Everyman's Colonial Library: Imperialism and Working-Class Readers in Leipzig, 1890-1914
Everyman's Colonial Library: Imperialism and Working-Class Readers in Leipzig, 1890-1914
There fell into my hands an old, brightly illuminated map of Europe. What good fortune!
… But it was only Europe, and my fantasy realm lay beyond this part of the world. I
gazed with longing after an itinerant Italian who offered beautiful maps for sale … In
order to have everything at once, I bought a planiglobium, whose puzzle long occupied
me, and nally had the other three, hitherto missing, corners of the earth.1
His geographical imagination red by maps, Henß was trans xed by the
mysteries of the non-European world. Although perhaps an extreme case, the
passage nevertheless reveals how tales of European discovery, conquest and
adventure appealed to readers among the German labouring classes even before
the revolutions in literacy and print-capitalism created a mass market for them.
I would like to thank Volker Berghahn, Wolfram Hartmann, Mark Landsman and Marcia Wright,
as well as the readers for German History, all of whom offered valuable comments on this article.
1
Adam Henß, Aus dem Tagebuch eines reisenden Handwerkers, ed. Karl Esselborn
(Darmstadt, 1923), p. 21. I rst encountered Henß in Rudolf Schenda, Die Lesestoffe der kleinen
Leute: Studien zur populären Literatur im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1976), p. 33.
German History Vol. 21 No. 4 10.1191/0266355403gh292oa Ó 2003 The German History Society
446 John Phillip Short
It also suggests a connection between reading and colonialism that was indirect
and problematic.
Henß identi es himself closely with his heroes, indeed travels and explores
with them in his imagination. He appears to make no distinction between the
real and the ctional. The historical Cortez is no more real to him than the
fabled Orient or Defoe’s desert island. This con ation prompts us to ask how
workers and artisans like Henß might have read stories of European discovery
and conquest. Travelogues and exploration accounts cultivated readers’ taste
for the exotic, the monstrous and the fantastic. They transmitted growing
knowledge about overseas empires. In the nineteenth century, they offered the
respectable enticements of the new popular science. And, as Henß describes
it, they produced in the reader a subjective mingling with imagined heroes, a
over the course of time ‘build on one another, creating a network of implicit
references, which reinforce their message and anchor it in the minds of their
readers. Together, they create a colonialist imagination and mentality that beg
to translate thought into action.’ Although she offers no evidence, Zantop writes
that, by the 1880s, ‘colonial fantasies’ had become ‘so rmly entrenched in
Germany’s collective imagination that they formed a collective residue of
myths … that could be stirred up for particular political purposes’.4 By this
account, colonialist books somehow transformed their readers into colonial
enthusiasts.
The assumed uniformity and transparency of meaning in colonial literature
conceals, on the one hand, the subjective, individual nature of reading and, on
the other, important social differences dividing German readers. Zantop’s
4
Susanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany,
1770–1870 (Durham, N.C., 1997), pp. 32, 2–3. See also, for example, the introduction and
several of the essays in Sara Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox and Susanne Zantop (eds.), The
Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy (Ann Arbor, 1998). On travel and
travelogue in the eighteenth century, see Wolfgang Griep and Hans-Wolf Jäger (eds.), Reise und
soziale Realität am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts (Heidelberg, 1983). On the ideological function
of travelogues more generally, see Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Trans-
culturation (London, 1992).
5
One exception to the general lack of analysis of working-class reception in mid-nineteenth-
century Germany is Rainer Noltenius, Dichterfeiern in Deutschland: Rezeptionsgeschichte als
Sozialgeschichte am Beispiel der Schiller- und Freiligrath-Feiern (Munich, 1984).
6
Rudolf Schenda, Volk ohne Buch: Studien zur Sozialgeschichte der populären Lesestoffe,
1770–1910 (Frankfurt/M., 1970), p. 444.
