In Luxembourg’s historiography, when it comes to non-governmental social work in the Interwar Period, some caveats can be detected. To fill in one important aspect of these gaps, this paper will examine the initiatives of a cooperative, run by Luxembourgian labour and working-class associations. Gemuso was founded in 1927 in order to create an awareness of the benefits of a socialist society for workers and their families, and to educate them in the ‘progressive spirit of socialism’. It thereby closely collaborated with the leftist women’s association Foyer de la Femme.

On the occasion of the 10^th anniversary of the Luxembourg Mining and Metal Industry Workers’ Association in collaboration with the Workers' Education Center, a first exhibition of so-called ‘leisure works’ in Luxembourg took place in 1926. After the success of this first presentation, the Federation of Free Unions of Luxembourg organized an extended exhibition called Gemuso – Ausstellung für Genossenschaften, Mußearbeit und Soziale Fürsorge and consequently formed the Cooperative Gemuso in 1927. The name refers to the overarching scope of activities: Cooperatives(Genossenschaften), leisure work(Mußearbeit), and social work(Soziale Fürsorge). The superordinate objective of all Gemuso initiatives was to educate the minds and broaden the horizon of the workers, who were, from their point of view, hitherto trained only to function machine-like within a framework of capitalist industrial production – organised after the modernist methods of rationalisation.

With the implementation of the eight-hour working day after World War I, a major change had occurred in Luxembourg’s labour world. The new law would allow workers to split their day into three parts: 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work and 8 hours of leisure time. This legal initiative went together with an upturn of leisure activities, related to gardening, small animal breeding and beekeeping or handicrafts, various sport clubs, music clubs, photography clubs, etc. The major labour associations in Luxembourg supported the value of these popular leisure activities. One objective of exhibiting the outcomes of the various leisure time activities of workers was to prove the eight-hour working day opponents wrong, in their claim that workers would spend all of their (now extended) leisure time in pubs – wasting the family income on alcohol.

The Gemuso adopted an innovative approach to reach and educate the workers, in that it embraced the full range of modern media (e.g. exhibitions, books, libraries, newspapers, lectures, slide shows, radio, film, art). The 1927 exhibition catalogue witnesses an extended program with three main sections covering cultural, civic and political education. The director of the exhibitions was the mining worker, union activist and proletarian artist Albert Kaiser (1892-1972). Responsible for the comprehensible design and the techniques of presentation, he was repeatedly praised by the leftist press. Along his multi-layered conceptual and artistic work, a European transfer of ideas can be tracked.

The objective of this paper is to examine Gemuso’s approach of leftist non-formal education in Luxembourg. How did the labour movement strive to transform society, create a socialist class-consciousness and bring across its message of workers’ solidarity and the importance of their cultural education? 

Caruso, M., Koinzer, T., Mayer, C., Priem, K. (2014). Zirkulation und Transformation. Pädagogische Grenzüberschreitungen in historischer Perspektive. Köln: Böhlau. Imorde, J. (2013). Teilhabe am Schönen: Kunstgeschichte und Volksbildung zwischen Kaiserreich und Diktatur. Weimar: Verl. und Datenbank für Geisteswiss. Roth, L., Seiwert, F. W. (2008). Köln progressiv: 1920-33, Seiwert - Hoerle - Arntz ; Köln: König. Pawella, F. (2008) Zur Darstellung von Gleichheit und Ungleichheit in der proletarisch ambitionierten Kunst der Zwischenkriegszeit, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der TU Dresden 3-4/2008, p. 56-61. Haller, R., Kinross, R. (1991) Otto Neurath. Gesammelte Bildpädagogische Schriften, Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky. Bourdieu, P. (1985) Sozialer Raum und „Klassen“. Zwei Vorlesungen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Heid, L., Schoeps, J. H. (1985). Arbeit und Alltag im Revier: Arbeiterbewegung und Arbeiterkultur im westlichen Ruhrgebiet im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik. Duisburg: W. Braun. Bourdieu, P. (1982) Die feinen Unterschiede : Kritik der gesellschaftlichen Urteilskraft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Stadler, F. (1982). Arbeiterbildung in der Zwischenkriegszeit: Otto Neurath, Gerd Arntz. Wien: Löcker. Kleindienst, J. (1977), Wem gehört die Welt. Kunst und Gesellschaft in der Weimarer Republik, Berlin: Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst. Arntz, G. (1930) Bewegung in Kunst und Statistik, a-z. organ der gruppe progressiver künstler köln, Mai 1930, p. 1.