formances,and tried to accommodate themwithin the distinctlylocal structures
of working-class life.AccordingtoAbrams, an unshakable belief in the coming
revolution grounded in scientificMarxism coexisted with what even some SPD
members described as typicalGermanVereinsmeierei,the sentimental cult of
community andgood cheer mentioned in chapter3inconjunction with the work-
ers’choral societies.¹⁶Last but not least,the workers’associations hadto com-
pete with the easy conviviality found in countless neighborhood pubs thattook
away much time and energy from the dailygrind of party politics (or union or-
ganizing) and distracted from the largerproject of class struggle. In the compe-
tition betweenBier(beer)andBildung,toallude toabook by Horst Groschopp,
the latter oftenlost out.¹⁷
Beyond the shared investment in cultureand education astechniquesoffor-
mation,aclear consensus on what theseterms actuallymeant and how they
shaped working-classlives could never be reached. The idea (rather than the
practice) of culturefoundareceptive audience among members of the so-called
labor aristocracy,namely trade union leaders, party bureaucrats, and skilled in-
dustrial workers.Afew SPD leaders publiclyadmittedthatthey had no time to
read novels or watch plays,which did not stop them frommaking sweepingcon-
clusions about the past,present,and future of socialist literature.Keypartici-
pants in the main literary debates conducted duringparty congresses rejected
tendentious art on principle but called for more politicallyengaged art.Some be-
lieved in an innate class instinctguiding all questions of taste,while others
dreamed ofafuture socialist aesthetic beyond class. Manywroteeffusively
about the simple people and their love of the classics butrailedagainst the pop-
ularity of serial novels and melodramas. Othersgushed about the workers’belief
in lifelong learning but convenientlyignored the fact that even party leaders had
not read Marx. Studies on workers’lending libraries confirm that historical nov-
Lynn Abrams,Workers’CultureinImperialGermany:Leisureand Recreation in theRheinland
andWestphalia(London: Routledge,1992).Onthis point,see RichardSaage,ed.,Solidargemein-
schaft und Klassenkampf.PolitischeKonzeptionen der Sozialdemokratiezwischen denWeltkriegen
(Frankfurt am Main:Suhrkamp, 1986).
See Hans Groschopp,ZwischenBierabend undBildungsverein: Zur Kulturarbeit in der deut-
schen Arbeiterbewegung vor 1914(Berlin: Dietz, 1987).Forthreehistorical studies withvery dif-
ferent emphases,see ManfredHübner,ZwischenAlkohol undAbstinenz: Trinksitten undAlkohol-
frageimdeutschen Proletariat bis 1914(Berlin: Dietz, 1988); GeorgWedemeyer:Kneipe &
politische Kultur(Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus,1990); and Dagmar Kieft,ed.,Kirmes—Kneipe—
Kino. Arbeiterkultur im RuhrgebietzwischenKommerz undKontrolle (1850–1914)(Paderborn:
Westfälisches Institut für Regionalgeschichte, 1992).
164 Chapter8