448 John Phillip Short
the ideological subtexts of popular works.7 The present essay addresses this
gap by examining the relationship of working-class readers to colonial literature
in the areas of natural science, ethnography and travelogue. The rst part of
the essay describes the world of working-class reading and demonstrates that,
far from being broadly indifferent to colonialism, proletarian readers did indeed
seek out various kinds of colonial literature, including novels, travelogues, war
stories and general descriptions of the colonies, as well as cheap serialized
and pamphlet ction. The second, more speculative part addresses the dif cult
problem of reception. Lacking direct evidence, I try to reconstruct the context
in which colonialist books were read. I therefore examine late-nineteenth- and
twentieth-century discussions of workers reading colonialist texts and consider
other aspects of working-class reading that might have shaped experiences of
7
See, for example, Dieter Langewiesche and Klaus Schönhoven’s fundamental work,
‘Arbeiterbibliotheken und Arbeiterlektü re im Wilhelminischen Deutschland’ , Archiv für Sozial-
geschichte , 16 (1976), pp. 135–204, and Hans-Josef Steinberg, ‘Workers’ Libraries in Germany
before 1914’, History Workshop, 1 (1976), pp. 166–80.
8
Statistisches Jahrbuch der Stadt Leipzig, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1911), p. 9. Sean Dobson, ‘Auth-
ority and Revolution in Leipzig, 1910–1920’ (Ph.D. Diss., Columbia University, 1996), pp. 35–9.
9
On the general social history of the Leipzig working class in the Kaiserreich, see Dobson,
‘Authority and Revolution’ . On the formation of a distinct Leipzig working class, see Hartmut
Zwahr, Zur Konstituierung des Proletariats als Klasse: Strukturuntersuchung über das Leipziger
Proletariat während der industriellen Revolution ([East] Berlin, 1978). The size and organiza-
tional strength of the Leipzig working class make it especially suitable for research in the social
history of culture and politics.
10
On the SPD cultural movement in Leipzig, see Dobson, ‘Authority and Revolution’ , and
Thomas Adam, Arbeitermilieu und Arbeiterbewegung in Leipzig, 1871–1933 (Cologne, 1999).
Working-Class Readers in Leipzig, 1890–1914 449
11
Ronald A. Fullerton, ‘Creating a Mass Book Market in Germany: The Story of the
“Colporteur Novel”, 1870–1890’, Journal of Social History, 10 (1977), pp. 266–83. See also
Gabriele Scheidt, Der Kolportagebuchhandel, 1869–1905: Eine systemtheoretische Rekonstruk-
tion (Stuttgart, 1994).
12
Ronald A. Fullerton, ‘Toward a Commercial Popular Culture in Germany: The Development
of Pamphlet Fiction, 1871–1914’, Journal of Social History, 12 (1979), pp. 495–500.
13
Karl Heinrici, ‘Die Verhältnisse im deutschen Colportagebuchhandel’ , Schriften des Vereins
für Sozialpolitik , 79 (1899), p. 203.
14
Ibid., pp. 205, 209–11.
450 John Phillip Short
showing as many naked women as possible, like Album, Frauenschönheiten, Das kleine
Witzblatt, Flirt, Satyr and Sekt. Then came the compulsive readers with Buch für Alle
and Gartenlaube.15
Tales of faraway battles and adventures set in colonial Africa, Asia or the South
Seas easily t the paradigm of the colporteur novel. Dashed off by hack writers
and cheaply produced for the mass market, they have left relatively few traces.
