sacks of money,stop kingsfromreturningto their castles,and resist the temp-
tations of the“booze devil”and the“beer witch.”Afterwitnessingaparticularly
dysfunctional Reichstag session, he turns to his impressionableaudience with
clear instructions:
Kasper:Children, children, herewe just sawavery sad butvery true example of the unity of
the proletarian masses.Sure, they sang“The Internationale”with conviction, but they still
managed, at all costs...
Children(interrupting him): togetintoafistfight.
Kasper:Thankyou. And nowgo home andtell all the big people:Kasper hasgotten his
stick back. They need to setabetterexample for the future;otherwise,Kasper will shellac
themgood. Goodbye, kiddies.
Children:Goodbye,Kasper.²⁹The rhetoricalstrategies employedbyRed Kasperbuild on the close connection
between the emotionaltone of socialist agitation and the performative qualityof
proletarian identifications: the invitationto ashared position of knowledge (i.e.,
“we just saw”)bysomeone withauthority;the reversal of hierarchies through
which children are chargedwith educatingtheirparents (i.e., “now go
home”); and the justification of violence (i.e., shellacking) as anappropriate
form of conflictresolution. Moreover,the dialogic structure of the scene, with
the children finishingKasper’ssentences,providesacritical model for diagnos-
ing the shortcomingsofparliamentary democracyand, implicitly,validatingthe
Marxist notion of dictatorship of the proletariat and the Leninistmodel of revo-
lutionary vanguard party.Their spirited exchanges with the RedKasper suggests
that the children alreadypossess manyofthe cognitive skills to be tested in fu-
ture confrontations both personal and political. The agitational work to be com-
pleted by the puppet playthen lies in modeling the emotionalresilience required
in the struggle forafuture societyyettocome.
The third and final lesson: understand thatfeelings–feelings of exclusion,
anger,and fear–are an important part of class struggle; this is the main mes-
sageofone of the most successful proletarian children’sbooksofthe Weimar pe-
riod,Ede und Unku(1931),“anovel for boysand girls”published by Malik with
photographs from the studio ofJohn Heartfield and translatedinto English in
1935 asEddie and theGipsy.³⁰Forits author,GreteWeiskopf (1905–1966), who
LoboFrank (i.e., ErnstHeinrich Bethge),Revolte imKasperhaus oderAlles stehtuff’mKopp.
Ein schnafftesPuppenspielfürSozialisten und Freidenker(Leipzig:AlfredJahn, 1929), n. p.
Rahel Rosa Neubauer makes this point in“Jo hn Heartfield und die Kinderbücher des Malik-
Verlags,”inAlex Wedding (1905–1966) und die proletarische Kinder- undJugendliteratur,ed.
Susanne Blumesbergerand Ernst Seibert (Vienna: Praesens,2007), 143 – 154.
The EmotionalEducation of the ProletarianChild 285