The Proletarian Dream Socialism, Culture, and Emotion in Germany 1863-1933

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that“workingclass”and“Social Democracy”not be treated as identicalterms
and theirrespectivehistories written withawareness of their complicated rela-
tionship became an integralpart of the subsequent processofremapping and
revisiting.¹⁰
Reclaimingthe forgotten history of working-class cultureduringthosedeca-
des often included arguments over terminologies andmethodologies–argu-
ments that concernedthe difficulty of thinking class within or outsideaMarxist
(and what kind of Marxist?) critical framework and, moregenerally, theorizing
the relationship between class, culture, and society beyond the terms establish-
ed duringthe late nineteenth century.The various proposals byWest German
scholars for defining the relationship between“workingclass”and“culture”
and, closelyrelated, between“workingclass”and“socialism”served different
theoretical,methodological,anddisciplinaryinterestsbutsharedtheconviction
that such discussions were useful and necessary.Togiveafew examples, in a
1979 survey of the state of historical research, JürgenKocka addressed the prob-
lem of historical continuities and called foraclearerdistinction between work-
ing-class culture and the legacies ofVolkskultur(popularculture, folk culture).¹¹
Helga Grebingand MatthiasWinter introduced the termArbeiterbewegungskultur
(cultureofthe workers’movement)tohighlightthe close connection between
working-class culture and workers’movement.¹²Somescholars advanced the


(Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press,2002)and, withKeith Nield,The FutureofClass in History:
What’sLeft of the Social?(Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press,2007). Sincethe earlyinter-
ventions by Evans, the local histories presented by David Crew, Mary Nolan, andLynn Abrams
and the introduction ofgendered perspective by Carole ElizabethAdams andKathleen Canning
have further complicated discussions of class,labor,and culture.Forreferences, see DavidF.
Crew,Town in the Ruhr:ASocial HistoryofBochum, 1860– 1914 (NewYork: Columbia University
Press, 1979); Mary Nolan,Social Democracy and Society:Working Class Radicalism inDüsseldorf,
1890 – 1920 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1981);Lynn Abrams,Workers’CultureinIm-
perial Germany:Leisureand Recreation in theRhineland andWestphalia(London: Routledge,
1992);Carole ElizabethAdams,Women Clerks in Wilhelmine Germany:Issues of Class and Gender
(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1988); andKathleen Canning,LanguagesofLabor and
Gender:FemaleFactoryWorkinGermany,1850– 1914 (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 1996).
Geoff Eley,“Jo iningTwoHistories: the SPD and the GermanWorkingClass, 1860–1914,”
FromUnification to Nazism: Reinterpreting the GermanPast,ed. Geoff Eley (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1986), 171 – 199.
JürgenKocka,“Arbeiterkultur alsForschungsthema. EinleitendeBemerkungen,”Geschichte
und Gesellschaft5.1(1979):5–11.
SeeHelgaGrebing,“Vo nder Klassenkultur zur Massenkultur?DreiFragenzur Arbeiterbewe-
gungskultur,”inArbeit und Kultur,ed. GerdKöhler and MatthiasN. Winter(FreiburgimBreisgau:
Dreisam, 1989), 119–123, 142–143, und 160–161and Michael Grüttner,“Arbeiterkulturversus Ar-
beiterbewegungskultur.Überlegungen am Beispiel der HamburgerHafenarbeiter 1888–1933,”in


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