|
|
Article: Bawdy bodies or moral agency? The struggle for identity in working-class autobiographies of imperial Germany.
- Article from:
- Biography
- Article date:
- September 22, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 University of Hawaii Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
To put it simply: the masses must for ever remain the masses. There would be no culture without kitchen maids.
--Heinrich von Treitschke, Politics 24
KITCHEN MAIDS HAVE A CULTURE, TOO
In his autobiography Unterwegs. Eine Selbstbiographie [On the Road: A Self-Biography], the factory worker and later Social Democrat Heinrich Holek (1864-1935) links himself to his ancestors, "people of labor [Arbeitsmenschen], women and men alike. Their life was a struggle with deprivation.... They were driven to work by the overseer with scorn and whips, they humbly carried their tithe in full baskets to the palace of the lord, of count, bishop or abbot" (9). In ...