Scholars have grappled with the nonsynchronicities that sustainedsocialist
allegory and its ongoing transformation of obsolescenceinto futurity.Their con-
tributions started as part of the highlypoliticized debates of the 1970sonprole-
tarian culture and maybeused hereto summarize the chapter’sfindings. Pre-
dictably, amajor point of contention at the time involved the socialist
appropriation of the bourgeois heritage. In an importanthistorical surveyof
earlyattempts at an“authentic proletarian visual language,”KnutHickethier ac-
knowledgesthe heavyreliance on bourgeois graphic arts and the difficulty of ne-
gotiating artistic sensibilitiesand political expectations.²³Studies by Klaus-Diet-
er Pohl and Ursula Zeller on the agitational uses of visual allegory highlight its
origins in the productive tension between bourgeois convention and socialist ap-
propriation. They noteagradual shift duringthe 1890s from the universal
themesrepresented by femaleallegories to the more confrontational and decid-
edlymale iconographies of the prewaryears.²⁴Offeringamorecritical perspec-
tive,Klaus-MichaelBogdal interprets the widespread preference for clothing so-
cial conflicts in historical costumes as compensation for the scientismof
historical materialism–an aesthetic choice borne of the desire to preservea
place whereideas and ideals still prevail and wherehistory can still be imagined
in embodied terms.²⁵Diagnosingaclear break between the symbolic politics of
Social Democracy and itsvery differentWeimar-erasuccessors, GottfriedKorff
explains the eventual demise of socialist allegory asaresultofwhat at the
time was seen as an irreversible process of secularization:“The wine leavesin
Knut Hickethier,“Ka rikatur,Allegorie und Bilderfolge—ZurBildpublizistikimDiensteder Ar-
beiterbewegung,”inBeiträgezurKulturgeschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung,1848– 1918 ,
ed. PetervonRüden (Frankfurt am Main: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1979),79–165.
Klaus-DieterPohl,“Allegorie und Arbeiter.Bildagitatorische Didaktik und Repräsentation
der SPD 1890–1914. Studien zum politischen Umgangmit bildenderKunst in den politisch-sat-
irischen Zeitschriften‘DerWahreJacob’und‘Süddeutscher Postillon’sowie in den Maifestzeitun-
gen”(PhDdiss.,University of Osnabrück, 1986). On nineteenth-century political posters and the
preferencefor female allegories, also see Ursula Zeller,Die Frühzeit des politischenBildplakats in
Deutschland (1848–1918)(Stuttgart: Ed. Cordeliers,1988), 59 – 93. On the largercontext, see
Günter Hess,“Allegorie und Historismus.Zum‘Bildgedächtnis’des späten19. Jahrhunderts,”
Verbum et Signum. Beiträge zur mediävistischen Bedeutungsforschung,ed. HansFromm, UweRu-
berg, andWolfgang Harms (Munich:Fink, 1975), 555–591. Foranoverview of socialist visual cul-
ture ingeneral, see Michael Klant,ed.,Der rote Ballon: Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie in derKar-
ikatur(Hanover:Fackelträger, 1988). And on the iconographyofthe proletariat in bourgeois and
socialist publication, see Helmut Hartwigand Karl Riha,Politische Ästhetik und Öffentlichkeit.
1848 im Spaltungsprozeß des historischen Bewußtseins(Fernwald: Anabas,1974), 89–138.
Klaus-Michael Bogdal,ZwischenAlltag und Utopie. Arbeiterliteratur als Diskursdes 19.Jahr-
hunderts(Opladen:WestdeutscherVerlag,1991), 153–159.
The Proletarian Prometheusand Socialist Allegory 117