Even if such remarks are read asamocking reenactment of then-fashionable
physiognomic ideas, as some Marx defenders have done, or dismissed as an ob-
vious example ofJewishself-hatred, this does not address the troublingfact that
manydescriptions of Lassalle includereferences to physical features and char-
acter traits that identifyhim as a“typical”Ostjude(East EuropeanJew). These
instances ofracial othering are inseparable from the political struggles within
European Marxism and GermanSocial Democracy but cannot be explained
through personal rivalries alone.Literaryauthors, in the obligatory recognition
scenes,acknowledge that Lassalle had features that could beread asJewish
(e.g., dark curlyhair)but then spendaconsiderable time reinterpretingthese
features as classicallyand traditionallymasculine–in other words, as attractive.
Political rivals such as Marx,meanwhile, produceasurfeit of emotion to de-
nounce Lassalle’sversion of socialism as feminized and feminizing. In all
cases, it is through hisracialized and sexualized bodythatidentification with
the workers’ movement is articulatedwithin the political imaginaries and
mass culturalpracticesavailable at the time. The fact that later literary and his-
torical treatments of Lassalle oftenreducethe rise of socialismto the individu-
alized scenarios of erotic attraction confirms the perceivedthreat of emotional
socialism bothtoMarxist orthodoxy and bourgeois society.
Tworecognition scenes from two later historicalnovels suffice to highlight
the growingdistance from thereligious tone in Büttner and are offered here
as yetanother perspective on the profound social, political, and emotional rup-
tures marked by 1918/19and the reconfigurations of socialism in either nation-
alist or internationalist terms.InLassalle. Ein Leben fürFreiheit und Liebe
(1902, Lassalle:ALife forFreedom and Love), the novelist and screenwriter
Alfred Schirokauer still uses the encounter between Lassalle and the workers
to reenact his elevation to an object of socialist desire. Once again, this process
is witnessed byawoman, in this case one of his manyworking-class lovers.Sig-
nificantly, herrecognition of his true face as that of the socialist messiah requires
that it be separated from anytracesofJewishness and claimed foraclassicallin-
eage:
Anew world of misery had just opened upto him. Ashen his Caesarian head (Cäsarenkopf)
emergedfromthe darkness of the coach. Marie could not turn her eyes from him. Never
beforehad he appeared so demandingofworship andyetsoremoved fromall earthlyaf-
fection. Her tenderlovesensed the world-topplingforces arisingwithin him and unleashedreferences in these novels,see Heinrich GeorgSchumacher,Ferdinand Lassalle asaNovelistic
Subject of FriedrichSpielhagen(Annapolis,MD: Advertiser-Republican,1914).
136 Chapter 6