Stefan Grossmann

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Grossmann's letterhead (1911)

Stefan Großmann (born May 19, 1875 in Vienna ; † January 3, 1935 there ) was an Austrian writer and journalist . He was the founder and editor of the political weekly Das Tage-Buch .

Live and act

Youth and school days

In his autobiography I was enthusiastic , Großmann describes himself as the “son of impoverished Viennese citizens”. His father lost his money and his enthusiasm for work in the 1870s crash, his mother initially invested the rest of the assets in a tea shop. After she opened a liquor store near the Praters, Großmann had to serve the guests there in the early hours of the morning before going to school. Although this early morning work was rather detrimental to his school performance, Großmann said that this contact with the ordinary workers and the employees of the neighboring Carltheater had a formative influence on his future life:

“I could never have achieved that natural relationship with ordinary people that has remained true to me all my life without those morning hours in the liquor store. I would never have learned the bond with the workers from books, and never would I have been able to grasp the madness of the mechanization of the erotic life so clearly as when these joy girls, exhausted by the night trot, humbly sat down on the bench where I brought them vanilla liqueur. "

- Stefan Großmann: I was thrilled . Berlin 1930, p. 18 f.

His interest in the socialist movement only increased after he left secondary school - without his parents' knowledge - six months before graduation . After an argument with his mother, he also turned his back on his Jewish parents and was baptized - a decision that, in retrospect, he associated with the “instinctive anti-Semitism of my youth”. At the age of 18 he moved to Paris, where he stayed for two years. There he earned his living with translations and trading in antiquarian books. In Paris he followed the speeches of the socialist leader Jean Jaurès during the Dreyfus affair with enthusiasm .

First journalistic steps

The poor health of his father was the reason for Großmann to return to Vienna. He had to promise the seriously ill that he would take up a "civil profession". Großmann worked as an actuary in an office for two years. During this time he published his first texts in the socialist magazine Die Zukunft , a radical workers' weekly. At the age of 20 he experienced his first press trial, which, however, ended in an acquittal. During this time he also met a young actress in the Viennese coffee house Griensteidl, with whom he fell in love. When the actress got an engagement at a Berlin theater, he went with her to the German capital. There he came into contact with the anarcho-socialist Gustav Landauer and worked for his magazine Der Sozialist . Since he was expelled from the country by the German authorities for his journalistic activities, he first went to Brussels . From there he returned to Vienna, where he took over the editing of the bi-monthly publication Wiener Rundschau . He also published articles in the weekly Die Zeit published by Hermann Bahr . Grossmann came into contact with the Austrian socialist leader Victor Adler through individual contributions to the Wiener Arbeiter Zeitung . This sporadic collaboration led to Großmann joining the editorial team of Arbeiter Zeitung in 1904 . A year later he caused a sensation there with a series of articles which, at the suggestion of Prime Minister Ernst von Koerber , dealt with the conditions in Austrian prisons . Grossmann processed his experiences with prisoners and guards in the play The Bird in a Cage , which premiered in 1906.

Theater founder

There was a decisive change in his professional career in 1906 with the establishment of the “ Free Volksbühne for the Viennese Workers ” based on the model of the Berliner Volksbühne . The project, which Großmann realized with the support of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria (SDAPÖ) , was a great financial and artistic success. A few years later, at the end of the 1911/12 season, 750 performances had been attended by around 650,000 spectators. At that time, the association had well over 20,000 members. Well-known actors such as Max Pallenberg , Raoul Aslan and Ernst Deutsch also belonged to the ensemble. The sets were u. a. Designed by Alfred Kubin and Erwin Lang, and from 1911 the dramaturge of the house was Berthold Viertel .

In this phase of his life, Großmann was certainly at the height of his artistic work:

“Back then I was literally working for four. I had become a critic of the 'Arbeiterzeitung' and at the same time its chroniqueur. I worked as a feature section correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt and, on the side, happily supported by my young painters, I ran the party's joke paper, 'Die Leuchtbirne'. Then there was the little work on the stage, the work of the dramaturge, the director and the tamer of the children, namely the actors. "

- Stefan Großmann: I was thrilled . Berlin 1930, p. 179

As he describes in his autobiography, the Volksbühne's “path to happiness” came to an abrupt end. The construction of his own Volksbühne theater led to a dispute with the authorities, in whose high phase Großmann was in hospital due to a stomach ailment and was unable to intervene. The conflicts with the other members of the association meant that in spring 1913 Großmann, exasperated, gave up all functions in Vienna and decided to move to Berlin with his Swedish wife and two daughters. He explained his motivation for giving up the management of the theater and moving to Berlin in the novel The Party , which appeared in 1919.

