the book’srelativel yshort chapters can be likened to fragments, snapshots, and
excerpts–thatis, building blocks in an ongoingprocess of criticalreconstruc-
tion. This construction principle allows each chapter alsotofunction asatest
site for various approachestothe difficulties ofwriting about collective emotions
and emotions in history and, in doing so,to establishadialogue between the
disciplinesalsoonthe level of methodological questions and conceptual solu-
tions. On the one hand, therangeofliteraryforms, theoretical arguments, visual
styles,and theatrical experiments bringsout surprising continuities and patterns
of influencemade possible largelyby the socialist practice of culturalappropri-
ation. On the other,the book’sdivision into twoparts separatedbyWorldWarI
and the GermanRevolution of 1918/19pointstoafundamental paradigm shift–
on the level of emotional, aesthetic, and discursive modalities–between the
nineteenth and twentieth century.Although the examples from literature,
music, theater,dance,painting,photography, and film are presented inaroughly
chronological fashion,they do not amountto acoherent history with distinct
causes and effects. In fact,most chapters conclude either by noting later devel-
opmentsoftheir respective themes, forms, or styles or by following the critical
reception of important theories and debates to theyears after 1933 and,again,
after 1945. Considerations of space prevented the inclusion of several cultural
practices with stronglinks to the workers’movement, including workers’poetry
and workers’sport; both will be discussed in the secondvolume.
Some chapters focus on an important socialist leader such asFerdinand
Lassalle or an influential literarygenre such as the proletarian novel; others or-
ganize their arguments aroundaparticular communist habitus (e.g.,inagitprop)
or visual motif (e.g.,handsand fists);yetothers use one particular text (e.g.,
We!orKuhleWampe)oraesthetic strategy(e. g.,allegory or montage)to tease
out the connections between political and aesthetic emotions.Aconscious effort
has been made to includeawide rangeofmass media, art forms, literarygenres,
and critical discourses and to make their sheer abundance, includinginthe form
of multimediality and media convergence, an integral part of the overarchingar-
gument.The multiperspectivism inherent in suchatransdisciplinaryapproach
serves at once to highlight the expansive and integrative quality of proletarian
cultureand drawattention to the processes of exclusion applied to anything
that does not fit into the Marxist master narrative.Within these parameters, lit-
erature nonetheless continuesto occupyaprivileged spacegiven its elevated sta-
tus in Germanculture, includingits socialist appropriations, and the unique
ability of fictional and discursive writingto provide access to collective imagina-
ries as mediated by,and in, language.
Usingemotions as bothathematic focus andaheuristic device in the writ-
ing of cultural history means that individual chapters might start with questions
12 Introduction