Family Virtues and Social Critique: Andreas Latzko’s Anti-War Prose (1917-1918)

Between 1917 and 1918, the Austro-Hungarian author Andreas Latzko (1876-1943) wrote three separate publications against the Great War: Menschen im Krieg (1917), Friedensgericht (1918), and Der letzte Mann (published 1919). Literary historians tend to bypass these works, and the few who note them chiefly focus on the best-selling novella cycle Menschen im Krieg (1917). It is usually presented as an example of expressionist political prose, or as a mixture of social satire and aesthetic shock-tactics that chiefly remains indebted to realist traditions, albeit with occasional incursions into expressionistic styles...