Karl Kraus and The Demolished Literature
  

Karl Kraus' satirical style, and the animosity he felt for  his contemporaries earned him a love-hate relationship with fellow patrons of the coffeehouse scene; it was the life behind his work, literally and figuratively.  He distanced himself from the trendiness of the contemporary literary circle, and formulated his own morals and ethics to be used as tools for satire. But Kraus was very much a product of the coffeehouse culture. His works were timely reviews of people and events, the social and political elements that were his view from his table at Griendsteidl Cafe.
    

The creation of his own journal, Die Fackel, or The Torch, published in 1899, collected his acerbic nature in a series of relentless critiques of Viennese public life. In one light, the journal was a medium for attack on the established viennese press, which Kraus deemed irresponsible in its abuse of its position in respect to the  influence it wielded public at whom it was aimed.  Particularly during and before the period of WWI, the press, run by print barons, fueled and shaped public opinion with its embrace of the war-- a quality which antimilitarist Kraus viewed as indefensible. This subtle degree of control which the press held over the public was very much a reflection of the influence that political factions executed over Viennese culture and which the avant-garde artists of the coffeehouse generation worked to divert.
    

In response to Cafe Greinsteidl being burned down in 1896, Kraus published his essay "The Demolished Literature." True to his style, the essay stood as a mock obituary which lamented the loss of an intellectual haven. "A certain affiliation with the artistic endeavors of the guests was already stamped on their physiognomy, the haughty awareness, no doubt, that they were contributing in their own way to a literary movement......One of the most important catchwords...was "life," and people got together nightly in order to come to terms with life, or, if the going got hot and heavy, to try to figure it out." The essay spoke to the nerves with which Kraus criticized the literati who were so dependent on the central market of the Griensteidl coffeehouse. He jeered at the impressive production of their literature with a self satisfying image of a writer, endlessly suffering and forever hunched over his work. "...Of late the cases of young writers paying for their strenuous productivity with rheumatism have multiplied."  In questioning the future of the literature and the patrons who once frequented the literary mecca, he satirized the fear of loss. "Together with the old houses the last pillars of our memories are falling, and soon an irreverent spade will have also leveled the venerable Cafe Griendsteidl to the ground... Our literature is bracing itself for a period of homelessness..."