the hair,the Phrygian cap on the head, and thegoddesses of freedom disap-
peared as visual and symbolic motifs–reason to conclude that the symbolism
of the workers’movement in theWeimar Republic is brought into being by a
loss of utopia–or better,bysecularization.”²⁶
In acompellinganalysis of nineteenth-century workers’literature that is
alsoapplicable to socialist allegories, Klaus-MichaelBogdal speaksofanaes-
thetic discourse whose constitutive elements werelocated entirelyinthe nine-
teenth century and whose formal conventions werealreadyconsidered obsolete
before the war.The anachronistic natureofthese traditions, he argues, cannot be
adequately analyzed through formal criteria but instead requires close attention
to the intended subject effects, i.e., whatBogdal analyzes as discourse and what
this study describes as the interfaceofemotional and culturalpractices.Accord-
ingly,thediscursivefunctionsofworkers’literature,itsdoubletemporalityasa
traceofeverydaylife andamovementtoward the notyet, are realized not in aes-
theticregisters that, in hindsight,seem derivative and obsolete but onlythrough
the historical subjects interpellated in the process, the proletariat.
Thus defined, socialist allegory and,more generally, proletarian culture
around the turn of the century remain caught between twodiscourses,Marxism
and bourgeois humanism. However,preciselybecause the scenarios of class
struggle are displaced into somemythological past,the adaptation of bourgeois
aesthetic traditionsto socialist contexts acquires new emotional equalities.For
Bogdal,the aesthetic modalities of pathos, satire, and sentimentality are of par-
ticular relevance here:“Pathos is the strategyfor representingand establishing
the stillfrailproletarian self-image.It servesaclass-formingfunction. Satire
imaginesthe image of the other.Sentimentalism imaginesaspace ofclass synthe-
sison the basisofthe‘all too human’and the personal.”²⁷All threemodalities
are not onlyrooted in idealistaesthetics, includingSchiller’svalidation of pa-
thos asaform of resistance, but they also confirm the ability of emotions to es-
cape the confinements of aesthetic form and survive in more contemporaryver-
sions–adefinition that applies perfectlytothepower of socialist allegory in
images as well as texts.Lastbut not least,Bodgal’sdefinition drawsattention
to the less obvious similarities between the sentimental masculinity of emotional
socialism and the heroic masculinity of socialist allegory.With special relevance
for the next chapter on the socialist celebrity phenomenon, the political symbol-
ism of sentiment and pathos pointstothe dependency of the proletarian dream
GottfriedKorff,“RoteFahnen undgeballteFaust.Zur Symbolik der Arbeiterbewegung in der
Weimarer Republik,”inFahnen,Fäuste, Körper.Symbolik und Kultur der Arbeiterbewegung,ed.
Dietmar Petzina (Essen: Klartext,1986), 60.
Bogdal,ZwischenAlltag und Utopie,152.
118 Chapter5