Notes on observations and interviews, background material including press releases, reports, transcripts of speeches and congressional committee hearings testimony, articles and pamphlets, gathered by Timothy Allman, journalist, news editor, and author of Unmanifest Destiny: Mayhem and Illusion in American Foreign Policy- from the Monroe Doctrine to Reagan’s War in El Salvador (1984). Materials concern El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, Belize and Panama, and focus on the Church, guerillas, dissent, terrorism, and foreign policies of presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus was born on April 28, 1874 in Gitschin, Bohemia (modern Jicin, Czech Republic), then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The son of Jakob Kraus, a wealthy Jewish papermaker and businessman, and his wife Ernestine Kantor, Karl moved with his family to Vienna in 1877. He began to study law at the University of Vienna in 1892, but after changing his major to philosophy and German studies, he decided to leave the university in 1896 without a degree in hand.

Still in his early twenties, Kraus launched himself into a career in literature, publishing the first issue of a new journal, Die Fackel (“The Torch”), in April 1899. Kraus attracted a number of well-known artists and writers to Die Fackel in its first decade, however, by 1911 Kraus had become virtually the sole contributor. Despite the dearth of other writers, Kraus continued to edit and publish Die Fackel until his death in 1936.

Kraus is typically considered a key member of the fin de siècle literary and artistic culture in Vienna. This group included artists such as Gustav Klimt, a pioneer of the Art Nouveau movement, and a later the Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka, who painted a portrait of Kraus. Typically, the writers and painters associated with Kraus were immersed in the twin ideas of both cultural decadence and imminent change. Die Fackel, in fact, was intended to hold a “torch” to the hypocrisy of German and Austrian society and the Austro-Hungarian government. In his writing, Kraus criticized everything from psychoanalysis to the corruption of the Habsburg Empire, laissez-faire economic policies, and the nationalism of the pan-German (Grossdeutschland) movement, among many other topics.

However, Kraus was not limited to biting essays on subjects of cultural concern, nor was he necessarily limited to these particular subjects in all of his writing. Kraus is known for using an array of literary vehicles to express himself, including essays, plays, poems, and aphorisms. His best-known work is the satirical play, Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (“The Last Days of Mankind”), a massive piece about World War I. Kraus also exhibited a lasting interest in language, about which he wrote regularly in Die Fackel as well as in books such as Die Sprache (Language). His linguistic interests also led him to re-translate Shakespeare’s sonnets in 1932.

The fact that newspaper articles discussing Kraus and his work could still be found in German-language newspapers nearly 30 years after his death speaks to his strong influence in German literature and cultural studies. His last writing, an issue of Die Fackel, appeared in February 1936. He died in Vienna four months later on June 12, 1936, from a stroke and heart failure.

The Kraus Collection consists primarily of materials written about Karl Kraus, with few items by him. In total only three items can be attributed definitively to Kraus, and one unsigned letter from 1910 may be by Kraus.

Instead, the value of the collection is as a gauge for Kraus’ cultural impact in Europe during his life and well after. Gabriel Rosenrauch, an avid Kraus fan and the individual responsible for compiling this collection, took care to preserve newspaper articles concerning Kraus from 1914-1962. This includes a large collection of articles and obituaries from 1936, which were clipped from newspapers printed in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, a copy of a British newspaper that includes a review of a book written about Kraus, and articles written in Hebrew and Yiddish.

Not only did Rosenrauch save newspaper clippings, he saved flyers advertising plays and lectures by Kraus and pamphlets that include articles written about Kraus, many by Werner Kraft, a well-known German scholar of Kraus, author, and librarian. In addition, Rosenrauch collected two French-language items from La Société des Etudes Germanique (the Society of Germanic Studies). Rosenrauch also came into possession of a large collection of photographs of Kraus, depicting his life from adolescence to old age, up to and including his apartment in Vienna and gravesite. Among the photographs is a view of an unidentified synagogue, which may be where Kraus’ funeral service was held.

Also of importance are a set of extensive indexes compiled by Rosenrauch of articles in Die Fackel. While the script is difficult to read, it is clear that Rosenrauch took considerable care to document and catalog the subjects of the articles written by Kraus and other contributors to the journal. The care epitomized in these indexes extends throughout the collection. Several articles and essays are present as typed copies, presumably prepared by Rosenrauch, in particular the work by Hermann Hesse and several of the pieces by Werner Kraft.

