Egon Erwin Kisch (29 April 1885 – 31 March 1948) was an Austrian and Czechoslovak writer and journalist, who wrote in German. He styled himself Der Rasende Reporter (The Raging Reporter) for his countless travels to the far corners of the globe and his equally numerous articles produced in a relatively short time (Hetzjagd durch die Zeit, 1925), Kisch was noted for his development of literary reportage, his opposition to Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime, and his Communism. Biography Kisch was born into a wealthy, German-speaking Sephardi Jewish family in Prague, at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and began his journalistic career as a reporter for Bohemia, a Prague German-language newspaper, in 1906. In 1910, Bohemia began publishing a weekly column of Kisch's essays. “Prague Forays” ran for more than a year and, along with several books containing reprinted and original material, made Kisch a local celebrity. These feuilletons, which consisted of he called "little novels" about the city, were characterised by an interest in prisons, work houses, and the lives of the poor of Prague. His style was inspired by Jan Neruda, Émile Zola and Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Before World War I, he uncovered the spy scandal involving Alfred Redl, which he published anonymously at the time. At the outbreak of World War I, Kisch was called up for military service and became a corporal in the Austrian army. He fought on the front line in Serbia and the Carpathians and his wartime experiences were later recorded in Schreib das auf, Kisch! (Write That Down, Kisch!) (1929). He was briefly imprisoned in 1916 for publishing reports from the front that criticised the Austrian military's conduct of the war, but nonetheless later served in the army's press quarters along with fellow writers Franz Werfel and Robert Musil. Communist The war radicalised Kisch. He deserted in October 1918 as the war came to an end and played a leading role in the abortive left-wing revolution in Vienna in November of that year. Werfel's novel Barbara oder die Frömmigkeit (1929) portrays the events of this period and Kisch was the inspiration for one of the novel's characters. Although the revolution failed, in 1919, Kisch became a member of the Austrian Communist Party and remained a Communist for the rest of his life. Between 1921 and 1930 Kisch, though a citizen of Czechoslovakia, lived primarily in Berlin, where his work