Max Winter

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Max Winter, disguised as a homeless man, in the course of his report for the Arbeiter-Zeitung about “Strotter” in 1902

Max Winter (born January 9, 1870 in Tárnok , Austria-Hungary , † July 11, 1937 in Los Angeles , California , United States ) was an Austrian reporter , journalist , writer and politician . He is considered to be the creator of social reporting in German-speaking countries . His work is characterized by a considerable variety of genres. In addition to realistic and detailed reports based on the motto "Enlightenment and exposure", he wrote poems, fairy tales, plays and a novel.

His work was quickly forgotten after his flight from the political turmoil in Austria at the beginning of the 1930s. It was not until the 1980s that he was rediscovered as a pioneer and master of social reporting and has since been presented as a role model in textbooks. His social reports have decisively developed the genre thematically, methodologically and formally. Historians recognize in them forerunners of modern research on everyday history .

Life

Youth and early work

Max Winter was born on January 9, 1870 in Tárnok near Budapest as the brother of Fritz and Robert. In 1873 the family moved to Vienna, where his mother worked as a milliner and his father as a senior official at the Imperial and Royal State Railways . After completing the last year of compulsory school at a grammar school , he completed a business apprenticeship . He later began to study economics, history and philosophy at the University of Vienna , but did not finish these studies.

At the age of about 23 he began his journalistic career with the Neue Wiener Journal . In 1895 Victor Adler brought him to the Arbeiter-Zeitung , the central organ of the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) . There he initially worked as a court reporter and learned the importance of clear evidence and intersubjective verifiability of the facts, as he knew how to use them successfully in his later reports.

Winters reports and reports were shaped by his political ambition and the desire to improve the living conditions of workers and socially ostracized people. For example, to report on the lives of prisoners, he had himself thrown into prison disguised as a homeless person. His 1902 report entitled Ein Strottgang durch Wiener Kanal , in which he reported on the " Kanalstrotter " who fished bones and fat out of the Viennese sewer system to sell to the soap industry, also became famous. In order to track down these people, who are difficult to find underground, he disguised himself as a strotter, with a hat and poor clothes.

A selection of his reports appeared as early as 1904, to which Alfred Polgar said appreciatively: The journalist has, so to speak, added up to a writer, journal articles have become a book , and in him already a representative of the New Objectivity , which only experienced its heyday in the 1920s believed to recognize.

1905 appeared in Im underground Vienna . Although this book consisted of his reports from the last few years, it was even more detailed and extensive, as well as largely reformulated and reformulated. It appeared in four editions. In the same year, together with Stefan Grossmann , with whom he occasionally operated intensive correspondence , he also wrote his first play Ein G′sunde Person , which was successfully performed in Viennese theaters.

Max Winter wrote two volumes of reports for the Berlin author and journalist Hans Ostwald , who from 1904 to 1908 headed the largest urban research project in German-speaking countries and published the results in the form of a fifty-volume series of books entitled Großstadt-Documents : Das goldene Wiener Heart and In underground Vienna . In addition to Max Winter, Felix Salten and Alfred Deutsch-German from Austria were involved in the book series.

From 1914 to 1918 Winter was editor-in-chief of AZ am Abend , which only appeared during the war years . On August 2, 1919, he married Josefine Lipa, who brought her son Ferdinand into the marriage.

Social and political engagement

Due to his social and political commitment, Max Winter became a member of the then Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria (SDAP) . From 1911 to 1918 he was a member of the Reichsrat , the state parliament of old Austria .

When the Austro-Hungarian monarchy collapsed , he became a member of the Provisional National Assembly for German Austria from October 21, 1918 to February 16, 1919, like all German members of the Reichsrat , which decided the transition from monarchy to republic.

On May 4, 1919 , he was elected to the Vienna City Council on the social democratic list and appointed to the 30-member City Council Reumann , the Executive Committee; he became one of three vice mayors. As an expert on welfare, he reached resolutions in the city council on the foundations for the social policy according to which Julius Tandler later created the city's welfare system, which is still respected today.

When the city council was abolished on June 1, 1920 and a (smaller) city ​​senate was elected instead of it by the city ​​council , it was no longer a member, but remained a city ​​council until 1923. He now devoted himself more to his social commitment. On November 10, 1920, the day the Federal Constitution of the Republic of Austria came into force , the Bundesrat was created as the second national parliamentary chamber. Winter, elected by the Vienna State Parliament, belonged to him as one of twelve Viennese representatives until 1930.

