Chapter 9
RevolutionaryFantasyand Proletarian
Masculinity
He had broughtawoman along. Slender,almost haggard, with her black hair cut inaman-
nish bob and her dark, tight-fittingclothes,she seductively planted herself ontopofabox
and distracted theyoungmen with her slender legsdanglingand her skirt pulled high. Her
mannish, angular facelooked haggard.Behind her sharp pince-nez sparkled the eyes of a
fox, bright and cunning. She wasachain smoker,had barely thrownawaythe butt of one
cigarettewhenshe reached into her blouse and fished out the packagain. Some of the
olderboyslookedather:thatwouldbesomething!Fritzwasashamed.Shewasnocom-
rade! He held back. That hussy onlycame hereto drive the comrades crazy.OttoGotsche,Märzstürme“Whatwasitabout the fateful month of March?”askedJulian Gumperz (1898–
1972) inreflections on what he described asauniquelyGerman revolutionary
calendar.March 1919,the well-known sociologist noted, was“ahistorical earth-
quake [...]that covered the land withasmoldering lava massofpolitical
events.”March 1920 turned out to be“less fervent but more persistent,less de-
cisive butmore responsive.”In March 1921,“the formidable movement of the
Saxon miners remained isolated,”and in March 1922,“thingsstayedreally
quiet.”Despite these disappointments, Gumperz firmlybelieved that“anew
March,aMarch of fulfillment,isbound to arrive one day.”¹The emotional nature
of his account attests to the powerful need for narrativesthat could reimagine
the political failures of March 1920 and 1921 as the beginning of assured victory
in the future.It is the main purpose of this chapter to examine how this revision-
ist process depended on therealignment of proletarian identifications with the
cult of militant masculinity in the aftermath ofWorld WarI.The aboveepigraph
fromarather lurid novel about the 1921 MarchAction by Otto Gotsche (1904–
1985) offersafirst indication of the ways in which the revolutionary fantasy
and, by extension, the proletarian dream depended increasingly on highlygen-
dered and sexualized scenarios.²
The protorevolutionary period of the earlypostwaryears described by Gum-
perz ended in October 1923 with the unsuccessful protests of Hamburgdock-
Julian Gumperz,“Vo reinem proletarischen März,”inPlatz dem Arbeiter!(Berlin: Malik, 1924),
179 – 180.
OttoGotsche,Märzstürme(Berlin: Dietz, 1954), 480.His autobiographical novelabout the 19 21
MarchAction was originallyscheduled for publication in 1933.