Die Ästhetik des Widerstands

by Peter Weiss

**The Aesthetics of Resistance** (German: *Die Ästhetik des Widerstands*, 1975–1981) is a three-volume novel by the German-born playwright, novelist, filmmaker, and painter Peter Weiss which was written over a ten-year period between 1971 and 1981. Spanning from the late 1930s into World War II, this historical novel dramatizes anti-fascist resistance and the rise and fall of proletarian political parties in Europe. It represents an attempt to bring to life and pass on the historical and social experiences and the aesthetic and political insights of the workers' movement in the years of resistance against fascism. Living in Berlin in 1937, the unnamed narrator and his peers, sixteen and seventeen-year-old working-class students, seek ways to express their hatred for the Nazi regime. They meet in museums and galleries, and in their discussions they explore the affinity between political resistance and art, the connection at the heart of Weiss's novel. Weiss suggests that meaning lies in