Surviving titles like In Kamerun! Erlebnisse eines jungen Deutschen an der
Westküste von Afrika or Unter den Battacks, den Menschenfressern auf Suma-
tra suggest that stories set in the European colonies promised suf cient com-
mercial appeal to attract the publishers of mass-circulation pulp ction.1 6 These
were exciting tales of German or European merchants, explorers and settlers
confronting the dangers of life in the colonies. Cannibalism, especially, was
wheat from the chaff’, reminding readers that, ‘in the eld of German colonial
literature, alongside much chaff, there are also hundreds of good books that
have remained completely unknown in broad circles’. A number of recom-
mended titles nevertheless belonged to the world of cheap colportage literature
and seemed to merit only grudging recognition. Twenty-pfennig booklets from
the ‘Hurra! Durch alle Welt!’ series, for example, were often lled with ‘too
much blood and impossible, exaggerated adventures’. That they were ‘never-
theless more worthwhile than the awful Indian-literature’ was ‘beyond ques-
tion’. The editor recommended Langheld’s Im schwarzen Erdteil and Liebert’s
Im Kampf gegen die Wahehe from another series, but warned that ‘not all
authors in [the series] are “outstanding”, and many remind one of colportage
literature’. And among twenty-pfennig books brought out by Globus was Afri-
18
Emil Sembritzki (ed.), Der Kolonialfreund: Kritischer Führer durch die volkstümliche deut-
sche Kolonial-Literatur (Berlin, 1912), pp. 5–6, 19–20, 32, 21.
19
On the broad range of works sold by colporteurs, see Heinrici, ‘Colportagebuchhandel’ ,
p. 215.
20
Advertisement in Über Land und Meer, 1891, p. 542; Konrad Haenisch, ‘Was lesen die
Arbeiter?’, Die Neue Zeit, 18, no. 49 (1899–1900), p. 693.
21
Heinrici, ‘Colportagebuchhandel’ , pp. 219–21.
452 John Phillip Short
lebt und stirbt, oder, Die Gottlosen haben keinen Frieden, the work of mission-
ary societies eager to popularize their role in spreading Christianity and German
culture overseas.2 2 The ‘heathen world’ of the colonies was an inexhaustible
source of variously exciting, inspirational and affecting tales of missionary life,
costing from ve to fty pfennigs each. Pamphlets like Erlebnisse im Hinter-
lande von Angra-Pequena and Unter den Zwartboois auf Franzfontein: Ein
Beitrag zur Missions- und Kolonialgeschichte Südafrikas, heavily illustrated
with missionary genre scenes and portraits of local converts and chieftains,
were calculated to appeal to a popular audience.2 3 The broad hostility of the
SPD and Leipzig’s socialist workers to the Lutheran church probably under-
mined the purpose of missionary colportage literature for many readers.2 4 For
the workers who did read it, the prospect of an exotic adventure story probably
22
Schenda, Volk ohne Buch, pp. 318–19; Schenda, ‘Populäre Drucke’, p. 1,630. See also
Sembritzki (ed.), Kolonialfreund .
23
Johannes Olpp, Erlebnisse im Hinterlande von Angra-Pequena. Missionstraktate (Barmen,
1896); H. Riechmann, Unter den Zwartboois auf Franzfontein: Ein Beitrag zur Missions- und
Kolonialgeschichte Südafrikas, Rheinische Missions-Schriften, no. 83 (Barmen, 1899). I am
grateful to Wolfram Hartmann for making several of the Rhenish Missionary Society tracts
available.
24
On Leipzig workers’ rejection of the church, see Dobson, ‘Authority and Revolution’ ,
p. 106.
25
Tony Kellen, ‘Der Massenvertrieb der Volksliteratur’ , Preußische Jahrbücher, 98 (1899),
p. 83.
26
Ernst Schultze, Freie öffentliche Bibliotheken: Volksbibliotheken und Lesehallen (Stettin,
1900), pp. 12–13, 16.
Working-Class Readers in Leipzig, 1890–1914 453
32
Hofmann, ‘Psychologie’ , pp. 261, 270, 291. The gures exclude the belletristic subcategory
of new ction where we nd the colonial novels of Frieda von Bülow, who was, in any case,
most popular among bourgeois women.
33
Langewiesche and Schönhoven, ‘Arbeiterbibliotheken’ , p. 151.
34
Rolf Engelsing, Analphabetentum und Lektüre: Zur Sozialgeschichte des Lesens in
Deutschland zwischen feudaler und industrieller Gesellschaft (Stuttgart, 1973), pp. 124–5.
