Meaningful Encounters? Egon Erwin Kisch’s ‘Prague Forays’ and Our Post-COVID World

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1910, Egon Erwin Kisch published the first instalment of his ‘Prague Forays’ column for Bohemia, the city’s pre-eminent German-language newspaper. The column, which ran for more than a year, launched the young writer’s literary career. This essay argues that Kisch’s ‘Prague Forays’ feuilletons, which walked his middle-class readers to down-and-out places throughout the city, can inspire us to think differently about urban encounters then and now. It probes the meanings that Kisch, a German-speaking Jew who inhabited an increasingly ‘Czech’ city, derived from his forays. It also confronts his feuilletons’ more problematic aspects, asking to what extent Kisch’s encounters with difference were ‘meaningful’, defined by humanist geographer Gill Valentine as contact that changes values and engenders a greater respect for others. How can we know if an encounter has been ‘meaningful’, and can such encounters be ‘meaningful’ for everyone involved?