competingperspectivesonthe socialist heritageduringthe ColdWar, GDR mu-
sicologists have claimed the history of workers’ choral societies foraGerman so-
cialist master narrative, whileWest German scholars have favored (nostalgic) re-
gionalist perspectives, especiallyafter the demise of theRuhr steel and coal
industries.¹¹However,most scholars todayagree that poetry,considered the lit-
erary form most conducive to expressions of (national) identity in the so-called
Vormärzperiod, theyears leadinguptothe 1848 March Revolution, provided the
worker’schoralsocieties withamedium of enunciation ideallysuited for shifting
thevery terms of articulation from bourgeois to proletarian identifications.
After the nationalisticWars of Liberation against Napoleon and the German
Revolution of 1848, poetry had emergedasthe preferredgenre for givingvoice to
long-simmering feelingsofinjusticeand growingdemands for recognition.
Quickly memorized, easilyrecited, and widelydistributed, poems forgedmean-
ingful connections between collective emotions and social movements. Estab-
lishing the workers as the main subject of political poetry was considered instru-
mentalto atransformativeprocess that required the reinscription of private
feeling into collective expressions of class, folk, and community.Somecontem-
poraries described this process through the imageofanoverflowing heart.Inthe
words of one observer,the socialist poetswanted only“to give voice to all the
sadness, all the joy thataccompanied the proletarian struggle for liberation
throughout its various phases and to relievethe heart of the surfeit of emotions
threatening to burst open the chest.”¹²
The poetry of theVormärz,especiallythe songsinspired by the 1844 Silesian
Weavers Uprisings, provided an influential emotional and agitational model for
the earlyworker’smovement.Eventually, the demands for freedom and justice
by abroadlydefinedKampfdichtung(agitational poetry) gave waytoamore ex-
plicit emphasis on the workingclassasahistoricalsubject and subjectofhisto-
ry.¹³In“Hunger Song”(1844), one of the earliest instantiations of such an antag-
ForanearlyGDR study, see ArnoKapp,VomGesang der Handwerksgesellenzumersten deut-
schen Arbeitergesangverein unter Bebel(Halle: MitteldeutscherVerlag, 1950).Onthe reception of
workers’musical culture in the socialist press, seeWernerKaden,Signale desAufbruchs.Musik
im Spiegel der“RotenFahne”(Berlin:VerlagNeue Musik, 1988).Forahistoriographyofthis im-
portant part of the socialist heritage,see Inge Lammel and Ilse Schütte, eds.,Hundert proletari-
sche Balladen, 1842– 1945 (Berlin:VerlagTribüne, 1985).
Anon., quoted in Peter Kiefer,Bildungserlebnis und ökonomischeBürde. Franz Mehrings his-
torische Strategie einer Kultur des Proletariats(Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1986), 124.
The most extensive collection isDeutsche Arbeiter-Dichtung.EineAuswahl Lieder und Ge-
dichte deutscher Proletarier,5vols. (Stuttgart: Dietz, 1893). The five volumes featureworks by
1: Walter Hasenclever,K.E.Frohme undAdolph Lepp; 2:JacobAudorf;3: In Reih und Glied. Ge-
dichtevon einem Namenlosen;4: MaxKegel; and5: Andreas Scheu.
On WorkersSinging in OneVoice 89