35
Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Polizeiberichte, 1906, 25–25b.
Working-Class Readers in Leipzig, 1890–1914 455
36
Gustav Hennig, ‘Proletarisches und bürgerliches Bibliothekwesen in Leipzig im Jahre 1912’,
Der Bibliothekar, 5 (1913), p. 671.
37
Wilhelm Liebknecht, ‘Wissen ist Macht—Macht ist Wissen’, Kleine Politische Schriften ,
ed. Wolfgang Schröder (Leipzig, 1976), p. 149.
38
In Bibliothekar, 3 (1911), p. 279.
39
Gustav Hennig, Zehn Jahre Bibliothekarbeit: Geschichte einer Arbeiterbibliothek (Leipzig,
1908), p. 25.
40
See, for example, Carl E. Schorske, German Social Democracy, 1905–1917: The Develop-
ment of the Great Schism (Cambridge, 1955), pp. 59–87; Hans-Christoph Schröder, Sozialismus
und Imperialismus: Die Auseinandersetzung der deutschen Sozialdemokratie mit dem Imperia-
lismusproblem und der ‘Weltpolitik’ vor 1914 (Hanover, 1968); Helmuth Stoecker and Peter
Sebald, ‘Enemies of the Colonial Idea’, in Arthur J. Knoll and Lewis H. Gann (eds.), Germans
in the Tropics: Essays in German Colonial History (New York, 1987).
456 John Phillip Short
44
Hennig, Zehn Jahre Bibliothekarbeit , pp. 10–11. Among the most-read titles in the ‘Reise-
beschreibungen und Naturwissenschaften’ section are Carl Bock, Unter den Kannibalen auf
Borneo. Eine Reise auf dieser Insel und auf Sumatra (Jena, 1887); G. Antonio Farini, Durch
die Kalahari-Wüste (Leipzig, 1886); Karl Lumholtz, Unter Menschenfressern: Eine vierjährige
Reise in Australien (New York, 1892); Richard Oberländer (ed.), Westafrika vom Senegal bis
Benguela: Reisen und Schilderungen aus Senegambien, Ober- und Niederguinea (Leipzig, 1878);
Stanley, Im dunkelsten Afrika; Herbert Ward, Fünf Jahre unter den Stämmen des Kongostaates
(Leipzig, 1891); Wissmann, Unter deutscher Flagge. Among most-read authors in the youth
section were Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) and Rudyard Kipling (three volumes borrowed
129 times).
45
A. H. Th. Pfannkuche, Was liest der deutsche Arbeiter? (Tübingen, 1900), pp. 21–3.
458 John Phillip Short
blacksmith’s son who goes to ght the Herero, it describes the harsh, alien
colonial landscape, the agony and sacri ce of German soldiers, and the
immense, destructive violence of the war. In Germany itself, ‘Frenssen’s book
was an event. It contributed like no other to the German people’s laying aside
its indifference to colonialism, learning to value the heroism of its sons and
taking increased interest in “New Germany”.’ The book’s descriptions—‘full
of vigour, gripping simplicity … and artistic perfection’—were said to ‘stir the
young to pure, unadorned heroism and plant loyalty to the fatherland deep in
their hearts’.5 0
Colonialists frequently resorted to books and libraries to generate enthusiasm
for the empire. The German Colonial Society erected at the 1896 Colonial
Exhibition in Berlin a reading room that was emblematic of the broad effort
50
Sembritzki (ed.), Kolonialfreund , pp. 111, 103. Gustav Frenssen, Peter Moors Fahrt nach
Südwest: Ein Feldzugbericht (Berlin, 1906).
51
Bundesarchiv, Berlin-Lichterfelde, R8023/108, Bl. 127, ‘Bericht über die Sitzung des
Vorstandes der Deutschen Kolonialgesellschaft’ , 28 Nov. 1905.
52
Ibid.
