High Treason and Low Comedy. Robert T. O’Keeffe
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4 below, because portions of it are the basis of his 1920s play about Redl, Die Hetzjagd. Additionally, the book is illustrative of the theme of what happens to a narrative when historical material is used for subsequent transformations into works of art.
In mid-June, 1913, Kisch moved to Berlin in search of other writing opportunities and a broader reading public. During his year in Berlin he wrote a novel, Der Mädchenhirt (The Shepherd of Young Women, a colloquial expression for a pimp—in English the book is usually referred to as “The Pimp”). It drew upon his observations of Prague’s underworld during the preceding years and was hailed as a “return to naturalism”26 at a time when various forms of modernism, especially Expressionism, were ascendant (at least in critical opinion) in all of the arts.27 As some critics pointed out, the main virtue of Kisch’s novel, regardless of its position in the ongoing debates about appropriately ‘modern styles’ and about German vs. Czech strife in Prague, was its bringing to the attention of the public the pressing issue of social inequality as manifested through the struggles of ‘little people’ in the new urban jungles of the era.28 Spector noted that Kisch had craftily escaped the rhetoric of ‘biological’ and cultural arguments regarding ‘nature vs. nurture’ as the determinants of character and behavior (advanced by ‘race theorists’, including German nationalists). Instead Kisch redefined the Czech–German contest as part of the unfolding class conflict of modernity, in other words, as a type of raw power struggle in which ‘national character traits’ were irrelevant. In addition his protagonist, the illegitimate offspring of a sexual liaison between a German father and Czech mother, subverted the old Bohemian-German trope of masculine Aryans subduing and stewarding hyperemotional, culturally primitive, ‘feminine’ Czechs (who here represent Slavs in general, all in need of ‘good German management’).29 While writing his novel in Berlin Kisch patronized bohemian cafés and circles, looking for an entrée into writing for the stage. In June 1914 he was appointed Dramaturge of a small theater and troupe that presented ‘socially conscious’ plays (Sozietätsbühne). This prospective career came to a sudden halt with the outbreak of World War I―as a reservist in the VIIIth Army Corps, Kisch was summoned to Prague and activated as an infantryman with the rank of corporal.
Kisch served in the Austro-Hungarian army for the duration of the war. As a footslogging rifleman he participated in one of the war’s earliest battles, an offensive launched into a salient between the Sava and Drina Rivers in Serbia. His graphic description of this battle, in which the Austro-Hungarian army, a victim of its own haphazard planning and incompetent leadership, suffered large losses of men and equipment to withering Serbian machine- gun and artillery fire, was translated by Harold Segel as “Episodes from the Serbian Front”.30 The piece comes from Kisch’s war diary, which appeared in 1922 as Soldat im Prager Korps (A Soldier in the Prague Corps) and was reissued in edited and augmented form in 1930 as Schreib das auf, Kisch! (Write It Down, Kisch!). The diary was not published at the time of its creation on account of Austria’s strict censorship of any and all realistic reporting about the war (a policy most notably belittled by Karl Kraus in his ‘monster play’, Die letzte Tagen der Menschheit, or “Mankind’s Last Days”). A hundred years later the historian Max Hastings, in Catastrophe 1914, cited passages from Kisch’s diary in order to vivify his accounts of battles fought on the Serbian and Russian fronts.31 Kisch’s unit was transferred to participate in the grim 1914–1915 winter fighting along the line of the Carpathian mountains, where he was promoted to lieutenant, wounded by a grenade, and, after hospitalization, assigned to the army’s press corps. In this job he re-established contact with Franz Werfel and met Joseph Roth and Robert Musil, who was his editor for a while; he maintained contact with both of these colleagues and rivals over the decades.32
