Essay About World War And Satirist Karl Kraus

Drama in World War I
World War I Drama in
Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!
– Siegfried Sassoon (1947, p.71)
World War I was the first war in human history to demonstrate Humankinds
immense capability of destruction. It cost, beside the psychical, social and political scars
and a ten-million lives, in addition to the unbelievable material casualties. It demolished
the optimism in humanity that was sparked in the renaissance, confirmed in the
enlightenment and refined in the beginning of the modern age. The pessimism that the war
caused pervaded throughout Europe triggered the historians apocalyptic prognostications.
The satirist Karl Kraus denouncing the war wrote a reportage entitled The Last Days of
Humanity. Huge numbers of the literary works that were produced in wartime were
fraught with melancholic and pessimistic themes. One of the particularities of this war is
that it was not concerned only with soldiers but reached also the layman. It was a war that
put on the same footing different social classes, genders and age groups. Thus the
pessimism transcended the soldiers, men of letters and haunted all the components of the
European society. The politicians idealistic rhetoric, chiefly that it was the war to end all
wars, did not succeed to eradicate peoples cynicism. David Lloyd George expressing his
1skepticism in regards to t political rhetoric stated ” This war, like the next war, is war to
end war”(Stimpson 195). These depressive circumstances of the war made people
desperately look for outlets to release their anxieties. Consequently, The theater became a
perfect outlet that all the components of the European societies frequented more often.
In this context, Dramatic works were selectively approached, very few forms of
drama were accepted by the mass, only ones