tural pursuit”and“spiritual moralforce”perfectly captures the shared sense of
spiritual elevation (and moral righteousness) that, for manylike him, sustained
their political commitments.¹Even outside observers commented on the intensi-
ty of the attachmentto bourgeois humanism asamodel for class emancipation.
Forinstance, theAustrian anarchistJosefPeukert (1855–1910) noted that in
these“workers’associations [...]the worker becameaware of his human dignity,
cultivated and developed his independent thinking and feeling,and raised his
level of consciousness and knowledge in heretofore unimaginable ways.”²Re-
calling theyears of the Anti-Socialist Laws, the naturalist writerand critic Hein-
richHart (185–1906), too, acknowledged:“NowherehaveIseenamore passion-
ateyearning for knowledge,amore burning hungerfor higher learning and
culturalrefinement thanamong the comrades who joined the social struggles
duringthe eightiesand nineties.”
Seventyyears later,the West German historian Gerhard Beier had nothing
but contempt for this kind of emotional bombast–afirst indication thatemo-
tions are pivotal even in the scholarlyassessment of these largerdiscourse on
(class) formation. Confrontingwhat he sawasavast repository of bad taste
and, worse still, bad emotion,Beier could onlyconclude:“Aworkers’education
thus conceivedwas an extracurricular education of the heart,overflowing with
the sentimentality of the lateromantic variety and the pseudo-pious trivializa-
tion of the educational ideals of German classicism–akitschyharmonyofthink-
ing and doing,ofdoing and thinkinginramblingreflections on beautifulappear-
ances.”³Around the sametime, the Britishcommunist historianAllen Merson
came tovery different conclusions in his proud description ofaproletarian cul-
ture more distinct than in England, the birthplace of the industrial revolution:
The Germanworking-class movement represented, in the earlier part of the twentieth cen-
tury,perhapsto agreaterextent than in anyother capitalist country,adistinct proletarian
culture, separate from the culture of the bourgeoisie and based onahighl ydeveloped net-
work of class institutions, includingnot onlytrade unions and political parties butavastRichardWeimann,“Die sozialistische Bildungsarbeit”(1920), quoted in Anna ElisabethHein
and Peter UlrichHein,KunstpolitischeKonzepte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung.Eine Darstel-
lung amBeispielvon Literatur undTheater(Münster: Lit,1983), 12.
Josef Peukert,Erinnerungen eines Proletariers aus der revolutionären Arbeiterbewegung(Berlin:
Verlagdes sozialistischen Bundes,1913),5.
GerhardBeier,“Arbeiterbildung als Bildungsarbeit,”inBeiträgezur Kulturgeschichte der deut-
schen Arbeiterbewegung 1848– 1918 ,ed. PetervonRüden (Frankfurt am Main: Büchergilde Gu-
tenberg, 1979), 59.
156 Chapter 8