first indication of the discursivestrategies necessary in the postrevolutionary re-
writing of failureand defeat.This process can be reconstructed through the rhet-
orical excesses triggered by the specter of female sexuality and the communists’
need for its containment.Time and again, in the novelsto be discussed,aworker
finds his political commitments tested in relationshipswith threetypes of
women: the mother (ormotherlytype), the sister (or sisterlytype), and, most rel-
evant to this discussion, the sexuallythreatening woman. Each time, an attrac-
tive woman arrivesinarevolutionary situation and unsettles the libidinal econ-
omyofclass struggle; each time, narrative denouement is achievedthrough her
expulsion from the homosocialworld of communism. Not dissimilar toarepeti-
tion compulsion, the underlying scenarios of attraction/repulsion and attach-
ment/detachment provide the psychological mechanisms necessary for the es-
tablishment of communism asadistinct emotional regime. In each case, the
preservation of the revolutionary fantasy asamale fantasyrequires thatthe
woman bereduced toaprojection screen, facilitating changewithout being
part of the solution. Herappearance in the form of images, visions, and halluci-
nations confirms that what isreallyatstake is the proletarian dream and its de-
pendence on the convergenceofmodern masculinity and communist orthodoxy.
Measured by BPRS standards,Marchwitza and Grünbergcan be called ideal-
typicalproletarian writers.Both mencame from working-classbackgrounds and
had been soldiers duringWorldWarI,with thewarexperience evident in their
detailed descriptions of military strategy. They joined the KPD in 1919/20, became
active in the BPRS, and published in KPD-affiliated journals; in fact,itwas the
German Revolution thatturned them into writers.Grünberg(1891–1972) took
part in theJanuary 1919 struggles inBerlin;hewas unemployed when he
wroteTheBurning Ruhr,joined the communist resistanceafter 1933,and later
in EastBerlin, publishedamemoir about his life asaworker-writer.Marchwitza
(1890–1965), the son ofaminer,fought in the RedRuhr Armyand the Spanish
CivilWarand laterreturnedto the GDR to contributeto the postwarmythifica-
tion of theWeimarKPD. His other novels, set among the minersand steelworkers
of theRuhr region,Kampf umKohle(1931, TheBattle over Coal) andWalzwerk
(1932,The Roller Mill), attest to his close familiarity with the region and its cul-
ture.¹¹
On Marchwitza, see AlfredKlein,“Die Arbeiterklasse imFrühwerk Hans Marchwitzas,”Wei-
marerBeiträge18.1(1972): 73 – 106.Marchwitza’sMeine Jugend(1947) offers anautobiographical
perspective on the affinities between labor strugglesand military battles,fromhis childhood
amongthe miners ofUpper Silesia to his traumatic experiences in the trenches ofVerdun.
RevolutionaryFantasy and Proletarian Masculinity 183