His special ambition, however, was the child friends : He founded the Reichsverein in 1917 on the basis of the "Child Friends Movement" which had existed regionally since 1908 and was its chairman until 1930. In August 1919 he requisitioned premises for the child friends in the main building of Schönbrunn Palace , where after approval of his action by the local council in the same autumn, the Schönbrunn Educational School , the private educational academy of Kinderfreunde under the direction of Otto Felix Kanitz , and a children's home were set up. The reformers Alfred Adler , Max Adler , Wilhelm Jerusalem , Marianne Pollak and Josef Luitpold Stern taught at the three-year school, which roughly corresponded to the upper level of an AHS , but which was not granted public rights .

In 1923, Winter was supposed to support the founding of an externally independent women's magazine for the National Council election campaign of the Social Democrats . This magazine, for which he suggested the title Die Unsatisfiedene , should have been discontinued after the election campaign, but was so successful that it had a circulation of 160,000 copies in 1930 and was only discontinued in February 1934 after the Social Democrats were banned by the Austrian corporate state had been. (The magazine was continued in the corporate state as Das kleine Frauenblatt and appeared under the Nazi regime until 1944.) The same publisher also published the Wiener Groschenbüchel , which enabled cheap access to high-quality literature such as Gottfried Keller and the distribution of “Schmutz- und Trash ”should prevent.

In 1925 Winter became President of the Socialist Education International . In the following year he initiated the “Mühlsteinbüchereien”, libraries for children throughout Austria. The name came about as a reaction to a pamphlet by Zyrill Fischer OFM, Vienna in 1926, in which he had condemned the work of child friends. Fischer had preceded his book with words of the holy child friend , namely the Gospel according to Matthew , chapter 18, verse 6: “... But whoever gives offense to one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for a millstone to be hung around his neck and it sunk into the depths of the sea. ”Winter and other friends of children made a very successful call for donations for“ millstone libraries ”.

In 1929 he wrote his only novel: The Living Mummy . The book, which was published in Berlin in 1929, is about a man who fell into a deep sleep in 1925 and only woke up 100 years later - in a world without hunger, hardship and oppression. Other details that he paints for the future are also noteworthy: a “united Europe” and “televisions in the living rooms”. On March 14, 1930, Max Winter was made an honorary citizen of the City of Vienna by the Vienna City Council at the suggestion of the City Senate under Mayor Karl Seitz .

In 1933 he was a member of the Association of Socialist Writers .

In total, Max Winter wrote around 1,500 reports to highlight grievances through stringent evidence, to shake up the public conscience and to urge those responsible to act. He always backed up his articles with files and archival materials.

Emigration and the last years of life

Max Winter - tombstone

As Anton Tesarek wrote, Max Winter had planned a trip to the United States for mid-February 1934 . And he also managed to leave, although on February 12, 1934 the unsuccessful uprising of Social Democrats against Austrofascism had begun and the Social Democratic Party had been banned by the Dollfuss federal government on the same day . He had received an invitation to a lecture tour and drove via Zurich, Paris and London. The political situation in Austria was a central topic in these lectures. On March 4, 1934, he spoke to an audience of three thousand at Carnegie Hall in New York, calling Engelbert Dollfuss a "workers murderer". Since a member of the Austrian consulate was present and reported in Vienna, the Austrian government revoked his citizenship on December 17, 1934 for “anti-Austrian behavior abroad” . At this point he was already in Hollywood , where he had moved in July of that year. There he tried his hand at penniless as a screenwriter and journalist. But his scripts, which he sent to Max Reinhardt ("The struggle for the sun") and Charlie Chaplin , were unsuccessful. He also offered himself as a storyteller in kindergartens ("Grandfather tells"). His Californian correspondence , later renamed Cosmopolitan Correspondence , only reached a small audience. Since some European newspapers received subscriptions that provided for two feature sections and four to eight notes a month , he was able to secure at least a modest income.

He died lonely in a Hollywood hospital on July 11, 1937. His burial took place in September at the Matzleinsdorf Evangelical Cemetery (wall on the left, No. 37). Though the funeral should have been kept secret, thousands of people attended the funeral accompanied by a large police force.

