Ludwig Anzengruber

His father, Johann Anzengruber, left the family home at an early age and moved to Vienna, where he found work as a bookkeeper in the treasury of the Austrian crown lands.

It is not surprising that the social standing of his parents – his father, from peasant stock, and his mother, a petty bourgeois – regularly played an important role in Ludwig Anzengruber's later works.

Only one of his plays, on the subject of Berthold Schwarz, was produced, and probably only because of the spectacular explosion at the end; his other works gathered dust in the drawer of his desk.

His mother, who was to become the most important person in his life as the years went on, tried to make ends meet with her meager widow's pension of 166 guilders and 40 kreuzers.

He worked as a supporting actor in many a second-rate theatre, without, however, displaying any marked talent, and he never made the breakthrough to success, although his stage experience later stood him in good stead.

In 1869 he found his way back into bourgeois society, when he took a job as a clerk (probably because he badly needed money) in the imperial police headquarters in Vienna.

His overnight success meant that the police official (4th class) could step off the career ladder of the civil service and devote himself entirely to literature, which saved him from conflict between being a poet and his duty to his office.

His young bride, the sister of his childhood friend Franz Lipka, was not up to the demands of practical life, and thus there were repeated crises in their marriage, although Ludwig's considerable debts and very close relationship with his mother were often also to blame for this.