460 John Phillip Short
be a way to make propaganda for the colonies has not been in vain since,
according to the municipal librarian, the colonial library has been frequently
in demand.’5 3 While such ‘thought-provoking’ examples may reveal more
about the na‡¨veté of bourgeois colonial propagandists than about the tendency
of working-class readers to absorb enthusiasm for the empire, they nevertheless
demonstrate how colonial literature became part of direct, unmediated attempts
to win workers over to imperialism.
More often, however, the diffusion of colonialist writing among working-
class readers was less direct than this. The organized colonial movement played
a relatively small role in getting colonial literature into working-class hands.
Popular illustrated magazines are a much better example of the multiple indirect
channels through which colonialism circulated as entertainment and education.
53
Augsburger Neueste Nachrichten, 8 July 1911.
54
Bibliothekar, 1 (1909), p. 28. This example of a periodicals category encompassing ten titles
in a public library in Berlin encapsulates the thematic constellation of discourses and disciplines
so typical of the period: science, the mass-cultural encounter with overseas worlds and
colonialism.
55
Heinrici, ‘Colportagebuchhandel’ , pp. 215, 217.
56
Pfannkuche, Was liest, p. 42.
57
Bundesarchiv, Berlin-Lichterfelde, R1001/4691, Bl. 35.
462 John Phillip Short
Similarly, at least one of the editors of the Gartenlaube was a member of the
Colonial Society in Leipzig (which had not a single working-class member).
While these were exceptions, there was nevertheless no mass-circulation maga-
zine in Wilhelmine Germany that did not give the colonial empire a prominent
place in its pages. The illustrated magazines normally displayed a broad,
inclusive patriotism that remained as removed from divisive party politics as
from the cheap thrills and violence of colonial colportage literature. The texts
and iconography in Westermanns Monatshefte, Über Land und Meer and Die
Gartenlaube all served to popularize a brand of German colonialism that was
not stridently political but rather forward-looking, scienti c and exciting. 5 8
Which is not to say that they were free of ideological content, or of the exoti-
cism, racism and celebrations of war typical of colonial literature. The standard
58
On colonialism in the Gartenlaube, see Kirsten Belgum, Popularizing the Nation: Audience,
Representation, and the Production of Identity in Die Gartenlaube, 1853–1900 (Lincoln, Nebr.,
1998). See in particular chap. 6, ‘Colonialism, Myth, and Nostalgia’.
59
See, for example, Karl Dove, Die Deutsche Kolonien, vol. 1, Togo und Kamerun (Leipzig,
1909), vol. 2, Das Südseegebiet und Kiautschou (Leipzig, 1911).
Working-Class Readers in Leipzig, 1890–1914
Fig. 2. ‘The First Victory of the Germans in Africa’. Source: Über Land und Meer, 53 (1885), p. 436. Reproduction: New
463
the contents are to be read critically, not only because various passages work as a pecul-
iar sort of propaganda for German colonial policy but also on account of contradictions
in judging the savages, their morality, etc. … These are neither the only—nor the most
glaring—contradictions. One has only to read how … the duke praises the embarrassing
justice that the German colonial authorities exercise over the natives … That the work
contains other jingoist [hurrapatriotisch] passages need astonish no further. Alongside
these, to be sure, one nds abundant material on land and people, and reading the work
pays handsomely.64
The geographical and ethnographical information—the innocuous sounding
‘abundant material on land and people’—somehow counterbalances the jingoist-
colonialist content, as if these aspects of the work contradicted one another.
Socialists thus seemed to count on a discerning working-class public to grasp
and preserve this distinction when reading colonialist texts. That the distinction
64
Bibliothekar, 1 (1909), p. 62; 5 (1913), pp. 571–2. The book was Vom Kongo zum Niger
und Nil: Berichte der deutschen Zentralafrika-Expedition 1910–11, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1912). The
duke served as the last German governor of Togo (1912–14).
