ABSTRACT
Classic or classicist personalities create norms which are subsequently imposed on their age as paradigms. In this sense and in the humble guise of a mere interpreter of Marx, Lukacs was already a classic in the twenties; friends and foes alike admit that History and Class Consciousness was the single major contribution to the history of Marxism as philosophy since Marx’s death. Lukacs’ works on the Weimar period of German classical culture exemplify this existential choice. They deal with representative personalities who could not represent mainstream German culture precisely because they were somehow too radical. Thus, as Michel Lowy has pointed out, Lukacs’ portrayal of the symbolic character of Holderlin’s tragedy closely resembles Trotsky’s fate. One of the most relevant results of Lukacs’ turn to Weimar was the abandoning of the myth of the proletariat.
