Page: 1 Date: 2014-08-01 Translator: Stephan Neuhaus (sten69)
- 2 - hard childhood taught me early to make comparisons between poor and rich. Out of the "Chemnitzer Volksstimme" [Chemnitz People's Voice] (Party newspaper of the social democrats for the Chamnitz area) and the "Wahre Jakob" [The Real McCoy] (satirical weekly newspaper of the SPD) I received the first political impressions that I still remember today. In spite of my primitive hatred of the rich and in spite of all my sympathy for social democratism (I am thinking especially of the lively participation of us young people in the elections of 1905 and 1907), I took religion very seriously as a child. - In December 1906, my parents resettled in Stuttgart. The remainder of my compulsory school attendance [Schulpflicht] was waived on account of my school reports and on Easter 1907, I began my four-year-long apprenticeship as machinist [Maschinenschlosser] with the company Kuhn, Stuttgart-Berg, later Eßlinger Maschinenfabrik [Eßlinger machine works]. After 10 hours of work the apprentices, according to their apprentice contract, had to go to the technical college [Fachschule], 5 days a week. I finished my Journeyman's test [Gesellenprüfung] with an A ["sehr gut", the best possible grade], but was laid off immediately, due to my political activities inside the company. [This sentence can parse as "because of my political activities, the company laid me off" or "because I agitated inside the company, I was laid off". I chose the second meaning.] In this company, which was large for the time, there was a separate apprentice department with about 50 apprentices. As member of the DMV, I was able to win over a large part of the apprentices for the youth organisation of the DMV and for the Sozialistische Arbeiterjugend (Socialist Worker's Youth), and was also successful in recruiting for the DMV among the grown-up workers.
Since 1908, I was a member of the Sozialistische Arbei[-]ter-Jugend [note different spelling] in Stuttgart, very soon as leader of the Ostheim district, and belonged to the executive committee [Vorstand] of Greater Stuttgart [Groß-Stuttgart]. [In] 1909[,] I became a member of the DMV and on 7 August 1910 [also] of the Social Democratic Party. (According to the Associatino Law in effect at the time, one could