to preserveapure ideal that would otherwise be tainted and damaged by the de-
mands of politics.”³
The communitarian ideals of the culturalsocialists, in turn, wereinsepara-
ble from the correspondingfantasiesofanolder folk cultureand abourgeois
highculture that had sustained the SPD duringthe years of the Anti-Socialist
Laws but that,after the cataclysms of warand revolution, lookedincreasingly
like withdrawal to aself-sustaining proletarian lifeworld–completewith nine-
teenth-century utopian tendencies,conventional tastes,and provincial attitudes.
In line with Marx’scharacterization of the working class as the universal class,
the culturalsocialists defined an emerging proletarian culture not as the culture
of aspecific class but of all of humankind. Insisting on the utopian potential of
the aesthetic, they appropriated the bourgeois concept ofautonomous artfor the
self-definition of this socialist culturalmovement as“atranshistorical forcebe-
yond class divides.”In the words ofKurt Heilbut,“the bourgeois man puts things
(money,factories,materialgoods)before people. The socialist puts people before
things. The bourgeois places the individual at the center (individualism), the so-
cialist the community (collectivism).”⁴Against the Communistversion of the col-
lective,the culturalsocialists upheld romantic visions ofapast and future folk
community and promised the integration of the traditions of bourgeois individu-
alism intoasuperior socialist communitarianism. Their ultimate aim, in Hartig’s
words, was the cultivation of the individual as part of the community.“What is
the ideal of socialism asacultural movement?”he asked:“It wants community.
However,community is experiencedbythe individual andmust be experienced
as ashared value that incorporatesthe personal. In other words, community
must be experienced as being conducive to one’sown personality.”⁵
By the mid-1920s, twodistinct models of proletarian culturevied for domi-
nance, Social Democratic Gemeinschaftskultur (communitarian culture) and
CommunistKampfkultur(militant culture). While critics writing for SPD-affiliated
publications drew on arguments formulatedduring theyears of theAnti-Social-
ist Laws, KPD functionaries increasinglysoughtinspiration andguidance from
the Soviet Union. The terms“communitarian”and“militant”in these cultural
contests capture the complicated relationship between the SPD asareform
Valtin Hartig,“Über die Möglichkeit proletarischerKultur,”Kulturwille1.1(1924):1. Similar ar-
guments weremade by the prolific PaulKampffmeyerin“Die Arbeiterbewegungals Faktorder
allgemeinenKulturentwicklung,”SozialistischeMonatshefte 16 – 18.1(1912): 30–32 and“Aufdem
Wegzur sozialistischenKultur,”3parts,Kulturwille2.6,7, and8(1925): 113–115,146–148, 164–
166.
Kurt Heilbut,“SozialistischeFestkultur,”Sozialistische Bildung22 (1930): 51.
Valtin Hartig,“Ku lturbewegung im Sozialismus,”DieTat16.12(1925): 885and 886.
258 Chapter 14