Kraus the comedian - now that we have Obu brand, we lack for nothing

The Last Days of Mankind is a piece of post-Biblical prophecy that ends with the destruction of humanity:

(The glow dies out.  Total darkness.  The , on the horizon, the wall of flames leaps high.  Death cries off stage.)

In fact the play ends twice, but the 1974 abridgement does not include the epilogue which includes – I am quoting a “Critical Analysis” by Franz Mauthner that follows the play – a sentence that is “probably the longest in German literature and also the longest catalogue of the sins of the German people” and a second apocalypse, for which God, in his own voice but oddly the words of the Emperor Franz Josef, denies all responsibility: “I did not will it so.”

But despite all this The Last Days of Mankind is mostly a comedy.  Monty Python stuff.  Blackadder.

SUBSCRIBER:  The rumor circulating in Vienna is that there are rumors circulating in Austria.  They’re even going from mouth to mouth, but nobody can tell you –

PATRIOT:  Nobody knows anything specific, but there must be something to it if even the government has announced that rumors have been spread.  (V. 17)

And thus a “rumors about rumors” sketch is up and running, with no one having any idea what the rumored rumors might be about.

OPTIMIST:  What do you say to the rumors?

GRUMBLER:  I am not aware of them, but I believe them.  (V. 18)

Act II, Scene 17 is the Restaurant Sketch, including the patriotic food jokes:

GENTLEMAN:  No, wait a minute – perfidy noodles – whatever does that mean?

WAITER:  Well, macaroni!

GENTLEMAN:  Oh, yes, right – Scoundrel’s salad, what’s that?

WAITER:  Salad with Italian dressing.

A woman at a pricey spa (“No Wounded Soldiers Allowed”) has become completely corrupted, able to speak only the language of propaganda and advertising:

FRAU WAHNSCHAFFE:  I have only two children, and unfortunately they are not yet eligible for military service.  And, to make things even worse, one of them, to our sorrow, is a girl.  So I have to make do by fantasizing that my boy has already been at the front, and has, naturally, already met a hero’s death.  (III.40)

Then she turns to her own duties.  I presume Kraus is simply giving her actual exhortations from newspapers and magazines:

We had a wholesome broth made with the Excelsior brand of Hindenburg cocoa-cream soup cubes…  In the beginning we really missed ersatz margarine, but now that we have Obu brand, we lack for nothing…  Today we’re going to try the much-praised hodgepodge with Yolktex brand of ersatz egg made from carbonite of lime and baking powder, and a bit of Saladfix, a delicious additive that I prefer by far to Salatin as well as to Saladol.

Battlefield skits, incompetent officers, idiotic leaders, self-serving journalists, repulsive psychiatrists – oh how Kraus hated psychiatry.  But as the play progresses, the tone darkens – as does the war – the comedy becomes blacker and in many cases moves beyond the comic as the absurd becomes nightmarish.  Finally Kraus blows it all up, which I suppose, in my next post, is where Kraus week should end.