A Language of Esoteric Signs: Deciphering Jewish and Masonic Gestures in Viennese Expressionism

In his dryly sardonic "praise" of Jewish patronage in relation to the then-dominant Secessionist aesthetic, the polemical critic Karl Kraus (1874–1936)—who, not insignificantly, had renounced Judaism one year earlier—implicitly conveys his belief that the Wiener Moderne style was as superficial as the Jewish-owned, Jugendstil homes that populated Vienna at the fin de siècle.