The loss of the war, the collapse of the Habsburg dynasty, and the rapid disintegration of Austria-Hungary in October, 1918, led Kisch into a new phase of life and a new set of political commitments. Like those of many soldiers on both sides of the conflict, his beliefs about society and politics had been radicalized by his experience of the war. During his last year of service he illegally attended various leftist conferences and ‘soldiers councils’ meetings. At the war’s end Kiich was on the scene in Vienna in uniform, becoming an agitator and leader of the Red Guard, a paramilitary force that threw its support to communists and other leftists in an abortive coup attempt against the conservative government of rump Austria.33 Soon thereafter he joined the Communist Party.34 Kisch remained evasive about his Party membership throughout his life. In situations that held the prospect of negative consequences (e.g., his status in Australia in 1934–1935 or in New York in 1939–1940), Kisch lied outright and denied any affiliation with the Communist Party.35 In contrast, Istvan Deak’s prosopography of Germany’s leftist, radical, and revolutionary intellectuals associated with the journal Die Weltbühne supplies a concise biography of Kisch that emphasizes his Party connections and various left-wing committees and organizations he either founded or belonged to.36
Kisch remained in Vienna throughout 1919, took part in the press wars between the left- and right-wing factions of Austrian political life, and experienced discouragement about the political situation and his diminishing opportunities to publish in Austria. He returned to Prague in 1920, worked for Prager Tagblatt, and re-established connections with his numerous friends and acquaintances who were active in both German and Czech literary and theatrical circles. He wrote Die Abenteuer in Prag (Prague Adventures) during 1920. It was a synthesis of reminiscences about his family and its history with colorful episodes recounting the city’s political and cultural life; it included versions of some of the work he had published in 1912 and 1913 and has been called by some “his first memoir”.
In 1921 he resettled in Berlin, which became his home base until his expulsion from Germany in 1933. Throughout the 1920s he traveled whenever necessary to Prague and Vienna in connection with his theatrical efforts and other publishing projects. In 1923 he compiled and edited an anthology of “classical journalism”. Kisch’s book about the Redl affair appeared in 1924. Though involved in theatrical projects during these years, he was obviously busy in writing to his main strength, reportage. In 1925 the book that spread his reputation as a master of reportage, Der rasende Reporter, sold well, was widely reviewed,37 and went into numerous reissues.38 Late in the same year he took his first trip to the Soviet Union, beginning his series of world-wide travels that resulted in thematic books of reportage.
Because Kisch and ‘reportage’ were almost synonymous for many of his readers, it is necessary to characterize this form of writing. What was it and what was it believed to be, especially with regard to Kisch’s career? The first hint can be seen in the materials that Kisch chose for his compilation Klassischer Journalismus, which gathered pieces by venerable ancestors of reportage as Kisch came to see it. Though many of the selected authors (e.g., Pliny, Luther, Napoleon, Bismarck) had not been journalists, he grouped them with writers from the late 18th century forward who had practiced journalism at one time or another in their lives, much of it adversarial. Vivid writing based on direct observation influenced his selections, so he was amenable to including short pieces by Viennese feuilletonists whose work he admired (e.g., Peter Altenberg). In his Introduction to the collection Kisch stated his belief that there was such a thing as totally objective or impartial journalism.39 Within a few years he was to change his mind about this, influenced by his leftist political beliefs and impressed by John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the World, which gave an enthusiastic, approving portrait of the Bolshevik leadership in the USSR (he wrote an Introduction to a 1927 German translation of Reed’s book).40 In Kisch’s mind, reportage acquired a leftist political impetus and political goals, which, if skillfully woven into the narrative of a report, would persuade the reader that the implicit socio-political framework of his writing was the correct one.
Using Kisch’s own criteria for writing ‘legitimate reportage’, a working definition would include the following elements. It is fact-based reporting that also investigates deeper social and political causes behind the facts. It uses what Kisch called “logical fantasy”, which he defined as the most plausible and effective narrative means to connect and explain a series of related facts. It is open to literary devices such as metaphor, irony, sarcasm, taking an indirect path to a revelation, and fashioning an authorial narrative persona who observes and reports, but it should use everyday language and avoid literary