Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre Nazi Germany

Homosexuality
and
Male Bonding In
Pre-Nazi Germany
the youth movement, the gay movement,
and male bonding before Hitler’s rise
original transcripts from Per Eigene,

the first gay Journal in the world
Harry Oosterhuis, PhD

Hubert Kennedy, PhD
Editors
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Homosexuality
and Male Bonding
in Pre-Nazi Germany


the first gay journal in the world
The Research on Homosexuality series:
Series Editor: John P. De Cecco, PhD, Director, Center for Research and Education in Sexuality,
San Francisco State University, and Editor, Journal of Homosexuality.
Historical Perspectives on Homosexuality, edited by Sal Licata, PhD, and Robert P. Petersen,
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Nature and Causes of Homosexuality: A Philosophic and Scientific Inquiry, edited by Norctta
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Homosexuality & Psychotherapy: A Practitioner’s Handbook of Affirmative Models, edited

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Alcoholism & Homosexuality, edited by Thomas O. Zeibold, PhD, and John Mongeon
Literary Visions of Homosexuality, edited by Stuart Kellogg
Homosexuality and Social Sex Roles, edited by Michael W. Ross, PhD
Bisexual and Homosexual Identities: Critical Theoretical Issues, edited by John P. Dc Cecco
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Bisexual and Homosexual Identities: Critical Clinical Issues, edited by John P. Dc Cecco, PhD
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Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany: The Youth Movement, the Gay Move¬
ment, and Male Bonding Before Hitler’s Rise: Original Transcripts from Dcr Eigcnc, the First
Gay Journal in the World, edited by Harry Oosterhuis, PhD, translations by Hubert Kennedy
This series is published by The Haworth Press, Inc., under the editorial auspices of the Center for
Research and Education in Sexuality, San Francisco State University, and thc Journal of Homo¬
sexuality.
Homosexuality and Mate Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany: The Youth Movement, the Gay Movement, and Male
Bonding Before Hitler's Rise: Original Transcripts from Der Eigene, the First Gay Journal in the World has
also been published as Journal of Homosexuality, Volume 22, Numbers 1/2.
© 1991 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Homosexuality and male bonding in pre-Nazi Germany: the youth movement, the gay movement, and male
bonding before Hitler’s rise: original transcripts from Der Eigene, the first gay journal in the world / edited and
introduced by Harry Oosterhuis : translations by Hubert Kennedy,
p. cm.
“Has also been published as Journal of homosexuality, volume 22, numbers 1/2, 1991.”
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-56024-164-0 (H: acid-free paper)
1. Homosexuality, Male —Germany. 2. Gay liberation movement —Germany. 3. Youth movement —
Germany. I. Oosterhuis, Harry. II. Eigene.
HQ76.2.G4H66 1991
305.38'9664—dc20
91-27666
C1P
Homosexuality
and Male Bonding
in Pre-Nazi Germany


Edited and Introduced

by Harry Oosterhuis, PhD
Translations
by Hubert Kennedy, PhD
The Haworth Press, Inc.

New York • London
Illustrations
All photographs from Der Eigene, except those showing covers

of the journal, are by Adolf Brand. They appear here courtesy of the
Collection Homodocumentatie-centrum (Amsterdam), the Interna¬
tional Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (Amsterdam), and the
private collection of Mr. Paul Snijders (The Hague).
Photograph 1 appears on p vii.
Photographs 2 through 13 appear following page 117.
392 u 6 H75445
Homosexuality and male

bonding in pre-Nazi
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Homosexuality
and Male Bonding
in Pre-Nazi Germany
original transcripts from Der Eigene,
CONTENTS
The Nameless Love xvii

John Henry Mackay
Preface xix
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Homosexual Emancipation in Germany Before 1933:
Two Traditions 1
Harry Oosterhuis
II. OPPOSING THE DOCTORS

Introduction 29
Harry Oosterhuis
The Ethical-Political Significance of Lieblingminne (1899) 35

Elisarion von Kupffer
Love (1899) 49
Peter Hamecher
Same-Sex Love, or Lieblingminne: A Word on Its Essence

and Its Significance (1903) 53
Edwin Bab
Memoir for the Friends and Contributors of the Scientific
Humanitarian Committee in the Name of the Secession
of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee (1907) 71
Benedict Friedlander
III. THE AESTHETICS OF THE MALE BODY

Introduction 85
Harry Oosterhuis
A Word in Advance to the Better Ones (1903) 93

Caesareon
The Tragedy of Being Different (1914) 95

Peter Hamecher
The Decline of Eros in the Middle Ages and Its Causes

(1903) 99
Nudity in Art and Life (1906) 109

Heinrich Pudor
Fidus (1903) 115

Hans Bethge
IV. EROS AND MALE BONDING IN SOCIETY

Introduction 119
Harry Oosterhuis
Into the Future! (1903) 127

Gotamo
The Women’s Movement and Male Culture (1903) 135

Edwin Bab
Friend-Love as a Cultural Factor: A Word to Germany’s

Male Youth (1930) 145
Adolf Brand
What We Want (1925) 155
Adolf Brand
The Significance of Youth-Love for Our Time (1902) 167

Reiffegg
On the Rearing of the Homosexually Inclined Boy (1903) 179

Lucifer
V. POLITICAL ISSUES AND THE RISE OF NAZISM

Introduction 183
Harry Oosterhuis
Homosexuality and Reaction (1911) 193

Adolf Brand
Eros in the German Youth Movement (1925) 199

St. Ch. Waldecke
Male and Female Culture: A Causal-Historical View (1906) 207

Benedict Fnedlander
Seven Propositions (1909) 219

Male Heroes and Comrade-Love in War: A Study

and Collection of Materials (1925) 221
G. P. Pfeiffer
Political Criminals: A Word About the Rohm Case (1931) 235

Adolf Brand
VI. EPILOGUE
Male Bonding and Homosexuality in German Nationalism 241
Harry Oosterhuis
Index 265
Illustrations following page 117

ABOUT THE EDITORS
Harry Oosterhuis, PhD, studied history at the University of

Groningen in the Netherlands. He was an editor of the historical
journal Groniek and the cultural journal Homologie. Supported by
the Dutch Ministry of Welfare, Public Health, and Culture, he
edited a book on fascism and homosexuality in 1985. He has pub¬
lished several articles on the history of the early gay movement in
Germany, male bonding, Nazism and male homosexuality, the his¬
tory of friendship and manliness, Christian attitudes towards homo¬
sexuality in the Netherlands, Rousseau, Thomas and Klaus Mann,
Otto Weininger, and Foucault. He was a junior assistant in the De¬
partment of Sociology of the University of Amsterdam and a grad¬
uate student in the Postdoctoral Institute of Social Sciences of the
Universities of Amsterdam and Leiden. He is presently lecturer in
gay studies at the Katholieke Universiteit, Nijmegen.
Hubert Kennedy, PhD, whose research has mostly been divided

between the history of mathematics and the history of the gay
movement, has published in several fields and several languages.
He edited and translated selected writings of the Italian mathemati¬
cian Giuseppe Peano (1973); his biographies of Peano (1980) and
the German pioneer of gay liberation Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1988)
were translated into Italian and German, respectively. His own
translations of the gay novels of the Scotch-German John Henry
Mackay (1985, 1988) have contributed to a revival of interest in
that anarchist boy-lover. He is the author of numerous scholarly
articles, ranging from bringing “out of the closet” James Mills
Peirce, first dean of the Harvard University Graduate School, to a
mathematical explanation of why no species is known that requires
the union of more than two sexes in order to reproduce. He is on the
editorial board of the Journal of Homosexuality and Paidika: The
Journal of Paedophilia.
.
Homosexuality
and Male Bonding
in Pre-Nazi Germany

original transcripts from Der Eigene,

The Nameless Love
Because still on the youthful wing

The scent of innocent beauty lies
That touched by a stranger scatters and dies —
This love must I tenderly sing.
Yet since you think it a dirty thing

Have dragged it through fear and infamy
And kept in the dark under lock and key —
This love will I freely sing.
To love’s persecuted my song I bring

And to the outcasts of our time
Since happy or not this love is mine —
This love dare I loudly sing.
John Henry Mackay, Der Eigene

