Another three hundred pages later,Lassalle resurfaces once more duringa
masked ball in Paris wherehebarelyescapes an attempt on his life.“Only
throughamiracle,Iknow it now,did Iescape certain deathyesterday,”he an-
nounces:“But that should not holdmeback from staying trueto mycause,
the cause of the people.Because even if afterseveralyears onlyafew thousand
workers are freed from the conditions that oppress them now,Iwill have been
amplycompensated!”Proof of his world historicalmission arrivesinthe form
of an attractive young ladywho approaches him in Notre Dame and offers to sac-
rifice her life for him.“Do not misunderstand me, Mr.Lassalle,”she explains:
“Whenyour facial features wereengravedonmysoul, it happened out of reverencefor the
manwhobears theweight of the hopes of millions of people livingunder oppressive con-
ditions,ithappened so thatyour face,atleast spiritually,could always be with me, the face
of the manwho, as someone oncetold me, renounced status and honorto be achampion
of the oppressed.”(FL,1087)Almost all literaryrepresentations of Lassalle from the period are structured
around his double identity as public figure and private person. Giventhe fre-
quent identification of narrative point-of-view with supporting characters that
know of him but are not known to him, the recognition scenes cited so far
maylegitimatelybecompared to the semipublicencounters known as celebrity
sightings. Their main functionatthe time wasto produce an illusion of intimacy
that,because of itsvoyeuristic/ exhibitionist structure, resisted easy integration
into the prevailing forms of sociabilityavailable within Social Democracy.More-
over,the identifications from below(or afar)facilitated by the socialist celebrity
set upaconvenientemotional structure for translatingsocial problems into ro-
manticscenarios.The promisedreconciliation of the personal and the political
mayhavebeen beyond reach, but the fantasiesproduced in its name werenone-
theless legitimate expressions,inthe commodified forms of socialist mass cul-
ture, of the workers’demand for recognition in the political and psychological
sense.
The adaptable and transferable nature of emotional intensity is particularly
relevant to understandingthe religious languageofthe Lassalle cult,beginning
with the reference to the LastJudgment in the socialistversion of theApostles’
Creed cited in the epigraph. In explaining these connections,several historians
have pointed to the continuing influenceofChristian faith, ritual, and doctrine.
ForEckardColberg,the apocalyptic structure of Lassalle’srevolutionary history
attests to the inevitable failureofall secular forms of redemption. Sebastian
Prüfer useswhat he calls the deification of Lassalle to question whether early
socialism functioned“as religion”or“instead ofreligion.”AndFranzWalter
and Arno Herzigpointto the commemorative practices after Lassalle’sdeath
132 Chapter 6