Fig..Karl Marx as“Der gefesselte Prometheus/Prometheus Bound,”.Withpermission
of Heinrich-Heine Institut, Düsseldorf.
Just like the countless personifications in officialWilhelmine culture, social-
ist allegoriesaimedtoconveyasense of unity and power,but in contrastto al-
legories of nation, their emotionalrewards onlyaddressed one particularclass:
the workingclass. Like mainstream allegoricalpractices,socialistversions oper-
ated on three interrelated levels: through their ritualistic functioninfestival cul-
ture and associational life, theiragitational function in promotingsocialist con-
cepts and ideas, and their emotional function in conveying an attitude of
optimism and faith in the future. Most relevantto the making of proletarian iden-
tifications, socialist allegoriespromisedafullydecipherable world, if viewed
from aproperlysocialist perspective.These qualities set socialist allegory
apart from the material culture of the nineteenth century as examined byWalter
Benjamin in his famousArcadesProject.Approachingthe culture ofmass con-
sumption and readingthe signs of historicalchangethrough his earlier studyon
the baroque mourning playallowsBenjaminto draw on the affinities of allegory
to mourning,which in his viewmakesitideallysuited asahermeneutics and a
method of historical materialism. Although his readingof“allegory as the arma-
ture of modernity”²¹is part of an analysis of capitalism and commodity fetish-
Walter Benjamin,“Central Park,”inSelectedWritings,Vol. 4, 1938– 1940 ,ed. Howard Eiland
112 Chapter5