Preface
The project of publishing English translations of selections from the

German journal Der Eigene was initiated by Southernwood Press (Am¬
sterdam) under the direction of Joseph Geraci and Donald Mader. It later
appeared more suitable and feasible that it become a special issue of the
Journal of Homosexuality. We wish to thank Messrs. Geraci and Mader
for graciously relinquishing the project and are especially grateful to them
for their early editorial work. Their generous cooperation insured a
smooth transition and greatly contributed to the timely completion of the
present anthology.
John De Cecco, Editor of the Journal of Homosexuality and Senior
Editor of the Haworth Press, then furnished the encouragement and sup¬
port that moved the project along. Indeed, his continued interest and con¬
cern were a mighty spur and we are deeply grateful to him.
The editor wishes to express his thanks to Gert Hekma, Jim Steakley,
and George Mosse for their comments on earlier drafts of the introduc¬
tions and for their encouragement. He is also indebted to Manfred Herzer
for placing at his disposal several sources copied in the Humboldt Univer¬
sity Library in East Berlin and in the Deutsche Biicherei in Leipzig and to
Messrs. F. Frenkel, H. Bianchi, and J. Geraci, who gave him the opportu¬
nity to consult some issues of Der Eigene. Gert Hekma was a valuable
support during the research done for this anthology: he furnished impor¬
tant bibliographical information and several sources from his private li¬
brary. Last but not least the editor is much obliged to Betsy Pier for typing
some parts of the manuscript.
Although this anthology has been a joint project of the editor and the
translator and we have constantly consulted one another, it nevertheless
allowed a simple division of labor. Harry Oosterhuis selected and edited
the articles to be included and added occasional notes to make them more
immediate to today’s reader. (His notes are distinguished from those of
the original authors by being put within square brackets [thus] and ending
with the symbol: HO.) He also wrote all introductions, including the Gen¬
eral Introduction and the Chapter Introductions, as well as the Epilogue,
which sums up the significance of the articles in this anthology. Hubert
Kennedy was responsible for translating those articles into English.
© 1991 by The Haworth Press, Inc., All rights reserved xix
XX Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany
Oosterhuis mostly wrote directly in English, but some passages were

originally in Dutch. For putting them into English, we wish to thank Les¬
lie K. Wright, whose own interest in the subject matter contributed to his
fine work.
For reasons of space and other considerations, only articles of non¬
fiction and a few illustrations were selected for this anthology. This does
not give the full flavor of Der Eigene, which also included prose fiction
and poetry and was liberally illustrated with drawings and photographs.
For today’s reader, however, the interest of that journal lies primarily in
the challenge it presented to ideas then current, both within and without
the “mainstream” homosexual emancipation movement. It is astonishing
how relevant much of this still is today, indeed, how contemporary some
(not all) of the ideas are. This is not the place for a lecture on “the uses of
history”; we simply state our hope and belief that readers will find the
present anthology both informative and entertaining.
Harry Oosterhuis
University of Amsterdam
Hubert Kennedy
San Francisco State University
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Homosexual Emancipation
in Germany Before 1933:
Two Traditions
Harry Oosterhuis
Before the Second World War, homosexual emancipation was largely a

German phenomenon. The first organization advocating the rights of ho¬
mosexuals was the Scientific Humanitarian Committee (Wissenschaftlich-
humanitdres Komitee) founded in 1897 in Berlin. The driving force be¬
hind this Committee was the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935),
who tried to change negative opinions toward homosexuality, which had
traditionally been regarded as sinful and criminal, and from the late nine¬
teenth century was increasingly seen as an illness. The main objective of
the Committee was the abolition of Paragraph 175 of the German Penal
Code, which punished with a prison term so-called “vice against na¬
ture.”1 Besides a political campaign to this end,2 the activities of the Com¬
mittee were directed to public education about homosexuality and to giv¬
ing support to individual homosexuals who had fallen victim to Paragraph
175 or to blackmail. To advertise scientific research on homosexuality it
published an annual, the Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen (1899-
1923).
For Hirschfeld, fighting the oppression of homosexuals was primarily a
matter of revealing what he considered to be the true nature of “uranism.”
Being a physician by profession he tried to prove scientifically that it was a
I
2 Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany
biological phenomenon and that the psychological makeup of urnings dif¬

fered from that of “normal men.” According to his widely publicized
theory, homosexuality was an inborn mental and physical condition of a
specific minority, the so-called “third sex,” which he described as an
intermediate human species between full-blown men and women, compa¬
rable to androgynes, hermaphrodites, and transvestites.1 —-
To validate scientifically his third sex theory, Hirschfeld referred to
embryology and Darwinism. Having pointed to the fact that the embryo is
bisexual in the first stages of its development, he maintained that its
growth reflects the evolution of mankind: ontogeny recapitulates phylog-
eny. In complete accordance with Darwin’s law of natural selection,
maleness and femininity became differentiated in the process of evolution,
resulting in the predominance of heterosexuality because of its usefulness
for procreation. Like other Zwischenstufen (intermediate stages) such as
hermaphroditism and androgyny, uranism, Hirschfeld wrote, should be
considered as a remnant of the process of evolution, comparable to other
“minor disorders in the natural development.”4
Hirschfeld’s name remains fairly well-known since his activities have
been described extensively in some histories of the German gay move¬
ment5 and in a biography.6 Moreover, in 1983, fifty years after the Nazi
destruction of his Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexology),
a Magnus Hirschfeld Society was formed in Berlin to promote the re¬
establishment of that institute, to work for sex education, and to support
the gay movement in its tactical aims.7
Less well-known than Hirschfeld is the name of Adolf Brand (1874-
1945), who edited and published the first homosexual journal, Der Ejgene
(The Self-Owner), which appeared between 1896 and 1931. Brand was
the leader of the second gay organization in Germany, the Gemeinschaft
der Eigenen (Community of Self-Owners). The attitudes of Brand and his
followers, which differed substantially from those of Hirschfeld and his
supporters, are the focus of this anthology. Essays from Der Eigene and
other writings by members of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen have been
collected and translated into English so that non-German readers can take
cognizance of their remarkable views on male homosexuality.8
ADOLF BRAND’S CAREER ASA GAY ACTIVIST, 1896-1933
The publisher Adolf Brand was one of the most controversial activists
in the gay movement. After abandoning his profession as teacher because
of his anarchistic opinions and his associations with bohemians and free¬
thinkers in fin-de-siecle Berlin, he started a bookshop and publishing firm
Harry Oosterhuis 3
and began publishing the journal Der Eigene, which appeared from 1896
until 1931 in different forms and with changing frequencies.9 The first
issues of Der Eigene were characterized by a particular kind of anarchism,
formulated fifty years earlier by the philosopher Max Stirner. Brand bor¬
rowed the title of his journal from Stirner’s main work, Der Einzige und
sein Eigentum (The Unique One and His Property),10 which strongly re¬
jected any subordination of individuality, not only to ecclesiastical and
temporal authorities, but also to morals, rationalism, and ideology.11
At the end of 1898, Der Eigene changed from an anarchist into a liter¬
ary and artistic homosexual journal. Its readers, as Brand declared, would
be men who “thirst for a revival of Greek times and Hellenic standards of/
beauty after centuries of Christian barbarism.”12 After having discontin-'
ued the publication of DerEJgene for three years due to lack of money,
Brand edited it again in 1903 as “a journal for male culture, art, and
literature.” In Der Eigene, contributions alternated between somewhat
sentimental love poems and short stories and essays on social, political,
and aesthetic aspects of Mcinner- und Jiinglingsliebe (love among men and
youths). Brand connected his defense of male eroticism to his anarchism,
which to him required complete self-determination over mind and body.
His bitter attacks were directed not only against government authorities
and Christian moralizers, but also against physicians and psychiatrists,
whose scientific research on human sexuality, Brand maintained, “took
away all beauty from eroticism.”13 In this way he took his first stand
against Hirschfeld, whom he had met in 1896, when they planned together
a political campaign for the abolition of Paragraph 175. For a short time
Brand supported Hirschfeld’s Committee, but very soon he and other writ¬
ers in Der Eigene gave voice to their dislike of sexologists such as Hirsch-
feld.
Brand’s frequent use of abusive language in his writings showed his
militant and somewhat quick-tempered character: he did not mince words.
Many times he got mixed up in public quarrels, scandals, and trials. In
1899 he caused a sensation in the German parliament by striking a mem¬
ber of the Reichstag with a dog whip. In 1903 he had to stop publishing
Der Eigene for a while because a moral purification group accused him of
distributing “lascivious writings.” Pictures of nude boys by the famous
photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden and the well-known painter Fidus
(Hugo Hoppener) were considered to be especially offensive, but also
some prose and even a reprint of Friedrich Schiller’s poem “Die Freund-
schaft’’' (Friendship) were designated as immoral. Brand was sentenced to
prison for two months on immorality charges. Even in the more liberal
Weimar Republic Brand had to put up with police searches of his house
and with trials because of his photographs of nude young men, which he
published in special magazines with titles such as Blatter fur Nacktkultur
(Journal for Nudism), Rasse und Schonheit (Race and Beauty), and
Deutsche Rasse (German Race). Sometimes he managed to defend him¬
self by arguing that his motivation was not sexual but artistic and scien¬
tific, and that showing male nudity was in the interest of “racial health
and purity.”
It comes as no surprise that Brand had to be very cautious in distributing
his journals. Subscribers were requested to sign a declaration promising
not to be shocked by the literature and pictures, especially, as Brand
couched it in guarded words, “unconcealed depictions of the human
body, which evoke shame in so many average people.”14
To gain moral and financial support for his activities, Brand and a few
of his friends in 1903 founded a society “for friendship and freedom,”
the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen. Among those who signed the constitution
of this society were some prominent men: the philosopher and biologist
Benedict Friedlander, who was also on the board of Hirschfeld’s Commit¬
tee; the renowned classical scholar Paul Brandt, who wrote a history of
sexual morals in ancient Greece under the pen name Hans Licht;15 Wilhelm
Jansen, a rich landowner and respected leader in the Wandervogel youth
movement; the then well-known poet Peter Hille; and the Dutch physician
Lucien von Romer.1* Information on most of the members of the Gemein¬
schaft is scarce, however. The names and number were known only to
Brand, who was the sole administrator. Probably there were never more
than about 1500 subscribers to Der Eigene, who by subscribing became
members of the society.17 The contributors to Der Eigene were for the
most part literary men. Some of them were talented and were known at
that time, but most of them were of minor importance and only known in
small circles.
The Gemeinschaft der Eigenen was not a political organization and
even less. Brand emphasized, a society for mere amusement. It was in fact
more a literary circle, comparable, Brand explained, to a masonic lodge or
the classical symposium; women were explicitly excluded. At the weekly
gatherings at Brand’s house in the Berlin suburb of Wilhelmshagen, po¬
ems and prose pieces were recited and issues concerning male homosexu¬
ality discussed. Beyond these private meetings, Brand sometimes orga¬
nized public lectures in the city of Berlin and also excursions into the
countryside. In the twenties he planned to establish a Licht-Luft-Sportbad
(Sun-Air-Sport Bath) in the tradition of the German nudist movement
Harry Oosterhuis 5
0Freikorperkultur), of which he and other members of the Gemeinschaft

