The historicallyspecific discourses of cultureand education examined by
Bollenbeck and Lepenies and their(distinctlyWest German) interpretations of
these discourses come into even sharper focus through acomparison with the
more inclusive definition of culture asawhole wayoflife proposed by therep-
resentativesof(British) cultural studies. Their definition of cultureiscloser to,
though by no means identical with, the Germanconcept ofZivilisation(civiliza-
tion), which refers to the entirety ofapeople’stechnical, social, and culturalach-
ievements. Additionally, it describes in more comprehensive ways the rich cultur-
al practices developedinthe name of the workingclass. In the highlycharged
juxtaposition of cultureand civilization that legitimized the self-understanding
of Germany’seducated elites throughout much of the nineteenth and earlytwen-
tieth centuries, civilization, as studied by anthropologists and ethnographers,
represents the material foundations and belongs entirely to the sphere of activity
and utility,includinglabor and industry.Once removed from the necessities of
life, cultureinthis conceptual division of labor becomes freetodevoteitself en-
tirelytothe pursuit of art and beauty.However,aswehaveseen, the discourse of
cultureitself could never freeitself from the conditions of its own emergence in
the context of Enlightenment thoughtand its afterlife in the bourgeois heritage.
Historically, cultureinGermanyacquired its overdetermined status within
the project of bourgeois emancipation through sophisticated argumentsabout
its differencefrom an overlyrefined, decadent civilization henceforth identified
with the aristocracy.Meanwhile, civilization madeareturn to public debates
through the heterogeneous customs,habits,and diversions henceforth associat-
ed with modern massculture. Thischapter has shown thatthese discursive con-
figurations cannot be mapped easilyonto the prevailing models in cultural stud-
ies that,based on theresistanceversus subversion model, tend to align cultural
hegemonywith dominant ideologyand equate popularculture with resistant po-
sitions. In the process, they fail to takeinto account the relationaldynamics of
highculture, massculture, folk culture, bourgeois culture, working-class culture,
and so forth.Understanding the strategic function of the discourse of (high) cul-
ture initiallydeployed against an estates-based society requires taking into ac-
count that which is excluded from suchaclass-based habitus,namelythe cul-
tural practices associated since Herder with the people, or the folk, and, after
the rise of the socialist movement, with the workingclass.Accordingly, the ap-
propriation of the discourses of culture and education by the workers’movement
and their institutionalization within the associational culture of Social Democra-
cy represents an importantexpression of aspiration andgesture of empower-
ment.The ways in which these key elements of the proletarian dream remained
grounded in the nineteenth century willbecome more apparent in the following
chapters about proletarian cultureand culturaldebates in theWeimaryears,
172 Chapter8