Bürgerkrieg und Romantik im Realsozialismus

The terms ‘civil war’ and ‘romanticism’ play a subordinate role in the memory of real socialism and Marxism-Leninism. Yet they were of outstanding importance for the self-images formed by Marx, Lenin and Stalin. This detailed study of Rudolf Bahro's early work and its intellectual and historical contexts provides a new perspective on these connections.
Bahro's work grows out of the spirit of revolutionary civil war and revolutionary romanticism, which coalesced into the political ‘religion’ of communism, which has its ‘theology’ in Marxism-Leninism. What is unique about Bahro's development is that he became increasingly aware of his role as a ‘theologian’ of these doctrines of faith, and he saw himself as a ‘reformer’ of the Communist Party, as its ‘church’.