Hans Müller's war: interrogating Krausian perspectives

Karl Kraus followed the wartime career of writer and journalist Hans Muller (later Muller-Einigen, 1882–1950) very closely, featuring him in a series of increasingly polemical articles in his magazine The Torch and as a character in three scenes of The Last Days of Mankind (1922). This article analyses Kraus’s depiction of Muller, arguing that he became emblematic for the satirist of a literary and journalistic opportunism that glorified the First World War whilst avoiding more active participation in it. The article concludes by revealing the story behind an episode in Muller’s biography that was to remain a conundrum for Kraus — his audience with the German Emperor Wilhelm II in 1917.