onistic“we,”GeorgWeerth (18 22 – 1856) recounts shared experiences of starva-
tion before he endswith an open political threat:“Otherwise we pack up onSun-
days,/ and devouryou, oh king.”¹⁴Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), in“ThePoor
Weavers”(1844), uses the pronoun“we” in asimilarlyconfrontationalway:
first by declaring,with growingintensity that,“We’re weaving!We’re weaving!”
and then,instead of resortingtotears or pleas, placingacurse on God, king,and
fatherland:“Old Germany, we are weavingyour funeral shroud./We’re weaving,
we’re weaving!”¹⁵The“we”took an even more class-specific turn in the figure of
the“proletarian machinist”who, in“Up fromBelow!”(1846) byFerdinandFrei-
ligrath (1810–1876), threatens to overthrow the existingorder.¹⁶Twomodels of
history,with the one implying eternal, immutable laws and with the otherem-
phasizing individualagency,henceforth informed the appealto therevolution-
ary workingclass.Johann Christian Lüchow in“The Proletariat”of 1848 de-
scribes the rise of the workingclass as part ofanaturalhistory,aspring
awakening:“Swellingand sprouting from below/likeanearlyseeded crop./It
grows well out of the soil,/ the proletariat!”¹⁷By contrast,GeorgHerwegh
(1817–1875)inthe 1863“Bundesliedfor the ADAV,”the precursor of the SPD,
presents the struggle between labor and capital in explicitlysocialist terms
and concludes with an empoweringmessagetothe workers:“Man of labor,
awaken!/ Andrecognizeyour power!/All the wheels willstand still,/ if this is
the will ofyour strong arm.”¹⁸
The proliferation of workers’choral societies can be measured by the count-
less songbookspublished in theyears that followed, fromAdolf Strodtmann’s
Die Arbeiterdichtung in Frankreich(1863, Workers’Poetry inFrance) toJohann
Most’sProletarier-Liederbuch(1873,Proletarian Songbook)toCarl Hoym’sProle-
tarier singe!Kampf-und Volkslieder(1919,Proletarian, Sing!) to Edwin Hoernle’s
Rote Lieder(1924,Red Songs). Thesecollections not onlyattes ttothe changing
composition of the workingclass and its political organizations fromVormärz
craftsmen’sassociationstoWeimar-era communist groups.The songbooks’re-
GeorgWeerth,“Hungerlied,”online at https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Das_Hungerlied, 1
March2017. Weerth wrote for Marx’sNeueRheinische Zeitung.
HeinrichHeine,“Die armenWeber,”online at https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Die_armen_
Weber,1March2017.
FerdinandFreiligrath,“Vo nuntenauf,”online at http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/ferdi
nand-freiligrath-gedichte-5009/33, 1March2017.
Johann Christian Lüchow,“Das Proletariat,”reprinted in Lammel and Schütt,Hundert pro-
letarische Balladen 1842– 1945 ,22.
“Arbeiterlied”(lyrics:GeorgHerwegh), inMost’sProletarier-Liederbuch,ed. GustavGeilhof,
5th ed.(Chemnitz: G.Rübner und Co., 1875), 4. Differentversions (here: from the thirdedition of
1873)are added in parentheses.
90 Chapter 4