The following inscription was placed on his tombstone after 1945:

His word spoke for freedom and justice.
His pen served the misunderstood and disinherited.
But his heart beat for the children.

The Vienna Library in the City Hall has the estate of Max Winter, which not only consists of his numerous publications, but also of his personal letters to relatives and acquaintances. Then there are the diaries, which report, among other things, from his trips to Germany and his time in exile.

Journalism concept and way of working

In a series of articles for the Chemnitzer Volksstimme in 1914, Max Winter recorded his ideas about journalism. In it he formulated three central requirements: sufficient space for the report, time for detailed research and “courage to present the incidents in a striking way”.

In the same series he also stated that his desire for journalists to “penetrate everywhere, be curious yourself in order to be able to satisfy the curiosity of others, see everything with your own eyes and what you cannot figure out by asking knowledgeable people, but never forget the personal interests with which the respondent is linked to the matter and then assess, evaluate and apply the answer. Never want to know anything better, first let yourself be instructed by what has been seen and asked, observed and read, but then form your own judgment. ” According to his credo “ The most unhealthy air for the reporter is the editorial air ” , the reporter should “ day and night in the middle swim in the stream of this life ” , meaning life “ on the street, in the factories and workshops, in the public restaurants, in the houses and apartments, on the sports fields and playgrounds, in the courtrooms, in the police rooms, on the Ambulance guards, in the hospitals, orphanages and poor houses, in the prisons, in the community rooms ”. “Above all, he should know the city in which he works and he should investigate all its thousands of secrets, inconsistencies, all the injustice and oppression that has in your hostel and he will not be finished until the end of his life. [...] Journalists would have to create sensations on the topic of their reporting, but completely different from the gossip papers, namely social sensations. " Because " as far as the people themselves are concerned, they also read it. "

Max Winter also added social science approaches to the classic journalistic approaches: open or covert participatory observation, discussions with and without guidelines. That is why he often called his reports “studies”, “investigations”, “research” or “inspection trips”. In addition to his main area of ​​work in Vienna, reports took him to the entire monarchy - to the industrial areas of Styria , to the Moravian - Silesian weavers and the Bohemian factory workers. He also knew about his travels to Germany, Italy, France, Spain and England.

His meticulous source research and methodological diversity found expression in disguises and identity changes, but also unconventional research on the scene. For his report “Between Iser and Neisse” (1900) he went on a 16-day hike to visit factories without prior notice. In this way he was able to circumvent the practice of the employers' associations, which warned the companies in good time when the inspections were announced by the trade inspectorate, so that they could remedy the worst abuses at short notice.

Between 1905 and 1908, in addition to his current work, he worked on the report “The Bloodsuckers of the Bohemian Forest”. To do this, he collected letters of complaint, articles from archives, examined lease agreements, studied legal texts and interviewed trusted persons on site. He went on his “inspection trips” to the factories in the Bohemian Forest alone and on foot. He published the results between August 9 and September 6 in an eight-part series in the Arbeiter-Zeitung.

One of his greatest journalistic successes was “The Court Judge Case ” from 1910. In it he uncovered abuses and arbitrariness of the military judiciary so convincingly that it had to be reformed as a result. He noted the considerable research effort for this report in the text in order to make the work behind such journalism visible. At the same time, the disclosure of his procedures and actions also ensured him credibility and respect.

Honors

A simple “monument” for Max Winter in the Max-Winter-Park

In 1949, in the 2nd district of Vienna , Leopoldstadt , Sterneckplatz was renamed Max-Winter-Platz . On this square there is a school and the Max Winter Park, built in the same year, with playgrounds and sports fields, a water playground and a Max Winter monument.

The Viennese social institution Haus Max Winter was named after him in 2010.

Works

Newspaper reports (selection of early works):

  • The disaster in Brüx. Arbeiter-Zeitung, Vienna, No. 200–203, 24. – 27. July 1895
  • Under the sign of the red lantern - a day with the rescue company. Arbeiter-Zeitung No. 355; 1896
  • A night in asylum for the homeless. Arbeiter-Zeitung No. 355; 1898
  • Berlin and Vienna asylum houses. Arbeiter-Zeitung from January 8, 1899
  • Parisian walks. Arbeiter-Zeitung No. 186, 192, 199, 206, 213; 1900
  • LSW One day warehouse worker. Arbeiter-Zeitung, Vienna, No. 353, from December 25, 1900
  • Cave dwellers in Vienna. Arbeiter-Zeitung No. 218; 1901
  • Build homeless shelters! Arbeiter-Zeitung No. 354; 1901

