Beer and Skittles? Workers and Culture in Early Twentieth‐Century Germany

This paper begins by examining the cultural practices of the large workers' leisure organisations associated with German Social Democracy and asks whether these merely reproduced ‘high’ or ‘bourgeois’ culture or whether they contributed to a distinct cultural identity for their members. It concludes that, although much of the culture of these organisations was borrowed, it was not necessarily understood in the same way by workers as by middle‐class Germans. Moreover these organisations remained separate from those of the German bourgeoisie and possessed distinctive core values, in particular that of solidarity. This difference was reinforced by the housing conditions of German workers, which obviated the possibility of a privatised and domestic leisure. However, this ‘labour movement culture’ had to compete both with other organised working‐class cultures (of Catholics, Poles and workers in company clubs), with a ‘culture of poverty’ on the part of those in irregular employment and on low incomes, and with an increasingly commercial leisure industry. This ‘labour movement’ culture was also predominantly male.