Workers' Culture in Imperial Germany: Leisure and Recreation in the Rhineland and Westphalia

This book represents the first alternative approach to the study of workers' culture in Imperial Germany while at the same time providing the first comprehensive historical analysis of the emergence of Germany.s modern leisure industry. The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed Germany's transformation into a major industrial economy. The central concern of this book is the emergence of a distinct worker's culture which provided a disparate and heterogeneous working class with a focus of identity in an alien and hostile society. Focusing on the aspect of that culture--the leisure activities enjoyed by workers during their infrequent leisure time--and on two major cities, Bochum and Dusseldorf, this study traverses the gamut of popular amusements and recreations on offer from the popular festivals of the early industrial years, the pubs, Tingel-Tangles and dance-halls, the clubs and rational recreations, to the mass, commercial culture epitomized by the cinema shortly after the turn of the century.