Portrait of Egon Erwin Kisch (Image Archive Austrian National Library)
editor
Last update
Give a coffee
Information should be free for everyone, but good journalism costs a lot of money.
If you enjoyed this article, you can check Aviation.Direct voluntary invite for a cup of coffee.
In doing so, you support the journalistic work of our independent specialist portal for aviation, travel and tourism with a focus on the DA-CH region voluntarily without a paywall requirement.
If you did not like the article, we look forward to your constructive criticism and/or your comments either directly to the editor or to the team at with this link or alternatively via the comments.
Your
Aviation.Direct team

Exploration flight over Venice

Advertising
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Egon Erwin Kisch is one of the best journalists in the German language. In 1925, almost a hundred years ago, a volume of summarized reports was published. The title of the book became his nickname: "The Furious Reporter."

"How much more wonderful it is in the flying boat than in the airplane! There is no engine in front of me blowing its exhaust fumes into my nose and eyes, no propeller obscuring the view. The pilot sits far behind me and the pressurized engine rattles above him. (…) We are flying low, only fourteen hundred meters."

What Kisch describes here is flying in its original form. You feel with all your senses that you are in the air.

Towards the end of the First World War, Kisch accompanied the Austro-Hungarian Army's seaplane reconnaissance flight from Istria to Venice as a press officer. This report is also part of the work mentioned above.

Who was “the racing reporter?”

Egon Erwin Kisch, born on April 29.4.1885, XNUMX in Prague, began a career as a crime reporter for Prague newspapers after two aborted studies, and in the process got to know the underworld very well. In addition to crime stories, he repeatedly published sensitive but factual milieu studies of Prague's slums and socially marginalized groups.

As early as 1913, he made a name for himself by uncovering the military cover-up of Colonel Redl’s suicide.

During World War I, Kisch was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army. After being injured on the Russian front, he came to Vienna as a press officer, where he increasingly became an opponent of the war and a declared communist.

Waiting room in the old Venice airport on the Lido (today's name: "Giovanni Nicelli" after a military pilot in World War I). The airfield building is now considered "molto elegante" due to its artistic interior design. (Photo: aeroporto G. Nicelli)

In the press quarters to the communist 

The position in the press department offered interesting opportunities: Above all, there was plenty of time for writing! Towards the end of the war, he had the opportunity to fly on the reconnaissance flight from Istria to Venice. Kisch processed this experience into the essay "Exploration flight over Venice“, which was published in 1925 in the aforementioned anthology together with other exciting texts. In the reports in this volume, he mingles with emigrants from France, visits the stoker of a giant steamer, describes a trip to the bottom of the sea, the death of a murderer and much more.

The texts are entertaining and sensitive at the same time, but also neutral, informative, sometimes a little imaginatively embellished and didactic. He almost always manages to reach the right people to talk to.

The locations are constantly changing: Prague, Vienna, Paris, London, Istria... Kisch is present almost everywhere. He used every available technical means to transmit data.

The nickname "the raging reporter" may sound a little superficial. Unjustly so! With his texts, which are of a high linguistic standard, Kisch has a firm place in Prague's German literature.

Later, other writers repeatedly claimed this nickname, but none of them even came close to the quality of Kisch's reporting.

Cover of “The Racing Reporter”, E. Reiss Verlag, Berlin, 1925 (Photo: Ludwig priv.)

Two minutes in Venice

How does the flight to Venice continue?

Der "Airplane“ skims the “blue-green boundlessness“ the Adriatic. In the water “polyps are swaying. We know they are mines, but we don't care. (That) is a matter for close reconnaissance." After forty minutes you reach the Lido and Fort San Nicolo can be seen. There, at the northern end of the Lido, is the airfield, which was used for military purposes from 1915 and is still in use for small aircraft. Venice's passenger airport ("Marco Polo") is now on the mainland.

The seaplane carrying Kisch and his pilot is shot at, but not hit; fighter planes take off. Kisch quickly takes some reconnaissance photos, a quick look to the west at the actual city: the gondolas on the Riva degli Schiavoni look like bristles, the Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Church can be seen... memories of peaceful times. The stopover over Venice lasts barely more than two minutes, then it heads back to the southeast. After a total of just under two hours, the plane is back in Istria.

Jumped from the ship

In the 1920s, Kisch lived mainly in Berlin and undertook numerous trips, including to the Soviet Union, the USA, Algeria and later to China. He published his impressions in many newspapers and several books.

With the Nazi era, things got tight for Kisch in Germany. Being a Jew and an active Communist Party member, as well as a journalist, was a dangerous combination. After being arrested in 1933, he was expelled from Germany and travelled to Australia, where he was refused entry despite having a visa because of his political views. However, he jumped from the departing ship onto the quay in Melbourne, injuring himself in the process, but managed to stay after numerous expressions of sympathy from the Australian left. During the war, he lived in the USA and Mexico. He spent his last years in Prague with his wife Gisela Lyner, who had tirelessly corrected and improved his work, where he died in 1948. He had come to terms with the communist regime. Kisch had experienced a lot in his life and eagerly absorbed all the impressions. His statement in the foreword to “The Racing Reporter” (1925) is emblematic: “And there is nothing more sensational in the world than the time in which one lives!”


This post was written by: Mag.Wolfgang Ludwig

Advertising

3 Comments

  • Bella Pindur , 27. June 2024 @ 12: 56

    The article impressively shows how versatile Kisch was – and how precisely Wolfgang Ludwig describes some new facets of this impressive “racing reporter”!

  • Michael Hofstätter , 27. June 2024 @ 17: 16

    Very interesting article about an exciting and eventful life! Makes you want to read his works.

  • Silvia Riebl , 27. June 2024 @ 19: 04

    Kisch had an exciting, dangerous and adventurous life. Reading Mag. Wolfgang Ludwig's work makes you want to get to grips with the furious reporter again.

Leave a Comment

Your e-mail address will not be published. Required fields are marked with * marked

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Advertising