Ludwig Anzengruber

Ludwig Anzengruber (29 November 1839 – 10 December 1889) was an Austrian dramatist, novelist and poet. He was born and died in Vienna, Austria.

The Anzengruber line originated in the district of Ried im Innkreis in Upper Austria. Ludwig's grandfather, Jakob Anzengruber, was a farm-worker on the Obermayr estate at Weng near Hofkirchen an der Trattnach. His father, Johann Anzengruber, left the family home at an early age and moved to Vienna, where he found work as a bookkeeper in the treasury of the Austrian crown lands. In 1838 he married Maria Herbich, the daughter of a petit bourgeois pharmacist. It is not surprising that the social standing of his parents - his father, from peasant stock, and his mother, a petty bourgeois - regularly played an important role in Ludwig Anzengruber's later works.

Ludwig's greatest influence in becoming a dramatist was his father who himself had been a secret poet in the style of Friedrich Schiller, but without success. Only one of his plays, on the subject of Berthold Schwarz, was produced, and probably only because of the spectacular explosion at the end; his other works gathered dust in the drawer of his desk.

Ludwig was only 5 years old when his father died in 1844. His mother, who was to become the most important person in his life as the years went on, tried to make ends meet with her meager widow's pension of 166 guilders and 40 kreuzers. In 1854 when Ludwig’s grandmother, who had been supporting her daughter and grandchild substantially, died, his home and living arrangements became even worse. Financial emergencies drained their savings, but Ludwig's mother was ready to make any sacrifice (including taking up work as a seamstress) so that he could study at the Paulaner elementary school from 1847 to 1850 and then at the Piarist high school from 1851 to 1853. In 1855 he dropped out of school due to increasingly bad grades and from 1856 to 1858 he was an apprentice at the Sallmeyer bookstore. During his employment at the bookstore he was able to read a great deal, but after disagreements with his master his apprenticeship came to an abrupt end.

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