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The Greedy Observer of Life (Egon Erwin Kisch)

One after the other, two amazing books appeared on the German book market, making the whole reading world look back at them. One of them was called "Mad Reporter", and the other "Hare Through Time". A review appeared in the Berlin "Birzhevaya Gazette", which said: "Kish (this was the author of the books mentioned) raised journalism to art. This is a true master of artistic journalism. His books are artistic examples of this art." Meanwhile, Birzhevaya Gazeta characterized in this way the old, honored communist, who served the cause of the revolution not only as a journalist, but also as a soldier. Another bourgeois newspaper, the Berlin Eight-Hour Evening Leaf, characterized the author as follows: "This is a man who says yes to life and no to any lie."

That is why Kish said "yes" to communism and "no" to the bourgeoisie.

The two books I'm talking about are full of ebullient content. Unfortunately, only one of them, and even then in an abbreviated form, appeared in Russian. Particularly striking is the enormous variety and large number of children in these books. It seems as if Kish really wants, first of all, to amaze with the versatility of life, the unlimitedness of its manifestations. It is characteristic of him, as noted by German criticism, to represent the greatest events through concrete, full-blooded trifles and to see large, sometimes world forces in life's trifles and be able to raise them to the desired height.

Kish is an avid observer of life, a life absorber and a Globttroter, a never-stopping traveler, a collector of life's treasures, life's deformities, life's curiosities.

The success of Kisch's books was enormous and put the author, without any dispute, in the first rank of German and at the same time world journalists. Kish deserves the attention of the Soviet reader, and I want to acquaint this reader first of all with his biography.valuable contribution to our own cause at this initial stage in the development of socialist culture.

Kish was born in 1885 in Prague, an engineer by education, by activity, throughout his life, a journalist. As a journalist he worked in Prague, Vienna and Berlin. His youthful novel The Shepherd of the Girls, written before the war, had a great, slightly scandalous (due to courage) success. During the war, Kisch served in the Austrian army, joined the International, was a participant in the January strike, and in October 1918 he turned out to be the commandant of the Vienna Red Guard, that is. that communist soldier's organization, which played no small role in the Vienna revolution, was covered by a hail of slander on the part of the bourgeoisie and disbanded not without bloodshed. Kish, who had been a communist for eleven years, came to Berlin and devoted himself there to proletarian literature. He has published the best journalistic anthology available so far, Classics of Journalism, which, unfortunately, has been extended only to Franz Mehring, inclusive, and embraces, in the main, socialist journalism. To those books that I have already mentioned, another interesting book about Russia, The Tsar, Priests and Bolsheviks, has been added as collections of his magazine sketches. I will talk about her separately. His pamphlet "The Case of the Chief of the General Staff Redl", written with a high order of biting irony, enjoyed tremendous success. He also wrote a small dramatic miniature "The Ascension of the Hangman Tony." This piece has been played more than a thousand times in different cities of Europe. It is not clear why it has not yet been given in Russia. Last year, Kish traveled to America and brought back a huge collection of new material, which he will treat the European reader to. I took care of him after his trip, and he managed to tell me an abyss of interesting things even during a half-hour conversation.

  By the way, Kish spoke with great sympathy about Charlie Chaplin, finding him almost the most advanced person in the entire American scientific and artistic intelligentsia. To this little article, I am enclosing a photograph given to me by Kish, where he is depicted with Charlie Chaplin. Charlie Chaplin - left.

Soon there will be a new (after a number of previous ones) edition in German of the famous book "Ten Days That Shook the World" by the late friend of our revolution, John Reed. Kish wrote an excellent biography of his colleague for this edition, paying tribute to the memory of a man with whom he himself has so much in common.

Now a few words about Kish's book on Russia. Otto Heller, a fellow proletarian journalist, writes about Kish that he described Russia with all the techniques that bourgeois journalism has developed, but wrote about what he saw through the eyes of a proletarian for the proletarians.

Kish is right. He doesn't advertise to us, he doesn't compliment us. Why is this between your own? But it gives the most vivid display of the main contrasts and main conquests of our life. And Kish traveled from Leningrad to Erivia, saw a lot of domestic and industrial, both official and private. He touched all aspects of our Soviet life.

This book is undoubtedly one of the best, dedicated to us, our hard work, our growing success.