Lukács provides the first and arguably most influential Marxist reading of Faust I and II. His five Faust-Studien became the basis of much GDR Faust scholarship and integral to the "Vollstreckerthese," East Germany's program of cultural politics based in the reappropriation of German Enlightenment and humanist bourgeois cultural production. While some Marxist readings of Faust simply get silly fast, Lukács writes with tact and grace.
