Labor literature of the early postwar period was essentially about coal miners, for the coal industry was a dominant force in rebuilding West Germany and paying its war debt. The leading exponent of this type of literature is Max von der Grün. His novels are exposés of the miners' problems. Employee safety, job-related stress, exploitation of the laborer, job reassignment as a result of automation, and unemployment are among the themes he treats. His works, however, lack the timeless moral vision found, for example, in the writings of Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass. Von der Grün seizes the issues of the moment and abandons the universal for the sensational. In this respect, one can compare his works to many of the anti-Vietnam War plays of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

A self-educated miner, von der Grü...