Working-Class Literature: Petzold’s Rauhes Leben
2003-01
Loading...
View/Download File
Persistent link to this item
Statistics
View StatisticsJournal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Title
Working-Class Literature: Petzold’s Rauhes Leben
Authors
Published Date
2003-01
Publisher
University of Minnesota, Center for Austrian Studies
Type
Working Paper
Abstract
This article is an introduction to the proletarian literature writer Alfons Petzold’s autobiography "Das rauhe Leben."
Jobs, and the search for jobs, were the primary focus of the autobiography, just as it was the main content of Petzold’s life. Petzold came from a very poor family. The jobs Petzold had were miserable hard labor, poorly paid, and did not require very high level of intelligent. Because of poverty, his family moved often. After Petzold’s father died, Petzold and his mother lived in dark, damp, and dirty one room apartment. By the age of 20, Petzold’s mother died also, and he was on his own. If he had been out of work for months, he either lived in cheap and dirty public hostel, or became homeless. He once even descended at night into the sewage tunnels under the city. Even under this kind of living condition, Petzold read lots of classics, e. g. Goethe, etc. He also started writing poetry at an early age. For Petzold, all the knowledge of poverty and hardship was first-hand, and his poetry reveals the strength of lived experience Petzold tried out various political and religious stances, but eventually felt disappointed by both. His works were not well received by the Socialists, or by the Fascists. After the rise of Austrofacism, his works were published only after heavy editing. To study Petzold’s poetry and prose fiction, we must be wary of projecting bourgeois values onto them. New criteria must be developed for viewing proletarian literature on its own terms, in the context its origins and intended purposes of the time.
Keywords
Description
Related to
Replaces
License
Collections
Series/Report Number
Funding information
Isbn identifier
Doi identifier
Previously Published Citation
Bjorklund, B. 2003. Working-Class Literature: Petzold’s Das Rauhes Leben. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, Center for Austrian Studies. Working Paper 03-1.
Suggested citation
Bjorklund, Beth. (2003). Working-Class Literature: Petzold’s Rauhes Leben. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/61599.
Content distributed via the University Digital Conservancy may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor. By using these files, users agree to the Terms of Use. Materials in the UDC may contain content that is disturbing and/or harmful. For more information, please see our statement on harmful content in digital repositories.