From editor to publisher

Großmann's move to Berlin was no accident. In the German capital he was considered a renowned journalist who also published regularly in magazines such as the Schaubühne Siegfried Jacobsohn and the future of Maximilian Hardens . Großmann therefore didn't have to wait long for offers from Berlin publishers. The publisher Franz Ullstein managed to tie him to the Vossische Zeitung . Großmann's role within the Vossische was initially unclear. After several months of touring through all the publishing departments, he finally expressed his desire to go to France, England and the USA as a correspondent. However, the outbreak of World War I meant that he was only able to travel to France in the early summer of 1914. After the outbreak of war, Großmann went to Vienna as a correspondent for six months and then took over the feature section of the Vossische Zeitung . He held this post until the end of the war.

Cover of the daily book of July 5, 1924

After the conservative readership of the paper complained heavily about an article for which he was responsible, Großmann left the Vossische Zeitung in 1919 . Together with the publisher Ernst Rowohlt , he founded the independent, non-partisan weekly Das Tage-Buch in 1920 . During the Weimar Republic, the magazine developed alongside the world stage to become the most influential radical democratic magazine. Großmann's collaboration with the journalist Leopold Schwarzschild , who joined the magazine in 1921 as editor and co-editor, also contributed to this. Due to his poor health, Großmann had to completely hand over the management of the magazine to Schwarzschild in 1927 , who also transferred it into exile in 1933 and continued as Das Neue Tage-Buch in France until 1940 .

The withdrawal from the daily book editorial office did not mean that Großmann fell silent as a journalist. Numerous articles by Großmann continued to be published in the Tages-Buch as well as in other publications. In 1928 , his novel, editor-in-chief Roth leads war , was published, the protagonist of which dominated public opinion in a big city with his tabloid. Two years later he published his autobiography I Was Enthusiastic . In the last years of the Weimar Republic he lived in Geltow near Potsdam. Like many other critical publicists, Großmann was to be arrested in March 1933. However, when the SA men and policemen saw the poor health he was in, they refrained from executing the warrant. Instead, he was ordered to leave Germany. Großmann and his wife returned one last time to Vienna, where he died on January 3, 1935.

Works

Dramas

  • The bird in the cage , Vienna 1906
  • Apollo Brunnenstrasse (with Franz Hessel), Berlin 1930
  • The two eagles , Berlin 1931

Novels, short stories, reports

  • Die Treue (novellas), Vienna 1900
  • Die Gasse (stories), Berlin 1904
  • Austrian penal institutions , Vienna 1905
  • Warm regards (stories), Vienna 1909
  • Grete Beyer (novellas), Vienna 1913
  • The Empress ' reader , Berlin 1918
  • The traitor Ernst Toller , Berlin 1919
  • Lasalle , Berlin 1919
  • The party , Berlin 1919
  • Lenchen Demuth and other short stories , Berlin 1925
  • Editor-in-chief Roth wages war , Zurich 1928
  • I was thrilled , Berlin 1930 and Vienna 2011 (autobiography)
  • The shoulders of the mizzi palm and other texts. Published by Traugott Krischke. Vienna, Kremayr & Scheriau 1995. ISBN 3-218-00605-8
  • We can wait or Der Roman Ullstein. Edited and provided with a foreword by Erhard Schütz, Verlag für berlin-brandenburg (vbb), Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-945256-02-2 .

Magazines

  • The day book, ed. by Stefan Großmann. Reprint of the years 1920–1926. , Athenäum Verlag, Königstein 1981

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Stefan Großmann  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Austria, Lower Austria, Vienna, Matriken der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde, 1784-1911," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9B23-YT2?cc=2028320&wc = 4692-D6C% 3A344266801% 2C344266802% 2C344424301: 20 May 2014), Vienna (all districts)> birth books> birth register F 1874-1877 March> image 89 of 323; Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde Wien (Jewish Community of Vienna) Municipal and Provinical Archives of Vienna, Austria.
personal data
SURNAME Grossmann, Stefan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 1935
Place of death Vienna