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The German Left and Aesthetic Politics. Cultural Politics between the Second and Third Internationals

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Published Nov 2021

Martin I. Gaughan

Author: Martin I. Gaughan
The German Left and Aesthetic Politics examines the articulation of contending materialist aesthetic practices within the ideological fractures of the German Left between the Second and Third International. It is hinged on the major literary critical contributions of Franz Mehring, representative of the Second, and Karl Wittfogel and Georg Lukacs representing the Third. Both parties focussed on the bourgeois revolutionary cultural heritage and how it might provide examples for emulation. However, post the 1918 November Revolution a radical politically avant-garde challenged that tradition, and through figures like the Berlin Dadaists, Piscator’s proletarian theatre and later Brecht, with contributions from dissident Marxist intellectuals, like Karl Korsch and Fritz Sternberg, asked other questions and proposed other answers. Revisiting the contexts and contents of these exchanges allows one to understand the serious role allocated to the cultural in constructing the ‘third pillar of socialism’, its integrative dimension.

Biographical Note

Martin I. Gaughan, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin in politics and economics, was awarded a PhD at the University of East Anglia, (‘Berlin Dadaism and Constructivism’, 1982). He has published German Art 1907-1937. Modernism and Modernisation (Peter Lang, 2007), and contributed chapters to other publications.

Readership

This book is of interest to those exploring the fundamental status of culture as being intertwined in a complex set of relationships with more apparently materialist discourses, e.g. the political and economy.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1 Franz Mehring: Literary Practice as a Socialist Form
1 A Portrait
2 Biographical Sketch
3 The Question of an Aesthetic Practice
4 Die Lessing-Legende
5 The Plays: ‘Minna von Barnhelm’ and ‘Emilia Galotti’
6 The Critique of Naturalism

2 Political Spontaneism and Cultural Practice
1 Political Spontaneism and Cultural Practice
2 The ‘Kunstlump’ Debate
3 Erste Dada-Messe (The First Dada Fair): ‘Die Kunst ist tot. Es lebe die neue Maschinenkunst Tatlins’
4 Das Proletarische Theater
5 Franz Jung: Activist and Artist
6 Herzfelde’s ‘Gesellschaft, Künstler und Kommunismus’ (1922)
7 Art and/or Politics 1919–22

3 Märten and the Development of a Theoretical Position: From Reformism to the November Revolution
1 The Historical Materialism Debate 1920–21

4 The ‘German October’ and Reconfiguration
1 The ‘German October’
2 Intellectuals and ‘the Second Culture’
3 Practice: From ‘Die Rote Gruppe’ to the ‘Assoziation revolutionärer bildender Künstler Deutschlands’
4 Wittfogel’s Aesthetic Programme
5 Thalheimer’s Introductions to Mehring’s Oeuvre

5 Wittfogel’s Critique of Thalheimer’s Introduction
1 Zur Frage der marxistischen Ästhetik (On the Question of Marxist Aesthetic)
2 Wittfogel’s Series
3 Becher: ‘Unsere Wendung’ (Our Turning Point)
4 Lukács and Die Linkskurve
5 Reportage or Portrayal
6 From the Second to the Third International: Lukács’s ‘Franz Mehring, 1846–1919’
7 ‘Nur-Kampfkultur oder positive Kultur’?
Conclusion

6 Crisis and Critique: Continuity and Conflict

Appendix: Towards a Materialist History of Art
References
Index