The collected German edition of a Marxist philosopher’s writings
A Multi-Volume Edition, Not a Single Book
Werke is the collective title under which the German-language writings of Georg Lukács have been published. It is not a single monograph but a multi-volume edition. Library records describe a Luchterhand Verlag series, published in Darmstadt and Neuwied and beginning in 1962, as well as a later edition from Aisthesis Verlag in Bielefeld. The Luchterhand Werkausgabe was edited by Frank Benseler; the Aisthesis volumes are edited by Zsuzsa Bognár, Werner Jung, and Antonia Opitz. The edition covers the range of Lukács’s work as a Marxist philosopher, literary critic, and aesthetic theorist, bringing together studies and essays that belong to philosophy, literary history, and aesthetics.
The Luchterhand Volumes: Realism, German Literature, and Aesthetics
Reference listings for the Luchterhand edition show how its numbered volumes were organized. Band 6 is identified as Probleme des Realismus III, Der historische Roman; Band 7 as Deutsche Literatur in zwei Jahrhunderten; Band 9 as Die Zerstörung der Vernunft; Band 10 as Probleme der Ästhetik; and Bände 11 and 12 as Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen. These titles indicate the edition’s center of gravity: literary realism and the historical novel, German literary history, the critique of irrationalist philosophy, and systematic aesthetics. In Lukács’s aesthetic writings, the source explains, he worked out the foundations of a Marxist aesthetics through the idea that literature reflects social relations in their totality. The Luchterhand volumes thus made available both his literary-critical studies and the philosophical arguments that framed them.
The Aisthesis Edition and the Early Writings
The Aisthesis Verlag edition organizes at least its early volumes chronologically. Band 1 is divided into two Teilbände of Frühschriften I: the first covers writings from 1903–1913, the second writings from 1914–1918, according to the publisher’s listing; library records give the broader span 1902–1918 or 1902–1919. The first Teilband was recorded in 2017 at 477 pages, and the second appeared under Aisthesis in copyright 2018. Band 2 is listed as Frühschriften II: Schriften 1919–1928, the period of Lukács’s early Marxist work; the source also records a Werke edition of Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein as Band 2. Band 3 includes Die Verdinglichung und das Bewußtsein des Proletariats, and Band 18 collects Autobiographische Texte und Gespräche. This edition therefore gives substantial space to the early Lukács—the pre-1919 essays and the writings of his first Marxist decade—as well as to autobiographical material.
The Edition’s Role in Lukács’s Reception
The Luchterhand Werkausgabe had a marked effect on Lukács’s postwar reception. According to the account of his influence, his works were, with few exceptions, printed only in Western European countries after his political ostracism, and there they reached the New Left. Frank Benseler and the Luchterhand Verlag were central to this process: the firm published individual editions and, above all, the Werkausgaben. The collected edition was therefore not merely a bibliographic container but a means by which Lukács’s philosophy, literary criticism, and aesthetics became available to a German-speaking readership and to the wider Western left. The Aisthesis edition extends that availability by issuing newly edited volumes, including the early writings and autobiographical texts, under the same collective title.
The Aisthesis volume list gives ISBN 978-3-8498-1150-1 for Bd. 1.1; 978-3-89528-999-6 for Bd. 2; 978-3-8498-1555-4 for Bd. 3, Teilband 1; and 978-3-89528-720-6 for Bd. 18. The source records the same ISBN 978-3-89528-999-6 for the 2013 Aisthesis Werke edition of Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein as Band 2, and gives ISBN 978-3-8498-1117-4 for the 2015 Aisthesis Werke edition of Die Verdinglichung und das Bewußtsein des Proletariats as Band 3. It also records a Jubiläumsausgabe as a facsimile of Lukács’s hand- and working copy, published by Aisthesis in Bielefeld in 2023, ISBN 978-3-8498-1856-2. The BnF record for Band 1, Teilband 2 describes a volume paginated pp. 492–871, 23 cm, with a bibliography on pp. 851–853 and an index; its ISBNs are 9783849811518 and 3849811514. The same record assigns the classification “Oeuvres complètes (allemand). 2018” and Dewey number 199.439.
Further Editions Listed with the Werkausgabe
The source’s list of further editions includes Fortschritt und Reaktion in der deutschen Literatur (Berlin 1947); Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein. Studien über marxistische Dialektik, with a new foreword (Neuwied 1968); Die Theorie des Romans (Darmstadt/Neuwied 1971); Taktik und Ethik. Politische Aufsätze I, 1918–1920, edited by Jörg Kammler and Frank Benseler (Darmstadt/Neuwied 1975); Revolution und Gegenrevolution. Politische Aufsätze II, 1920–1921, edited by Jörg Kammler and Frank Benseler (Darmstadt 1976); and Die Seele und die Formen. Essays (Neuwied 1971). It also lists Georg Lukács in Berlin, edited by Alfred Klein (Berlin/Weimar 1990), with the reprint of texts from Die Linkskurve and Moskauer Rundschau; Wie ist die faschistische Philosophie in Deutschland entstanden (1933), edited by L. Sziklai (Budapest 1982); Wie ist Deutschland zum Zentrum der reaktionären Ideologie geworden, edited by L. Sziklai (Budapest 1982); Dostojewski, Notizen und Entwürfe, edited by J. C. Nyiri (Budapest 1985); Die Säuberung Moskau 1936: Stenogramm einer geschlossenen Parteiveranstaltung, edited by Reinhard Müller (Frankfurt 1990); and Briefwechsel 1902–1917, edited by Eva Karádi and Eva Fekete (Stuttgart 1982).
Bibliographic Aids and the Anniversary Festschrift
The source lists Andor Gábor’s Biobibliographie von Georg Lukács as a manuscript from 1940; it was reprinted in Heinz Ludwig Arnold (ed.), Georg Lukács, Text + Kritik Heft 39/40 (Richard Boorberg Verlag, Munich, 1973), pp. 79–88. It also lists Jürgen Hartmann’s Chronologische Bibliografie der Werke von Georg Lukács in Frank Benseler (ed.), Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag von Georg Lukács (Verlag Hermann Luchterhand, Neuwied/Berlin, 1965), pp. 625–696.
Library Holdings for the Luchterhand Set
Holdings listed in the Libris record for the Luchterhand series include Bd 2–17 at Umeå University Library; Bd 2 (1968–) with specified parts at Uppsala University Library; Bd 2 and 4–17 (1962–1986) at the Royal Library; 1962–1986 at Gothenburg University Library; and Bd 2–18 (1964–2005), incomplete, at Lund University Library. The record assigns the series the subject terms G Litteraturvetenskap and D Filosofi Allmänt, with classification DDC 100 and kssb D.