w$re advocates. He also tried to establish an idyllic vacation resort in an
old castle or monastery. Both projects were not realized because of lack of
financial support. Members of the Gemeinschaft were entitled to support
and advice if they, as homosexuals, got into trouble, for example, by
being blackmailed. At the same time they had an opportunity to find a
lover by means of a personal ad in Der Eigene or in one of the other
journals through which Brand informed them of his activities, including
the weekly report Wochenberichte der Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, an oc¬
casional supplement Extrapost der Eigenen, and Eros.'*
In 1907 Brand’s name appeared in the national and foreign press be¬
cause of his involvement in the sensational Harden-Eulenburg scandal.19
This affair was one of many homosexual scandals around the turn of the
century in Germany in which high-ranking men, especially army officers,
were involved. In 1902 the social-democratic paper Vorwarts, trying to
pillory the Kaiser’s policy of armament, wrote that the rich steel baron F.
Alfred Krupp was indulging in homosexual vice in his countryseat on
Capri, suggesting that this proved the moral decadence of the capitalist
class. Four years later the nationalist journalist Maximilian Harden started
a campaign against two close friends and political advisors of Kaiser
Wilhelm II, Prince Philipp zu Eulenburg-Hertefeld and Count Kuno von
Moltke. These two noblemen were the center of the so-called “Fieben-
berg Circle,” whose members cultivated romantic friendships and in
which Wilhelm II often was a guest.20 In one of his articles in his weekly
Die Zukunft Harden hinted that they were homosexuals. Fike that of
Vorwarts, Harden’s motivation was political —his aim was to obstruct the
influence of the pro-French Fiebenberg Circle on the Kaiser in foreign
policy— but when Moltke charged Harden with slander, judicial and pub¬
lic attention was directed to the alleged homosexuality of the two noble¬
men. Brand meddled in the affair by writing a pamphlet in which he main¬
tained that the prime minister, Bernhard von Billow, who resented
Eulenburg’s pacifist influence on the Kaiser, was the instigator of Harden’s
accusations,21 an assertion which was not without truth. Moreover, Brand
charged Biilow with hypocrisy, because, he asserted, the Reichskanzler
himself was having a homosexual relationship with one of his assistants.
Biilow sued Brand for libel; Brand was convicted by the court and sen¬
tenced to prison for a term of eighteen months. He was in fact the only one
who was actually imprisoned as a result of the scandal and this strength¬
ened his role as a martyr for the cause of homosexual emancipation.
Brand’s behavior can be explained in two ways. First, he admired
Eulenburg and wanted to defend him; during some of the trials the prince
declared that he had “deep bonds with men” and considered his capacity
for friendship as “one of the finest German virtues.”22 Second and more
important, Brand, as some other gay activists somewhat naively believed,
was convinced that the disclosure of homosexual relationships among
high-ranking men would not only make people aware of class injustice,23
but would also eventually bring about the abolition of Paragraph 175. He
had opted for this strategy of “the path over corpses” a few years earlier
by publishing a pamphlet in which he revealed that the leading politician
of the Catholic Center Party, Kaplan Dasbach, was sexually attracted to
males.24 Brand expected Hirschfeld and his Committee to support him in
this policy, but they repudiated it. Indeed, they criticized him for embark¬
ing on such an extremist course.25 Brand never forgave Hirschfeld for
withholding support and to a certain extent even held him responsible for
his imprisonment. While Hirschfeld had supported Harden in one of the
trials by testifying as an expert witness and stating that Moltke was homo¬
sexual in a psychological sense, he would not do the same thing for Brand
in his case against Biilow.
After having served his prison sentence Brand immediately distributed
another brochure in which Hirschfeld was accused of having played an
evil part in the “conspiracy” against Eulenburg.26 Hirschfeld, the bro¬
chure claimed, had betrayed the homosexual movement by frustrating a
plan to embarrass the police authorities and the government by means of a
massive public admission of homosexuality by prominent men, thus mak¬
ing Paragraph 175 unenforceable.27
After the First World War Brand and Hirschfeld settled their differences
for some time./Both welcomed the democratic Weimar Republic and in an
atmosphere of optimism. Brand cooperated with the leaders of the Com¬
mittee to prepare a new campaign for the abolition of Paragraph 175. The
circulation and frequency of Der Eigene were greater than ever28 and
Brand’s fiftieth birthday was celebrated in Hirschfeld’s Institut fur Sex-
ualwissenschaft, on which occasion Hirschfeld praised, not without a
touch of irony, Brand’s fighting spirit. However, their reconciliation did
not last: in 1925 he published a small book in which Ewald Tscheck, a
regular contributor to Der Eigene in the twenties, explained that the Scien¬
tific Humanitarian Committee should be fought, since its activities were
“harmful to the German people.”29 The same Tscheck ridiculed Hirsch¬
feld and his assistants in Brand’s satirical magazine Die Tante (The
Fairy).1(1 Also in Der Eigene several ‘comic’ pieces appeared in which
‘Dr. Feldhirsch’ was held up to derision.
Harry Oosterhuis 7
At the end of the twenties Brand had become disillusioned; Weimar

democracy and even the liberties of Berlin had disappointed him. Several
times he had advised the readers of Der Eigene to vote for the Social
Democrats, but when they were in the government they did not press on
with the abolition of Paragraph 175. In 1929 Brand announced in Der
Eigene that legal reform had become a minor goal of his movement, since
the eros that he believed in was above the “coarse sensuality” forbidden
by Paragraph 175. He also complained that most homosexuals were not
interested in political struggles and preferred to amuse themselves in the
thriving Berlin subculture.11 Because of its intellectual tone-Brand liked
to present himself as the leading man of a homosexual elite —the number
of readers of Der Eigene remained rather small in comparison to mass-
circulation periodicals such as the Blatter fur Menschenrecht (Journal for
Human Rights), Das Freundschaftsblatt (Friendship Journal), and Der
Insel (The Island) published by Friedrich Radszuweit who headed a homo¬
sexual organization counting a membership of some thousands. Brand
considered Radszuweit a vulgar man whose writings were in bad taste.12
The rise of National Socialism intensified Brand’s pessimism. In the
early thirties he announced that he would write his memoirs, but Hitler’s
rise to power prevented their publication and put an end to his activities.
Soon after Hitler’s nomination as prime minister the Gemeinschaft der
Eigenen and its writings were banned. Nazi storm troopers raided Brand’s
house five times and seized his journals, books, and photos.11 A small part
of his works was saved by his assistant, Karl Meier, who fled to Switzer¬
land where he started Der Kreis, which in the forties and fifties was the
most important European gay journal. Although he was well-known as a
gay activist. Brand was not arrested by the Nazis: apart from not being
Jewish, as were Hirschfeld and Kurt Hiller (another important leader of
the Committee), Brand was probably not considered a leftist. I have found
one indication that he was connected to a Nazi who might have protected
him,14 but above all his marriage appears to have been his safeguard. His
erotic attraction to young men had not prevented him from taking a nurse
as his wife. Their lives were never threatened by the Nazi regime, and it is
likely that they would have survived the war were it not for the American
bombardment which killed them at home in 1945.
TWO TRADITIONS
The historical significance of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen was mainly

