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‘Vata, derf i aufstehn?’: Childhood experiences in Viennese working-class families around 1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Reinhard Sieder
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Continuity and Change , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , May 1986 , pp. 53 - 88
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

1 Erhebung über die Kinderarbeit (Child labour survey) in Austria in 1908, published by the Imperial Office of Labour Statistics, Ministry of Trade (Vienna, 1911).Google Scholar

2 In Vienna around 1900, children under 14 were found working above all in public houses, especially in the Prater, selling bread and tobacco, in skittle alleys, as craftsmen's assistants, errand boys, delivering milk, newspapers and the like. See Kraus, Siegmund, ‘Kinderarbeit’, Neues Frauenleben 14, 3–4 (1902).Google Scholar

3 Kanitz, Otto F., Das proletarische Kind in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1974).Google Scholar

4 Hanisch, Ernst, ‘Arbeiterkindheit in Österreich vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg’, Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 7 (1982), 109–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Sloterdijk, Peter, Literatur und Lebenserfahrung: Autobiographien der Zwanziger Jahre (Munich and Vienna, 1978), 154.Google Scholar David Vincent, in a study of 104 worker autobiographies in English, found that most of the authors hardly said anything about their family and married life; Vincent, David, ‘Love and death in the nineteenth century working class’, Social History 5 (1980), 223et seqCrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also his Bread, knowledge and freedom: A study of nineteenth-century working class autobiography (London, 1982)Google Scholar, and Kuhn, Axel, ‘Die proletarische Familie: Wie Arbeiter in ihren Lebenserinnerungen über den Ehealltag berichten’, in Haumann, Heiko, ed., Arbeiteralltag in Stadt und Land: Neue Wege der Geschichtsschreibung, 89et seq.Google Scholar, as well as Fischer, Wolfram, ‘Arbeitermemoiren als Quelle für Geschichte und Volkskunde der industriellen Gesellschaft’, in his Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im Zeitalter der Industrialisierung, Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft 1 (Göttingen, 1972), 219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 See, for example, Rehbein, Jochen, ‘Biographisches Erzählen’, in Lämmert, Eberhard, ed., Erzählforschung: Ein Symposion (Stuttgart, 1982), 51–73Google Scholar; Schütze, Fritz, ‘Kognitive Figuren des autobiographischen Stegreiferzählens’, in Kohli, M. and Robert, G., eds., Biographie und soziale Wirklichkeit: Neue Beiträge und Forschungsperspektiven (Stuttgart, 1984)Google Scholar; Fischer, Wolfram, ‘Struktur und Funktion erzählter Lebensgeschichten’, in Kohli, M., ed., Soziologie des Lebenslaufs (Darmstadt-Neuwied, 1978), 311–36Google Scholar; Quasthoff, Uta, ‘Eine interaktive Funktion von Erzählungen’, in Soeffner, H.G., ed., Interpretative Verfahren in den Sozial- und Textwissenschaften (Stuttgart, 1979), 104et seq.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 On the characteristics and problems of this type of interview, see Schütze, Fritz, ‘Zur Hervorlockung und Analyse von Erzählungen thematisch relevanter Geschichten im Rahmen soziologischer Lebensweltforschung’, in Arbeitsgruppe Bielefelder Soziologen, Kommunikative Sozialforschung (Munich, 1976), 159–260.Google Scholar

8 The interviews date from the period 1980–4. Most were conducted by me; a few were placed at my disposal by Michael John, Hans Safrian and Robert J. Wegs. I wish to thank them all. The interviews used are all held by the Institute for Economic and Social History in the University of Vienna, in the form of transcripts and cassettes. Page numbers following the quotations in the text refer to these transcripts.

9 Verlagssystem. The putting-out system was, along with manufacture (Manufaktur), an important form of early capitalist production. The putter-out, or Verleger, would provide raw materials and sometimes even the tools required for the production of goods, which were manufactured in outwork. The putter-out also assumed responsibility for the sale of the goods, the worker being paid only for his labour (tr.).

