werment to empowerment,whichwasmeant to resultinthe revolutionary deed.
During the earlypostwaryears, ErnstToller’sMasse Mensch(1921,translatedas
Masses andMan)andDie Maschinenstürmer(1922,The MachineWreckers) not
onlyconnected the historical battle between capitalism and socialism to the con-
temporary traumas of war and revolution but also imagined the future of mod-
ernity in alternatively chiliastic and apocalyptic tones.Significantly, channeled
through the expressionist sensibilitiesofToller,the mass chorus stillexpressed
the desire to becomeaclassinthe form ofaquestion:“From the abysses of the
factories we cry:When shall we live in love?When shallwework atwill?When is
deliverance?”³⁰
The workers hadto wait for the cultural organizations of the SPD and KPD
foundedduringthe Weimaryearsto createpublicspaces in which these emo-
tional needscould be addressed as part of the parties’ respective reformist
and revolutionary strategies;asthis chapter has shown,that distinct emotional
and performative spacewas claimedbytheSprechchormovement.Its cult of
community mayhaveappealedto writers,performers, andaudiences across
the divisions in theWeimar left; but it also found its most outspoken critics in
the cult of the collective developed in the context of communist agitprop and
its very different performance practices and emotional regimes.
ErnstToller,“Masses and Man,”trans.Vera Mendel, inGerman Expressionist Plays,ed. Ernst
Schürer (NewYork: Continuum,2005),212.
Social Democracy and the PerformanceofCommunity 237