ideological and is, in my opinion, closely connected to the aversion its
spokesmen shared to contemporary medical theories on male homosexual-
ity, including the emancipatory one of Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld’s preoccu¬

pation with proving scientifically that homosexuality was a biological
phenomenon and that the psychological makeup of urnings differed from
that of “normal men” linked him with contemporary psychiatrists. It was
exactly this supposed continuity between medical explanations of homo¬
sexuality and Hirschfeld’s biological approach that was the bone of con¬
tention for Adolf Brand and the other authors in Der Eigene. They criti¬
cized some very essential presuppositions that have determined the
conceptualization of homosexuality from the late nineteenth century until
the present day.
In many ways the European and American gay movements after the
Second World War took up the cause of Hirschfeld’s Committee: the
striving of a minority for equal rights. The different perspective put for¬
ward by the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, stressing the cultural importance
of homoeroticism among men in general, was rooted in German history:
the tradition of romantic friendship between males in the 18th and 19th
centuries. The difference and competition between Brand’s Gemeinschaft
and Hirschfeld’s Committee can be explained historically by the fact that
in the second half of the 19th century this cultural tradition of friendship
was superseded by medical theories about same-sex love. Before turning
to the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen itself, I will give a condensed overview
of these historical developments which were so important for its position
in the homosexual movement and its views on male homosexuality.
ROMANTIC FRIENDSHIP IN GERMANY 1750-1850 ,

The period 1750-1850 in Germany has been referred to by literary and
cultural historians as the “century of friendship.” In certain 18th century
religious and literary circles, friendship was held in high esteem as a bond
of intimate feelings. In such circles, the personal character of friendship
was closely related to an awareness of the gulf which existed between
one’s true self and the role one played in society. In anti-rationalist move¬
ments such as pietism and Sturm und Drang, friendship was seen as the
region in which the individual was able to evolve par excellence in an
atmosphere of privacy and sincerity. This link with emotion was distin¬
guished not merely from the older customs, whereby friendship was much
rather rooted in social intercourse, but also from the Enlightenment con¬
cept, according to which friendship was an expression of social virtue and
served the general well-being.35 In pietism, the Protestant school of thought
which had many followers in Germany and which centered around one’s
personal relationship with God and introspection, it was one’s inner reli-
Harry Oosterhuis 9
gious feeling that was of prime importance. This type of friendship was
based on a bond between kindred spirits and provided the exclusive atmo¬
sphere in which one could give expression to one’s deepest and most
personal emotion.
In its secular form, this cult of friendship reached its zenith in the liter¬
ary Sturm und Drang movement and in Romanticism. In the idea of
friendship formulated around 1800 by the philosophers Friedrich Schleier-
macher and Wilhelm von Humboldt, what mattered was not so much a
deepening of faith, as Bildung, the realization of the “unique self.”*’ In
such an ideal, true friendship was reserved for an intellectual elite consist¬
ing principally of men. Women, it was generally argued, would not be
able to fulfill the high ideals, since for them, friendship with males would
be merely an introduction to a sexual relationship, whereas among men it
was an end in itself. Referring to Plato, friendship between men was often
seen as superior to the excited, unpredictable love relationships between
men and women.
Friendship between men was, nevertheless, seen as a form of love
which could be passionate and sensual. The typically German expression
Freundesliebe (love between friends) originates fpbrfftfre Sturm und Drang
period, when in many university towns literary^Soaeties of Friends”
were founded in which men wrote each other passidiTate letters, dedicated
real love poems to one another, embraced and kissed each other warmly
and shed many tears when they had to take leave of one another or met
again after a long absence. Friendship and love are shoots from the same
stem, according to the influential poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, who
made friendship one of the main themes of his poetry. The terms the
philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and the novelist Jean Paul used
around the year 1800 to give expression to their affection for each other
were not exceptional in these circles. “My dear Heinrich, do tell me once
again when the opportunity occurs that you love me. Like the young girl I
want to hear that repeated, if not trillions then millions of times,” wrote
Jean Paul,37 while in a letter of Jacobi’s one can read, “I feel that exactly
the same as you, that a friend should love his friend as the woman loves
the man, the lover the loved one.”38
To many of the Romantics, love between men and women and friend¬
ship between men were on one and the same level. The philosopher Schle-
gel said that friendship in love and love in friendship made both perfect. In
(heterosexual) romantic love and in friendship too the ideal was spiritual
love, but this did not mean that the Romantics rejected sensuality-they
adopted a positive attitude toward it insofar as it went hand in hand with a
spiritual union. Seen the other way around, they proceeded from the idea
that the ideal emotional and intellectual relationship went hand in hand
with physical sensations. The author Heinrich von Kleist, who confided to
a friend, “You have restored the age of the Greeks in my heart. I could
have slept with you, dearest boy,”19 was not the only one to bear witness
to the fact that friendship was sensual. In 1785 Jean Paul expressed the
view that “all our feelings must retain something physical, and the Greek
fire of friendship would be more frequent among us, if it were still to feed
itself on physical beauty.”40 Before this, the philosopher and theologian
Johann Georg Hamann had already declared that physical contact was a
natural expression of friendship. Hamann, who had criticized the hegem¬
ony of Reason in the Enlightenment and who held the opinion that thought
and feeling were indivisible, wrote in his work Sokratische Denkwiir-
digkeiten (Socratic Memoirs, 1759), in which he treated the subject of
Greek paederasty: “One cannot feel any vital friendship without sensual¬
ity, and a metaphysical love possibly does more harm to the nerves than
an animal love does to flesh and blood.”41 The renewed interest in Greek
culture and art in the 18th century contributed in no small measure to the
appreciation of the physical side of male friendship. According to the art
historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Greek sculpture, which strongly
concentrated on male beauty, was unsurpassable and under this influence
various writers and poets (including Goethe, Herder, Schiller, and
Holderlin) expressed more or less positive views about Greek male love and
a pedagogical Eros.42
The Platonic model, by which passionate friendships between men
were justified until the middle of the 19th century, did indeed emphasize
the importance of intellectual sympathy and similar ideas about morals,
but it was at the same time a confirmation of sensuality. Appreciation of
the spiritual character of friendship did not exclude passion as it did later
on. By calling friendship a “bond between kindred spirits,” the emo¬
tional element was, on the contrary, emphasized. Friedrich Schiller, who
associated male friendship with sublime ethical ideas and valor, wrote,
with reference to his sketch for the theatrical piece Die Malteser (a play
about the relationship between two knights), that this should be “utterly
beautiful, but also real passion, with all its symptoms,” or “true sexual
love” which found its expression in “tender care, recognizable by raging
jealousy, by sensual adoration of the body, by other sensual symptoms.”41
Although some literary men were criticized from time to time for being
too sentimental or for allowing themselves to be carried away by the “ar¬
dor” of friendship at the expense of morals, friendship was able to be
Harry Oosterhuis 11
sensual until far into the 19th century without this leading to one’s being
suspected of sodomy. The difference between sensual friendship and sod¬
omite lust was apparently still so great in the middle of the 19th century
that the composer Richard Wagner, speaking of his friendship with Franz
Liszt, could say quite unconcernedly that he could not imagine any friend¬
ship without love. In his Kunstwerk der Zukunft (1850), about Greek art,
he wrote that friendship was sensual because it came from sensitivity to
physical beauty.44 It was only as the 19th century progressed that an open-
mindedness of this kind concerning erotically-tinted friendship even, for
example, in Friedrich Nietzsche’s work, gave way to a certain distrust.
The way in which the author Gottfried Keller expressed himself in 1849
on the subject of friendship between men is typical of the growing reserve
concerning its intimate nature: “I must really frankly express that friend¬
ship does not occupy any great place in my life. . . . There may have been
a time when the great passionate and ideal friendships were justified, but I
don’t believe they are any longer. It seems to me that at least among men
it is becoming more and more improper for two to want something so very
special and exquisite between them; it is not social and it is impolitic. . . .
In relations with women it is rather different.”45
From the middle of the 19th century onwards it was often said that
friendship could not flourish in a society in which economic interests had
more and more influence. The sociologist Georg Simmel, for example,
stated at the beginning of this century that “totaT”7riendship which took
hold of the entire personality was difficult to realize as a result of the
increasing functional differentiation of society. Although others pointed
to the importance of intimate friendship in the anonymous society (Gesell-
schaft) as one of the social links where partnership (Gemeinschaft) was
still possible, emotional security was becoming more exclusively associ¬
ated with the family. Independent male and female relationships suffered
as a result of the increased social importance attributed to man-woman
relationships and the family.46 In bourgeois circles, emotion was confined
more and more to marriage and the family at the expense of firm emo¬
tional relationships outside the family.
Increasing medical interest in homosexuality from 1870 on made no
small contribution to a situation in which emotional friendships soon gave
rise to objections. During the 18th century and the Romantic period, close
relationships between men were able to remain largely “unsullied,” since
“sex” was primarily reproduction of the species. The sphere of sex was
fairly clearly delineated. It was not, moreover, directly related to emo¬
tional life. The Romantics’ ideal of love represented a firm step towards
linking sexuality and affection, but it was the evolution of scientific

