Ludwig Thoma

Thoma's dramas, including Die Medaille (The Medal, 1901), Das Säuglingsheim (The Orphanage, 1913), and especially Moral (1908), reflect elements of folk theatre.

[5] He spent the first years of his life in the forester's lodge of Vorderriß on the River Isar near the Tyrolean border, a very remote and lonely area at the time.

[9] The death of his father and separation from his family affected his school work; as a result he was a difficult student who received few favourable reports: There's something sly about his character.

When censured and punished, he shows an unusual coldness and stubborn, defiant insensitivity for his years.In 1876, his mother rented the pub Zur Kampenwand in Prien am Chiemsee, which she managed together with Viktoria Pröbstl and her daughters.

[10] Ludwig began a period of alternating between boarding school and holidaying in his family's "idyllic home", as he calls it in Lausbubengeschichten ("Tales of a Rascal").

Misdemeanours and conflicts with teachers there are probably based on real experiences: "There is sufficient evidence that Thoma condensed these altercations for his stories, but by no means invented them.

The trigger for the change of location seems to have been a "shameful act" on the part of Ludwig, which also made it impossible for his sister Marie to accept a suitor.

Martin A. Klaus quotes the "special remarks" from Thomas Landshut's high school diploma: He did his earlier studies at the Wilhelmsgymn.

Thoma stood silently in front of the auditorium, unable to choke out a word, until the headmaster rushed to the podium, improvised a speech and saved the situation.

[17] On the advice of a fellow student, he switched to the University of Erlangen for the summer term; he studied here without getting involved in any clubs, and on 1 August 1890 he received the certificate for entry into legal clerkship.

In order to keep up appearances in such situations, he preferred to switch to a new environment where people knew nothing about his embarrassing behaviour.In his Erinnerungen, Thoma describes his times as a schoolboy in Munich and Prien verbosely, but he treats his degree studies very briefly: I spent two terms at the Forestry Academy in Aschaffenburg, then I switched to law, studied in Munich and Erlangen, where I passed the exam after the prescribed time had expired.

[18] In April 1895, Ritter published Thoma's short story "Der Truderer" in the literary supplement Sammler, in which cheerful events of rural life were recorded for the first time in prose form.

Ludwig Thoma also commented on political issues, writing an article about the party conference of the Bavarian SPD and their agricultural policy for the Augsburger Abendzeitung in October.

In spring 1897, Thoma moved to Munich, where he shared a bachelor's apartment with his school friend, Richard Rothmaier, while Viktoria Pröbstl ran the household.

[22] Paul switched in 1897 to the satirical weekly Simplicissimus founded the year before by Albert Langen, whose employees Thoma also met in Café Heck on Odeonsplatz.

When the edition of 31 October 1899 was confiscated for lèse-majesté, author Frank Wedekind, draftsman Thomas Theodor Heine and publisher Langen fled abroad to avoid prosecution.

I'm afraid he's too blunt and outspoken for SimplicissimusBut Langen chose Thoma, whose comedy Die Witwen had failed him as well as Munich director Jocza Savits.

At the beginning of 1901 he wrote the one-act play Die Medaille,[25] set in Dachau which was premiered at Munich's Residence Theatre.

Thoma was rid of his financial worries and indulged in an upper-class lifestyle: together with Albert Langen, he leased a hunting ground in Unterweikertshofen near Dachau, which he had visited repeatedly since 1895.

In 1907, he married dancer Marietta di Rigardo, known as Marion (1880–1966), who was born in the Philippines and was an emancipated young woman for her time.

"[33] In the same piece, the chairman of this moral society makes the statement: "Mr. Assessor, when a couple in a marriage stop lying, then they separate.

In summer of 1918 he met Maidi Liebermann von Wahlendorf (1883–1971), who came from the Jewish sparkling wine dynasty Feist-Belmont and was now married.

In the last 14 months of his life Thoma wrote for the Miesbacher Anzeiger - often through an editorial on the first page[37] - 175 mostly (except for five cases) anonymous and mostly anti-Semitic articles, especially against the government in Berlin and social democracy.

But he also wrote about the Jewish bourgeoisie, for example: "Teiteles Cohn and Isidor Veigelduft, they are still allowed to put their ornate knuckles in their leather cases in summer, with Rebekka on her arm in a dirndl dress, smelling of violets and garlic.

[36] And Thoma insulted Jewish publisher Rudolf Mosse with the words "Rascal with your curly hair and your progressive motion scissors"; Kurt Tucholsky he denigrated as a "little Galician cripple".

also the reaction Thomas wrote anonymously in the Miesbacher Anzeiger on 2 February 1921 to a contribution by Tucholsky (alias Ignaz Wrobel[40]) in Die Weltbühne).

In an article on 16 March 1921, Thoma wrote in the Miesbacher Anzeiger under the title "Broadcast to all Berlin government and Jewish Pigs" with reference to the law passed in the Reichstag for the dissolution of self-defence organizations that had formed after the First World War: "It only needs a Galician Jew to want to disarm us - we'll beat him so that he doesn't fit in a coffin anymore.

Ludwig Thoma was buried in the parish cemetery of the Church of St. Lawrence, Egern, in Rottach-Egern by Lake Tegernsee.

Today his grave lies between that of his longtime friend, the writer Ludwig Ganghofer, and that of his lover, Maidi von Liebermann.

His stories spiced with humour and satire or his one-act plays of the rural and small-town environment in Upper Bavaria are regarded as brilliant.