Finally, since this collection was created by Rosenrauch, it includes his some of his personal correspondence. These letters are mostly exchanged with Helene Kann, a Kraus archivist, whom he helped to escape from Vienna and then from Europe after the Anschluss of Austria in 1938. These letters do not necessarily provide insight into Kraus, but they do provide interesting details about the collector as he maneuvered around Europe during World War II, ultimately ending up in Israel until his death in the 1960s.

The following is a list of works by Karl Kraus collected by Gabriel Rosenrauch housed with the Rare Books in the Special Collections and University Archives.

• Die Fackel. Wien : Verlag “Die Fackel”, 1899-1936. (AP30 .F15)
• Kraus, Karl. Epigramme. Wien ; Leipzig : Verlag “Die Fackel”, 1927. (PT2621.R27 E8 1927)
• Kraus, Karl. Literatur, oder Man wird doch da Sehn. Magische Operette in zwei Teilen. Wien : Verlag “Die Fackel”, 1921. (PT2621.R27 L48 1921)
• Kraus, Karl. Literatur und Lüge. Wien : Die Fackel, 1929. (PT2621.R27 L5 1929)
• Kraus, Karl. Die chinesische Mauer. Wien : Die Fackel, 1930. (PT2621.R27 C5 1930)
• Kraus, Karl. Nachts. Wien : Die Fackel, 1924. (PT2621.R27 N3 1924)
• Kraus, Karl. Sittlichkeit und Kriminalität. Wien : Die Fackel, 1923. (PT2621.R27 S5 1923)
• Kraus, Karl. Die Sprache. Wien, Verlag “Die Fackel”, 1937. (PT2621.R27 S83 1937)
• Kraus, Karl. Spräche und Widerspräche. Wien : Die Fackel, 1924. (PT2621.R27 S88 1924)
• Kraus, Karl. Die letzten Tage der Menschheit : Tragodie in fünf Akten mit Vorspiel und Epilog. Wien : Die Fackel, 1922. (PT2621.R27 L42 1922)
• Kraus, Karl. Traumstück. Wien ; Leipzig : Verlag “Die Fackel”, [1923] (PT2621.R27 T85 1922)
• Kraus, Karl. Traumtheater: Spiel in einem Akt. Wien : Die Fackel, 1924. (PT2621.R27 T86 1924)
• Kraus, Karl. Untergang der Welt durch schwarze Magie. Wien : Die Fackel, 1925. (PT2621.R27 U5 1925)
• Kraus, Karl. Die Unüberwindlichen, Nachkriegsdrama in vier Akten. Wien, Leipzig, Verlag “Die Fackel,” 1928. (PT2621.R27 U54 1928)
• Kraus, Karl. Wolkenkuckucksheim : phantastisches Versspiel in drei Akten auf Grundlage der “Vogel” von Aristophanes (mit Beibehaltung einiger Stellen der Chöre in der Schinckäschen Ubersetzung). Wien ; Leipzig : Verlag “Die Fackel”, 1923. (PT2621.R27 W58 1923)
• Kraus, Karl. Worte in Versen. München, Käsel-Verlag, [1959] (PT2621.R27 W6)
• Kraus, Karl. Zeitstrophen. Wien : Die Fackel, 1931. (PT2621.R27 Z2 1931)

Louis Lyons, ca.1955.

A distinguished journalist, Curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, and radio and television commentator, Louis Martin Lyons was a distinctive progressive voice in the media from the 1920s through the 1970s. Born on Sept. 1, 1897, and raised fatherless both in the suburbs of Boston and on a small farm in Plymouth County, Mass., Lyons graduated from Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1918. After military service during the First World War, he returned home intending to become a teacher, but with the assistance of a friend’s connections, embarked instead on a career in journalism. Hired by the Boston Globe in 1919, and then working as editor for the MAC Extension Service and reporter for the Springfield Republican, Lyons quickly found his niche. Even at this early stage in his career, he had a nose for news and little fear of controversy. His reporting, for example, helped expose some alleged improprieties by Amherst College President Alexander Meiklejohn that led to his resignation.

In 1923, Lyons returned to the greener pastures of the Globe as a reporter, later becoming a columnist, special features writer, and, during the Second World War, war correspondent. From the mid-1930s, he was also an active member of the American Newspaper Guild, one of the first white collar unions in the country and a target for critics who thought it tinged with Communism. At the Globe, Lyons covered a broad terrain, from Lindberg’s flight across the Atlantic to the Vermont floods of 1927. In perhaps the best known article of his career, in 1940, Lyons quoted then ambassador to Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy, as saying that “Democracy is finished in England. It may be here.” Although Kennedy claimed he was misquoted and, then, taken out of context, the article deepened the split between Kennedy and Roosevelt and ultimately helped precipitate the ambassador’s resignation.

