George Grosz and the Communist Party: Art and Radicalism in Crisis, 1918 to 1936 byBarbara McCloskeyReview by: Jonathan PetropoulosThe American Historical Review, Vol. 103, No. 4 (Oct., 1998), pp. 1268-1269Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2651272 .

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1268 Reviews of Books

a two-tiered, gendered welfare state, which included social insurance programs designed largely for men and protective labor legislation for women.

The third section examines women's careers and work cultures. Here Canning offers a sophisticated statistical analysis of the work histories of nearly 3,500 textile workers. Contradicting previous depictions of women workers, Canning finds that female textile workers had careers that often rivaled those of male textile workers in terms of longevity, especially where men and women performed similar jobs. Many women interrupted work for childbearing, but Canning shows that they often returned to work later. Overall, she finds examples of "comparable job commitment and stability of male and female textile workers" (p. 245) and offers evidence that the dichotomy between "skilled" men's jobs and "unskilled" women's work was often fictitious (p. 292), used largely to justify higher wages for men. Finally, she argues that women devel- oped their own political consciousness, manifested in separate work cultures, wildcat strikes, and demands that male-dominated unions "usually disdained as peripheral" (p. 286).

Canning's third section mounts a strong challenge to the class formation model dominant in German labor historiography. She also persuasively links the discur- sive domain to the factories' "institutions of tutelage" (p. 298), showing how the textile factories' work rules, company dormitories, child-care centers, and domestic science courses reflected social reformers' fears about working-class domesticity. Canning overestimates the impact of protective labor legislation on women work- ers, however; other recent research has concluded that such legislation was easily circumvented.

Canning's book is a substantial addition to a growing body of literature that details how gender shaped industrialization and class formation. Perhaps her tar- gets-thus far largely impervious to work on gender- will finally be influenced by Canning's valuable study.

NANCY R. REAGIN Pace University

BARBARA MCCLOSKEY. Geo7ge Grosz and the Commu- nist Party: Art and Radicalism in Crisis, 1918 to 1936. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1997. Pp. xiv, 258. $39.50.

In the wake of World War I, George Grosz (1893- 1959) emerged as the most notable Communist artist in Germany. Despite the renown gained from his position in the vanguard of modernist artistic move- ments and his effectiveness as a politically engaged satirist and propagandist, Grosz's relationship with the increasingly dogmatic Communist Party was "tense and uncertain." In this sober but fascinating mono- graph, art historian Barbara McCloskey explores this nexus between modern art and radical left-wing poli- tics.

McCloskey conducted impressive research in a host of German and American archives and consulted an

extensive array of newspapers, journals, and secondary sources, all of which contributed to this truly interdis- ciplinary synthesis. Although Grosz has been the sub- ject of two important earlier studies by Beth Irwin Lewis and M. Kay Flavell, McCloskey's careful re- search and her focus on the political dimensions of the artist's career have yielded a significant contribution that transcends Grosz himself. This book speaks to the general issue of art and politics in the twentieth century.

While the chronological parameters of the study begin with the founding of the German Communist Party (KPD) in 1918, McCloskey provides useful back- ground information on Grosz during World War I, when he was discharged from military service due to psychological instability. She refrains from judgment about whether this condition was partially feigned and deftly shows how Grosz's neurotic mindset was linked to his own creative process and how it reflected his "antipathy toward the dominant cultural order" (p. 18). Additionally, McCloskey explains how Grosz's psychological problems became manifested in sexual fantasies that were often violent and misogynist. As Communist politicians were later to discover, Grosz was psychologically complex and fiercely independent. McCloskey enables us to appreciate these qualities without succumbing to the pitfalls of psychohistory.

In the wake of his discharge from the army in May 1915, Grosz experienced the most artistically produc- tive years of his life as he played a leading role among German modernists: he made contributions not only to Expressionism, but also to Dadaism and New Objec- tivity. At the same time, he became the most promi- nent artist working on behalf of the KPD, producing graphic art for a number of Communist publications (especially in connection with the Malik-Verlag) and participating in a range of leftist cultural initiatives, including Erwin Piscator's Proletarian Theater. His brilliant and controversial satirical depictions of poli- ticians, industrialists, clergy, and the military, among others, resulted in three trials during the Weimar Republic (all of which featured judgments against him). It is evident from the art he produced that Grosz was not prepared to accept constraints on his thinking: this was clearly manifested in the early Dada work, which represented a "thorough going attack on the institution of art and the bourgeois cultural order that sustained it" (p. 70). It was not in his nature to abide by conventions or respect authority.

