scribedaliterature borneofthe drumfire of war and the street battle of revolu-
tion. Stationed in an important section on the front in the largerbattle between
communism and capitalism, the new types of writers-soldiers were
amazingfellows whoseethe with impatience, whohammer their sentencesuntil their lan-
guagebursts butwhoalso can be so disciplinedand matter-of-fact in their hearts that they
makesober calculationsand construct their languageworlds likemachinists. The most im-
portant event in the field of literatureisthe emergenceofaproletarian-revolutionary liter-
ature,aliteraturethat sees the world from the perspective of the revolutionary proletariat.¹⁴Turning literature intoabattlefield meant actively promotingthe new work of
BPRS members such as Kläber,Renn, and Marchwitza as well asWilli Bredel
and Ernst Ottwalt.Itmeant rejectingwhatBecher dismissively calledArbeiter-
dichter(worker poets) in the folk tradition of MaxBarthel and distinguishing
themselvesfrom theLinkeleuteliteratur(left-sympathizer literature) written by
so-called fellow travelerssuch as Alfred Döblin,Kurt Tucholsky,and Leonard
Frank.¹⁵Foranimportantgenre like the novel, this meant developingadistinctly
proletarian aesthetic in critical dialogue with the established traditions of the so-
cial novel and the educational novel, on the one hand, and with new forms such
as the reportage novel and the modernist novel, on the other.And asregards
concurrent attempts at separating the tradition of the novel from the confines
of national literature,this meant developing the proletarian novel in critical dia-
logue with new literary experiments in the Soviet Union and as part of interna-
tional networks of exchangethat,togivejust one example, led to the translation
of allUpton Sinclair novels by the Malik publishing house.¹⁶
The ideal proletarian novel, asF. C. Weiskopf andKurt Hirschfeld insisted,
stood out through its correct politicalGesinnung(stance) andTendenz(tenden-
cy). Inasharp departure from the earlier insistenceonauthenticvoices,coming
from the workingclasswasnolonger regardedaprerequisite of legitimateau-
thorship.Thus liberatedfrom the constraints of economic determinism, the pro-
letarian novel could focus on its primary task asalaboratory of political emo-
tions and become an essential part of class discourse and the collective
JohannesR.Becher,“UnsereFront,”Die Linkskurve1.1(1928): 1.
JohannesR.Becher,“Einen Schrittweiter!,”Die Linkskurve2.1(1930): 1–5. In the Soviet
Union, the preferred term was fellow traveler.
Foracomparative perspective,including on the reception of German communist writers and
critics in theUS,see AnthonyDavid Dawahare,American ProletarianModernism and the Prob-
lem of Modernity in the Thirties(Ann Arbor,MI: UMI Press, 1996).
Marxist LiteraryTheoryand Communist MilitantCulture 263