sentations of the March 1920 and 1921 events, theRuhr Uprising (Ruhraufstand)
and the MarchAction (Märzaktion), mayberead asrevisionist narrativesthat
identify causes and effects, reveal obstaclesand mistakes, and propose strat-
egies for the future. The novels about these two revolutionary situations try to
make sense of the workers’experience of sudden empowerment and unlimited
possibility, followed by crushing,devastatingdefeat,and they do so through
the problem of masculinity.The main psychological dilemmaaddressed byWei-
mar-era novels about theRuhr Uprising can be summarized thus: how to live
with, and make sense of, failure? The solution offered was revisionist in the po-
litical and psychological sense, asauthors retold the story of revolution as one of
temporary political defeatand inevitable historicalvictory and, in the process,
strengthened proletarian identifications by healing the wound of injured mascu-
linity.
As previous chapters have shown, the proletarian dream had always de-
pended on normative definitionsofmasculinity in establishingwhat it meant
to beaworker andarevolutionary;this included the sexualization of class strug-
gle asahomosocialproject.Measured against the associational cultureofpre-
war Social Democracy,with its ownmännerbündlerischqualities, the trauma of
World WarIand the failed German Revolution of 1918/19requiredmore aggres-
sive–which also means more defensive–scenarios in affirming the primacyof
class struggle. Subsequently,all desires and beliefs considered detrimentalto the
ultimategoal of revolution wereprojected onto the figure of the sexualized
woman, while the theory ofrevolution itself was sexualized throughacult of mil-
itant,ascetic masculinity closelyassociated with the KPD. No literaryworks
bring out thegendered nature of this kind of revisionismmore clearly than sev-
eral novelswritten by members of the KPD-affiliatedBund proletarisch-revolutio-
närer Schriftsteller(BPRS, Association of Proletarian RevolutionaryWriters).
To brieflysummarize the historicalevents thatrequired such almost compul-
sive rewriting: On14 March 1920,inresponseto the rightwingKapp Putsch
against the electedgovernment,SPD,USPD,and KPD,with support from the un-
ions, had called forageneral strike.Emboldened by theirinitial successes, in-
cludingthe surprise defeat ofaFreikorps unit atWetter and the subsequent con-
quest of Dortmund by the RedRuhr Army, workers’ councils formedinEssen on
20 March and assumed military and administrative control over the entire Ruhr
region. Thegeneral strikemayhavesaved Weimar democracy from the first as-
sault by rightwing forces, but after terminating the strike on22 March, the work-
ers and thegovernmentfailedto reachacompromise.With fifty to sixty thou-
sand armed men in the RedRuhr Army, more than three hundred thousand
workers stillonstrike, and the center of the Germancoal and steel industry in
workers’hands, SPD ministerCarl Severing made the fateful decisionto use
Revolutionary Fantasy and Proletarian Masculinity 179