A group of mostly Jewish German-speaking
writers, the Prague Circle included some of the most significant figures in
modern Western literature. Its core members, Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Franz
Werfel, Paul Kornfeld, and Egon Erwin Kisch, are renowned for their seminal
dramas, lyric poetry, novels, short stories, and essays on aesthetics. The
writers of the Prague Circle were bound together not by a common perspective or
a particular ideology, but by shared experiences and interests. From their
vantage point in the Bohemian capital during the early decades of the twentieth
century, they witnessed first-hand the collapse of the familiar and predictable,
if not entirely comfortable, monarchical old order and the ascent of an anxious
and uncertain modern era that led inexorably to fascism, militarization, and
war. In order to deal with their new challenges, they considered strategies as
diverse and oppositional as the members of the Prague Circle themselves. Their
responses 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 spectrum
of the Activism Debate, which preceded the much studied Expressionist Debate by
a generation. This study examines the critical reception of these influential literary
figures to determine how their legacies have been shaped.