{"id":2202,"date":"2014-02-20T09:17:51","date_gmt":"2014-02-20T09:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/?p=2202"},"modified":"2017-08-29T16:16:51","modified_gmt":"2017-08-29T15:16:51","slug":"deborah-holmes-to-give-cambridge-lecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2014\/02\/20\/deborah-holmes-to-give-cambridge-lecture\/","title":{"rendered":"Deborah Holmes to give Cambridge lecture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday 28 February, Dr Deborah Holmes, Head of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/secl\/german\/index.html\">Department of German,<\/a> will deliver the Annual Ludwig Boltzmann Lecture at the University of Cambridge\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mml.cam.ac.uk\/german\/index.html\">Department of German and Dutch<\/a>. \u00a0The title of her talk is \u2018War and Words: Krausian \u201cBiographik\u201d in <i>The Last Days of Mankind<\/i>\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>In his monumental drama <i>Die letzten Tage der Menschheit <\/i>[<i>The Last Days of Mankind<\/i>], the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus launched a savage attack on the causes and conduct of the First World War as seen from the perspective of Austria-Hungary. Over 800 pages long in its later versions (1922\/28), it consists in large part of quotations from newspaper articles, proclamations, legal texts, war poems and songs, juxtaposed with snatches of conversation as overheard in Vienna\u2019s streets and coffeehouses. There is no plot as such, rather a succession of dialogues created from this varied intertext and sustained by an immense cast whose members are largely based on historical figures.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Holmes\u2019 lecture will explore the relevance of Kraus\u2019 mammoth project to the biographies of the individuals he co-opted for his satire and vice versa. In particular, the genesis of scenes from the first two acts featuring Hofrat and Hofr\u00e4tin Schwarz-Gelber will be examined. These blackly comical characters \u2013 ruthless careerists intent on exploiting the opportunities for social mobility created by the war \u2013 are claimed to have been based on the real-life models of either Hermann and Eugenie Schwarzwald or Rudolf and Erna Schwarz-Hiller, acculturated Jewish couples who were respected representatives of liberal reform movements in<em> fin-de-si\u00e8cle<\/em> Vienna. In investigating their literary incarnation here as paradigmatic types, Dr Holmes sheds light, not only on the nature of Kraus\u2019 satire but also on the modes of biographical writing to emerge from German-language Modernism.<\/p>\n<p>The lecture is generously supported by the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/gtb.lbg.ac.at\/en\/en1\/1\">Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography<\/a>, Vienna.<\/p>\n<p>The lecture will be held at 5pm, in the main lecture theatre, Divinity School, St John\u2019s College, Cambridge, followed by a reception. To contact the department at Cambridge, please see the page here:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mml.cam.ac.uk\/german\/contact\/default.html\">www.mml.cam.ac.uk\/german\/contact\/default.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday 28 February, Dr Deborah Holmes, Head of the Department of German, will deliver the Annual Ludwig Boltzmann Lecture at the University of Cambridge\u2019s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2014\/02\/20\/deborah-holmes-to-give-cambridge-lecture\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2458,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2202"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2202"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7813,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2202\/revisions\/7813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}