That Grosz was both rebellious and politically com- mitted makes his relationship with the Communist Party especially fascinating. Here was an individual completely dedicated to socialism, someone who pas- sionately believed in social justice and who abhorred militarism. And while the Communist leadership ini- tially welcomed his contributions, Joseph Stalin and his cohorts proved increasingly domineering: they did not appreciate satire nor believe that Grosz "docu- ment[ed] the real strength of the revolutionary prole- tariat" (p. 125). The 1928 Comintern Congress passed

AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 1998

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Modern Europe 1269

a resolution establishing (in typically euphemistic phrasing) "closer ties between German and Soviet artists" (p. 130), but Grosz was not one to accept subordination to any authority, and he drifted off on a more independent course. There continued to be ample opportunity for him to use his art for political purposes, but by the late 1920s, Grosz was being attacked not just by the nationalist right but also by many on the Communist left who were more respon- sive to Moscow. Grosz's increasingly strained relation- ship with the KPD in the mid-to-late 1920s, McCloskey shows, is crucial to understanding his decision to create more commercially salable portraits and land- scape paintings, and ultimately, his decision to emi- grate to the United States in 1932.

In detailing this fascinating but complicated history of Grosz's relationship with the Communist Party, McCloskey has written an extraordinary book. Her thoughtful and meticulous scholarship is precisely what is needed with a subject as complex and unstable as Grosz. She has an excellent understanding of Ger- man history and the history of Communism (both in theory and practice). She is creative and authoritative in explicating the visual images. And she relates Grosz to other contemporaries; such as Wieland Herzfelde, Hannah Hoch, Raoul Hausmann, Otto Dix, and Ber- tolt Brecht. McCluskey makes it abundantly clear that Grosz was at the center of many extraordinary cultural activities during the Weimar Republic, and she also provides diachronic context, placing him in a longer tradition of politically engaged artists (for example, comparing him to Thomas Theodor Heine who earlier produced radical illustrations for Simplicissimuts).

There is very little in this book to criticize. The discussion of Grosz's career in the United States, which featured interactions with Diego Rivera and John Dos Passos, among others, is so captivating that one wishes the chronological scope extended beyond 1936. Her decision to end the book here-when Grosz "the revolutionary iconoclast had withdrawn into the artistic process" (p. 193)-is defensible. But one still would have liked more. Also, it is unfortunate that this handsome volume does not include color plates. But these observations should not detract from this impor- tant and engaging study.

JONATHAN PETROPOULOS

Loyola College in Maryland

DIRK H. MULLER. Arbeiter, Katholizismus, Staat: Der Volksverein ftir das katholische Deutschland und die katholischen Arbeiterorganisationen in der Weimarer Republik. (Politik- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte, num- ber 43.) Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz. 1996. Pp. 352. DM 49.80.

Dirk H. Muller's study of the People's Association for Catholic Germany and the Catholic Worker Clubs in the Weimar Republic can be seen as a companion volume to other German publications that have ap- peared in the last two decades. It is closest ideologi-

cally and historiographically to Michael Schneider's Die Christlichen Gewerkschaften 1894-1933 (1976), for both works were produced under the auspices of the Research Institute of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Bonn. Experts in the field of German Catholic studies will also be eager to place Muller's book next to Rudolf Brack's Deutscher Episkopat und Gewerk- schaftsstreit 1900-1914 (1976), Horstwalter Heitzer's Der Volksverein ftir das katholische Deutschland 1890- 1918 (1979), and Jurgen Aretz's Katholische Arbeiter- bewegung and Nationalsozialismus 1923-1945 (1982).

Like these earlier works, Muller's contribution is meticulously researched and exhaustingly thorough. In addition to the publications of the movements them- selves and the familiar archival sources in Bonn and Monchen-Gladbach, he draws on the archive of the People's Association in Potsdam, whose existence was only rumored in West Germany before 1989. Perhaps because of the significance of this latter material, Muller does not really limit himself to the Weimar period; rather he provides the reader with background chapters that add new insights to the studies of Schnei- der, Brack, and Heitzer. One unfortunate aspect of this is the author's irritating habit of citing archive, collection, and portfolio but omitting from many foot- notes the specific document he has used. There is also a handbook or reference-work quality to most of the book. Many of the chapters read like lists of names, organizations, and budgets mixed together with seem- ingly endless indirect quotes from Volksverein and Arbeiterverein literature swamping and obscuring the brief analytic passages. In short, there should have been more analysis of this valuable archival material from Potsdam.

Those patient enough to wade through the mass of details will find the book's arguments unobjectionable. Both the Volksverein and the Catholic Arbeitervereine experienced their heydays before 1914. The former was an impressive empire of educational and journal- istic ventures that offered laymen a vast array of political and intellectual opportunities outside of the church. The workers' clubs were always more closely watched over by clerics, but they became increasingly meaningful to workers as feeder organizations to the Christian trade unions and as a political training ground for the left wing of the Center Party. Neither organization was able to adjust, however, to changed conditions after 1918. The Volksverein lost many of its functions to specialized interest groups that emerged around the Center Party, languished at the grass roots, and eventually went into financial receivership. The rank and file of the Arbeitervereine grew tired of being almost independent, protested this adolescent status, and, except for a core of aging true believers, drifted away. Threatening both organizations was the unwill- ingness of the Catholic hierarchy to tolerate the inde- pendent or autonomous activities of laymen. The tendency toward greater controls that set in with the "Catholic Action" movement after 1922 stifled the remaining potential of the two organizations under

AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 1998

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