At no time did Vienna playa greater role in the intellectual and artistic life of the German speaking peoples and of Europe than in the first three decades of the present century. It was the home of Mahler and SchOnberg, of Hofmannsthal and Schnitzler, of Mach and Wittgen- stein, of Freud and of Austro-Marxism. Less known outside the Ger- man-speaking world was Karl Kraus, whose whole work was insepa- rably connected with the Vienna of his time and who, perhaps for this reason, may seem today more "provincial" than the others whom we have just named. Kraus was an apocalyptic moralist: The...