Ludwig Thoma, satirist, political essayist, playwright, and author of first-rate stories and novels, contributed a distinctly "Old-Bavarian" note to the literary concert during Germany's Wilhelminian era. Deeply attached to the country and the plain people around the thriving Bavarian capital of Munich, he concentrated on the life of the farmers, portraying their characters, traditions, and work and, not infrequently, upholding their old ways and values against the conceits and artificialities of the increasingly bureaucratic society spawned by the industrial age. By artfully linking colorful and expressive local language to deep-rooted human problems he became one of the few writers capable of elevating dialect beyond provincial sentiment or entertaining farce to the realm of great literature.

Born in 1867 in Oberammergau, Thoma was the fifth of seven children of Max and Katharina Thoma. He spent his first six years in his father's solitary forester's house in the beautiful upper Isar...