10 On the economic and business structure of Vienna see Ehmer, Josef, Familienstruktur und Arbeitsorganisation im frühindustriellen Wien (Vienna, 1980), 167CrossRefGoogle Scholar and his ‘Rote Fahne – Blauer Montag: Soziale Bedingungen von Aktions- und Organisationsformen der frühen Wiener Arbeiterbewegung’, in Puls, Detlev, ed., Wahrnehmungsformen und Protestverhalten: Studien zur Lage der Unterschichten im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1979), 147.Google Scholar

11 Ehmer, Familienstruktur, 192.

12 See Bernays, Marie, Auslese und Anpassung der Arbeitschaft in der geschlossenen Grossindustrie, Schriften des Vereins für Socialpolitik 133 (Leipzig, 1910), 115.Google Scholar In 1908 only 15.6 per cent of workers questioned in a textile factory in Gladbach were sons and grandsons of industrial workers.

13 See, for instance, Glettler, Monika, Die Wiener Tschechen urn 1900: Strukturanalyse einer nationalen Minderheit in der Grosstadt (Munich and Vienna, 1972).Google Scholar

14 ‘No und mir Kinder haum natürlich nur deitsch gredt.’ Henceforth, the interviews will be quoted in English only (tr).

15 For instance, Scott, Joan W. and Tilly, Louise A., ‘Familienökonomie und Industrialisierung in Europa’, in Honegger, Claudia and Heintz, Bettina, eds., Listen der Ohnmacht: Zur Sozialgeschichte weiblicher Widerstandsformen (Frankfurt, 1981), 99et seq., especially 111Google Scholar; English original: Scott, Joan W. and Tilly, Louise A., ‘Women's work and the family in nineteenth-century Europe’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 17 (1975), 36–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; See also Tentler, Leslie Woodcock, Wage-earning women: Industrial work and family life in the United States 1900–30 (Oxford, 1979), esp. 177Google Scholar; Stearns, Peter N., ‘Working class women in Britain 1890–1914’, in Vicinus, Martha, ed., Suffer and be still: Women in the Victorian age (London, 1972), 108, ‘Mining women, like the urban poor, usually had substantial power’.Google Scholar

16 See John, Michael, Hausherrenmacht und Mieterelend 1890–1923 (Vienna, 1982), 5.Google Scholar

17 Sedlaczek, S., Die Wohn-Verhältnisse in Wien: Ergebnisse in Wien: Ergebnisse der Volkszählungen vom 31. Dezember 1890 (1893), 218.Google Scholar

18 Ehmer, Familienstruktur, 56.

19 Österreichische Statistik, 65, fasc. 1(1904): xviii, xl, xli; quoted from John, Hausherrenmacht, 49.Google Scholar

20 Sedlaczek, Die Wohn-Verhältnisse, 271. In 1910, 9 per cent of all Viennese were sub- tenants or Bettgeher.

21 Sieder, Reinhard, ‘Gassenkinder’, Aufrisse: Zeitschrift für Politische Bildung 5, 4 (1984).Google Scholar

22 See Goffman, Erving, Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behaviour (Harmondsworth, 1972), especially the chapter entitled ‘The nature of deference and demeanour’, 47–96.Google Scholar

23 Vigne, Thea has found similar impositions of silence in lower class English families; see ‘Parents and children 1890–1918: Distance and dependence’, Oral history 3, 2 (1975), 6–13.Google Scholar. It was more common for silence to be imposed at mealtimes in families with more than five children than it was in smaller families. Children were forbidden to join in the adults' conversation at other times besides mealtimes. Only a reduction in the number of children led to a degree of relaxation. See also the material on this theme with reference to English working class families in Thompson, Paul, The Edwardians (London, 1975), 58.Google Scholar

24 On the relationship between ‘closed’ role systems such as that in a working class family and the syntactic and semantic ‘rigidity’ and ‘limitation’ of their internal verbal communication (‘restricted code’), see Bernstein, Basil, ‘A sociolinguistic approach to socialization: With some reference to educability’, in Class, codes and control, vol.1 (London, 1971), 143–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 With empirical reference to Viennese working class families in the 1920s, see Hetzer, Hildegard, Kindheit und Armut (Leipzig, 1929)Google Scholar, see also Kohn, Melvin L., ‘Social class and parent-child relationship: An interpretation’, American Journal of Sociology (1962–1963), 471 ff., in particular 478Google Scholar; and Bronfenbrenner, Urie, ‘Socialisation and social class through time and space’, in Maccoy, E.E., Newcomb, T.M. and Hartley, E.L., eds., Readings in social psychology (New York, 1958)Google Scholar;Neidhardt, Friedhelm, ‘Schichtspezifische Elterneinflüsse im Sozialisationsprozess’, in Wurzbacher, G., ed., Die Familie als Sozialisationsfaktor (Stuttgart, 1968), 174et seq.Google Scholar

