ON-LINE: Prague Forays: Egon Erwin Kisch and Walking-as-Belonging (Chad Bryant)

Egon Erwin Kisch, a celebrated member of the Prague Circle, first earned local fame while writing a newspaper column entitled Prager Streifzüge, or Prague Forays, published weekly from 1910 to 1911. In these literal and figurative forays, Bryant argues, Kisch puzzled through notions of urban belonging in a city ruled by Czech elites and shot through with political antisemitism. Kisch’s literary experimentations, furthermore, suggested ways of thinking about strangers and difference, place and community, in the fin-de-siècle city more broadly.

Chad Bryant is Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His most recent book, Prague: Belonging and the Modern City, will be published by Harvard University Press in May 2021.