A Life in the Making
by Franz Michael Felder
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Pub Date 6 Jul 2021 | Archive Date 27 Jun 2021
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Description
Over the 29 years of his short life, Franz Michael Felder worked with furious productivity to better himself and the lives of those around him. From his humble origins in the Austrian village of Schoppernau, he went on to found workers' cooperatives, a political party and even a public library in his own home, as well as writing many literary works.
A Life in the Making is both the culmination of this extraordinary career and a chronicle of its development. It is a story of early hardship and fortitude, of Felder's relentless zeal for learning and his lifelong effort to reconcile his own expanding horizons with the enforced confines of the community he was born to. Unfolding in prose of limpid beauty, A Life in the Making becomes a deeply moving tribute to Felder's wife Nanni, and to his enduring belief in the possibility of a better world.
Advance Praise
"One of the masterpieces of 19th-century German literature." -- Polis
"Exhumed from oblivion… blessed with a strange power… The 21st-century reader will never forget this friend from Schoppernau." -- Le Matricule de Anges
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781782276852 |
| PRICE | US$18.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 320 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
8stitches9lives �, Reviewer
A Life in the Making tells the story of Franz Michael Felder who was born into a middle-class family of farmers, in 1839 in Schoppernau, whose property was at any given time at least two-thirds in debt. Felder, who was nearly blind in one eye due to doctor malpractice, attended a two-class primary school and always had an interest in the written word. In 1861, he married Anna Katharina “Nanni” Moosbrugger from Au. She was, like Felder, well read and composed poetry and the two had five children together. Nanni died in 1868 and Felder died just a year later in 1869 at the age of 29. Franz Michal Felder is recognised as one of Vorarlberg’s first social reformers.
He endeavoured to change the difficult social and economic prospects that affected many people in the region from the ground up. In order to try to break the nearly unlimited economic power of the region’s cheese dealers, Felder founded the first agricultural cooperative. His activities met with heavy resistance, especially from the clergy. Franz Michael Felder was erudite and an avid writer. He subscribed to many newspapers including the socially critical “Gartenlaube,” for which he also wrote. His social criticism and societal utopian ideals were the topic of his novels, “Sonderlinge (Eccentrics)” and “Reich und Arm (Rich and Poor).”
He is recognised as one of the most legendary Vorarlbergers. His short, intense life exuded tremendous energy and was shaped by the will for changes in society, literature and politics. His name stands for courage and enlightenment, for utopia and resistance, for tradition and renewal. This memoir explores Felder's personal life and his multilayered work. However, in addition to the impressive and emotional life story, it also allows an authentically precise insight into the everyday life of the conservative, rural milieu in the Bregenzerwald. A Life in the Making was completed only a short time before his death and hailed as a masterpiece. A compelling, captivating and absorbing read about a much neglected historical figure who deserves to be remembered for his work regardless of if you accept his ideology. Highly recommended.
