In 1924 the philosopher Helmuth Plessner published Grenzen der Gemeinschaft, the limits of community. He defended distance, tact and the Sehnsucht nach der Maske, the longing for the mask. German Wikipedia summarizes his idea of the mask. Through it a person becomes general and turns von der Privatperson zur Amtsperson, from a private person into an official person. Tact, in the same summary, dient der Entspannung unter Menschen, die man nicht kennt, eases things between people who do not know each other. Plessner wrote against a strong longing of his time for total community. His view stood largely alone in Germany at the time, and the book was only rediscovered in the early 1980s.