In 1938, Lyons was accepted into the first class of fellows at the Nieman Foundation, which had been created to assist mid-career journalists, in the words of the donor, “to promote and elevate the standards of journalism in the United States and educate persons deemed specially qualified for journalism.” When Archibald MacLeish left as Curator of the Foundation to become Librarian of Congress in the following year, Lyons was selected as his successor, leaving his responsibilities at the Globe entirely in 1946 to work full time at the Nieman. From the post-war period until 1964, he helped shape the Fellows program, diversifying its ranks to include women, non-whites, and non-Americans, and expanding its scope to include all major media.

If anything, Lyons’ obligations at the Foundation seem to have spurred his productivity, while opening new avenues as a public spokesperson on journalism writing, and the role of the press. Lyons maintained an intensive schedule of lecturing and publishing, and he expanded into non-print media. When WGBH radio was founded in 1951, Lyons was tapped to do news and commentary, and when they branched out into television four years later, he became the station’s first newscaster. For twenty years, his nightly radio broadcasts were also fixtures on the local scene. A forceful advocate for freedom of the press even at the height of the McCarthy era, he was recognized with the George Foster Peabody Award for reporting by a local station and the Richard Lauterbach Award for “substantial contributions in the field of civil liberties” in 1958, and was awarded the Freedom Foundation Medal in 1959 and the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award in 1963. Lyons received honorary degrees from the University of Massachusetts, Rhode Island State College of Education, Colby College, and Harvard. Since 1981 (also 1964-1966), the Nieman Foundation has awarded its Louis M. Lyons Award annually to “honor displays of conscience and integrity by individuals, groups or institutions in communications.”

Although Lyons retired from the Nieman Foundation in 1964, he remained actively engaged in journalism. He continued his television broadcasts on shows such as Prime Time and Evening Compass until curtailed by a stroke 1975, and he served on the Board of Trustees at the University of Massachusetts from 1964 until 1971. Remarkably, a year and a half after his stroke, he returned to regular radio commentary. Louis Lyons died on April 11, 1982, leaving three sons, a daughter, and a step-daughter.

The Lyons Papers contain a selection of lectures, transcripts of broadcasts, and correspondence relating primarily to the television and radio career of the journalist Louis Martin Lyons. From the McCarthy era through the end of American involvement in Vietnam, Lyons’s broadcasts covered topics ranging from local politics, personalities, and places to the major current events on the national and international scene.

The distinction between broadcasts, lectures, and articles is not always clearly marked in the collection, however the broadcasts appear almost exclusively to be associated with WGBH, while the lectures were generally delivered to universities, press organizations, and at many of his awards ceremonies. The broadcasts, the true heart of the collection, address topics ranging from New Hampshire politics to Girl Scouts and the UN, politics in Boston, John F. Kennedy’s run for president, nuclear war and Cold War, international politics, the abuse of the press, McCarthyism, civil rights, John Birchers, racism, Black education, Vietnam, and the Du Bois homesite dedication. Includes some correspondence relative to the broadcasts, the deaths of Lyndon Johnson and Earl Warren, anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, television commentary, and the role of the press. Of particular note are materials relating to his emotional broadcast following the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the latter including dozens of letters from the public reacting, pro and con, to Lyons’ impassioned words. Most of Lyons’ earlier (McCarthy-era) broadcasts were destroyed in a fire at WGBH. Lyons’ lectures cover a similar range, but are more typically focused on journalism as craft and responsibility and issues surrounding the media.

The correspondence is relatively sparse, with much of it concerning such mundane matters as arrangements for lectures. While there is no sustained correspondence with any single person, Lyons did correspond with a number of well known individuals (e.g. Archibald MacLeish, Lux Feininger, Gluyas Williams, Arthur Schlesinger, Leonard Lewin, and Felix Frankfurter), and a few letters stand out. A letter from a former MAC student, Walton D. Sproul, for example, contains a vivid description of the final hours of World War I at the front, Senegalese troops, and the first signs of peace in Germany; an emotional letter from friends Charles and Phyllis Paskauskas discusses theur mood and the mood of the nation in the wake of John F. Kennedy’s death (in the Kennedy file); and a number of letters from the late 1960s and early 1970s discuss presidential politics and the raging political controversies of the day.

The papers of editor Charles Whipple include much additional information on the American Newspaper Guild at the Boston Globe during the period of Lyons’ employment.