author
Max Kretzer
1854–1941
Raised in poverty and shaped by years of factory work, this German novelist became known for vivid stories about labor, hardship, and city life. His fiction brought working-class experience into late 19th-century literature with unusual immediacy.
3 Audiobooks
Aatetoverit : Sosiaalinen romaani
by Max Kretzer
Vuorisaarna: Romaani nykyajalta
by Max Kretzer
Familiensklaven : Roman
by Max Kretzer
About the author
Born in Posen in 1854, he moved to Berlin with his family after they fell into poverty and had to leave school at just thirteen. He then spent about twelve years working in factories, an experience that strongly shaped his writing and gave him a close view of everyday urban labor.
He went on to become a prolific German novelist associated with social realism, writing about workers, the poor, and the pressures of life in industrial Berlin. Reference works and biographical sources describe him as one of the early writers to portray working-class life in a direct, detailed way.
Max Kretzer died in Berlin in 1941. Today he is remembered chiefly for fiction that drew on firsthand experience and for helping bring ordinary people and modern social conditions into German literature.