Emil Plaintiff

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Portrait photo of Emil Kläger by Hermann Drawe

Emil Kläger (born October 10, 1880 in Wiznitz , Bukowina, † June 2, 1936 in Vienna ) was an Austrian journalist .

Live and act

He worked as a columnist and court reporter for the Neue Wiener Journal and the Neue Freie Presse . He became known, among other things, for his extensive and detailed social reports about homeless people and strotters and their lives in Vienna's sewers , on the street and in the overcrowded warming rooms. He was one of the prominent journalistic advocates of Halsmann in the sensational, as it was without point of departure, murder trial against the photographer Philipp Halsmann in Vienna.

Together with the court secretary and photographer Hermann Drawe, in 1904, two years after Max Winter , armed with brass knuckles and a revolver as a precaution , he went in search of the “outcasts of the big city”, whose inhumane existence they wanted to document. For this purpose they first went into one of the two main collecting canals that ran along both sides of the Danube Canal .

He was able to win the trust of some of the strotters and homeless people in the Viennese sewer system, which was the basic requirement for his reports and texts, which are among the first empirical systematics of this century on the subject of homelessness , as he was also central due to his detailed and qualitatively methodical approach uncovered practical research problems. With this approach, he set standards that are still important for recent qualitative studies on the subject of homelessness.

From 1904 to 1908, he reported on his findings in slide shows, which were repeated over 300 times due to the great interest and attracted around 60,000 visitors, at the Vienna Urania . Later, a fictional film based on Kläger's reports entitled “Through the Quarters of Misery and Crime” was produced, which was released in cinemas in Vienna on June 25, 1920. In 1908 a book of the same name was published with the first edition of 10,000 copies, which was comparatively high for such topics. This became known beyond the city limits and was also translated into Russian and French . The book even influenced the reorganization of criminal law in 1912. In it, among other things, he reports on "Quartiere im Wienkanal", of which he described the "Zwingburg" under Vienna's Schwarzenbergplatz as particularly outstanding. The name was due not least to the fact that it could only be reached through a board that had to be placed over a channel and could be pulled in at any time. In this way even the police could be prevented from entering. In addition, the “Zwingburg” had several “exits” - in other words: channels.

The men's dormitory, newly built at this time in Meldemannstrasse in Brigittenau in Vienna , where the homeless Hitler later found accommodation, was also examined in detail by the plaintiff . He praised the kitchen as "home-style" and "attractively cheap". A “good roast pork” cost only 19 kreuzer and a complete lunch was already available for 23 kreuzer, according to the plaintiff, a soup with a filler was available for 4 kreuzer.

Works

  • Through the Viennese quarters of misery and crime: a traveling book from the afterlife . K. Mitschke, Vienna 1908 (179 pages, with a foreword by Friedrich Umlauft), digitized ; Facsimile edition ed. and with an afterword by Ernst Grabovszki. danzig & unfried, Vienna 2011 (300 pages).
  • Legends and fairy tales of our time . A. Wolf, Leipzig 1917 (135 pages)
  • About clothes and love: conversations, letters and stories . A. Wolf, Leipzig 1917 (91 pages)
  • The Human Protection Act: Appeal and draft . Manz, Vienna 1935 (78 pages)

literature

See also

Web links

Commons : Emil Kläger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Plaintiff, Emil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Milo, Milo Boy (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian journalist
DATE OF BIRTH October 10, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Wiznitz , Bukowina
DATE OF DEATH June 2, 1936
Place of death Vienna