Ludwig Thoma

Ludwig Thoma (German: [ˈluːt.vɪç ˈtoː.ma] ; 21 January 1867 in Oberammergau – 26 August 1921 in Tegernsee) was a German author, publisher and editor, who gained popularity through his partially exaggerated description of everyday Bavarian life. After graduation from the Imperial Latin School in Landstuhl (today: Sickingen- Gymnasium Landstuhl), he first studied Forestry in Aschaffenburg, then Law until 1893 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg. Subsequently, he settled down as a lawyer, at first in Dachau, later in Munich. After 1899, he worked for the magazine Simplicissimus and published humorous narrations, comedies, novels and stories. Thoma satirized Bavarian rural and small-town life. His serious peasant novels Andreas Vöst (1905), Der Wittiber (1911), and Der Ruepp (1922), as well as his humorous collections Assessor Karlchen (1900), Lausbubengeschichten (Tales of a Rascal, 1904), and Tante Frieda (Aunt Frieda, 1906), are characterized by authenticity of regional language and life. Thoma's dramas, including Die Medaille (The Medal, 1901), Das Säuglingsheim (The Orphanage, 1913), and especially Moral (1908), reflect elements of folk theatre. In 1907, he married 25-year-old Marietta di Rigardo, who was born in the Philippines. The marriage, however, did not last; Marietta was soon bored and by 1911 Thoma and Marietta were divorced. In the later years of his life, he wrote nationalistic propaganda agitating against left-wing politicians (e.g. for the newspaper Miesbacher Anzeiger). During World War I, he served as a medical orderly. In July 1917, he joined the German Fatherland Party. His best-known works are Der Münchner im Himmel (The Munich Man in Heaven), which was adapted into an animated short film released in 1962, the Lausbubengeschichten (Tales of a Rascal) and Jozef Filsers Briefwexel (Jozef Filser's Letters). Lausbubengeschichten was made into a movie in 1964, also released in English under the title Tales of a Young Scamp. Ludwig Thoma was born as the fifth child of forester Max Thoma and his wife Katharina Thoma, née Pfeiffer, in Oberammergau. His paternal ancestors were active in the forest service; his great-grandfather Joseph von Thoma [de] (1767–1849) had headed the Bavarian Forestry Commission and had been elevated to the nobility as a life peer for his services. His mother's family initially ran an inn in Oberau, later in Oberammergau. 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. His upbringing was essentially in the hands of his nanny Viktoria Pröbstl, with whom Ludwig Thoma had a very close relationship. According to Katharina Thomas Willen, Ludwig was to have pursued a career as a priest. As a result, she attached great importance to a good education for her son; private tutors taught him to read and write even before he started school, and he received private Latin lessons early on. Shortly after the family moved to Forstenried near Munich in 1874, when Ludwig was only seven years old, his father died and the family were surprised to find themselves destitute: Viktoria Pröbstl had to sell furniture from the forester's lodge to pay for the burial. Thoma's mother had to raise seven children alone. The children initially had one of their father's colleagues, Karl Decrignis, as a guardian. Ludwig and his sister Luise were taken in by their uncle Albert Paulus in Landstuhl. There Ludwig attended one year of primary school, and then went into the second year of the Latin school. 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. — Klaus (2016), p. 21 In 1876, his mother rented the pub Zur Kampenwand in Prien am Chiemsee, which she managed together with Viktoria Pröbstl and her daughters. 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." In 1877, he moved to the boarding school of the study seminar in Neuburg an der Donau. He had to repeat a year at the study centre in Burghausen. Here Georg Pauliebl was one of his friends; his life story was described by Thoma in the story Der heilige Hies ("Saint Hies"). In 1879, Thoma moved from Burghausen to the Wilhelmsgymnasium. During his school days he lived as a lodger, and he described this time in his Erinnerungen ("Memoires"). He also had to repeat a year in Munich and stayed until 1885. The family moved to Traunstein in 1883, where his mother leased the inn Zur Post. 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. In 1884, after the death of Karl Decrignis, the forest officer Ludwig von Raesfeldt took on the guardianship of the Thoma siblings. In 1885, Raesfeldt succeeded in getting Ludwig admitted to the final year of the grammar school in Landshut, after he was threatened with expulsion from his school in Munich. Martin A. Klaus quotes the "special remarks" from Thomas Landshut's high school diploma: He did his earlier studies at the Wilhelmsgymn. in Munich, but behaved there in such a way that he had to be advised seriously to change schools. — Klaus (2016), p. 26 In Landshut, Thoma passed his Maturität examinations in 1886. At the suggestion of his classmates, he went up to give the graduation speech: "But the young man failed. 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." Like his father, Thoma wanted to be a forester and began studying forest science in Aschaffenburg in the winter term of 1886/87, but dropped out after the first year. During his time in Aschaffenburg he joined the oldest forestry corps (Forstcorps), the Corps Hubertia of Munich. Because he did not attend a Mensur, he was dishonourably dismissed ("without a ribbon"). In the winter term of 1887/1888 he moved to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and enrolled for a degree in law. Like his father before him, he became a member of the Corps Suevia Munich. In Munich he did compete in two compulsory duels, but stayed on the defensive each time. So he received the (at his time) desirable schmiss ("duelling scar"), but was also released from the Corps Suevia without a ribbon. On the advice of a fellow student, he switched to the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg 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. For Martin Klaus, failure and the subsequent change of educational establishment is symptomatic of Thoma's character: The move to Erlangen following the "Suevia" embarrassment is an important indication of how little Thoma could cope with a tarnished public image of himself. 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. — Klaus (2016), p. 44. 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. My experiences at the university were the usual ones, so much so