26 Hetzer, Kindheit und Armut, 44.

27 Quoted from Ziak, Karl, ed., Ein Bruder so wie du: Das Alfons-Petzold-Buch (Vienna and Frankfurt, n.d.), 195Google Scholar. Alfons Petzold (1882–1923) was a working class writer of Christian socialist persuasions who was born in Vienna. His output includes novels, poems and short stories, among them Der Franzl (1970) (tr).

28 Stearns, ‘Working class women’, 106.

29 On the particular strictness of gender specific upbringing in working class families see, for instance, Neidhart, ‘Schichtspezifische Elterneinflüsse’; Bronfenbrenner, ‘Socialisation’ For the gender-specific freedom enjoyed by boys on the Street see Humphries, Stephen, Hooligans or rebels? An oral history of working class childhood and youth 1889–1939 (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar, Thompson, , The Edwardians. The gender-specific upbringing of girls was also observed by the Viennese schoolteacher Margarete Rada, Das reifende Proletariermädchen und seine Umwelt (Vienna, 1931).Google Scholar

30 Sixty-seven per cent of the schoolgirls observed and questioned by Rada regularly did the washing up, helped with cleaning the home, etc. On washing days, which in the tenements occurred on every second or third week, one third of the schoolgirls was absent from class. See Rada, Das reifende Proletariermädchen 29 and 26.

31 See Sieder, ‘Gassenkinder’, for a more extensive account.

32 Cf. no, 17, p. 5: ‘Just on Saturdays, everybody had a bath … the water would be heated up and everybody washed and bathed one after the other.’

33 See also, for English working class families, the study by Vigne, ‘Parents and children’, 7: Vigne quotes the wife of a factory worker who had II children: ‘…So that we did have our evenings on our own. And we wouldn't allow … he didn't want the children – neither did I … they were all in bed before eight o'clock’.

34 Leichter, Käthe, Wie leben die Wiener Heimarbeiter? Eine Erhebung über die Arbeits- und Lebensverhältnisse von 1000 Wiener Heimarbeitern (Vienna, 1923).Google Scholar

35 In 1928 a working class Viennese child wrote to Die Arbeiterin: ‘…and we children creep into our bed. But then the fight begins in earnest, because there are two of us sleeping in a big collapsible bed and each of us wants the biggest space’ (Die Arbeiterin 6 (1928)). As late as 1936 a study covering 12.4 per cent of all Viennese children and adolescents up to the age of 18 revealed that only 55 per cent of the children surveyed had their own ‘sleeping place’; this definition included makeshift sleeping places such as benches, drawers, laundry baskets or wash-tubs. The study covered all the children and young persons registered at the youth welfare department (Jugendamt) for the purposes of maintaining regular surveillance of domestic conditions; the picture it presents is thus distorted in favour of ‘welfare cases’. See Kinder ohne Bett (Vienna, 1936), 8. See also Hetzer, Kindheit und Armut and the description there of the living conditions of Willy C. He was the illegitimate child of a thirty-year-old woman labourer who lived with an eighteen-year-old sewerage worker in a box-room, along with her younger sister, a prostitute, and a baby. The kitchen was sub-let. All the family slept in one bed. The consequence was that Willy, aged six, did not usually manage to sleep until late: ‘The father [a night worker – RS] went out late, his aunt [the prostitute – RS] came home at night and the baby cried … Moreover, the bed was very cramped, so that it was impossible to stretch oneself out, and one kept receiving involuntary prods and pushes which often gave Willy cause for bitter complaint. In the morning his body often ached from his uncomfortable position.’

