Paul Ilg

At the age of 21, he was offered a position as secretary of the Swiss National Exhibition in Geneva in 1896.

Paul Ilg suffered all his life from the stigma of his poor origins. Although he received repeated literary recognition, he could not establish himself permanently in the literary business of his time. He usually lived in difficult financial conditions and was always on the lookout for patrons. This experience also characterizes Ilg's socially and socially critical work, which often refers to "a degraded, humiliated, homeless, unhumanized, socially disadvantaged man who, by means of economy, art and love, bends and breaks into the higher spheres, the apparent spheres of happiness society, where castles and silver-laden hotel halls seek to cover up the memories of poor-blooded childhood". Paul Ilg was born in Salenstein as the illegitimate son of the farmer's daughter and factory worker Marie Ilg. In his first three years of life, he grew up on the farm of the grandparents and was sent after their death as Verdingbub to relatives to Rehetobel. He also had to operate as a peddler in Appenzellerland, before he fled in 1886 as a nine-year-old to his mother to Rorschach. A short time later, the two moved to St. Gallen where Ilg also attended secondary school. After a scholarship to attend a high school was rejected, Ilg began successively a Locksmith, cooking and trade, but he broke off shortly after the beginning again. Also a training on the bank in the French Switzerland failed. At the age of 20, Ilg finally found employment as a clerk at a property speculator in Zurich and began writing his first texts.