knowledge about sexuality that insinuated sex into areas previously not
regarded as sexual.47
THE MEDICALIZA TION OF HOMOSEXUALITY

IN GERMANY 1840-1900 ,
In historical studies today on (male) homosexuality it is almost com¬
monplace to point to the difference between sodomy and homosexuality.
Until far into the 19th century “sodomy” referred to certain sexual acts,
especially anal intercourse, of which anyone, in theory, was regarded as
being capable. The terms “homosexuality” and “uranism,” which came
into fashion from 1870 on, were used to indicate the disposition of a
minority. Homosexual acts were no longer regarded as simply sin and
crime, as a temporary deviation from the norm, but as a state of being.48
Already in the forties and fifties of the 19th century some German phy¬
sicians who acted as expert witnesses for law courts, where they were
required to prove acts of sodomy, devoted studies to the character and the
emotional life of sodomites. At the beginning of the 19th century, various
medical authorities assumed that, as with onanism, committing “unnatu¬
ral acts” could lead to morbid deviation or even to insanity. Around the
middle of the century the connection between genitals and cranium was
reversed in medical analyses. Doctors shifted the focus from the anus of
the person violated and the penis of the violator to the physiology and the
psyche of the wrongdoer. His personal history, motivations, and mental
structure were to play a role in the search for explanation. Psychiatrists
began to view “unnatural lewdness” as a symptom of “moral insanity”
(insania moralis).
It was the psychiatrist Hermann Kaan who first employed the term psy-
chopathia sexualis in 1844. Although Kaan was of the opinion that this
deviation was acquired, he viewed the morbid inclination as an aspect of
personality. Eight years later the forensic medical authority Johann
Ludwig Casper was the first in Germany to assert that a preference for
members of the same sex was sometimes inborn. This love, which in¬
volved a “hermaphroditism of the soul,” did not require anal penetration,
was often confined to embraces and mutual masturbation, according to
Casper, and could be kept within an entirely non-sexual sphere. In so
doing Casper was one of the first physicians to distinguish between sexual
act and disposition. For him the concepts of sodomy and paederasty were
to be replaced by new notions. In his approach Casper influenced the
lawyer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895), who introduced the concept
Harry Oosterhuis 13
“urning.”41' In a dozen brochures, published between 1864 and 1879,

Ulrichs argued that the male homosexual was characterized by a
Seelenwanderung, a woman’s soul in a man’s body.50 The urning joined a
man’s physical frame with a woman’s sexual urges and psyche, and was
therefore not completely a man. Ulrichs explicitly defended homosexual
acts, provided they were in harmony with the nature of the parties con¬
cerned. In that case, male-male love was not unnatural because the urning
loved in accordance with his immutable inborn nature. Since the urning
was not a real man, he could not be judged by the standards for a “dion-
ing,” the man who desires a woman, and laws which made “unnatural
acts” punishable should not be enforced against him.
Ulrichs’s plea for enlightenment and judicial reform found little support
among the majority of his colleagues. Beginning in 1860, after a period of
impunity in some states, “unnatural lewdness” was made punishable in
more and more German states. From 1871, Paragraph 143 of the Prussian
legal code was enforced throughout the German empire as Paragraph 175.
Ulrichs was not even afforded the opportunity to fully present his views at
the 1867 Congress of German Jurists in Munich. His audience drove him
from the speaker’s rostrum. Receptivity to Ulrichs’s ideas was to come
from elsewhere. The German-Hungarian writer Karoly Maria Kertbeny
(Karl Maria Benkert), who introduced the word homosexuality, wrote an
anonymous open letter to the Prussian Minister of Justice in 1869. Echo¬
ing Ulrichs he argued for the abolition of Paragraph 143 on the grounds
that it was a matter concerning an inborn inclination.
Especially psychiatrists and neurologists occupied with same-sex love
adopted Ulrichs’s idea of the anima muliebris in corpore virili (woman’s
soul in a man’s body). The first psychiatric study of homosexuality to
appear in Germany was the article “Die contrare Sexualempfindung,”
published in 1869 in a medical journal.51 Written under the influence of
Ulrichs, its author, Carl von Westphal, viewed the “contrary sexual ten¬
dency” as an inborn instinct that corresponded to a certain effeminacy in a
male. Since the tendency was pathological, according to Westphal, he
preferred medical treatment to legal prosecution. Westphal’s approach
typified the increasing involvement of physicians with same-sex love in
the second half of the nineteenth century. Ulrichs’s writings proved a
source of inspiration for both Westphal and the well-known psychiatrist
Richard von Krafft-Ebing, whose much read principle work Psychopathia
sexualis (1886), in which deviant sexual behavior, i.e., virtually all non-
procreative sexuality, was named and classified, contributed to the result
that homosexuality could be recognized and discussed.52
Along with other physicians, Krafft-Ebing expressed himself in favor

of the abolition of Paragraph 175. He was one of the first to sign the
petition of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which made this de¬
mand of the authorities. According to him, the “contrary sexual ten¬
dency” was a deviation caused by natural laws and, as with other defor¬
mations and disorders, called not for punishment or contempt, but
compassion. Krafft-Ebing was influenced by degenerationist thinking and
viewed homosexuality as one of the deviations of normal evolution. Al¬
though he had first held the opinion that homosexuality was caused either
by some congenital burden or by circumstances arising during puberty,
such as masturbation or seduction, under Hirschfeld’s influence he later
came to the conclusion that homosexuality was inborrt^-As far as their
personality was concerned, homosexuals were to be sharply distinguished
from “normal” individuals: their sexuality awakened sooner, their libido
and their emotionality were stronger, they were feminine in sentiment and
character, they often came from a neurotic family background, exhibited a
disposition for neurasthenia and epilepsy, and had a monomaniacal inter¬
est in art.
With Krafft-Ebing the so-called medicalization of homosexuality was
settled. By the end of the nineteenth century, when Berlin had become an
important center for sexology,” most of the leading German sexologists,
e.g., Iwan Bloch, Albert Moll, and Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, were in
agreement on the distinction between act and disposition. One looked at
the person behind the same-sex acts. The scientists focused attention on
feelings, preferences, habits, sexual experiences, dreams, fantasies, mem¬
ories, etc. Various types of behavior, such as effeminacy, were interpreted
as homosexual.
The contention that medical theories brought about the construction of
the homosexual category and identity does not mean that these were in¬
vented from nothing. Historical research shows that from at least the 19th
century there were homosexual subcultures in which men participated
with some characteristics of a homosexual identity. Homosexual activity
was sometimes explained as behavior which was part of being ‘different,’
of a sinful orientation, effeminate proclivities, or a life-style.54 The thesis
of the medical construction of homosexuality refers to the fact that at the
end of the 19th century new meanings were attached to such behavior,
which resulted in the idea that it was a symptom of a biological or psycho¬
logical state of being. These new meanings were developed in the context
of existing social practices and with the collaboration of homosexuals
themselves, who often furnished psychiatrists with the life stories and
sexual experiences on which medical explanations were grounded.55
Harry Oosterhuis 15
The development of a homosexual subculture in the second half of the

