by the exchange.Hestared, stared outside, at the thousand-headedmass.And suddenlyhe
knewwhowas waitingfor the messiah.³⁰Toward the end of theWeimar Republic, the literary scholarArno Schirokauer,in
the appropriatelytitledLassalle. Die Macht der Illusion, die Illusion der Macht
(1928,ThePower of Illusion and the Illusion of Power), summons themystery
of Lassalle’sface once more but onlyinorder to makeamockery of the cult
of romantic loveand, by extension, the dream of socialism. In this example,
the recognition scene features HelenevonDönniges and Lassalle, now again
with“dark and frizzled locks,”meeting for the lasttime at the Rigi thermal
baths in Switzerland before theduel. Instead of themessiah, thereadersfind
onlythe figureofNarcissus,atroublingcommentary on the attachments that
sustained proletarian identifications duringthe Wilhelmineyears and increas-
ingly haunted Social Democracy towardthe end of theWeimar Republic.
At the moment that he [i.e., Lassalle] says farewellto politics,buries ambition, and after
aspiringtolead the masses,becomesasimple and straightforwardwooer,atthe moment
when he drops the banner of the revolution and is concerned onlywith the conquest of one
human heart,heisvictorious!It is thesweetest,the happiest of victories.Both of them pas-
sionatelyinlove, they give themselvesuptoariot of the sentiments [...]They multiplytheir
lovebytheir self-love. Narcissus falls in lovewith Narcissus.[...]Beneath[her] crown of
red-golden hair,agentle,voluptuous forehead; beneath [his]dark and frizzled locks,a
solid, rebellious cranium. Narcissus has fallen in lovewith Narcissus.³¹The implicit diagnosis ofaprofound crisis in the emotional attachments organ-
ized through Social Democracy offers one explanation for the transition from the
clichédromance of socialism in the Alfred Schirokauer work from the prewar
years to the almostcynical deconstruction of the Lassallemyth in the Arno
Schirokauer work from the postwaryears. As the next chapter documents, emo-
tional confessions and attachments also feature prominentlyinturn-of-the-cen-
tury workers’life writingsand, in ways notyetaddressed, draw attention to the
importantrole of bourgeois mediators in the making of the proletarian dream.
Alfred Schirokauer,Lassalle. Ein LebenfürFreiheitund Liebe(Berlin:Bong,1912),93. The
book was adaptedtothe screen byRudolf Meinert in 1918 under the titleFerdinand Lassalle,
DesVolkstribunenGlück und Ende.Forthe largercontext in which physiognomic categories
weremobilized in modern discourses of charisma, see Claudia Schmölders,“Fa cial Narratives:
The Physiognomics of Charisma,1900–1945,”New German Critique38.3 (2011): 115–132.
Arno Schirokauer,Lassalle:The PowerofIllusion and the Illusion of Power,trans. Eden and
Cedar Paul (London: G. Allen&Unwin, 1932), 290–291.Foracritical assessmentand aselection
of writings from theWeimaryears, seeFerdinand Lassalle,Nachgelassene Briefe und Schriften,
ed. GustavMayer,6vols.(Stuttgart:DVA, 19 21 – 25).
Ferdinand Lassalle,the First SocialistCelebrity 137