65
Hans Meyer, Das Deutsche Kolonialreich: Eine Länderkunde der deutschen Schutzgebiete ,
vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1909), p. 7.
466 John Phillip Short
view in this period.6 6 At the same time, the celebrated Stanley had many working-
class fans. For example, among the most-read titles under ‘Naturwissenschaft
und Reisebeschreibungen’ in an SPD library in Leipzig in 1911 were four titles
by Darwin, borrowed altogether twenty-seven times, and three copies of Roth’s
Stanleys Reise durch den dunklen Weltteil, borrowed twenty-one times. A
dozen years earlier, Stanley’s Im dunkelsten Afrika and various volumes on
Darwin were consistently prominent among ‘works with educational content’
borrowed by Leipzig printers’ and typesetters’ assistants.6 7 Aside from their
popularity, there was no obvious connection between Stanley and the Darwin-
ists, and it is not necessarily the case that the same workers read both. Still,
given the broad popularity of Darwinist theory among socialists and the
tendency to think of colonial literature as science, it is not unreasonable to
66
Kelly, Descent of Darwin, chap. 7, ‘Darwin, Marx, and the German Workers’, traces this
development among workers.
67
Bibliothekar, 4 (1912), pp. 390–91; Pfannkuche, Was liest, p. 22. For further examples of
workers reading Darwin, see Bibliothekar, 1 (1909); 3 (1911), pp. 261–2, 284; J. S. and E. F.,
‘Was lesen die organisierten Arbeiter in Deutschland?’ , Die Neue Zeit, 13, no. 5 (1894–5), pp.
154–5; Advocatus [pseud.], ‘Ein weiterer Beitrag zur Frage: “Was liest der deutsche Arbeiter?” ’,
Die Neue Zeit, 14, no. 20 (1895–6), p. 633; Steinberg, ‘Workers’ Libraries’. On Stanley, see
examples cited above and Bibliothekar, 4 (1912), p. 512. See also Daum, Wissenschaftspopulari-
sierung, pp. 241, 300–8.
Working-Class Readers in Leipzig, 1890–1914 467
68
Henry Morton Stanley, In Darkest Africa, or the Quest, Rescue and Retreat of Emin Pasha,
Governor of Equatoria, vol. 1 (London, 1890), pp. 363, 352.
69
Ernst Haeckel, The History of Creation: Or the Development of the Earth and Its Inhabitants
by the Action of Natural Causes, vol. 2, trans. E. Ray Lankester (New York, 1876), pp. 307,
310–14, 324. Translation of Die Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (Berlin, 1868). Cited in Kelly,
Descent of Darwin, p. 117.
70
Ibid., pp. 108–9, 117, 122.
468 John Phillip Short
richer and more copious than in the reports of travelers in distant lands as to the savage
men and tribes which they have met with.71
The famous anthropologist, Darwinist and colonialist Ratzel had likewise begun
as a writer of travelogue.7 2
The racial aspect of popular Darwinism in Germany was inseparable from
colonial travel literature, and the travelogue was indebted to the Darwinists.
Popular science undoubtedly formed an important framework of reception
among some working-class readers, for whom both genres were popular. Both,
however, also supplied explicit cultural and scienti c justi cations for imperial-
ism. The political and scienti c strands are so closely interwoven that it is
dif cult to attribute to either a dominant in uence over working-class reading.
Of course many, even most Social Democrats who took up Darwinism were
71
Ludwig Büchner, Man in the Past, Present and Future: A Popular Account of the Results
of Recent Scienti c Research, trans. W. S. Dallas (London, 1872), pp. 315, 324, 137–8. Trans-
lation of Der Mensch und seine Stellung in der Natur in Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft
(Leipzig, 1872). Cited in Kelly, Descent of Darwin, p. 117.
72
Woodruff D. Smith, ‘Anthropology and German Colonialism’, in Germans in the Tropics:
Essays in German Colonial History, ed. Arthur J. Knoll and Lewis H. Gann (New York, 1987),
p. 41.
