Albert Klaus

Albert Klaus (born July 20, 1902 in Neubrandenburg ; † January 13, 1983 in Görlitz ) was a German writer and children's book author , best known for his socially critical novel Die Hungernden .

Life

Little is known about the author's life. Albert Klaus was born in Neubrandenburg as the son of the shoemaker Albert Klauß (sic!). Most likely the parents had already left the city for an unknown destination when their son Albert started school. In 1915 the family no longer lived in Neubrandenburg.

Before 1933 he worked in a fire extinguishing equipment factory. He also worked as a travel agent and traveler. After the Second World War , Klaus worked as a librarian and head of a cultural center in Görlitz.

Albert Klaus is not identical with the dialect poet of the same name (1872-1945) from the Harz foreland.

plant

1932 appeared with the socially critical novel Die Hungernden Klaus' first and at the same time best known work. A year later, Klaus published another novel with Three Friends . No further publications can be verified for the time of National Socialism . After the Second World War, Klaus' writing activity was limited to children's books, for which he mainly wrote animal fables and fairy tales. Most of the manuscripts, however, did not find a publisher in the GDR, since the "animal stories in the opinion of the literary planners had nothing to do with contemporary socialist literature". The socially critical novel Werner und der Flaschenteufel about alcohol abuse by young people was also rejected by the Gebrüder Knabe Verlag. The last publication Klaus' was 1971, the "marten, fox and roof story" Under dark firs .

The starving

Klaus achieved fame as a writer primarily through his socially and socially critical novel Die Hungernden . This work, called “unemployment novel ” in the subtitle, was published in 1932 in the social democratic book club Der Bücherkreis . Jan Tschichold designed the cover and the typography. In this novel, Klaus traces the fate of a carpenter and a clerk, who are both exposed to unemployment and impoverishment, in two storylines. Klaus does not give any specific dates or historical events for the timing of the novel, so that it can only be classified in the last crisis years of the Weimar Republic. The blame for social misery is seen in the novel with the government as well as the entrepreneurs. Although the protagonists see the way out of misery in political participation in a party that represents their interests, the name of the party is not explicitly mentioned despite the clear proletarianization. The National Socialism, which was growing in strength at this time, and the dispute between socialists and national socialists are also not mentioned in the novel. The Germanist Helena Szépe therefore judges the core statements of the novel as “left-wing melancholy”. In her dissertation, Christa Jordan also criticizes Klaus' sometimes inappropriate use of vocabulary and grammar, which she sees as a deficit of the work, and speaks against Jürgen C. Thöming's assessment from, who in Klaus emphasizes the consideration of language and language competence when designing roles.

Works

• The starving. An unemployment novel. 1932.
• Three friends. 1933.
• The funny Hannemax. 1958.
• Minka and the milk. 1958.
• Little vagabonds. 1958.
• Jitji. The story of a weasel. 1971.
• Under dark fir trees. A story of marten, fox and badger. 1974.

literature

• Wilhelm Kosch (Ed.): German Literature Lexicon. 3. Edition. Francke, Bern 1981, Vol. 8, Sp. 1244f.
• Christa Jordan: A time will soon break: Impoverishment and the transfigured path to socialism: Albert Klein (The Hungry). In: Christa Jordan: Between distraction and intoxication. Lang, Bern 1988, pp. 204-218.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ In this spelling of the name, the then obligatory registration of birth in the Neubrandenburger Zeitung was made on July 27, 1902. The registry office may have made a mistake in the father’s first name (there was also a worker Albert Klaus in Neubrandenburg at the same time) or it was just a not self-used one Baptismal name mentioned - in March 1901 the marriage of a shoemaker Gustav Klauss (sic!) To Selma Dahms, who was born in Neubrandenburg and who became self-employed as a shoemaker a little later and can be verified in the city until about 1907, is documented by several newspaper advertisements. In contrast, the mentioned second bearer of the name is constantly addressed as a worker.
2. ↑ Address book entry in Neubrandenburg not verifiable.
3. ↑ Jens Kersten: root princesses, detectives and a youth library full of adventure. The history of the Gebrüder Knabe Verlag. Knabe, Weimar 2009, p. 62.
4. ↑ Jordan: Dispersion. P. 364.
5. ↑ Kersten: Root Princesses. P. 63.
6. ↑ Kersten: Root Princesses. P. 62.
7. ↑ Jordan: Dispersion. P. 214.
8. ^ Jordan, Dispersion , p. 211.
9. ↑ Helen Szépe: The representation of National Socialism in some time novels of the Weimar Republic. In: Monthly books for German teaching, German language and literature. 70 (1978) 2, pp. 151-158; P. 157.
10. ↑ Jordan: Dispersion. P. 209.
11. ↑ Jürgen C. Thöming: Social novels in the final phase of the Weimar Republic. In: Wolfgang Rothe (Ed.): The German literature of the Weimar Republic. Reclam, Stuttgart, pp. 212-236; P. 223.