In the autobiographical notes accompanying Paul Zech's contributions to the famous verse anthology Menschheitsdämmerung (The Dawn and Dusk of Mankind, 1920), edited by Kurt Pinthus, the poet writes of the self-imposed challenge that caused him to leave school to work for two years in the coal mines and steel mills of the Ruhr, Belgium, and northern France. The attitudes which were fostered at that time by Zech's identification with the working class remained with him throughout his life. In the early days his prose depicted aspects of the existence he had known in the mills and mines; but even in his advanced years, when the author found himself encapsulated in an alien culture, his sympathies continued to be expressed for the subjects of exploitation.

Zech's socialistic impulses were infused initially with a Christian religiosity that was associated with vitalism and a reverent awe of nature. These attitudes...