The heterogeneous and frequently vague nature of the many manifestoes and programmatic statements produced by the numerous writers of the expressionist movement has made it a notoriously difficult phenomenon to pin down to any clear ideological line. The great variety of political and religious groupings which many of its prominent associates went on to join after its official demise, such as the various socialist and communist factions, the National-Socialists, Christians and radical Zionists, may be an indication that a breadth of opinion already existed within its ranks which made the attempt at anything more than a broad and very fleeting affiliation of like-minded thinkers virtually impossible.

The question of expressionism's impact as a revolutionary event in a social and ideological sense is made even more difficult to answer by the fact that any genuinely radical political agendas proposed in the literary or programmatic writings of the movement are invariably obscured or “overdetermined” by factors apparently extraneous to the issues at stake. For besides fulfilling the intellectual's need to overcome the social and spiritual isolation through engagement within the community, the notion of a revolution often appears to offer the possibility merely of curing the self vicariously through the attempt to heal the world. Alternatively, the ideal of revolution frequently seems to have been embraced as part of a more general desire for spiritual renewal or even as a criminal and destructive act offering a stimulating experiential “rush” or “Lebenssteigerung.”