Gaze (Karl Kraus – The Great Wall of China)

Within the Schönberg circle, Karl Kraus was followed both as an author and as a public reader of texts. The correspondence between Alban Berg and Anton Webern reveals that the famous Kraus lecture Die chinesische Mauer (The Great Wall of China) provided inspiration for one of Schönberg’s paintings: The lecture took place on May 3, 1910 in the ballroom of the Austrian Society of Engineers and Architects (Eschenbachgasse 9, Vienna, 1st district) and was organized by the Academic Association for Literature and Music, which also acted as an organizer for Schönberg’s concerts. Kraus’s lecture Die chinesische Mauer (The Great Wall of China) takes its starting point from the murder of the evangelical missionary Elsie Sigel in New York City’s Chinatown. Newspapers reported that the victim, coated with “chlorinated lime” and murdered by a Chinese lover on 9 June 1909, was found in a suitcase.