substitute forrevolutionary action–apoint confirmed by the KPD’sunwilling-
ness to form viable alliances with other leftist groups and their declining appeal
among the workingclasses (instead of the mass of unemployed).
The discussions among KPD functionaries about the most suitablegenres
and styles for creatingamore militant culture reproduced familiar ideological
differences (e.g.,with the left communists) and often took place alonggenera-
tional lines. Gertrud Alexander(born in 1882), the feuilleton editor ofDie Rote
Fahneandaleadingculturalcritic, had repeatedlyclaimedcommunist owner-
ship of the bourgeois heritagesince her intervention in the 1920 Art Scoundrel
Debate. Herveneration of the great works asasourceofcritical insight informed
both her belief in the artist asamediator between classes and her opposition to
modernism asaphenomenon of bourgeois decadence. Promotingthe classics as
an eternal sourceofaesthetic pleasure, Alexander insisted that,despite capital-
ist exploitation,“culturehas always existed, and immortal thingswerecreated.
The new culturewill not and cannot develop so fast thatthe worker,the new
man, could not and should not take pleasure in the beautiful thingsofthe
past.”⁸
Founded in 1928 by agroup ofyounger writers (all bornduringthe 1890s),
the Bund proletarisch-revolutionärer Schriftsteller (BPRS, Association of Prole-
tarian RevolutionaryWriters) announcedaclear break with this traditionalnar-
rative of great art existing beyond or outside class. Inspired by the worker-corre-
spondentsmovement in the Soviet Union, the BPRS set out“to transform
proletarian revolutionary literaturesothatitconquers,cultivates, and organizes
the hearts and minds of the workingclass and the large workingmasses for the
task of classstruggle and thegoal of proletarian revolution.”⁹In developing
strategies for turning workers intoreaders and, ultimately, thinkers,KPD func-
tionariestook theircues from Lenin who famouslydemanded that workers not
limit their education to“‘literature for workers’but learn to mastergeneral liter-
ature.”¹⁰Through the journalDie Linkskurve(1929–1932,literally: left turn), the
BPRS operated as part of various culturalinitiativescoordinated after 1929 by the
short-livedInteressengemeinschaft für Arbeiterkultur (IfA, Alliance ofWorkers
Culture Groups). BPRS writers published their works withWieland Herzfelde’s
legendary Malik publishing house, which launched the inexpensive Roter-Eine-
Gertrud Alexander,“HerrnJohn Heartfield und George Grosz,”Die RoteFahne,9June (1920).
Quoted in GerhardFriedrich,Proletarische Literatur und politische Organisation. Die Literatur-
politik derKPDinder WeimarerRepublik und die proletarisch-revolutionäreLiteratur(Frankfurt
am Main: Peter Lang, 1981),21.
VladimirIlyich Lenin,“What Is to Be Done?”(1902),http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/
works/1901/witbd/ii.htm,1March2017.
Marxist Literary Theoryand Communist MilitantCulture 261