especiallyintheir political manifestations, resisted easy integration into the
heroic narrativesofworking-class mobilization. Contemporaries were particular-
ly troubled by the deep longingshared by fictional and actual workers foralead-
er who would be worthyoftheir loveand adulation–and who, in fact,lived in a
world farremoved from the poor and the oppressed. Equallydisconcerting,in
light of the socialist belief in knowledge andreason as the most powerful
tools of self-emancipation, was the preoccupation with love, passion, beauty,
sensuality,wealth, and luxury in the sensationalist treatments of his life. In
all of therecognition scenes to be discussed next,the desiringgaze of the work-
ing classconstitutes Lassalle as someone both far removed and intimately
known–in short,acelebrity.Through thesedynamics of looking and being
looked-at,the workers become part ofamodel performanceofpolitical mobili-
zation. These scenes build on the concept ofanagnorisisin theAristotelianPo-
etics,whereitdenotesacharacter’smovefromignoranceto knowledge;only
here, the cognitiveprocess isredefined as an emotional one.Forthe workers,
the intended subjecteffects organized through the first-person plural involve
the following cognitivesteps:Bydesiring you(i.e., Lassalle), we desire social-
ism. By recognizingyou, we understand our historicalrole as the revolutionary
proletariat.Bychoosingyouasthe leader,weacknowledge our responsibilities
as the universal class and the embodiment of true humanity.Faced with such
imaginary scenarios,one might ask (inavariation onFreud’sfamous question):
What doesaworker want?Or, in anawareness of the centralrole of fantasy:
What do socialist intellectuals want the workers to want?Can scholars reclaim
these stories and images foraforgotten, suppressed and, for thatreason, all
the more importantarchive of socialist feelings? Or must these five decades of
heightened textual productivity be seen asagradual process of elimination–
of religiosity,emotionality, and sexuality–fromarevolutionary project that,
after the carnageofWorldWarI,would become much more narrowly defined
along party lines?
Ferdinand Lassalle,TheHeroofthe People,the historical novel that sheds
light on some of these questions, was written byacertain Heinrich Büttner (or
awriting team workingunder that name)and allegedlybasedonpersonal let-
ters,official documents, and interviews with closerelatives. Published in serial
form, it appeared in seventy-seven installments of twenty-four pages each. A
populargenre distinguishedbyits mode of distribution,Kolportageromane
weresold door to door by so-called colporteurs onasubscription basis.²³Written
On theKolportageromanand the culture industry,see Andreas Graf,“Ko lportageromane.
Produktion, Distribution und Rezeption eines Massenmediums,”LeipzigerJahrbuchzurBuchge-
128 Chapter 6