Poetry of Class

Patrick Eiden-Offe, Ph.D. (1971), is a permanent research associate at the Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung in Berlin. He has published three books in German, Das Reich der Demokratie. Hermann Brochs “Der Tod des Vergil” (Fink, 2011), Die Poesie der Klasse (Matthes & Seitz, 2017) and Hegels Logik Lesen (Matthes & Seitz, 2021), and is currently writing an intellectual biography of Georg Lukács.

• Translator’s NoteIntroduction1 Class and Classification, Proletariat and Proletarianisation2 The Proletariat: a Non-identical Subject3 Romantic Anti-capitalism4 Historiography of Rescue5 Proletarian Identity: Openness and (Self-)Enclosure6 Inverse Relevance of the Vormärz7 Literary History as Social History: Class as Figure1 Small Masters and Journeymen: from Guild to Movement1 Romantic Anti-capitalism: Ludwig Tieck’s The Young Master Carpenter2 Journeymen Culture and the Workers’ Movement: Wilhelm Weitling3 Georg Weerth and the Break with Guild Traditions2 ‘We? Tricky Question!’ on the Search for Class Identity in Proletarian Journals1 Negations: ‘Bourgeois’ and ‘Intellectual Prolatarians’2 Ascension: ‘We’ Want to Be Bürger3 Activation: What ‘We’ Should Be4 Affirmation: ‘We’ Who Raise Our Voices3 Counting the People: Class Statistics1 Statistics and Social Agitation: The Hessian Messenger2 Statistics in the Service of Revolution: Gesellschaftsspiegel4 Miserabilism and Critique: from the Poverty of Literature to the Poverty of Theory1 Ludwig Tieck and the Wolves of London2 German Misery, German Verse: Engels as Narrative Theorist3 Striking Stereotypes: Ernst Dronke’s ‘Rich and Poor’4 The Family Romance of the Proletarian5 Relentlessness6 Mystères – Misère7 Misery in Relations: Production, World Market, Needs8 Poverty and Quality of Life: Disposable Time5 Wage Labour and Slavery: Unfulfilled Promises of Freedom1 Allegories of Class: ‘Steam King’ and ‘White Slaves’2 Point of Comparison: Weitling’s ‘Politics of Slavery’3 The ‘Semblance of Liberty’ and Real Slavery: Engels4 Class Slavery5 Why ‘White Slaves’?6 Theory as Mystification: the Cult of the Industrial Worker and Global Critique7 The Universality of Proletarianisation6 Representing the ‘Labouring Poor’1 The Possibilities of Literature: Ernst Willkomm’s White Slaves or the Sufferings of the People2 Engels and the Invention of Social Reportage3 The Reporter in the Field: ‘The Great Towns’7 Class in Struggle1 Witches’ Sabbath as Early Modern Class Struggle: Tieck2 The Witches’ Sabbath of the Class Struggles in France: Börne3 Social War on Lake Zurich: Weitling4 Primitive Rebels in Lower Lusatia: Willkomm5 Rescuing the Rebels6 Revenge and Class7 The Machine Breakers8 Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?9 Towards a Pure Strike: Georg Weerth’s Fragment of a Novel10 The Struggle for the Family Wage, the Feminisation of Factory Work and the Masculinisation of the Workers’ MovementConclusion: the Return of Romantic Anti-capitalismEpilogue: Romantic ‘Anti-capitalism’ from AboveBibliographyIndex