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3 - Prometheans

Secularist Intellectuals on the Socialist Stage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 November 2023

Todd H. Weir
Affiliation:
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands
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Summary

This chapter examines socialist-secularist intellectuals. Secularist intellectuals were noted both for their quick rise within the socialist party, which offered them newspaper editorships and Reichstag candidacies, and for their tendency to heresy. They provided many of the key figures in anarchism, revisionism and radicalism. The first section focuses on how an important oppositional movement of 1890 to 1893, the so-called “revolt of the Jungen” was led by some of the Berlin secularists introduced in Chapter 1. The Jungen have been the subject of a number of reflections on the role of intellectuals in the party; however, none of these has dealt with the secularist dimension of this conflict. By taking up this lacuna, the chapter reinterprets key aspects of the history and the theory of the intellectual. The second section of this chapter shows how Berlin secularists strategically employed heresy as a means of developing their charisma as autonomous intellectuals within the socialist milieu.

Type
Chapter
Information
Red Secularism
Socialism and Secularist Culture in Germany 1890 to 1933
, pp. 63 - 88
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Prometheans
  • Todd H. Weir, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands
  • Book: Red Secularism
  • Online publication: 30 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316443736.004
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  • Prometheans
  • Todd H. Weir, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands
  • Book: Red Secularism
  • Online publication: 30 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316443736.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Prometheans
  • Todd H. Weir, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands
  • Book: Red Secularism
  • Online publication: 30 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316443736.004
Available formats
×