In 1896, Kraus left university without a diploma to begin work as an actor, stage director and performer, joining the Young Vienna group, which included Peter Altenberg, Leopold Andrian, Hermann Bahr, Richard Beer-Hofmann, Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Felix Salten. In 1897, Kraus broke from this group with a biting satire, ("Demolished Literature"), and was named Vienna correspondent for the newspaper "Breslauer Zeitung". One year later, as an uncompromising advocate of Jewish assimilation, he attacked the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, with his polemic ("A Crown for Zion"). The title is a play on words, in that "Krone" means both "crown" and the currency of Austria-Hungary from 1892 to 1918; one "Krone" was the minimum donation required to participate in the Zionist Congress in Basel, and Herzl was often mocked as the "king of Zion" ("König von Zion") by Viennese anti-Zionists.