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Abstract: The article examines the theoretical prerequisites (the ideas of K. Marx and F. Engels), the sources (pre-March literature of the 19th century, working-class literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries) and the early development (1920s – 1930s) of socialist realism in Germany. It was at that time that the need to put literature at the service of party and class interests was declared. The main problems of the works correspond to the spirit of party propaganda and popularization of social-democratic ideas. In the history of the formation of Marxist aesthetics as the foundation for socialist literature, a great role belongs to F. Mering, who justified one of the basic differences between socialist literature and other socio-critical literary trends, which only depicted social conflicts, but did not connected their resolution with the ideas of class struggle and proletarian revolution. Among the initiators of socialist realism in Germany (1920–1930-ies) were I. R. Becher, B. Brecht, F. Wolf, A. Zegers, etc. They were well acquainted with Soviet literary policy and practice (M. Gorky and others) and transferred it to German soil. The main postulates of the literature of that period were: a socialist work should strive for the knowledge of truly dialectical objectivity and take pains to provide a comprehensive, concrete and profound demonstration of the unity of the driving forces of history. The famous Marxist philosopher G. Lukács made a great impact on theory and practice of German socialist realism. His ideas that the creators of socialist art and the artistic “ideological avant-garde” are called upon to discover the typical and show new trends in the development of essential features of modern life following the best traditions of European realism, as well as the idea of the popular art understood in the spirit of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics, were actively followed by German proletarian writers in the Weimar Republic and anti-fascist writers during the Third Reich.