“How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.”

Karl Kraus (1874 to 1936)

An Austrian journalist, critic, playwright, and poet who has been compared with Juvenal and Jonathan Swift for his satiric vision and command of language.

In German literature he ranks as an outstanding writer of the World War I era, but, because his work is almost untranslatably idiomatic, his talents have not been widely recognised.