to Berta Lask’sMarxist world history ofAufdem Flügelpferde durch die Zeiten:
Bilder vom Klassenkampf derJahrtausende (1925,Onthe Winged Horse of
Time: Scenes from the ClassStruggle throughout the Millenniums) to LisaTetz-
ner’ssuccessful novel and play,Hans Urian. Die Geschichte einerWeltreise(1929
and 1931, Hans Urian: TheStory ofaTrip around theWorld). Several works land-
ed on the Nazis’list of banned books, evidence that the emotional education of
socialist children was perceivedasaserious threat tomore restrictive models of
folk community.Others playedakey role in the internationalism of proletarian
children’sliterature, with zur Mühlen’sproletarian folk tales translatedinto Eng-
lish andJapanese.
Proletarian children’sliteraturebuilt on existing genres,includingfairytales,
historical novels, and moralityplays,and employed familiar figures,themes,
and motifs in order to provide inspirational stories of working-classempower-
ment.The recoursetotradition and conventionallowed theirauthors to uncover
the visible and invisiblehierarchies that sustained capitalist societies and make
their devastatingeffect on working-classlife intelligible toyoungreaders. Iden-
tification playedacentral role in the intended process of agitation in the political
and emotional sense. Serving asalaboratory of emotions, proletarian children’s
literaturewas brought in alignment with official SPD and KPD positions through
the selective appropriation of older cultural traditions andmodes of address.Ac-
cordingly,the bourgeois belief in theautonomous individual had to be adapted
to the collective narratives of class unity and solidarity.The moral messagesfrom
folk culturewerefrequentlyreferenced but without theiremphasis on social har-
monyand faith inauthority,and the Christian ideal of brotherlyloveredefined to
fit the new politicalgoals of equality, freedom, and democracy.Eventhe forma-
tive role of reading and writing in the making of the public sphere was funda-
mentally redefined, with the cult of inwardnessinbourgeois culturereplaced
by the ethos of collective action in working-class culture.
In presentingtypical emotional situations andofferingappropriatebehav-
ioral solutions fromaclassperspective, theauthorsofproletarianchildren’s
literature usuallyemploythreedistinctbut interrelatedstrategies: adidactic
onethatdefinesthe projectofmoral educationinclass-specific terms; an ag-
itationalonethat explains theworld through Marxist categories;and athera-
peutic one that, basedonthe diagnosisof feelingsofinferiority, builds up
children’ssense of self-worth. Theinitial acknowledgment of individual pain
andsuffering is usually followed by theintegration ofsuch isolatingfeelings
into acollective narrat iveofclassempowerment. Theemotional andcognitive
work to be performedalwaysrequires consciousrejecti on oftheideologyof
individualismin bourgeois society andwilli ng acceptance of theworking
classas theidealmodel of thecommunity/collective.Momentsof observation
The EmotionalEducation of the ProletarianChild 281