Defamations, bodily harm, copyright battles, media crimes: the trial files of Viennese law office Oskar Samek reveals Karl Kraus, who had been involved in hundreds of lawsuits, to have been a literary master of prosecution and (self-)defence. Writer Barbara Zeman and recipient of the Büchner prize Clemens J. Setz explain this ‘magnum opus’ in public debate. The speaker Robert Stadlober will read from the files, accompanied by musical interventions by Viennese grindcore band Onkel Gusta.

Kraus lectures – A tribute to the 150th birthday of Karl Kraus in five lectures

‘There is nothing more desolating than his acolytes, nothing more godforsaken than his adversaries’, wrote Walter Benjamin about Karl Kraus, the oft-cited and much too rarely read language and culture critic, satirist and talented performer born in 1874. In the Free Republic of Vienna, different artists and intellectuals will stage a series of ‘lectures’ like those held by Kraus himself between 1910 and 1936 to great acclaim in Vienna’s Konzerthaus, in workers’ homes, in theatres and other venues. On five weekends, Kraus will not be regurgitated, but his ‘Theatre of Poetry’ will be dusted off: Linguistic analysis and text demolition as demonstrated by him as the editor of the Fackel, in The Last Days of Mankind, the Third Walpurgis Night and hundreds of trials against corrupt politicians and media personas receive a new interpretation. Contemporary historian Katharina Prager, who manages Kraus’ estate in Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, will already give an insight into the life and work of Karl Kraus on 29 April 2024 in a Wiener Vorlesung at Gartenbaukino.