litical shortcomingsofthese parallel projects of culturalrefinement and class
formation.Forthatreason, the nineteenth century discourse of bourgeois culture
and education will be read asadistinctly Germanresponse to what Antonio
Gramsci calls culturalhegemony, the establishment of bourgeois values,
norms, and beliefs as universal ones and the enlistment of hegemonyinthe pre-
sentation of social and economic inequalities as quasi-natural conditions.⁷
Twospeeches byWilhelm Liebknecht can be used both toreconstruct these
discursive constellations in the contradictory terms thatconfirm them asaprod-
uct of the nineteenth century and to identify the seemingly incompatible ele-
ments of bourgeois heritage, proletarian culture,revolutionary theory,and re-
formist politics thathaunted Social Democracy long into the twentieth
century.Atthe 1874 convention of the SDAP(Social Democratic GermanWorkers’
Party of Germany)inCoburg, Liebknecht still insisted on the full politicization of
culturallife and called foranew kind of proletarian literature–newspapers, po-
litical tracts, and science books–that would allow the party“to forceits ideas
upon the enemy.”⁸Yetafter the 1875 Socialist Unity Congress at Gotha, more and
more arguments weremade in favorofseparate cultural and political spheres.
Now Liebknecht joined Bebel in his conviction that“duringstruggles, the
muses remain silent”and explained his position as follows:“The proletariat is
alreadybeing destroyed through social and economic conditions;should we
addto thatbyruining the bodyand soul of the children of the proletariat?”Fear-
ing that readingnovels might weaken their revolutionary resolve,hehad only
one conclusion, namely,“afighting Germany has no time for poetry.”⁹Nonethe-
less, when thinkingabout the future, Liebknechtremained utterlyconvinced
that,“for the culturalhistorian of the future, the founding of the smallest work-
ers’club will be of greater value thanthe battle ofKöniggrätz.”¹⁰
Aclearer sense of therepeatedattemptsbythe party leadershipto“solve”
the problem of culture, whether proletarian or bourgeois, can be gained from
Forreferences, see Antonio Gramsci,Selections from the Prison Notebooks,trans. Joseph A.
Buttigieg and Antonio Callari (NewYork: Columbia University Press,2007).
Wilhelm Liebknecht, quoted by PetervonRüden,“Anmerkungenzur Kulturgeschichteder
deutschen Arbeiterbewegungvor dem ErstenWeltkrieg,”inBeiträgezur Kulturgeschichte der
deutschen Arbeiterbewegung,1848– 1918 ,ed. PetervonRüden (Frankfurt am Main: Büchergilde
Gutenberg, 1979), 21.
Wilhelm Liebknecht,“BriefausBerlin,”Die Neue Zeit9.2(1891):710. The German proverb
“Unter denWaffen schweigendie Musen”is based on the Latin“Inter arma silent Musae”attrib-
utedtoCicero. The Bebel connection is acknowledged inHermannWendel,August Bebel. Eine
Lebensskizze(Berlin:Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft,1923), 86.
JohannJacoby, quoted byWilhelm Liebknecht,inKleine politische Schriften,61. Sadowa is
an alternative name for the morecommonlyusedKöniggrätz.
158 Chapter 8