Alice Schalek was a Viennese journalist and the first woman allowed to report from the front as a war correspondent in the First World War. She wrote for the Neue Freie Presse, the paper Kraus despised most. That alone would have been enough.
Kraus turns her into the embodiment of an enthusiastic press. He has her write about the wounded as if reviewing a premiere, and in the film, played by Iris Schmid, she says the line that sticks: now the glorious spectacle of war begins.
“Schalek did something he found highly problematic for women: she stepped very firmly into a male role.”
“Karl Kraus’s image of women was not exactly roaringly modern.”
Christian Ortner calls the scene in which she provokes an artillery attack just to experience something exaggerated. Kraus was not fair to Alice Schalek. He was not fair to anyone. That was his programme, and it is still the most uncomfortable thing about him.
How far Kraus takes the character is shown in a scene that appears in the film. A military chaplain visits the position, blesses the weapons, and then tries shooting with God himself. The soldiers cheer; this has to go into the Grazer Volksblatt at once. Schalek wants a turn too. The priest may and I may not, she complains; after all she only describes what she has experienced herself, and it is for the Sunday paper.
You laugh, and then the laugh sticks in your throat. Because the pattern has stayed: the reporter who has to get closer because only experience counts, and the war that provides the backdrop. You can see it today on any screen, with helmet, vest and live link.
From the series “The characters”: people from Karl Kraus’s First World War drama, who they really were and what the film makes of them. Quotes translated from German. Release and screenings · Cast and contributors
