In this thoroughly researched and clearly written monograph, Andrew Bonnell presents a balanced account of the Freie Volksbühne (Free People's Stage) in Berlin from its founding in 1890 to the outbreak of the First World War. Bonnell devotes more than half of the book (introduction and chapters one through four) to an extensive examination of the social-economic, political, theoretical, and ideological context in which the Freie Volksbühne originated and developed. He first identifies three dimensions of “working-class culture,” consisting of pre-industrial traditions, the actual “life-world” of workers (Lebenswelt, as used by Jürgen Habermas), and “the tension between the life-world of workers and the instrumental rationality of the capitalist system, in the shape of the modern mass-culture industry” (pp. 11–12). This is a helpful clarification of what he understands by working-class culture, but in his initial explication of the “life-world” of workers, he pays little attention to the place of the socialist labor movement. Later he refers, without elaboration, however, to “the life-world of the Social Democratic labour movement” (p. 175) and notes that “for a significant minority of industrial workers, the culture of the labour movement and its organizations also contributed to the shaping of a distinctive, working-class life world” (p. 203). A deeper exploration of this point would be welcome.

Bonnell begins his contextual survey in chapter one with a well-informed description of the social-economic conditions of workers. In the second chapter he turns to the implications of the Social Democratic Party's unwavering emphasis on class conflict and the political struggle for its affiliated cultural organizations. Many party leaders expressed serious reservations about cultural activities, which they believed detracted from the main purpose of the movement. In chapter three, as part of the theoretical and ideological context, Bonnell elaborates on the prevailing belief among prominent “Left Marxists” (his label for Karl Kautsky, Franz Mehring, Rosa Luxemburg, and Clara Zetkin) that cultural programs should be designed primarily to advance class consciousness and political goals, and that Social Democrats should make at most a highly critical appropriation of the best aspects of bourgeois culture. His treatment of the theoretical context continues in chapter four where he reviews the main tenets of Revisionism, stressing that several of its well-known supporters (Eduard Bernstein, Paul Kampffmeyer, and Conrad Schmidt) leaned toward idealism, conceived of Social Democracy as a Kulturbewegung (cultural movement), endorsed the notion of Kultursozialismus (cultural socialism), downplayed the importance of class as a cultural determinate, and recognized the arts as valuable in themselves. These chapters provide a meaningful framework for the rest of the book.

Bonnell divides the history of the Freie Volksbühne before the First World War into three main stages, overlapping with the years of successive chairmen: Bruno Wille (1890–1892), Franz Mehring (1892–1895), and Conrad Schmidt (1897–1914). He outlines the distinctive characteristics of each stage in individual chapters. Throughout the book he emphasizes the ongoing tension between those who placed class conflict and politics above artistic considerations and those who downplayed the political dimension and viewed the labor movement chiefly as a Kulturbewegung. For each period, Bonnell discusses many of the plays that were presented and seeks to explain what difference it made for the role of the Freie Volksbühne when a chairman preferred one kind of drama rather than another. Wille, who promoted naturalist drama and wanted no link to socialist politics, left the Freie Volksbühne in 1892 when numerous members demanded closer ties to the Social Democratic Party. In the same year he founded the Neue Freie Volksbühne. By contrast, Franz Mehring embodied the outlook of Left Marxists. He favored plays from the German classics, though not exclusively, and accompanied his choices with explanatory commentaries that reflected the principle of making a critical selection of the progressive aspects of bourgeois culture and of contributing to the creation of an “oppositional public sphere” (p. 175). By the beginning of the twentieth century, with Revisionism challenging orthodox Marxism and with Conrad Schmidt as chairman, the advocates of artistic values over class conflict gained greater influence even as the membership expanded from about 7,500 in 1901 to almost 18,000 in 1910/11. Bonnell argues that in this third phase it is extremely difficult to discern any principle that guided the choice of plays so that the programs of the Freie Volksbühne did not differ significantly from those of commercial theaters. He concludes that “from being part of a socialist ‘alternative culture,’ the Freie Volksbühne had become assimilated into a reactionary definition of German national culture” (p. 202). The merger in 1914 of the Freie Volksbühne and the Neue Freie Volksbühne represented, Bonnell argues, the supremacy of those who were willing to abandon any effort to contribute to the creation of a workers' culture with its own identity. His account of the three periods is reasonably comprehensive, but the book would be enhanced had he included more information about negotiations with various theaters, arrangements with directors and performers, and other details about the management of the Freie Volksbühne.

Bonnell makes a commendable effort to be impartial, yet it is clear that his sympathies are predominantly with the Left Marxists and far less with the policies of Bruno Wille and Conrad Schmidt, who believed aesthetic education and workers'cultural improvement were ends in themselves. He has made a strong case for his interpretation that after the turn of the century the Freie Volksbühne contributed increasingly to an uncritical and positive integration of workers into the society and culture of the German educated and propertied classes. This is certainly the best history of the Freie Volksbühne for the years Bonnell covers.