nineteenth century, especially in Berlin,56 should be noted together with
the conceptual formation in medical science. Bordellos, private clubs, and
friendship circles were apparently already in existence. The changes in
urban infrastructure as a consequence of industrialization and urbaniza¬
tion, which soared after the unification of Germany, increased the number
of opportunities for anonymous meetings. Men who carried on with other
men found each other in parks, cafes, theatres, public toilets, train sta¬
tions, bath houses, swimming pools, and on the street. This may well
have contributed to an early form of group consciousness.
On the other hand, the wide circulation of medical notions, which su¬
perseded other meanings, like those of sin, life-style, or romantic friend¬
ship, had consequences for the way men interpreted their homosexual
feelings and their behavior^loreover, the supposition that homosexuality
was an individual characteristic for an identifiable group of people formed
the historical condition for the creation of the homosexual emancipation
movement. The greater ability to be recognized and discussed facilitated
both medical treatment and other forms of restraint and repression, as well
as self-awareness, organization, and emancipation. At the beginning of
this century Hirschfeld’s third sex theory gained wider influence in scien¬
tific and public discussions concerning homosexuality. His criticism of
thinking of same-sex love in terms of illness and degeneration addressed
only value judgments, and not the presuppositions underlying this way of
thinking. Hirschfeld viewed uranism as a biological and psychic given,
which by means of scientific experimentation could be proven, described,
and explained. In his role as scientist, doctor, and counselor, he had his
patients and clients answer an extensive “psycho-biological” question¬
naire. Just like other physicians he wanted to know all about their physical
and mental characteristics, their youth, their ancestry and family back¬
ground, their dreams, fantasies, and preferences, the pitch of their voice,
the sensitivity of their skin, and so on.57
FRIENDSHIP AND HOMOSEXUALITY:

A DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIP
What was new in the medical concept was that a mental constitution
was involved. The modern concept of homosexuality contains two aspects
which were formerly seen as distinct until deep into the 19th century: the
sexual act of sodomy and the feeling of deep friendship. The reader of the
medico-sexologist treatises by Westphal, Krafft-Ebing, Moll, Schrenck-
Notzing, and Hirschfeld was overwhelmed by an avalanche of symptoms
which could be indications of homosexuality.5* This trend was reinforced

still further by Freud with concepts like latent and repressed homosexual¬
ity. Not merely the body but also the emotional makeup and certain ex¬
pressions of feeling were “sexualized.” The medico-psychological con¬
struction of homosexuality could be seen as an assemblage of emotions,
longings, and behavior which had previously existed independently of one
another. What had formerly been seen simply as expressions of true
friendship could now have sexual significance.
A study in 1891 of the friendship between Goethe and Schiller, in
which the author asked himself anxiously to what extent the lack of a clear
distinction between love and friendship brought with it moral decline, is
symptomatic of the mixed feelings with which close relationships between
men were seen at the end of the 19th century.59 According to this author,
male friendship in ancient Greece had, after all, under the influence of
figures like Plato and Socrates, degenerated into paederasty. Although
romantic friendship on the German model was, he continued, on an alto¬
gether higher plane than the Greek “pollution” and fulfilled an important
cultural function, expressions of friendship from that “effeminate” pe¬
riod had something ridiculous and objectionable about them. True
enough, he still saw an important role left for male friendship to play in
society, but its range should be restricted so that no harm was done to the
institution of marriage. Whereas the Greeks used the same word for love
and friendship, he advocated a division between the two concepts.
This literary historian was not the only one who aspired to protect
friendship from the stain of immorality. This became problematical, how¬
ever, around the turn of the century, in view of the great interest taken in
love between persons of the same sex. Between 1898 and 1908 in Ger¬
many about one thousand publications appeared on the subject, and activ¬
ities of the movement for homosexual emancipation and a number of ho¬
mosexual scandals attracted a lively interest from the press. Moreover, in
the discussion concerning the nature, scope, and explanation of male ho¬
mosexuality it was repeatedly associated with friendship.
In the first decades of this century sexologists, literary historians, peda¬
gogues, youth leaders, and gay activists debated the question of the extent
to which friendship between males in general was sexual.60 In this debate
the homosexual movement was divided: whereas the Gemeinschaft der
Eigenen endeavored to justify homosexuality by pointing to the cultural
functions of intimate friendships between adult men as well as between
older men and youths in general, Hirschfeld stressed the distinction be¬
tween friendships of heterosexual men and homosexual, or erotic, same-
Harry Oosterhuis 17
sex relations. A clear distinction was necessary, in Hirschfeld’s view, to

avoid scaring away potential heterosexual allies of the homosexual move¬
ment. Heterosexual men, wrote a close collaborator of Hirschfeld in the
Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen, rightly feared that their feelings of
friendship would be regarded as the same as the sexual passion of homo¬
sexuals.61 In the samc Jahrbuch Hirschfeld had a heterosexual man make a
contribution as a counterweight to the “homosexual propaganda for friend¬
ship” by the Gemeinschaft derEigenen and others: “As a student, I lived
for three years inseparable from my dear, old friend. ... In those days we
had not the slightest notion that any suspicion could stain such a relation¬
ship. . . . The assumption that true, devoted friendship between two of the
same sex, that ideal, which is rightly valued so highly . . . that friendship
must always have a ‘sexual emphasis,’ this assumption I must therefore
reject out of my own experience and feelings as false. It seems to me that
the champions of ‘love of boys’ have, by generalizing their own anoma¬
lous sentiments, themselves created the mistrust with which youthful
friendships are now, unfortunately, regarded. ... In my youth we knew
nothing of this. . . . One spoke of such things as though they were remote
matters, which went on somewhere abroad or in far-off days, as one
speaks of cannibalism: such things do happen, but it doesn’t concern any
of us, thank God. If this quiet trust is to return to the benefit of our sons,
whom we heartily wish a similar innocence in their relations with their
friends, then the propaganda of ‘the others’ in word and deed must, above
all, be brought to a halt.”62
Despite this, Hirschfeld himself did not escape accusations that he
brought friendship into discredit. At the request of the journalist,
Maximilian Harden, who, for political reasons, had accused two of the
emperor’s confidants. Count von Moltke and Prince Philipp zu Eulen-
burg, of homosexuality, Hirschfeld acted as an expert witness in 1907 in
the case which Moltke had brought against Harden for slander. Hirschfeld
declared that Moltke preferred friendship with men to an intimate relation¬
ship with a woman, because he was “mentally a homosexual.” During a
second lawsuit, in which both Moltke and Eulenburg declared under oath
that they were not homosexual, Eulenburg used the opportunity to attack
Hirschfeld: “I have been an enthusiastic friend in my youth and am proud
of it. But if I had known that twenty-five years later a man would think out
a system, according to which every friendship is suspect of ‘dirty’ sex
acts, I would not have dared to look out for friends. One of the finest
German virtues is the capacity for friendship. And I had deep bonds with
men, to whom I wrote enthusiastic letters. I don’t regret this at all. We
know that our great heroes, like Goethe and others, corresponded with
their friends in terms of endearments.”63 Eulenburg’s defense of “pure”
friendship was successful to the extent that Hirschfeld withdrew his earlier
declaration: Moltke was not really a homosexual, he said, deep friend¬
ships could in some cases be difficult, as in Goethe’s days, to distinguish
from love, but that did not necessarily indicate homosexuality.64
Although in his publications Hirschfeld repeatedly stated that there
were “objective criteria” whereby friendship could be distinguished from
uranism, he, too, contributed to a certain confusion via his definition of
homosexuality. It was not the act itself that was the decisive criterion, but
the presence (or absence) of a homosexual constitution. If he could not
explain sexual contact between men by a sexual passion which had its
source in the brain, then one could speak of pseudo-homosexuality or an
expression of friendship. “It is often just as difficult to distinguish sexual
acts between people of the same sex with psychical homosexuality and
those without, as it is to distinguish psychic homosexuality from friend¬
ship. One can only speak of genuine homosexuality there where the physi¬
cal is an expression of the spiritual.”65
Sexologists, such as Moll, Bloch, and Placzek also endeavored to indi¬
cate what the difference was between friendship and homosexuality, but
their writings were at least as equivocal as Hirschfeld’s. They shared his
point of departure, that friendship was principally spiritual, whereas love
relationships would inevitably lead to “the stimulation of sexual pas¬
sion.” This, however, was undermined by another common supposition,
namely, that sexual behavior and the sexual constitution did not necessar¬
ily have to go together. Moll, for instance, recognized that several forms
of sensuality between men, such as sensitivity to physical beauty and the
urge to embrace and kiss, did not have to point to “genuine” homosexual¬
ity, but could be expressions of deep friendship.66 Bloch, who in his stan¬
dard work Das Sexualleben unserer Zeit in seinen Beziehungen zur mo-
dernen Kultur (Sexual Life in Our Time and Its Relations to Modern
Culture, 1907) stated that love ought to be possible between men without
their being suspected of homosexuality, was at the same time of the opin¬
ion that there was a physical element in friendship. Like Moll and Hirsch¬
feld, he distinguished friendship from so-called “genuine” homosexual¬
ity, which was rooted in the nature of the personality, but not from other
relations and situations in which people of the same sex mixed: the
pseudo-homosexuality in social organizations where men met together,
among bisexuals and adolescent boys, and that of intimate friends. The
romantic cult of friendship around the year 1800 was connected, accord-
Harry Oosterhuis 19
ing to Bloch, with bisexuality, then widespread. Interpretations of this

