Franz Rehbein

Franz August Ferdinand Rehbein (born March 5, 1867 in Neustettin , † March 14, 1909 in Berlin ) was a German working-class writer and editor of the social democratic newspaper Vorwärts . Rehbein wrote the autobiography The Life of a Farm Worker , which was published in 1911.

Life

Franz Rehbein - son of a laundress and a self-employed tailor - grew up in Western Pomerania . The father died of tuberculosis when Franz was still a child. As a boy, the hardship of the family forced him to work in the fields for landlords. In 1881 Rehbein came to Schleswig-Holstein as a Saxon worker ( seasonal worker ) and hired himself out for a sugar factory. But he ran away from his agent in Hamburg and became a servant on an East Holstein estate in the Grafenecke .

Rehbein did his three years of military service with the Schleswig-Holstein Dragoon Regiment No. 13 in the fortress of Metz . Here he experienced the three emperor year in 1888 . In his autobiography he describes the inhumane drill in the army. He then worked as a farmhand and foreman on farms in Dithmarschen , married and became a day laborer at the threshing machine .

The hard work, the winter unemployment, the miserable life from hand to mouth, and then the comparison of my life as a day laborer with the mostly abundant farm owners - all of this spoke to me in a clearer language than any scientific textbook could have done .

In 1895 Franz Rehbein suffered a serious accident on a threshing machine that resulted in an amputation of his right arm. With that his agricultural work ended.

He moved to Kiel , where he sold haberdashery as a street vendor and, together with his wife, delivered the social democratic Schleswig-Holsteinische Volkszeitung . He became a social democrat, from 1899 editor of the people's newspaper in Elmshorn . He worked as a party agitator, but had a difficult time because of his rejection of revisionism . In 1901 he went to Berlin and worked there for the Vorwärts . In 1907 Rehbein took over a position at the General Commission of the German Trade Unions . He died unexpectedly in 1909, leaving behind his wife and six children.

He had completed his autobiography, The Life of a Farm Worker , a few weeks before his death. The question of whether Rehbein wrote his autobiography at the suggestion of the theologian, social reformer and politician Paul Göhre or just sent him the completed manuscript has not been clarified. His widow Dora Rehbein and Paul Göhre brought out the autobiography from the estate in 1911 at Verlag Eugen Diederichs .

style

Franz Rehbein writes the blunt and gripping style of the autodidact , dialogues and verbatim expressions, often in the Schleswig-Holstein region of Platt . Paul Göhre said of him: “There is nothing awkward about him, he is completely in control of his thoughts, pictures, words, sentences. He even handles foreign words with complete confidence. ”With a patriotic and religious upbringing, he experienced the encounter with the illegally introduced Zurich newspaper“ Der Sozialdemokrat ”, mediated by a shoemaker in Süderdeich , as a revelation. After his serious accident, he immersed himself in the socialist classics, especially Lassalle and Bebel . Quotations show that he - and certainly with stylistic gain - read and appreciated Fritz Reuter . His drastic description of the living and working conditions, the often not only inadequate but disgusting meals, the presumptuousness of the landlords and the march farmers, the labor at the threshing box and the lawlessness in which he was at the mercy of arrogant and harassed superiors as a soldier are milestones of workers' literature. He describes unemployment as follows:

However, if you are used to regular work and don't want to end unemployment again, then it becomes damn uncomfortable in the four stakes. Hell, is it a feeling to be young, strong and unemployed in the cottage, where you really want to work! You are literally ashamed to be seen on the street. It is as if every bush and every dunghill was grinning maliciously at you. The few pennies are shrinking more and more; you can count on your fingers when the last taler has to be torn; and then what? Oh, how pretty full and heavy it seems to be when you have earned it, and how light it becomes when you have to spend it!

Works (selection)

• Childhood in Western Pomerania (1867–1880). In: Proletarian CVs, page 178 (excerpt from The Life of a Farm Worker )
• The life of a farm laborer . Edited and introduced by Paul Göhre . Diederichs, Jena 1911
  • Reprint: The Life of a Farm Worker . Edited and with an afterword by Urs J. Diederichs and Holger Rüdel. Christians, Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-7672-0892-X
  • Reprint under a new title: Servants and rabble. From the life of a farm laborer in Wilhelmine Germany . Grandstand, Berlin 1955
  • Farm workers life . Illustrated and newly published. by Guntram Turkowski. Boyens, Heide 2007, ISBN 978-3-8042-1220-6 .

literature

• Fritz Treichel: Franz Rehbein. From day laborer to reporter in Berlin. In: Pomerania. Issue 1/1974, ISSN  0032-4167 . Reprinted in: Die Pommersche Zeitung . No. 9/2016, p. 16.

Web links

• Literature by and about Franz Rehbein in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature list in the online catalog of the Berlin State Library
• Franz Rehbein: The Life of a Farm Worker. Hamburg, 1985

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Klaus-Joachim Lorenzen-Schmidt , Ortwin Pelc (Ed.): The new Schleswig-Holstein Lexicon. Wachholtz, Neumünster 2006, Lemma Rehbein.