Abstract
The article takes up the approach to critical modernism shaped up by scholarship about Vienna 1900 referencing a series of works unfolding the internationally communicated modernist ideas and, at the same time, expressing an ironic distance from them. These critical efforts produced art works, literature and philosophy that communicated between and reached beyond their original contexts and group identities.
With the support of Allan Janik‘s interpretation of this kind of critical artistic and intellectual activity (K. Kraus, A.
Schnitzler, L. Wittgenstein etc.) as a modus operandi of Central European modernism and its specific historical condition, the article outlines an approach to the history of polemic modernism in the Czech lands, both Czech and German, in terms of the longevity of individually challenging initiative (F.
X. Šalda, S. K.
Neumann), counter-proposals (Jung Prag movement) and solitary careers representing the frontiers of identities, i. e. cultural, ethnic, religious or Avant-Garde loyalties (J. Popper-Lynkeus, L.
Klíma, R. Weiner, J. Čapek).