As "die Schalek" she appeared in Karl Kraus' "Die Fackel" before 1914, and as a stylistically compromised collaborator in the "Neue Freie Presse", which he closely observed.

In the war notebooks of his magazine and in the apocalyptic tragedy "The Last Days of Mankind" she then races from front to front as a reporter turned fury, no longer a skeptical contemporary but a repulsive satirical figure.

From their battlefield reports, which were as sentimental as they were chauvinistic, Kraus tailored a convincing bugbear of irresponsible journalism in the First World War.

This effective caricature, not entirely free from gender bias and anti-Semitic nuances,

Before and after her journalistic gaffes in the service of the Imperial and Royal War Press Quarters, Alice Therese Emma Schalek (1874 to 1956), daughter of a Jewish, liberal bourgeois Viennese family, led a remarkable career as a writer and journalist.

In the decade after 1900, as one could read in the “Neue Freie Presse” in 1906, she was considered “one of the most important young Viennese writers”.

Her debut, the 1902 book When Will It Meet: A Viennese Roman, garnered some enthusiastic reviews for its caustic and gripping portrayal of bourgeois upbringing for girls and its critical image of anti-Semitism.

"Das Fräulein", a volume of novellas, was published in 1905 by the young, ambitious Viennese publishing house,

who also published the first prints by Hofmannsthal and Schnitzler as well as Musil's "The Confusions of the Pupil Törleß" in 1906.

In 1909, when a last volume of literary prose was published, the novel "Schmerzen der Jugend" (Pains of Youth), Schalek undertook her first tourist-oriented trip to India, which is recorded in the collection "Indienbummel" (1911).

Inventions, machines and services

After the martial interlude of the photographically illustrated war reports “Tyrol in Arms” (1915) and “Am Isonzo” (1916), the volume “In Buddhas Land.

A Stroll Through Back India”, which used trips from 1911 and 1913.

However, its belated publication also signaled the beginning of a profitable career as a travel columnist, photographer and lecturer.

Only two titles were published that documented the tireless production of the journalistic globetrotter in book form: a travelogue about Japan (1925) and a photo book "At the Courts of the Maharajas" (1929).

The publisher of this collection had the choice of dozens of uncollected articles that appeared primarily in the Neue Freie Presse, but also in other Viennese newspapers and magazines.

Four series of texts from the years 1925 to 1935 were selected, in which stays in South America, India, Africa and the United States are described from quite different perspectives.

In the case of the United States, however, one can hardly speak of the “margins of modernity” announced in the title.

The author, who otherwise presents herself as a cosmopolitan connoisseur, is amazed at how working women in North America exploit all sorts of new inventions, machines and services,