official program called“the problem of the German proletariat’sdevelopment of
consciousness.”¹²Consequently, justastheKAPD decidedto createarevolution-
ary situation by cutting through the layers of party bureaucracy,appealingin-
steadto the spontaneity of the masses,Jung sought to liberate his readers
from the stricturesshared by bourgeois ideologyand its favoritevehicle, the re-
alist novel, and to experimentwith forms of collective agencybeyond the surro-
gatepleasures found in psychological interiority.
Jung’snovellas from his so-calledredyears comment almost compulsively
on the conditions necessary forarevolutionary situation while continuously
sharpening his critical terms for analyzingthe causes and effectsofthe revolu-
tion’srepeated failures.Proletarier(1920,Proletarian) takes place in the after-
math of the October Revolution, whileDie RoteWoche(1921,The RedWeek)de-
picts the workers’response to theKapp Putsch.Arbeiterfriede(1922, Workers’
Peace) tests the limits of communitarianism, andArbeiterThomas(Worker Tho-
mas),written in 1930,uses a1921uprising inUpper Silesia for an exercise in com-
munist self-reflection.Written“with purpose and without artistic ambition,”¹³
these novellas share manyformal and thematicelements with the then-popular
reportagesfrom the workingworld. In theirinnovative use of literary technique,
however,they function aboveall as models foravery different politics of iden-
tification. All of the works describeemotional trajectories from hope to disillu-
sionment,with brief moments oftogetherness followed by extensive periods of
isolation,but they do so withouteverresortingtothe emotional scripts ofmelo-
drama or pathos. Instead the narrative strategiesreenact the tension between so-
cialreality and utopian possibilitythrough the means of literaryintensifications
that include sensations, perceptions, and observations,all the whileguarding
against the dangers of character identification, whether empathetic or sympa-
thetic.
The refusal of emotional engagementmade Jung adifficult writer especially
in leftist milieus sustained by clear emotionsand strongpassions. Literary schol-
ars, too, have struggled to evaluateabodyofwork that can be grouped neither
with the historicalavant-gardes nor with the Communist BPRS writers.Critical
Program of the KAPD of May1920, reprintedinHans-ManfredBock,Syndikalismus und Link-
skommunismus von 1918– 1923 (Meisenheim: A. Hain, 1969),410. Forhistorical overviews,see
Hans-ManfredKoch,Geschichte des“linken Radikalismus”in Deutschland: EinVersuch(Frankfurt
am Main:Suhrkamp, 1976).
FranzJung,“Lebenslauf,”Abschied von der Zeit(Werke9.2),ed. Lutz Schulenburg(Hamburg:
Edition Nautilus, 1997), 30.The quoteistaken fromhis application foravisa to the United States
after 1946.
198 Chapter 10