Reports published in book form (selection):

  • Between Jizera and Neisse. Pictures from the small glass industry in North Bohemia. Vienna 1900
  • In the darkest of Vienna. 1904
  • The golden heart of Vienna. Berlin 1904, as Volume 11 of the series " Big City Documents "
  • In underground Vienna. Berlin 1905, as Volume 13 of the series "Big City Documents"
  • Meidlinger pictures. How ministers live. Vienna 1908
  • The court judge case. From a journalist's notebook in Munich 1910
  • Sanitary measures of the state authorities on the occasion of the cholera diseases in Vienna. 1910
  • I am looking for my mother. The youth story of a "paid-up child." Munich 1910
  • Social hiking. Vienna 1911
  • The Austro-Hungarian War in letters from the field. Munich 1915
  • Cave dwellers in Vienna. Brigittenau living and moral images from the time of Lueger. Vienna 1927

Stage plays:

Novel:

  • The living mummy. A science fiction from the year 2025 . Berlin 1929

See also

literature

  • Max Winter: The crampons of the head louse. Viennese social reports from the beginnings of investigative journalism, 1901-1915 . Beppo Beyerl, Angelika Herburger, Traude Korosa (eds.): Fe.Re.Es. - Features. Reports. Essays. Volume 1, Edition Mokka, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-902693-26-6
  • Hannes Haas: Max Winter. Expeditions to the darkest of Vienna - masterpieces of social reporting. Picus Verlag, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-85452-493-5 .
  • Miriam Houska: “Journalism of the Senses and the Senses”. Max Winter's perception and communication of the misery in Vienna in social reports in the Arbeiter-Zeitung 1896 to 1910. Vienna 2003, (Vienna, Univ., Dipl.-Arb., 2003).
  • Stefan Riesenfellner: The social reporter. Max Winter in old Austria. Publishing house for social criticism , Vienna 1987, ISBN 3-900351-67-8 .
  • Stefan Riesenfellner (Ed.): The world of work around 1900. Texts on the everyday history of Max Winter. Europaverlag, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-203-51034-0 , ( materials on the labor movement 49).
  • Helmut Strutzmann: Max Winter. The black Viennese heart. Social reports from the early 20th century. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1982, ISBN 3-215-04924-4 , (An Austria topic from the Bundesverlag) .
  • Herbert Gantschacher : Witness and Victim of the Apocalypse . ARBOS , Vienna et al. 2007
  • Alfred Pfoser, "'What did the war bring you?' The social report of Max Winter in the First World War ", in: The light and the dark side of modernity, Turia + Kant, Vienna 2014, pp. 30–37

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Digital copies 1893–1919 and 1932–1939 on a website of the Austrian National Library
  2. ^ Digital copies of all editions 1889–1936 on a website of the Austrian National Library
  3. ↑ Helmut Lang (Ed.): Austrian Retrospective Bibliography , Series 2: Austrian Newspapers 1492-1945 , Volume 2, p. 113
  4. ^ Alfred Polgar in Marcel Reich Ranicki (ed.): Kleine Schriften , Volume 4.Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1984.
  5. ^ Digital copies 1923–1934 on a website of the Austrian National Library
  6. ^ Anton Tesarek: Max Winter. In: Norbert Leser (Ed.): Work and Echoes. Great figures of Austrian socialism. Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, Vienna 1964, p. 447 ff.
  7. ↑ Maya McKechneay: Max Winter: In rags on milieu research. In: ORF.at , July 11, 2017.
  8. ↑ Police forbid eulogy. In: Arbeiter Zeitung, 1937 , October 15, 1937.
  9. ↑ Facsimile of July 24, 1895
  10. ↑ Facsimile of July 25, 1895
  11. ^ Facsimile of July 26, 1895
  12. ↑ Facsimile of July 27, 1895
  13. ↑ facsimile

Web links

Wikisource: Max Winter  - Sources and full texts
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on December 28, 2006 .
personal data
SURNAME Winter, max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian journalist and politician (SdP), member of the National Council, member of the Federal Council
DATE OF BIRTH January 9, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Tárnok , Hungary
DATE OF DEATH July 11, 1937
Place of death Hollywood , USA