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In-Depth Information
reports.” Kraus scorned scientists like Suess who made themselves “subser-
vient to the press” (
Pressgehorsam
).
77
In the wake of the Messina earthquake,
Kraus noted that the liberal papers barely disguised their contempt for the
faithful, even as they clung to their own dogma—their unshakeable faith
in science.
78
“We fled to science,” Kraus remarked after Messina (see figure 3.3). he
quoted the
Neue Freie Presse
on the marvels of instruments capable of re-
cording earthquakes thousands of miles away. “the greater the distance,
the more reliably the instruments function. Only when they are at the site
of the earthquake is there a danger that they will break.” technically, he
was right, since strong motion seismographs had yet to be perfected. More
profoundly, he was arguing that science refused to admit when it had been
bested by nature. Kraus quoted further from the
Neue Freie Presse
as it in-
voked the authority of a famous representative of both science and liberal-
ism: “What eduard Suess, with such wit, has called the pulse of the planet,
will be determined with scientific precision.” Kraus immediately one-upped
this bit of scientific poetizing: “that, however, will do nothing to slow the
earth's pulse. And its
bon mots
are more astonishing.”
79
As in his “North
Pole,” Kraus imagined that nature “spoke” in the language of disaster. he
framed the earthquake as a witty retort to the inflated rhetoric of science and
journalism. the
Neue Freie Presse
relied on Suess to prop up its liberal opti-
mism at a moment when it should, by all rights, have acknowledged defeat:
“the Sicilians will indeed allow themselves for once to be enlightened on
the count that priests cannot protect them from earthquakes. the devout
editors of the
Neue Freie Presse
will never renounce the belief that geologists
are capable of it.” the faith of the press in technical experts was matched,
Kraus implied, by the experts' need for legitimation from the press. the real
danger, in Kraus's view, was that science and the press were conspiring to
lull the public into a false sense of security: “there comes science with its
words of truth and comfort and bestows its benevolent solace on the fright-
ened ones.”
80
Kraus refused to let scientific rhetoric twist natural disasters
into signs of progress.
The
Grubenhund
Kraus attributed the power of modern science to the performative quality of
its jargon, its rhetorical voice or “intonation” (
Tonfall
): “With the right in-
tonation one can conquer the whole world,” he remarked in 1910. “Scream
murder and a murder is committed; whisper abracadabra and it is religion;
write dynamo exhaust pipes and it is science.”
81
the occasion for this reflec-
