Weimar and Work — Labor, Literature, and Industrial Modernity on the Weimar Left

Kley (German studies, Gettysburg College) presents a study of communist and anti-authoritarian socialist literature in Weimar Germany, focusing on the communist understanding of work as a socialization process and point of political identity. He is particularly interested in anti-authoritarian socialist contributions to class consciousness, a group in which he subsumes anarchists. He contrasts and compares these with other communist tendencies. He also explores the mediation of industry and literature by worker artists, the industrialization of everyday life, the tension between industrial and artisan conceptions of work, alienated and unalienated work, German communists on Soviet industrialization, worker newspapers, anti-authoritarian socialist challenges to industrial work discourse, the role of literature for anti-authoritarian socialism, and German anti-authoritarian socialists in Mexico. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Martin Kley studied at the universities of Augsburg, Pittsburgh, and Texas at Austin, where he received his PhD in Germanic studies. Since then, he has worked as an Assistant Professor of German Studies at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. He has published articles on cinema, communist and anarchist culture, and contemporary German literature.