Despite the relatively broad reception of Pierre Bourdieu's field theory, its application to specific social or cultural movements still represents a desideratum. This work is based on Bourdieu's cultural sociological analyses regarding the formation of intellectuals in France and examines the categories of field, capital, and habitus using the example of the surrealist avant-garde between 1919 and 1930. The focus of the investigation lies in sharpening Bourdieu's paradigms around the central figure of the surrealist movement, André Breton. Breton's career and interventions are confronted with the political situation and the nature of the literary field after World War I. The genre of the manifesto is exemplarily illustrated as a positioning in the literary battle of opinions. Through a critical reflection on Bourdieu's theory, a clarification of field-typical criteria is achieved, which allowed surrealism to become a point of reference for subsequent avant-garde movements.