onceto produce aesthetic experiences, organize socialrelations, and sustain po-
litical commitments.²
Acomplication to be considered in this context is the influenceofbourgeois
notions ofInnerlichkeit(interiority or inwardness) and their formative role in the
invention of German national character.This discursive construction of an inte-
rior and exterior world is inseparable from the politicized distinctions between
public and privatesphere thatresonated throughout the nineteenth century
and contributed to the transformation of inwardness intoasiteofresistance
andaform ofrecognition. In fact,ifthere is one recurringtheme in the memoirs
of August Bebel(1840–1913),Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900),Karl Kautsky
(1854–1938), and several others, it is their feeling of powerlessness and,closely
related, theirragingagainst injustice. All three men cite lack of recognition in the
legal, political,and social spheres as formative moments in their personalrad-
icalization, and all pointto painful experiencesofdisrespect and discrimination
as powerful motivation for their commitmentto the cause. Their revelations in-
dicateto what degree the project of socialism was foundedon, and sustainedby,
specific emotional regimes, scripts, and lexicons.This languageofemotions is
closelymodeled on bourgeois notions of subjectivity and the public sphere.
Yetintheir almost exclusive focus on political emotions, therefunctionalization
of these traditions in the socialist movementshifts the site of feeling from indi-
vidual to collective modalities.Against the bourgeois cult of inwardness,which
justifies the retreat from publiclife by cultivatingmind and soul, the socialists
took coreliberalvalues–personal responsibility,individual initiative,and free-
dom of speech and assembly–and reconfigured them to promotevalues and be-
haviors emphasizing community.Thisrefunctionalization was helpedbytheir
references toadecidedlyPrussian ethos of discipline, order,duty,and sacrifice
for the commongood thatmayhaveremained undeveloped in the socialist cul-
ture ofmale sentimentality but thattook center stageinthe later culture of com-
munistmilitancy and Nazi community.Highlighting these continuities,Oswald
Spengler later extolled the Prussian roots of German socialism in his influential
book onPreußentum und Sozialismus(1919,Prussianism and Socialism).
Moral questions and ethical concerns were of central relevance to the imag-
ining of the proletariat as the universal class–thatis, the class whose particular
interests coincided with the needs of humanityasawhole. Therecourse to moral
Auseful overview of emotional cultures in the nineteenth century can be found inUteFrevert
et al., eds.,Emotional Lexicons:Continuity and Changeinthe Vocabulary ofFeeling 1700– 2000
(Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press,2014). Foracase studyfromthe history of social movements,
see ChristianKoller,“Es ist zum Heulen. EmotionshistorischeZugängezur Kulturgeschichtedes
Streikens,”Geschichte und Gesellschaft36.1 (2010): 66–92.
66 Chapter 3