Karl Kraus

Among Schocken’s most treasured literary possessions were the handwritten notebooks of the anti-war satirical play, The Last Days of Mankind. Written by the Viennese-Jewish writer Karl Kraus, this was a 700-page attack against the blindness of those responsible for plunging Europe into the catastrophe of World War I. Kraus, among the most famous writers in his time, was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature three times.

Schocken’s affinity for The Last Days of Mankind was evident in a public lecture that he commissioned, held at the Schocken Library in Jerusalem just after the outbreak of World War II. This was Schocken’s final public event in Jerusalem before leaving for America in 1940, and apparently he could think of no better subject to mark this milestone. The lecture was given by Werner Kraft, a biographer of Heinrich Heine.