turn of the century can thereforebedescribed asaprocess of masculinization,
with pathos and sentiment increasinglyseen asathreat to the proper balancing
of“thoughtasfelt and feeling as thought.”
To summarize the points made thus far,political emotions perform theirhis-
toricallyspecific functions through culturallymediated processes of translation
and transformation. One example, the conversion of individual sufferinginto
collective indignation, can be used on the remainingpages to delineate how
this process finds expression inaparticularheroic narrative,namelythat of So-
cial Democratic self-sacrifice.Aself -conscious emotionrather thanaprimary or
even secondary one, self-sacrifice(just like self-discipline and self-restraint) can
be described as the product ofacontinuous feedback loop between cognition
and emotionalong the lines ofWilliams’s “feelingsthoughtand thoughts
felt.”The willingness to sacrifice individual happiness foralargercause and
the steadfast belief in the rightness of this decision are onlyconceivable inside
oppositional groups or milieus that offerastrongcollective identity and provide
emotional scripts thatvalidatesuch sacrifices.The emotional scripts evoked by
Bebel and others illustrate how Protestant notions of suffering andredemption
and Prussian virtues such asduty,honor,and hard workcould be claimed for
socialist narratives. Allusions toaProtestant work ethic or toaChristian escha-
tology,for that matter,should not beread as proof thatsocialism functionedas
little more thansecularreligion. On the contrary, therewriting of the scripts of
self-sacrifice in the languages of class, which invariablymeantaprocess of mas-
culinization, involved aprofound changeinthe authorship,and hence owner-
ship, of dominantdiscourse and implied dramatic challenges and changes to
the powerdynamics withinWilhelmine culture and society.
Read in this light,the confessions by party leaders about theirvery personal
relationship to the partyreveal auniquelySocial Democratic structure of feeling
thatrevolves around the above-mentionedconversion of suffering into indigna-
tion and the transfiguration, to staywith Christian tropes,ofindignation into
sacrifice for the cause. In these new class-based narrativesofsacrifice, moral
righteousness joins forces with belief in certain victory,and acollective habitus
of smugness sometimes finds cover under the Marxist rhetoric of historicalinevi-
tability.Not surprisingly,inthe cultureofSocial Democracy,selflessness was
highlyvalued and admired–in sharp contrast to anypublic expressions of
envy and resentment.Evenworse, hatredand rage,sometimes described as
eruptive emotions, werestronglycensored within the cultural traditions from
which the workers’movement emerged, namely Protestantismand bourgeois hu-
manism.Both subscribedto an ethos of civility and moderation and attributed
special value to the cultivation of interiority.Meanwhile, political challenges
to this Social Democratic culture of sacrifice,which usuallyincluded the demand
76 Chapter 3