nature were fiercely attacked by the psychiatrist Siegfried Placzek in his
often reprinted book Freundschaft und Sexualitdt (Friendship and Sexual¬
ity, 1919). In this book a large number of sexologists, psycho-analysts
especially, were criticized because they were so quick to discern sexual
urges in romantic friendships, but at the same time Placzek admitted that it
was sometimes difficult to say what the difference was between friendship
and sexual love. Further medical research would have to throw light on
the matter. However, after the First World War the most important discus¬
sion about friendship was to be carried on in political rather than in med¬
ico-sexological circles.
Bloch and Placzek were not the only ones who regretted the decline of
romantic friendship. About the time of the First World War numbers of
literary-historical and cultural-philosophical studies appeared about
friendship,67 which had existed in the past but could hardly be achieved
any more in modern society. Friendship, according to the view then gen¬
erally held, had degenerated to a rather superficial sympathy based on
shared interests or activities. Moreover, as a result of the growing influ¬
ence of nationalism, a comradeship determined by collective aims had
taken the place of intimate personal friendships.
I will go further into the political history of friendship in Germany at
the end of this book. It is now time to consider the position of the Gemein-
schaft der Eigenen vis-a-vis the historical developments I have described
in this introduction. The “medicalization” of homosexuality and its rela¬
tion to friendship between men are the recurring themes of the essays from
Der Eigene which I selected and Hubert Kennedy translated from German
into English for this anthology. The reader should be aware that my selec¬
tion is biased in a certain way and does not represent the whole range of
contributions to Der Eigene. Brand’s journal was for a large part devoted
to literature and the visual arts. Most of the short stories and poems were
not very outstanding and are, according to literary standards, of minor
importance, which does not alter the fact that literature could be important
for the development of a homosexual self-consciousness.66
The emphasis in this anthology is on the ideological and political issues
which were raised by some members of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen.
Historically these are, in my view, more interesting than the artistic con¬
tributions; some of the questions discussed in Der Eigene could even be
important for present-day debates on homosexuality. My interest in the
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen was inspired by Michel Foucault’s speculations
on the history of (homo)sexuality. After reading his work, especially the
introduction to his history of sexuality. La volonte de savoir, published in

1976, the idea occurred to me that the writings of members of the Gemein-
schaft der Eigenen could be considered as resistance to the labelling and
control which was connected with the medical interference with homosex¬
uality. The second suggestion I took from Foucault’s work is that culture
and not nature is of central importance in historical research into (homo¬
sexuality). Not only the attitude of people towards sexual behavior, but
also the meaning and concept of sexuality itself are subject to continual
variation and changeVThe widely divergent and ever changing meanings
which are attached to Sexual” thoughts and behavior are determined not
so much by biological or “natural” fact, but by cultural and political
codes, symbols, and meanings. Recent studies have raised the idea that
homosexuality, especially the gay identity, is a social and historical con¬
struct.'’9 I hope that the writings in this anthology can give some substance
to these theoretical considerations.
I have chosen to present my selections from DerEigene in four separate
chapters around different themes and each chapter with an explanatory
introduction. This arrangement is somewhat artificial, because several
topics overlap and some articles could be placed in more than one chapter.
Some repetition and overlap of similar arguments by different authors
seems to be inevitable in an anthology of this type.
For Chapter II, “Opposing the Doctors,” I selected four contributions
of members of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen who were very critical of the
medical theories on homosexuality, including that of Hirschfeld. Chapters
III and IV deal with the aesthetic, cultural, and social scope of same-sex
love and male bonding that, according to the authors of Der Eigene, was a
more promising way of emancipating homosexuality than Hirschfeld’s re¬
liance on medical science and political lobbying. Chapter V throws light
on the political attitudes of some of the members of the Gemeinschaft der
Eigenen. As the reader will notice, these are rather controversial. Some
contributions to DerEigene show that homosexuals need not always be on
the liberal or left side of the political spectrum. On the contrary, in Ger¬
many before the Second World War some homosexual men seem to have
opted for extreme nationalism as a way to realize their ideas on male
bonding. At the end of this anthology I will evaluate this political stand
and discuss it from a historical perspective, including the Nazi policy
toward homosexuality and male bonding.
To be clear, the publication of some racist, antifeminist, and undemo¬
cratic views of some authors of DerEigene does not, of course, mean that
the editor endorses these views in any way. I have decided to include
Harry Oosterhuis 21
them, because as a historian I think it would be wrong to leave them out:

