ty,aKampfkultur.”⁶Antagonism under these conditions meant conflict with not
onlythe democratic institutions of theWeimar Republic but also the SPD as the
party of political defeatism and, in the heated rhetoric of the times, social fas-
cism. In theyears that followed,“battle”became the motto forawiderange
of cultural groups.The KPDformed its own Arbeiter Theaterbund Deutschlands
(ATBD,Worker Theater Association of Germany) under the heading ofKampf-
theater.Severalmusical splintergroups organized in theKampfgemeinschaft
der Arbeitersänger(KdAS,AgitationalUnit ofWorkers’Choral Singers) to pro-
mote the soundsand rhythms ofKampfmusik.Communist athletes in 19 28
formedthe Kampfgemeinschaft für Rote Sporteinheit (KG,Agitational League
for RedSport Unity,orshort: Rotsport) after their exclusion from the Arbeiter-
Turn- undSportbund(ATSB,Workers’Gymnastics and Sports); its largest club,
the Berlin-based ASV“Fichte”even published its own journal, predictablycalled
Kampfgenoss(1926– 1930 ,FightingComrade).
The Stalinization of theKPDinthe late 1920swas the main reason for the
party’sincreasingly confrontational stance towardthe SPD.⁷The same can be
said about therepeatedattacksinKPD publications on modernism asaphenom-
enon of bourgeois decadence. Scholars have explained the party’spromotion of
classicalrealism and, later,the doctrine of socialist realism withreference to the
prescribed shift from the proletarianism associatedwith the Proletkult move-
ment towardthe Marxism-Leninism promotedbythe Comintern.Yetthe recourse
to normative aesthetics obscures the more troublingproblem, extensivelydis-
cussed in the Soviet Union (and laterinthe United States),that the literature
of the workingclass was graduallybeing reducedto the literature of the Commu-
nist Party.Inthe lateWeimarRepublic, the almost compulsory calls for more
militancy in art and life also indicatedagrowingdependence on cultureasa
Karl August Wittfogel,“ProletarischeKampfkultur,”Die RoteFahne,7June 1925.The article
was part ofaseries that includes“Über proletarischeKultur,”Die RoteFahne,31May 1925
and“InKampf mitwelchen Elementen entwickelt sich die proletarischeKultur?,”Die Rote
Fahne,21June 1925.Onthe idea ofareligion ofKampf,see his“Die proletarische Religion,”
Platz dem Arbeiter!ErstesJahrbuch(1924): 213 – 215. Manywritings have been reprinted inKarl
August Wittfogel,Zur Frageeiner marxistischen Ästhetik:Abhandlung(Cologne:Kölkkalkverlag,
1973).
Fornew research on theWeimar KPD,see Norman La Porte and Rolf Hofrogge,Weimar Com-
munism asMass Movement 1918– 1933 (Chadwell Heath: Lawrence&Wishart,2017). Assess-
ments of German communism in the largercontext of modern German history can be found
in EricD. Weitz,Creating German Communism, 1890–1990: FromPopular Protests to Socialist
State(Princeton:PrincetonUniversity Press,1997) and,together with David E. Barclay, eds.,Be-
tweenReform andRevolution: German Socialism and Communism from 1840 to 1990(NewYork:
Berghahn, 1998).
260 Chapter 14