warned Lassalle, theauthor ofFranzvon Sickingen,against“using individuals as
mere mouthpieces of the spirit of the time”and turningfor inspiration to Schiller
rather than Shakespeare, but to noavail.²⁶Again it was leftto Mehring,inSchil-
ler,ein Lebensbildfürdeutsche Arbeiter(1905,Schiller,aLife Story for German
Workers),to present the poet’spassion for freedom and democracyasan
model for the socialist movement but,atthe same time, criticize his aesthetic
theory as an expressionofpoliticalresignation.
Intellectual historians continueto evaluate the uniquelyGerman discourse
of culture(as opposed to civilization) and use the underlying conceptual binaries
(e.g., of spirit vs. matter,freedom vs. necessity) to account for its aesthetic man-
ifestations and political limitations since the late eighteenth century.There exists
general agreement that the discourses of culture and education must beread as
an integral part of the utopian project of humanism in the transition from an es-
tate-based feudal society toamodern class society.Two recent monographs by
GeorgBollenbeck andWolf Lepenies affirm the formative role of the bourgeoisie
in establishingthe discourses of cultureand education in the nineteenth century
and do so in ways that indicate the continued relevance of these discourses in
the twenty-first century.Theirrespectivearguments, whichmake little to no men-
tion of Social Democracyand the workingclass, can be used to summarize the
findingspresented in this chapter preciselythrough the decentered perspectives
offered.Bollenbeck’shistoricallyoriented studyof1997provides ample evidence
for the contribution of the discourses of culture and educationto the emergence
of the bourgeois public sphere. In his view,they promoteduniversalist claims
about human nature but alsocompensated for the lack of political rights and
freedoms.Cultureand education conveyedknowledge of the world, provided
models for interpreting experiences, and defined privatevalues and publicbe-
haviors. These discourses accompanied the belated emergence of Germanyas
anation-state and affirmed the uniquerole of theBildungsbürgertum(educated
middle class)–sometimes even in opposition to therationalism of the Enlight-
enment and its afterlife in economic liberalism.²⁷Through their explanatory
strengths,Bollenbeck concludes, these discourses helpedtoclarify social proc-
esses, advancepolitical programs, and maintain powerful mechanisms of inte-
gration, not least in the name of Germannationalism and colonialism.
Karl Marx, Letterto Ferdinand Lassalle, 19April 1859,http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/
marx/works/1859/letters/59_04_19.htm,1March2017.
GeorgBollenbeck,Bildung und Kultur.Glanz und Elend eines deutschen Deutungsmusters
(Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1994), especiallyChapter1.
170 Chapter8