argued for extensive reforms as the best defense against what he termed theoret-
ical and applied socialism. Along similar lines, the Prussianreformer Herrmann
Graf zu Dohna (1802–1872), inDiefreien Arbeiter im preußischen Staat(1847, The
Free Workers in the Prussian State), called on the state to mitigate the suffering
of the workers,whereas theAustrian juristJohannvonPerthaler (1816–1862),in
Ein StandpunktzurVermittlungsocialer Mißstände imFabriksbetriebe(1843, A
Proposal for the Mitigation of the Deplorable State of Affairs in theFactories)
suggested improvementsinthe factory system.
Indicative of the permeableboundaries separating the social imaginary in
political theory from its appearance in literaryfiction, their arguments would
soon bereproducedincountless nineteenth-century social novels and social
dramas about the modern factory as the sourceofhuman misery and class strife.
By the sametoken, the descriptions of the infamous masses in city novels and
social dramas attest to the wide familiarity of literarywriters and critics with
the prevailing tropes of massdiscourse in the scholarship. These easilyrecon-
structiblepatterns of influenceconfirm the mutual dependency of scholarly
and literarypractices on the emotionalregimes organized through the specter
of the proletariat inmass discourse. Of course, the same can be concluded
aboutvonStein’scomments, and those of manyotherbourgeois scholars, on
the sheer energy of therevolutionary workingclassand its resonances in artistic
and literaryrepresentations of the Paris Commune.
The importance ofvonStein’sdescription of the proletariat asanew social
formationbecomes even clearerthroughacomparisonto the backward-looking
approach taken by his contemporaryWilhelm Heinrich Riehl (18 23 – 1897), one of
the founders of German ethnography. His belief in theVolkas apolitical, social,
and culturaldefense against modern society playedakey role in the establish-
ment ofVolkskundeas an academicdiscipline and prepared the ground for the
proliferation ofvölkischthoughtthroughout the earlytwentieth century.Inhis
multivolumeDie Naturgeschichte desVolkes als Grundlage einer deutschen So-
cial-Politik(1851–1869, The National History of thePeople as theBasis ofaGer-
man SocialPolicy), Riehl explains what he calls the essence ofapeople through
the natural and cultural landscape and its manifestation in national character.⁸
Not surprisingly,inDie bürgerliche Gesellschaft(1861,Bourgeois Society), the
fourth estate is introduced through its opposition to this established order,
namelyasthose“who have movedaway,orbeen expelled, from society’sexist-
ing systems of groups and estates,who consider it an outragetotalk about mas-
SeeWilhelm Heinrich Riehl,Die Naturgeschichte desVolkes als Grundlageeiner deutschen So-
cial-Politik(Stuttgart: Cotta, 1894).
38 Chapter 1