function,they became more diverse, with titlesrangingfromJosef Peukert’san-
archist memoirErinnerungen eines Proletariersaus der revolutionären Arbeiterbe-
wegung(1913,Recollections ofaProletarian from the RevolutionaryWorkers’
Movement) to Nikolaus Osterroth’sSocial Democratic conversion narrativeVom
Beter zumKämpfer(1920,MyPath from PrayingtoFighting) to OttilieBaader’s
socialist feminist memoirEin steinigerWeg(1921,AStonyPath). In the wake
of the October Revolution, the emphasis on communication by editors such as
Levenstein and Göhre appeared not onlyoutdated but alsoineffectual compared
to the confrontational tones and styles promoted byanew generation ofradical-
ized workers. Asaproduct of the nineteenth century, workers’ life writingsre-
mainedindebted to the cultureofemotional socialism and reproduced, in the
voice of the worker-writers,the tensions between the demands for socialreform
and the promises of bourgeois subjectivity thatcould not beresolved in the lan-
guages of emotion.Avery similar argument can be made for the overdetermined
discourses on cultureand education thatdefined the complicated relationship of
Social Democracyto the bourgeois heritageand thatare the focus of the next
chapter.
154 Chapter 7