36 Hetzer, , Kindheit und Armut, 122 and 259Google Scholar; Rada, Das refende Proletariermädchen, 67Google Scholar.

37 Bernfeld, Siegfried, ‘Über die einfache männliche Pubertät’, in Antiautoritäre Erziehung und Psychoanalyse (Frankfurt, Berlin and Vienna, 1974), 317.Google Scholar

38 Diana Gittins, referring to English working class families of the interwar period, quotes a woman worker whose recollection of her first kiss resembles that of the Viennese worker quoted here even in details: ‘I thought if a man kissed you, you had a baby… he kissed me and put his tongue in my mouth you know and I'd never known such a thing before and I was terrified and I pushed him away. When I got home I cried and said to my mother, Oh! I'm going to have a baby!’: Diana Gittins, ‘Married life and birth control between the wars’, Oral history (Family History Issue), 3, no. 2 (autumn 1975), 54–5. See idem. Fair sex: Family size and structure 1900–1934 (London, 1982).Google Scholar

39 See Freud, Anna, The ego and the mechanisms of defence, International Psycho-Analytical Library no. 30, revised edition (London, 1968), 71et seq.Google Scholar

40 Bernfeld, ‘Über die einfache männliche Pubertät’.

41 See note 35 above.

42 ‘Screen memories’ in the Freudian sense are childhood recollections which stand out on account of their particular clarity and apparent lack of significance. Their analysis leads to prominent infantile experiences and to unconscious fantasies. In so far as such recollections are screen repressed sexual experiences or fantasies, Freud called them screen memories. See Freud, Sigmund, ‘Screen memories’ in the Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Signumd Freud, III, 301et seq.Google Scholar

43 A dialect word meaning ‘to splash’ (tr.).

44 Numerous other instances of neighbourly solidarity in the tenements of Vienna are recorded by John, Hausherrenmacht, 70 et seq.

45 On the principle of reciprocity, which regulates social intercourse in conditions of stability and spatial proximity, whenever these forms of social intercourse are not subject to the market laws of supply and demand, see Mauss, Marcel, The gift: Forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies (London, 1974).Google Scholar

46 Hetzer, Kindheit und Armut:

47 Quoted from Karl Ziak, Ein Bruder so wie du, 182.Google Scholar

48 Further instances of neighbourly conviviality are to be found in John, Hausherrenmacht.

49 See Feldbauer, Peter and Pirhofer, Gottfried, ‘Wohnungsreform und Wohnungspolitik im liberalen Wien’, Forschungen und Beiträge zur Wiener Stadtgeschichte 1 (1978), 148–90, especially 187.Google Scholar

50 See Sieder, ‘Gassenkinder’.

51 See ibid. In Floridsdorf in 1900 more than a third of all dwellings were re-let within a year and almost half the tenants spent less than two years in the same dwelling. See John, Hausherrenmacht, 69.

52 For figures of eviction proceedings around 1900 see John, , Hausherrenmacht, 8–9.Google Scholar

53 Interview with Herr S. conducted by John, M. and quoted from his Wohnverhältnisse sozialer Unterschichten im Wien Kaiser Franz Josephs (Vienna, 1984), 182.Google Scholar

54 Interview with Herr W. conducted by John and quoted from his Hausherrenmachi, 70.Google Scholar

55 See Mikschy, Hans, Der Kampf urn das Reichsvolksschulgesetz 1869 (Vienna, 1949).Google Scholar

56 Zoitl, Helge, ‘Rückständigkeit und Juristenmonopol’, Zeilgeschichte 6 (1978), 3.Google Scholar

57 See Rada, , Das reifende Proletariermädchen; Therese Schlesinger, Wie will und wie soll das Proletariat seine Kinder erziehen? (Vienna, 1921), in particular 4.Google Scholar

58 See Safrian, Hans and Sieder, Reinhard, ‘Gassenkinder – Strassenkämpfer: Zur politischen Sozialisation einer Arbeitergeneration in Wien 1900–1938’, in Niethammer, Lutz and Plato, Alexander von, eds., Jetzt kriegen wir andere Zeiten. Auf der Suche nach Volkserfahrungen in nachfaschistischen Ländern (1985), 115–49.Google Scholar

59 See Sieder, ‘Gassenkinder’.

60 Raspe, Jan, Zur Sozialisation proletarischer Kinder (Frankfurt, 1981), 64.Google Scholar

61 Several informants (nos. 20, 14, 15, 16) say they took part in evenings organized by the Sozialistische Arbeiterjugend, where they read Schiller, Goethe and other classics, often taking various parts, and that this made an enormous impression on them. See Hanisch, , ‘Arbeiterkindheit’, 144–5Google Scholar; Pfoser, Alfred, Literatur und Austromarxismus (Vienna, 1980).Google Scholar