Heide Kunzelmann

Heide Kunzelmann on BBC Radio 3

Dr Heide Kunzelmann, Lecturer in German in the Department of Modern Languages, will feature on the BBC Radio 3 programme Free Thinking at 22.00 on Thursday 5 January 2017, exploring the writing and politics of Karl Kraus (1874-1936).

Free Thinking is a series of interviews, talks, debates, drama and live performance with contributions from leading thinkers, artists, scientists and writers. The episode on Karl Kraus is part of Radio 3’s Breaking Free series of programmes exploring the music and culture in Vienna.

Heide joins presenter Philip Dodd, American author Jonathan Franzen (The Kraus Project, Picador, 2014) and novelist Lawrence Norfolk to discuss Karl Kraus, whose artistic achievements include 700 one man performances of works by Brecht, Goethe, Shakespeare and others, plus performances of Offenbach’s operettas, accompanied by piano and singing all the roles himself; whose magazine Die Fackel published Oskar Kokoschka, Adolf Loos, Heinrich Mann, Arnold Schanberg, August Strindberg and Oscar Wilde and whose support for other artists included assisting Frank Wedekind in staging his controversial play Pandora’s Box.

In 1915 Kraus began writing a satirical play about World War One called The Last Days of Mankind which mixes dialogue drawn from contemporary documents with fantastical expressionist scenes of apocalypse.

The programme will be available after it has been broadcast on the BBC’s iPlayer.