At the age of 25 he founded Die Fackel, which he wrote alone from 1911 to 1936; Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit (The Last Days of Mankind) was a radical reckoning with the First World War, Die Dritte Walpurgisnacht (The Third Walpurgis Night) took issue with Hitler. According to Elias Canetti, Karl Kraus was “the greatest and most caustic man living in Vienna today.” Kraus, born in 1874 in JičÍn in Bohemia, died in 1936 in Vienna: for some he was God, for others the devil incarnate. His name has remained legendary, but what he represented is beginning to fade. Jens Malte Fischer now brings him into the present with this compre-hensive biography. Kraus’s personality and work, his friends and enemies, aphorisms and antagonisms are brought to life to reveal one of the greatest writers of his time and beyond.