ters,burghers,and peasants, who declare themselvestobethe‘true’people, and
who want to dissolve all naturallydevelopedestates into the big primordial
mush of the‘true’folk.”⁹
Much of Riehl’swriting is concerned with eliminating the category ofArbeit-
erfrom German public discourse and integrating it into older traditions of social
thoughtand the bodypolitic. Throughout the threat posed by the socialistmove-
ment remainsahidden referencepoint,from his conclusion that the proletariat,
lacking property,fatherland, and community,“incessantlyuses theoretical re-
flectiontoagonizeabout its position in society”¹⁰to his ownpreoccupation
with creatingstable critical categories to contain this dangerous threat.First,
he rejects the termArbeiteras aGermanizedversion of theouvrierthat,linguis-
ticallyaswell as politically, ends up importingFrench conditionsto the German
states.Thenhedistinguishestheidealworkerwithhisrootsinthetraditional
guild system from the modern proletarian asafigureofabjection and destruc-
tion. Finally, he separates the manual laborer from the industrial worker,with
the latter defined through his experiences of deracination. However,byequating
socialists with workers and workers with proletarians,heends up describing a
rather disjointedgroup comprised of workers, loafers, journeymen, and beggars
distinguishedaboveall through their corrosive effect on traditionalestate-based
society.The main problems caused by their sharedFessellosigkeit(i.e., the lack
of social and religious ties) are analyzed as moralrather than economic in na-
ture. Thecurse of the workingclass subsequentlycomes from beinguprooted
and stranded between the simple peasantry and the educated middle class.¹¹
Riehl acknowledgesthe problems of the fourth estate but insistsonthe integra-
tion of the workers into the estate system as the best defenseagainst the antag-
onisms unleashed by class struggle. Hisdistinction betweenarisingclass that
aims to take the place of the people andatraditionalfolk thatconfirms the eter-
nal laws of heredity recasts contemporary struggles in the biologistic terms of
natural history.Inwhat ways such ethnographic categories continuedto domi-
nate scholarlyengagement with the proletariat can be seen inamuchlatter
studybyWill-Erich Peuckert (1895–1969) titled Volkskundedes Proletariats
(1931,Ethnographyofthe Proletariat) that starts out by asking:“Does the prole-
Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl,Die bürgerliche Gesellschaft(Stuttgart: Cotta, 1861), 347.
Riehl,Die bürgerliche Gesellschaft,470. His greatest scorn is reserved for theGeistesproletar-
iat(i.e., intellectuals)whoincite socialtensions and arouse class hatredinorder“create”the
Germanworkerbased on the historical model of the revolutionaryFrenchouvrier.
Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl,“Die Arbeiter.Eine Volksredeausdem Jahre 1848,”reprinted inDie
Eigentumslosen. Der deutschePauperismus und die Emanzipationskrise in Darstellungen und Deu-
tungen der zeitgenössischenLiteratur(FreiburgimBreisgau: Alber,1965), 394–405.
The Threatofthe Proletariat and the Discourse of the Masses 39