Stefan Großmann (18 May 1875 – 3 January 1935) was a Viennese writer who became one of the most prominent left-wing liberal journalists of his generation. He was the founder and during its first seven years the producer of the respected political weekly journal Das Tage-Buch.
Life
Provenance and early years
Born in the city's central Wollzeile district, Stefan Großmann described himself as the "son of impoverished Viennese citizens". Leopold Großmann (1836-1901), his father had been in business, but had lost his money and his will to work in the economic crash of the 1870s. His mother, born Sophie Brummel (1845-1916), used what remained of the family money to invest in a tea shop. Later she opened a liquor kiosk near the Prater, the park and amusement centre on the south-eastern side of Vienna. Großmann was expected to serve the customers during the early morning shift, before he went to school. He later reflected that although these early starts might have been detrimental to his school performance, the direct contact they gave him with "ordinary workers" and the staff from the adjacent Carltheater had a defining impact on the rest of his life.
He left school when he was seventeen, half a year before he was due to take his final exams, without telling his parents, and began to take an increasing interest in the socialist movement. The Social Democratic Party had been founded in 1889 and was conspicuously still far outside the political mainstream: at the Gumpendorf Workers' Education Association Großmann found like-minded young socialist "extremists", to the disgust of his parents who had hoped to prepare their son for a conventional middle-class existence.
After an intensifying battle with his mother he turned his back on his family's Jewish background and had himself baptised as a Christian, a decision which he later linked with the "instinctive antisemitism of my early years". When he was eighteen he moved to Paris where he remained for two years, supporting himself with translation work and by trading in second-hand books. He followed the unfolding Dreyfus affair and the speeches of the time delivered in Paris by the young socialist leader Jean Jaurès with fascination and close attention.
Young journalist
His father's deteriorating health persuaded Großmann to return to Vienna after two years. He found himself promising his father that would take on a "proper job" (einen "bürgerlichen Beruf"). For the next two years he worked in an office as an insurance actuary. During this period he also published his first journalistic contributions in "Die Zukunft" ("The Future"), a radical labour weekly news sheet. He was only twenty when he had his first experience of a "press trial", but it ended in an acquittal. It was also at this time during his frequent visits to Vienna's Café Griensteidl ("coffee house"), that he met and got to know Anna Reisner, a young stage actress. He fell in love, and when the object of his affections accepted a part in a Berlin stage production he accompanied her to the German capital. There he made lodged with the anarcho-socialist Gustav Landauer. While still in Vienna he had already contributed articles to Landauer's Berlin-based newspaper, Der Sozialist, which described itself as the "mouthpiece of independent socialism" ("Organ der unabhängigen Sozialisten"). He now became a more full-time contributor and general assistant. His brand of politics was not popular with the authorities, however, and after only a few months he was identified as a "troublesome outsider" ("lästiger Fremder") and expelled from the country. He moved across to Brussels but remained there only for a few months before returning "home" to Vienna.
While still in Brussels he had received and accepted an invitation from Gustav Schönaich to take on an editorship role at "Wiener Rundschau", a newly launched fortnightly publication. He also published articles in Hermann Bahr's weekly Vienna newspaper (from 1902 joined by a daily version) Die Zeit. Through a handful of articles submitted to the Arbeiter-Zeitung (Vienna "Workers' Newspaper") Großmann then came into contact with Victor Adler, a leading figure in the Austrian labour movement. This led to a regular position as an Arbeiter-Zeitung contributing editor in 1904. Under the pseudonym "Oblomow" he contributed theatre criticism and feature articles. He also became Arbeiter-Zeitung's regular court reporter at the commercial court.