73
On the mixing of science and travel narrative, see Essner, Deutsche Afrikareisende , pp. 117–
19, and Daum, Wissenschaftspopularisierung , pp. 329–30.
74
Essner, Deutsche Afrikareisende , p. 114.
Working-Class Readers in Leipzig, 1890–1914 469
of instruction’ and ‘offer something to those who pick it up only for entertain-
ment’.7 5 Working-class readers frequently encountered this generic ambiguity
in the interplay of science, politics and entertainment. Books that counted as
science for some readers appealed to others as tales of exotic, dangerous and
thrilling adventure.
‘Of all the sciences’, observed Joseph Conrad, it is geography that
nds its origin in action, and what is more, in adventurous action of the kind that appeals
to sedentary people who like to dream of arduous adventure in the manner of prisoners
dreaming behind bars of all the hardships and hazards of … liberty. 76
We might well extend the analogy to explain the appeal of colonial travelogues
to modern industrial workers in Germany’s big cities. Among working-class
patrons of a Berlin library in the 1890s, for example, one group of readers
75
Karl Dove, Südwestafrika: Kriegs- und Friedensbilder aus der ersten deutschen Kolonie
(Berlin, 1896), p. vii.
76
Conrad, ‘Geography’ , p. 247.
77
Advocatus [pseud.], ‘Was liest der deutsche Arbeiter?’, Die Neue Zeit 13, no. 2 (1894–5),
p. 817. As was typical, the ‘Länder- und Völkerkunde (Reisebeschreibungen)’ category was
second in popularity to ‘Romane und Novellen’, which included a lot of Zola and ‘a few Hinter-
treppenromane ’ of the pop-orientalist subgenre, among them Der Türkenkaiser und seine Feinde
and Die Geheimnisse des Hofes von Konstantinopel (Advocatus [pseud.], ‘Was liest’, p. 815).
78
Langewiesche and Schönhoven, ‘Arbeiterbibliotheken’ , pp. 184–8, 194.
470 John Phillip Short
with human skulls’ and wear necklaces of human teeth.7 9 Elements of the
fantastic and the exotic probably excited many—even most—proletarian read-
ers more than the scienti c and political content.
Walter Hofmann, the Dresden librarian, emphasized this escapist mode of
reading colonial literature. Most books identi ed by colonialists or socialists
for their propagandistic or scienti c value appeared to Hofmann as pure, un-
redeemed entertainment. Hofmann did recognize that workers might read the
same book in different ways, as science or adventure, and tried to resolve the
ambiguity by considering books within the context of a worker’s broader read-
ing pattern. When requesting books, workers rarely made a distinction between
‘war literature, travelogue and descriptions of exotic cultures’ on the one hand
and scienti c works on the other (a distinction most librarians do not seem to
79
Wissmann, Unter deutscher Flagge; Herbert Ward, Five Years with the Congo Cannibals
(London, 1891; reprint, New York, 1969), translated as Fünf Jahre unter den Stämmen des
Kongostaates (Leipzig, 1891), pp. 132, 120; Stanley, In Darkest Africa, p. 172.
80
Hofmann, ‘Psychologie’ , pp. 278–9, 284. These were the thirty volumes of Alexander von
Humboldt’s epic Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, rst published in
French from 1805 to 1834. See Pratt, Imperial Eyes, pp. 111–43; Daum, Wissenschafts-
popularisierung , pp. 269–79.
81
Hofmann’s ‘Buchholz, Reisen in Südwestafrika ’, appears to have been Reinhold Buchholz,
Reisen in West-Afrika (Leipzig, 1880); Franz Thonner, Im afrikanischen Urwald: Meine Reise
nach dem Kongo und der Mongalla im Jahre 1896 (Berlin, 1898).
