Kleinkunst: Little Art
    
     A German phrase for "little art," Kleinkunst defined the revolutionary coming-of-age nature that was grabbing artistic expression at the turn of the century.  In the field of literature, visual arts, and performing arts, kleinkunst was a nod to the modern art movement which allowed room for experimentation in style and structure, a transformation from the traditional art form. Against the backdrop of the traditional novel, play, or poetry,  the small art of, specifically, literature, came in the form of  short stories, anecdotes, and essays. The result was an era represented by a body of brief and satirical works created in and by the atmosphere of the coffeehouse. Peter Altenberg noted a beauty in the simplicity of the writing that came out of the coffeehouse style. "You can write a novel of 200 pages and it can turn out superb. But you can also say the same thing in three pages and have it turn out just as superb. Nowadays there are many otherwise capable people who have no time to read 200 pages."  While it was the fulcrum of the spirit of the age, the coffeehouse was also a world unto itself, and its provision of journals and newspapers were a digestible link to the world beyond it. The text of the the literati were reflections, often bitter, on the developments in all areas, social, political, and artistic, of Austrian life. Karl Kraus's Die Fackel, or, The Torch was a journal which he published from 1901 to 1936. Its literary structure was grounded in his usage of Klienkunst works of satirical and ironic short pieces to critique the current political events of the time.
    

The coffeehouse stood as the most ideal environment for the breeding of Klienkunst as writers depended on the atmosphere of gossip, criticism, competition and story to absorb the natural brevity of life into their characteristically brief works. In a nod to the nature of modernity, the small form perfected the art of downplaying emotion about the inevitability of change and stood as a harbinger of the fast pace life of the modern world. As Polgar noted, "life is too short for long literature, too transitory for lingering descriptions and observation, too psychopathic for psychology, too fictitious for novels."