Stefan Grossmann (1875–1935)

Stefan Grossmann was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. His parents were Sophie (Brummel) and Leopold Grossmann. His father had lost all his money and his will to work in the economic crash of the 1870s, and his mother supported the family running a tea shop and an amusement park. Grossmann was expected to serve the customers during the early morning shift, before he went to school. He later reflected that the direct contact he had there with "ordinary workers" had a defining impact on his life. He left school at 17 and took an increasing interest in the socialist movement. He turned his back on his family's Jewish background and was baptized a Christian. He moved to Paris, where he supported himself with translation work and by trading in used books. His father's deteriorating health persuaded Grossmann to return to Vienna after two years and to take a job in an office as an insurance actuary. During this period, he published his first journalism in Die Zukunft (The Future), a radical labor weekly newspaper. He fell in love with a young stage actress and when she went to Berlin for a stage role, he accompanied her. Grossman now became a full-time journalist; however, after only a few months, he was identified by the authorities as a "troublesome outsider" and expelled from Germany. He moved to Brussels for a few months before returning to Vienna, where he become the editor of Wiener Rundschau, a new fortnightly publication. He became a contributing editor for the Arbeiter-Zeitung in 1904. Under the pseudonym "Oblomow," he published theater criticism and feature articles, and served as the regular court reporter. In 1906, Grossmann founded a new theater for working people, the Freie Volksbühne für die Wiener Arbeiter, with the backing of the Social Democratic Party. This project was a great artistic and financial success for several years, but came to an end after a period of intense wrangling over a theater building blocked by the authorities. With his Swedish-born wife Ester Strömberg and their two daughters, Grossmann returned to Berlin, where he published his novel Die Partei in 1919. In 1920, he teamed up with publisher Ernst Rowohlt to found the independent weekly political journal Tage-Buch. Many of the nation's leading intellectuals became regular contributors. Eventually, Grossmann was recognized one of the most prominent left-wing liberal journalists of his generation. In 1928, he published his novel Chefredakteur Roth führt Krieg, and two years later, he published his autobiography, Ich war begeistert (I Was Enthusiastic). In the early 1930s, he returned to the world of theater, staging productions of his plays at the Berlin Volksbühne and at the Grosses Schauspielhausin. In January 1933, the Nazi regime took power in Germany, and in March, Nazi paramilitaries arrived at Großmann's home at Geltow, just outside Berlin, to arrest him. However, he was very ill at that time, which caused them to "spare" him, although they ordered him to leave the country. He returned to Vienna, terminally ill and destitute, but continued to work to the end, writing articles condemning those who collaborated with the Nazis.