472 John Phillip Short
almost exclusively of travel and war accounts ‘represent a whole other type’—
indeed, a pathologically escapist one—though they are ‘somewhat more
developed, rather more distinctive’ than ‘the simpler minds’ attracted to Jules
Verne and the Gartenlaube.8 2 Reading Zola implied a sober grappling with
social reality, while reading colonial travelogues amounted to a ight into the
realm of the ethnographic-fantastic.
The librarian’s curious system—his ‘psychological’ typology of the working-
class reader and corresponding categories of literature—suggests not only the
escapist mode of reading but also an additional context in which workers read
their colonial travelogues and war stories. If Hofmann’s ‘Gerstäcker-reader’
did not necessarily represent a truly pathological escapism, he certainly existed,
at least in the sense of reading quantities of adventure novels, most of them
VII: Conclusions
The story of colonial literature and its proletarian readership does not quite t
into conventional accounts of either imperialism or working-class culture in
82
Hofmann, ‘Psychologie’ , pp. 267, 280.
83
On the links between colonial literature and novels of the American frontier, see for example
Dorian Haarhof, The Wild South-West: Frontier Myths and Metaphors in Literature Set in
Namibia, 1760–1988 (Johannesburg, 1991), and Hugh Ridley, Images of Imperial Rule
(London, 1983).
Working-Class Readers in Leipzig, 1890–1914 473
84
Among the substantial literature on the SPD subculture and its implications for German
politics, see Günther Roth, The Social Democrats in Imperial Germany: A Study in Working-
Class Isolation and National Integration (Totowa, 1963). Criticism of Roth’s interpretation
includes Richard Evans, ‘The Sociological Interpretation of German Labour History’, in R.
Evans (ed.), The German Working Class, 1888–1933: The Politics of Everyday Life (London,
1982), and Dick Geary, ‘Working-Class Culture in Imperial Germany’ in Roger Fletcher (ed.),
Bernstein to Brandt: A Short History of German Social Democracy (Baltimore, 1987). More
recently, Vernon Lidtke has drawn a much sharper distinction between the SPD and other spheres
of German culture; see his The Alternative Culture: Socialist Labor in Imperial Germany, 1878–
1890 (New York, 1985).
85
The philosopher Ernst Bloch speculated on the potentially revolutionary and utopian content
of nineteenth-century colportage literature set in faraway places, and particularly in the work of
Karl May. See his Heritage of Our Times, trans. Neville and Stephen Plaice (Berkeley, 1990),
pp. 154–64.
474 John Phillip Short
in the case of workers reading popular books about the empire.8 6 It is quite
clear that some workers were receptive to the appeal of ‘bourgeois’ colonial
literature, even in SPD reading rooms. Nevertheless, the concept by itself does
not suf ce to explain the transmission and function of colonial knowledge and
sentiment among different social classes in Leipzig. As we have seen in the
case of literature, the mediation of colonialism was indirect and uncertain, fol-
lowing intricate channels and conducted by an unlikely combination of SPD
librarians, colporteur peddlers and bourgeois pressure groups like the Colonial
Society. Understanding the ideological effects of this dissemination depends
upon knowledge of much more than libraries and reading patterns: the many
dimensions of popular culture and associational life, local politics and social
structure, economy and labour relations.
Abstract
From the 1870s, the German colonial movement belonged wholly to
the bourgeoisie, a tendency reinforced by consistent Social Democratic
hostility. However, this did not necessarily exclude the lower classes
86
The most in uential application of this theory to German history is Hans-Ulrich Wehler,
Bismarck und der Imperialismus (Cologne, 1969).
87
Some direct evidence of the powerful effects of SPD anti-colonial propaganda exists in the
form of Hamburg police reports transcribed by Richard Evans. These overheard working-class
conversations reproduce with striking consistency the anti-colonialist language and ideas typical
of SPD newspapers and propaganda. See Evans (ed.), Kneipengesprä che im Kaiserreich: Die
Stimmungsberichte der Hamburger Politischen Polizei, 1892–1914 (Reinbek bei Hamburg,
1989).
Working-Class Readers in Leipzig, 1890–1914 475