| Primary Source |
| Germany | Kaiserreich | [P|S|M] |
Karl Retzlaw describes in his memories how he fared when he as a 12-year-old arrived, with his mother, in Berlin in 1908
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"With the second wage long trousers were bought for me, so that I would look older and
could look out for a job; I had to contribute to the family livelihood.
Of course, at first I was enrolled in school. In Berlin instruction was
given only in the morning; this made it possible for me to work from afternoon to evening.
The first attempt failed. I had found a job in a shop selling plumber's
articles; I had to deliver lead pipes and faucets on a handcart. But only after a few days the police 'signed me up', because I was unable to pull the
overburdened handcart up a street with an incline, and I had caused a concourse.
My next job was that of delivery boy of a capmaker. I earned 3 Mark per week
and daily a cup of barley malt coffee with a hardroll. The capmaker was widower; a housekeeper cared for his household. Here I stayed for one and a
half years. Then the man remarried, and the new wife told me : 'your afternoon coffee is cancelled'.
I gave up the job, because without hardroll and coffee I felt hungry.
Working hourse were also too long, often until 8 or 9 o'clock in the evening.
[...]
In the meantime I had turned 14 and had graduated from school. I could not find an apprenticeship, because the master craftsmen demanded the payment of
a premium and were unwilling to pay a wage. My mother did not have money, her income was not sufficient to pay for our livelihood. In the city it was
very difficult to earn our daily bread. We had times when we ate no lunch from thursday until payday on saturday. Our main worry was always to have
the money ready for the rent. Furthermore, mother was often sick. We did not receive sick pay, and because it was only for one or two days in a week
that mother could not go to work, she did not receive any support for the sick.
In our household there was rarely any fruit and never any butter. Except
in my youngest childhood, I ate butter for the first time in my life when I was seventeen. We ate lard,
artificial honey or beet juice on our sandwiches. We were poor in the very sense of the
word : poor in regard of the food we ate, poor in regard of the housing we lived in, poor in
regard of the time we had for ourselves."
| | Karl Retzlaw: Spartakus. Aufstieg und Niedergang. Erinnerungen eines
Parteiarbeiters. (Spartacus, Rise and Fall, Memoires of a Party Worker) Frankfurt 1971, p. 19f; quoted after : Gudrun Dormann und Alexander Decker,
Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie (The German Social Democracy), in: Materialien zum historisch-politischen Unterricht 1 (Materials for
Historical-Political Instruction), ed. by H. Hoffacker. Stuttgart 1975/79, p. 24f; listed on
PSM-Data by permission |
Dokument in deutscher Sprache
GM & AG
(digitale Umsetzung und Übersetzung) für psm-data 
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