“The answer is here, the echo of my blood-haunted madness. And no longer does anything resound to me out of of ruined creation except this one sound, out of which millions who are dying accuse me of still being alive, I who had eyes to to see the world, and whose stare struck it in such a fashion that it came as I saw it. If heaven was just in letting this come about, then it was unjust in not have annihilated me. Have I deserved this fulfillment of my deathly fear of life? What’s looming there, invading all my nights? Why was I not given the physical strength to smash the sin of this planet with one ax blow? Why was I not given the mental power to force an outcry out of desecrated mankind? Why is my shout of protest not stronger than this tinny command that has dominion over the souls of a whole globe.

I preserve documents for a time that will no longer comprehend them or will be so far removed from today that it will say I was a forger. But no, the time to say that will not come. For such time will not be. I have written a tragedy, whose perishing hero is mankind, whose tragic conflict, the conflict between the world and nature, has a fatal ending. Alas, because this drama has no actor other than all mankind, it has no audience.” – The Last Days of Mankind, Karl Krauss