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.
I would never have learned affinity with the workers from books, and I would never have been able to grasp the bizarre mechanisation of erotic life with such clarity were it not for the "joy bringers", exhausted from their night work, chattering on the benches while I brought the girls their vanilla liquers.
""Eine merkwürdige Mischung von politischem Verschwörertum, sozialer Erbitterung und musikseliger Tanzfreudigkeit herrschte hier zwischen vier und sieben Uhr morgens ... Niemals hätte ich jene natürliche Beziehung zu den einfachen Leuten, die mir mein ganzes Leben lang treu geblieben ist, ohne diese Morgenstunden im Schnapsladen erreichen können.
Niemals hätte ich die Verbundenheit mit den Arbeitern aus Büchern lernen, und nie hätte ich den Irrsinn der Mechanisierung des erotischen Lebens so deutlich fassen können als damals, als diese vom Nachttrabe erschöpften Freudenmädchen bescheiden sich auf das Bänkchen hockten, wohin ich ihnen Vanillelikör brachte"[3][4] 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.
[4] 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".
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.
[3] 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.
... Ich blickte wirklich durch viele Fenster in das Arbeitsleben des Wiener Proletariats, und ich würde Schriftstellern, die nicht reine Subjektivisten sein wollen, nur raten, in jungen Jahren eine solche Berichterstatterarbeit demütig auf sich zu nehmen.“"[3][4] 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.
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.
Großmann's experiences of the prisoners and those supervising them were then recycled when he used them for a stage-play, "Der Vogel im Käfig" ("The caged bird") which had its Viennese premier in 1906.
[8]) On 21 June 1906 the company's first performance took place, with a staging of "Hinauf zu den Sternen" by the controversial Russian writer Leonid Andreyev at the Theater in der Josefstadt.
The Wiener Stadttheater was completed featuring a traditional "renaissance stage", and without reference to the socialist egalitarian precepts of the original design, remodelled after 1918 and quickly becoming, in the words of one dismissive commentator, the venue for "wholesome" operetta productions.
In 1913 the company had been forced to sell the still unfinished building to the politically well-connected architectural firm of Fellner & Helmer, which is charged in some quarters with having "successfully sabotaged the entire project".
Confrontation with other leading members of the theatre association led to his decision, during the first part of 1913, to sever his ties with Vienna and relocate, with his Swedish-born wife and their two daughters, to Berlin.
He already had a strong journalistic reputation in the German capital, thanks to his regular contributions to the Berlin theatre magazine "Schaubühne" and, in the past, to Max Harden's Vienna based anarcho-socialist "Die Zukunft" ("The Future").
Großmann had good contacts with a number of influential media figures in the city, including the proprietor of "Schaubühne" Siegfried Jacobsohn, and did not have to wait long for offers of work from Berlin publishers.
After several months "trying out" different departments he finally expressed a wish to work as a foreign correspondent in France, England and the United States of America.
If we were to succeed in creating this secret association of the knowledgeable and wise, evaluating objectively without right-wing or left-wing bias, then discussions would begin about enacting socialism more easily and more effectively, above the aristocratic distortion of democracy, above the training and creativity of untrammelled humanity, without the dead weight of swarming passions."
"Diese Zeitschrift rechnet mit urteilsfähigen Lesern.Das ‚Tage-Buch‘ kann und wird keiner Partei dienen, wohl aber hoffe ich auf eine Verschwörung der schöpferischen Köpfe neben, über, trotz den Parteien.
Tage-Buch was independent and not affiliated to any political party: its overall approach was driven by the philosophy and beliefs of its founders and of its first publisher, Stefan Großmann.
[12] Although there was nothing contrived about Großmann's declining health, his resignation from Tage-Buch's management in 1928, accompanied by the sale of his shares in it to Schwarzschild, also reflected growing personal differences between the two men.
[11] Resigning his proprietorship and editorial duties did not put an end to Großmann's journalistic contributions which continued to appear in Tage-Buch and in numerous other publications.
Riding the traditional populist pillars of hatred and hope, the new government used the security services to target political opponents, starting with those who had eloquently derided and mocked them when in opposition.
He was terminally ill and destitute, but he had never been forgotten by the media establishment in the Austrian capital, where his theatre reviews, court reports and other contributions had continued to appear in the city's newspapers.
[14] Chancellor Dolfuss, shortly before his own assassination, became aware of Großmann's article and took the opportunity to place a formal ban, in Austria, on "Die Sammlung".