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Robert Goodrich
attempted – usually disastrously – to regulate alcohol consumption in the clubs.
Along those lines, Otto Müller forbade alcohol at any People’s Educational Nights:
The fears that have been expressed here and there that the number of visitors would be
reduced if nothing were drunk have not been realized to our knowledge. Why should
our people not learn to relax and have fun without beer or even schnapps! In the theater,
in high-class concerts, etc., alcohol is always excluded and no one misses it; why do we
then want to make an exception for the People’s Educational Nights? 43
Müller compared the drinking habits of the Catholic working classes to the middle
classes where sobriety and self-improvement through the cultivation of the fine
arts had replaced alcohol consumption and the associated “dirty jokes and insipid
way of speaking of the beer bench.” Müller and other leaders hoped that People’s
Educational Nights would counter the temptation “to visit the pub” and “excessive
alcohol consumption,” by “accustoming the individual to noble recreation and
pleasures.” 44 Clearly, the KAB was modeling its prescriptions on middle-class
expectations. The Arbeiterfamilie argued that in public, “they [the bourgeoisie]
drink nothing since they consider spirits as something serious that does not fit in
well with the ‘cozy’ pub.” 45 The KAB thus encouraged workers to emulate middleclass
drinking specifically and middle-class cultural consumption generally.
Although moral-cultural imperatives drove much of the anti-alcohol agenda,
KAB leaders also had direct political and organizational reasons for their opposition
to drinking. They often viewed pubs and alcohol consumption as avenues
towards socialism. Police officials tended to agree, as one report referred to private
drinking clubs as “breeding halls for social democratic efforts and incitements.” 46
As confirmation, no less a figure than Karl Kautsky referred to pubs as the “sole
bulwark of political freedom for the proletariat.” 47 Additionally, the KAB feared
that drinking hindered organizing. A Cologne archdiocesan report complained,
“Alcohol abuse among broad circles is a strong hindrance for the advancement of
the laboring estate [because] it encourages a degrading lack of interest in material
and intellectual cultural assets . . . and under its dominance there can be no talk of
solidarity and self-education.” 48 The “drink question” thus became entangled with
the need for organizational growth and solidarity, an entanglement that produced
competing imperatives and reflected similar developments in the socialist labor
movements. 49
Yet a public goal of the KAB remained temperance. To underscore this goal, in
1909 the annual report from the Cologne clubs concluded, “The Delegate’s
Congress considers it necessary to promote the fight against alcoholism in every
way through educational lectures in club meetings and where possible through the
formation of local branches of the Catholic Kreuzbündnis.” The resolution called
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