Discussions of the Austrian cultural critic Karl Kraus (1874-1936) tend to focus on his skills as a writer. Apart from a very limited amount of studies (Lensing 2007; Youker 2011; Stocker 2013), surprisingly little attention has been paid to his performance as a public speaker. Nevertheless, Karl Kraus owes much of his enduring fame to the fact that he toured intensely in the period between 1910 and 1936, the year of his death. This article aims to reflect on both the rhetoric and the (implied) theatricality of Kraus’ spoken-word performances. It is the ambition of this article to frame Kraus’ performance, which eschews easy categorisation, within the wider framework of how authors at the time resorted to spoken performances to shape an image of themselves and how they used specific media to achieve this goal. First, I discuss some of the eyewitness accounts of Kraus’ performances in order to show why it is so difficult to arrive at a neutral account of Kraus’ lecture evenings. In a second step, I tackle the rhetorical profile, the vocal fervour and the theatrical minimalism of Kraus’ scenography, which allows us to detect both progressive and conservative elements in his performances. In a third step, I describe how Kraus’ “Theater der Dichtung” and its resistance against conventional theatre can be modelled as an early precursor of techniques cherished by the main representatives of anti-illusionism and potentially also Regietheater. Finally, I compare Kraus with Thomas Mann so as to highlight that the particular usage that authors made of particular media (and even typography) contributed to their overall rhetorical (and ultimately political) persona.

中文翻译：

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卡尔克劳斯在舞台上

奥地利文化评论家卡尔克劳斯（1874-1936）的讨论往往集中在他作为作家的技能上。除了非常有限的研究（Lensing 2007；Youker 2011；Stocker 2013），令人惊讶的是，他作为公众演讲者的表现却很少受到关注。尽管如此，卡尔·克劳斯（Karl Kraus）在很大程度上仍归功于他在 1910 年至 1936 年（即他去世的那一年）期间进行了大量巡演。本文旨在反思克劳斯口语表演的修辞和（暗示的）戏剧性。这篇文章的目标是在更广泛的框架内构建克劳斯的表演，避免简单的分类，在更广泛的框架内，即当时作者如何诉诸口语表演来塑造自己的形象，以及他们如何使用特定媒体来实现这一目标。第一的，我讨论了克劳斯表演的一些目击者叙述，以说明为什么很难对克劳斯的演讲晚会做出中立的叙述。在第二步中，我处理了克劳斯布景的修辞轮廓、声音热情和戏剧极简主义，这使我们能够在他的表演中发现进步和保守的元素。在第三步中，我描述了克劳斯的“Theater der Dichtung”及其对传统戏剧的抵抗如何被建模为反幻觉主义的主要代表以及可能还有 Regietheater 的主要代表所珍视的技术的早期先驱。最后，我将 Kraus 与 Thomas Mann 进行比较，以强调作者对特定媒体（甚至排版）的特定用法对他们的整体修辞（以及最终的政治）角色做出了贡献。