imaginary communities,the so-called performativeturn has allowed scholars to
be more attuned to public practices that emergedbefore, outside, and against
the normative effects of bourgeois subjectivity in the theater and beyond, espe-
ciallythe class-based practices developed by theSprechchormovement.This is
not the placeto use the socialist event cultureofthe late nineteenth and early
twentieth century to imagineasuppressed, if not alternative history of public
performances rooted in folk culture andreligious culture. However,rethinking
socialist performance along these lines means to include ludic and cultic ele-
ments in an expanded definitionofthe public sphere andto see theKantian
free playofthe imagination as an importantmediator between romantic notions
of expressive individualityand collectivity.
Revisiting modern performance practicesfrom these perspectives, theater
historian MatthiasWarstat and dance historianYvonne Hardthavestudied emo-
tional communities in officialWilhelmineculture, includingits national ceremo-
nies and anniversaries, as well as inWeimar consumer culture,youth culture,
and bodyculture. Their analyses of public performances,rituals, and events
have shed new light onamodern bodypolitic that facilitated socialist and com-
munist reclamations of the people and the public sphere–and, after 1933,gave
rise to the aestheticization of theracial community in the fascistGesamtkunst-
werk.⁵AccordingtoWarstat,the shift from text-basedto body-based cultures
of community that occurred around the turn of the century must be seen not
just asaresponse to the bourgeois crisis of language,acritical clichéofmodern-
ism studies, but primarilyasacontinuation of well-established practices in the
workers’movement and, one might add, even older traditionsrangingfrom me-
dievalmystery plays to regional folk festivals.
Once community is described asahistoricallyspecific performance, the par-
ticular contribution of theSprechchorand its dance-based variant,theBewe-
gungschor(movementchorus), in establishing the emotional regimes identified
with socialism comes into clearer view;this includes thegendereddivides that
define community as either all-male or equated withaposition of masculinity.
On 1May 1932, twenty thousand people gathered in the StädtischeFesthalle in
SeeYvonne Hardt,Politische Körper.Ausdruckstanz, Choreographien des Protests und die Ar-
beiterkulturbewegung in derWeimarerRepublik(Münster: Lit,2004) and MatthiasWarstat,The-
atrale Gemeinschaften. ZurFestkultur der Arbeiterbewegung 1918– 33 (Tübingen: Francke,2004).
Forashort English-languageversion, seeWarstat’s“Community BuildingwithinFestivalFrame
—Working-Class Celebrations in Germany, 1918–1933,”inFestivalising! TheatricalEvents,Politics
and Culture,ed. Temple Hauptfleisch et al.(Amsterdam:Rodopi,2007), 242–260. Theatricality,
the term preferred by manyGerman theater historians, and performativity,the one prevalent in
Anglo-American scholarship, can be used synonymously.
SocialDemocracy and the PerformanceofCommunity 225