“The Paduan creates; he is a creator. He tears a thousand souls from out of a thousand bodies and molds them into a single soul with the flames of his speech! There they stand, children, women and men—each separate—ridiculous and pathetic creatures! And the Paduan grasps them and kneads them into a great whole, into a single strong mass in the guise of a mad and mighty beast: every individual disappearing, dissolving into the mass, melting together with millions of others.

“Suddenly overnight a young, mighty, titanic being grew into existence, das Volk.”

Hanns Heinz Ewers, 1910