Prague Circle

A group of mostly Jewish German-speakingwriters, the Prague Circle included some of the most significant figures inmodern Western literature. Its core members, Franz Kafka, Max Brod, FranzWerfel, Paul Kornfeld, and Egon Erwin Kisch, are renowned for their seminaldramas, lyric poetry, novels, short stories, and essays on aesthetics. Thewriters of the Prague Circle were bound together not by a common perspective ora particular ideology, but by shared experiences and interests. From theirvantage point in the Bohemian capital during the early decades of the twentiethcentury, they witnessed first-hand the collapse of the familiar and predictable,if not entirely comfortable, monarchical old order and the ascent of an anxiousand uncertain modern era that led inexorably to fascism, militarization, andwar. In order to deal with their new challenges, they considered strategies asdiverse and oppositional as the members of the Prague Circle themselves. Theirresponses were shaped to various degrees by Catholicism, Zionism, expressionism,activism, anti-activism, international solidarity with the working class, and transcendence.Stephen Shearier explores how these authors aligned themselves on the spectrumof the Activism Debate, which preceded the much studied Expressionist Debate bya generation. This study examines the critical reception of these influential literaryfigures to determine how their legacies have been shaped.