Question: Karl Kraus wrote The Last Days of Mankind to direct satire at what?

full_context: Document 1: The Last Novel: The Last Novel is a novel by David Markson. Following in the tradition of his earlier work such as "Wittgenstein's Mistress", "Reader's Block", "Vanishing Point", and "This Is Not a Novel" the novel is largely composed of obscure anecdotes about authors, artists, theorists, etc. The story of an aging author, who may or may not be writing his last novel, slowly emerges through the fragments.
Document 2: The Last Days of Mankind: The Last Days of Mankind (German: "Die letzten Tage der Menschheit" ) is a satirical play by Karl Kraus. It is considered one of the most important Kraus works.
Document 3: Franz Schuh (writer): Franz Schuh (born March 15, 1947) is an Austrian novelist, literary critic and, above all, essayist in the tradition of Karl Kraus and Alfred Polgar. Schuh was born, and lives, in Vienna, where, just like his predecessors, he prefers to write in one of the traditional coffeehouses.
Document 4: Hubert Krains: Born in Brussels, he became a member of the Académie royale de langue et de littérature françaises de Belgique. He wrote essays and became famous with "Portraits d'écrivains belges" (1930), a collection of essays on Belgian writers. Krains died in an fatal train accident. A prize is named in his honour.
Document 5: Karl Kraus (writer): Karl Kraus (April 28, 1874 – June 12, 1936) was an Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. He directed his satire at the press, German culture, and German and Austrian politics. The Austrian author Stefan Zweig once called Kraus "the master of venomous ridicule" ("der Meister des giftigen Spotts").
Document 6: Stefan Zweig: Stefan Zweig ( ; ] ; November 28, 1881 – February 22, 1942) was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most popular writers in the world.
Document 7: Wolfgang Bauer (writer): Wolfgang Bauer (18 March 1941 – 26 August 2005) was an Austrian writer best known as a playwright who, particularly in his younger days, was regarded as an "enfant terrible" by the Austrian cultural establishment.
Document 8: Werner Krauss: Werner Johannes Krauss ("Krauß" in German; 23 June 1884 – 20 October 1959) was a German stage and film actor. Regarded as one of the greatest actors of his time, Krauss dominated the German stage of the early 20th century. However, his participation in the antisemitic propaganda film "Jud Süß" and his collaboration with the Nazis made him a controversial figure.
Document 9: Karnabharam: Karnabharam or "The Anguish of Karna" (literally: "The Burden of Karna") is a Sanskrit one-act play written by the Indian dramatist Bhasa, an Indian playwright complimented even by the famous Kalidasa in the beginning of his play Malavikagnimitram . The play describes the mental pain of Karna on the previous day of the Kurukshetra War. Karnabharam is essentially the retelling of an episode of the Indian epic Mahabharata but the story is presented in a different perspective in the play. It is perhaps the only potential tragedy in the classic Sanskrit literature, presented in a form that comes closest to the "Vyayoga" (Sanskrit: व्यायोग) form of one-act play. That is so perhaps because the Natya Shastra ordains the playwrights to create plays for recreation, and essentially create happy endings . In Karnabharam, the tragedy does not occur on-stage (Unlike Urubhanga, a tragedy that shows Duryodhana dying - again, written by Bhasa). Karnabharam shows the valiant, generous, righteous Karna riding out towards the battle-ground, where his death under heart-wrenching circumstances is certain. The basic plot of this play is inspired by Mahabharata.
Document 10: Tales from the Vienna Woods (play): Tales from the Vienna Woods (1931) is the most famous play by Austro-Hungarian writer Ödön von Horváth (1901–1938). It was premièred in Berlin in 1931 and has been filmed several times. Before the première, the German writer and playwright, Carl Zuckmayer nominated the play for the Kleist Prize, which it won, the most significant literary award of the Weimar Republic. The play's title is a reference to the waltz, Tales from the Vienna Woods by Johann Strauss II. Horvarth's play premièred at the Deutsches Theatre, Berlin. Written in the late 1920s during the period of catastrophic unemployment and the Great Depression, the play is a key work of modern drama, described by Erich Kaestner as "a Viennese folk play accompanied by Viennese folk songs". It is a bitter satire about the mendacity and brutality of the petite-bourgeoisie, named ironically after the forested highlands near the Austrian capital that are so idealised in the waltz. In the play, Viennese 'Gemütlichkeit' or 'coziness' becomes a hollow phrase; the tragic, brutal story of the sweet girl Marianne and the deeply conventional butcher Oskar reflects the hardships and anxieties of the late 1920s during the global economic crisis.
Document 11: Franz Kafka: Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-language novelist and short story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic, typically features isolated protagonists faced by bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible social-bureaucratic powers, and has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include "Die Verwandlung " ("The Metamorphosis"), "Der Process " ("The Trial"), and "Das Schloss " ("The Castle"). The term "" has entered the English language to describe situations like those in his writing.
Document 12: Last man: The Last man, or the Last race (German: "der letzte Mensch"), is a term used by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" to describe the antithesis of his imagined superior being, the "Übermensch", whose imminent appearance is heralded by Zarathustra. The last men are tired of life, take no risks, and seek only comfort and security.
Document 13: Karl Kraus (physicist): Karl Kraus (21 March 1938 – 9 June 1988) was a German theoretical physicist who made major contributions to the foundations of quantum physics.
Document 14: The Tragedy of Man: The Tragedy of Man (Hungarian: "Az ember tragédiája" ) is a play written by the Hungarian author Imre Madách. It was first published in 1861. The play is considered to be one of the major works of Hungarian literature and is one of the most often staged Hungarian plays today. Many lines have become common quotations in Hungary. The 1984 film "The Annunciation" ("Angyali üdvözlet") was based on the play, as was the 2011 animated film "The Tragedy of Man".
Document 15: Journaille: "Journaille " is a German pejorative term used to refer to tabloid journalism and the yellow press. The term is a neologism from the early 20th century, formed from the word journalism and the French loan-word "kanaille" ("canaille"), meaning scum, scoundrel or rabble. The term was introduced by the Austrian writer Karl Kraus in an article in his journal "Die Fackel" in 1902. In a later article in the same journal, Kraus wrote that the original inventor of the term was the Austrian dramaturge Alfred von Berger. The pejorative term was much used by the German Nazi Party in their attacks on the press of the Weimar Republic. Unlike many other terms used by the Nazis, the word "journaille " is still used in present-day Germany, and has also established itself in the political parlance of the Netherlands and Flanders.
ground_truth: the press, German culture, and German and Austrian politics.