there is no need to distort the past and idealize a group like the Gemein-
schaft derEigenen. The main purpose of this English anthology is histori¬
cal insight into a part of the gay past which has so long been neglected and
almost forgotten. By letting some members of this group speak for them¬
selves, I leave it to the reader to differentiate the ideas which are still
worthy of consideration from those that are objectionable.
NOTES
1. The history of Paragraph 175 has been described by H. Sievert, Das Ano-
male Bestrafen. Homosexuality, Strafrecht und Schwulenbewegung im Kaiser-
reich und in der Weimarer Republik (Hamburg, 1984).
2. To this end a petition was drafted and signed by high-ranking personali¬
ties, and repeatedly presented (without result) to the Reichstag. See Jahrbuch fur
sexuelle Zwischenstufen 1 (1899): 239-41.
3. M. Hirschfeld, “Die objektive Diagnose der Homosexualitat,” Jahrbuch
fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen 1 (1899): 4-35; idem, Derumische Mensch (Leipzig,
1903); idem. Was soil das Volk vom dritten Geschlecht wissen? Eine
Aufklarungsschrift iiber gleichgeschlechtlich (homosexuell) empfindende Men-
schen (Leipzig, 1901); idem, “Die Zwischenstufen-‘Theorie’, ” Sexual-Pro-
bleme. Zeitschrift fiir Sexualwissenschaft und Sexualpolitik, 1910, no. 2, pp. 1 lb-
36.
4. M. Hirschfeld [Th. Ramien], Sappho und Sokrates, oder wie erklart sich
die Liebe der Manner und Frauen zu Personen des eigenen Geschlechtsl (Leip¬
zig, 1896), p. 17; idem. Die Homosexualitat des Mannes und des Weibes (Berlin,
1914), p. 391.
5. For instance, J. D. Steakley, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in
Germany (New York, 1975); M. Bolle, ed., Eldorado. Homosexuelle Frauen und
Manner in Berlin 1850-1950. Geschichte, Alltag und Kultur (Berlin, 1984).
6. C. Wolff, Magnus Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexology (Lon¬
don, 1986). Especially concentrating on Hirschfeld’s scientific work is R. Seidel,
Sexologie als positive Wissenschaft und sozialer Anspruch. Zur Sexualmorpholo-
gie von Magnus Hirschfeld (Munich, 1969).
7. Two members of the Society published a bibliography and Hirschfeld’s
autobiographical writings: J. D. Steakley, ed.. The Writings of Dr. Magnus
Hirschfeld: A Bibliography (Toronto, 1985); M. Hirschfeld, Von einst bis jetzt.
Geschichte einer homosexuellen Bewegung 1897-1922, ed. M. Herzer and J. D.
Steakley (Berlin, 1986).
8. In 1981 J. S. Hohmann edited an anthology of Brand’s journal: Der
Eigene. Ein Blatt fiir mannliche Kultur. Das Beste aus der ersten Homosexuellen-
zeitschrift der Welt (Frankfurt, 1981).
9. In the years 1896-1898 Der Eigene appeared as a Monatsschrift fiir Kunst
und Leben (Monthly for art and life) that was characterized by a somewhat liberal
anarchist tone. Der Eigene became a homosexual journal in 1899: Brand subtitled
it Ein Blatt fur mannliche Kultur (A journal for male culture). Around the turn of
the century he had to stop the publication of Der Eigene for three years because of
lack of money. In 1903 seven issues of Der Eigene appeared, now as Ein Blatt fur
mannliche Kultur, Kunst und Litteratur (A journal for male culture, art and litera¬
ture). Again he had to stop publishing the journal because he was sentenced to
prison for two months for publishing pictures of nude boys. Der Eigene reap¬
peared in 1905 and in 1906 was published in one volume: Ein Buck fur Kunst und
mannliche Kultur (A book for art and male culture). After that Der Eigene did not
reappear until after the First World War. This was due to Brand’s involvement in a
scandal, which resulted in a prison sentence of eighteen months. From 1911 until
1914 he continued his activities by distributing a new magazine. Extrapost des
Eigenen. Der Eigene was published again continuously from 1920 until 1926,
when financial difficulties caused a stop until 1929, when twelve issues of Der
Eigene appeared. The last number of Der Eigene appeared in 1930. In the years
1930-1932 Brand stayed in touch with the readers of his journal by publishing
again the Extrapost des Eigenen (1929-1931) and a new magazine Eros (1930-
1932). Because of the rise of Nazism Brand had to stop his activities in 1933.
10. [This may be the best place to explain the translation of Der Eigene as
“The Self-Owner” and hence Gemeinschaft der Eigenen as “Community of Self-
Owners” even though most writers in English who have discussed Adolf Brand’s
journal have translated eigen as “special” or “exceptional.” That meaning is no
doubt implied, but does not convey the primary meaning given the word by
Stirner, which was undoubtedly intended by Brand. In his brilliant translation of
Stirner’s book, Steven T. Byington has noted that Stirner used the word “in a way
that German dictionaries do not quite recognize” (Max Stirner, The Ego and His
Own: The Case of the Individual Against Authority, New York, 1907; now New
York, Libertarian Book Club, 1963, p. 155), and he adds that “self-ownership”
would translate Eigenheit “in most passages” of the chapter with that title.
In the very first issue of Der Eigene (1 April 1896) Adolf Brand wrote:
“This journal is dedicated to eigenen people, such people as are proud of their
Eigenheit and wish to maintain it at any price.” That he understood these words in
Stirner’s sense of “self-ownership” was confirmed in 1920, when he wrote:
Whoever has always attentively read the leading articles of the journal
long since knows of course that Der Eigene stands on the basis of individu¬
alist anarchism and that for it the Weltanschauung of Max Stirner and
Friedrich Nietzsche is the great working program of the future. For Der
Eigene represents the right of personal freedom and the sovereignty of the
individual to the farthest consequence. [Der Eigene, 1920, no. 10]
John Henry Mackay was certainly one of those self-owners, as was his good
friend the novelist Gabriele Reuter, who wrote of her circle in the 1890s: “All of
us were individualists of the purest water. ... We had all read our Stirner” (Vom
Kinde zum Menschen. Die Geschichte meiner Jugend, Berlin, 1921, p. 448).
According to Janos Frecot: “The word eigen became the key word of the libera-
Harry Oosterhuis 23
tion tendencies in the sphere of sensuality and sexuality. In 1903 there appeared
the novel of an American life-reformer in a German edition illustrated by Fidus:
Die Eigenen. Ein Tendenzroman furfreie Geister” (Janos Frecot, “Von der Selt-
stadt zur Kiefernheide, Oder: Die Flucht aus der Biirgerlichkeit,” in Berlin um
1900, ed. Gesine Asmus, p. 420-31 [Berlin, 1984], here p. 422). Frecot went on
to mention Der Eigene and the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, which he described as
“a cultural union of homosexuals and of artists and writers positively disposed
toward the cause of the homosexuals.” The novel Die Eigenen was written by the
German-American Emil F. Ruedebush, who explained in an article in Der Eigene
in 1926 that he chose that title “because the translation Selbsteigner of the original
name ‘Selfowners’ sounded too ugly.” Apparently he did not find the original
title “too ugly.” At any rate, it shows that he too understood the word eigen in
Stirner’s sense.
With this background, Der Eigene appears most accurately translated as “The
Self-Owner,” while those of us in the individualist anarchist tradition readily
allow the connotation of “special” and “exceptional.” HK]
11. M. Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (Stuttgart, 1972; first edition,
1844). The revival of Stirnerian anarchism at the end of the nineteenth century
was stimulated by John Henry Mackay, who wrote a biography of Stirner and
edited several of his writings. Under the pseudonym Sagitta, Mackay contributed
five poems to Der Eigene in 1905 and 1906.
12. A. Brand, “Ueber unsere Bewegung,” Der Eigene, 1898, no. 2, pp. 100-1.
13. Der Eigene, 1899, no. 4/5, pp. 175-6.
14. Der Eigene, 1903, no. 7, p. 486.
15. P. Brandt [H. Licht], Sittengeschichte Griechenlands (Berlin, 1926/28; 2d
ed., 1932).
16. A. Brand, Satzung der Gemeinschaft der Eigenen. Bund fur Freundschaft
und Freiheit 1903-1925 (Berlin, 1925).
17. In Der Eigene I have found only one reference by Brand to the number of
the membership of the Gemeinschaft. On that occasion he complained that only
250 of the total 1650 members had payed their contribution. On another occasion
he stated that a public lecture organized by him was attended by 100 to 120 men,
of whom only 10 were members of his society.
18. Wochenberichte der Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (Weekly report of the Ge¬
meinschaft der Eigenen), 1904-1907; Extrapost des Eigenen (Supplement of the
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen), 1911-1914 and 1929-1931; Eros, 1930-1932. Other
magazines which Brand published were: Die Gemeinschaft der Eigenen. Flug-
schrift fur Sittenverbesserung und Lebenskunst (The Gemeinschaft der Eigenen.
Pamphlet for moral improvement and the art of living), 1906, and Freundschaft
und Freiheit. Ein Blatt fur Mannerrechte gegen Spiefiburgermoral, Pfaffenherr-
schaft und Weiberwirtschaft (Friendship and freedom. A paper for male rights
against bourgeois morality, clerical rule, and female management), 1921.
19. See, for instance, H. Weindel and F. P. Fischer, L’homosexualite enAlle-
magne. Etude documentaire et anecdotique (Paris, 1908); J. Grand-Carteret, Der-
riere “Lui” (L’Homosexualite en Allemagne) (Paris, 1908). See also J. D. Steak-
ley, “Iconography of a Scandal: Political Cartoons and the Eulenburg Affair,”

Studies in Visual Communication 9, no. 2 (spring 1983): 20-51; revised version in
Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Martin Bauml
Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr. (New York, 1989),
pp. 233-63.
20. This group has been described as a homosexual circle. See I. V. Hull,
“Kaiser Wilhelm II and the ‘Liebenberg Circle’,” in Kaiser Wilhelm II: New
Interpretations, ed. J. C. G. Rohl and N. Sombart (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 193-
220. The way these conservative noblemen experienced homoerotic friendships
and connected them to idealism, a special sensibility, and artistic creativity resem¬
bles the ideas expressed in Der Eigene.
21. A. Brand, Fiirst Biilow und die Abschaffung des §175 (Berlin, 1907).
22. Quoted in Wolff, Magnus Hirschfeld, pp. 72-3; see also H. F. Young,
Maximilian Harden (Munster, 1971), p. 118.
23. A. Brand, §175 (Berlin, 1914).
24. A. Brand, Kaplan Dasbach und die Freundesliebe (Berlin, 1904).
25. In 1908 Hirschfeld wrote that the scandals and the division of opinion had
caused damage to the cause of homosexual emancipation. He criticized the Ge-
meinschaft for being antifeminist, misogynist, and anticlerical. See M. Hirsch¬
feld, “Jahresbericht 1906/08,” Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen 9 (1908):
647-8; idem, “Einleitung und Situationsbericht,” Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwis¬
chenstufen [vols. 10-19 under the title Vierteljahrsberichte des Wissenschaftlich-
humanitdren Komitees] 10 (1910): 1-30. Later Hirschfeld characterized the Ge-
meinschaft der Eigenen as “ubertriebene Nebenstromungen” (exaggerated side
currents) and “Schwarmgeister” (fanatics). M. Hirschfeld, Die Homosexuality
des Mannes und des Weibes (Berlin, 1914), p. 1007.
26. A. Brand [F. Schwarzer], Interessante Briefe und Dokumente zur Biilow-
Eulenburg-Intrige (Berlin, 1909).
27. See also A. Brand, “Unser Bekenntnis zur Republik,” Der Eigene, 1926,
no. 4, pp. 97-105.
28. In 1924 for the first time the price of Der Eigene was printed on each
issue, together with the statement that the journal was sold in bookshops and
newspaper stands. Before 1924 Der Eigene probably could only be obtained by
subscribing.
29. E. Tscheck [St. Ch. Waldecke], Das Wissenschaftlich-humanitdre Komi-
tee. Warum ist es zu bekampfen und sein Wirken schadlich fur das deutsche Volk9
(Berlin, 1925).
30. E. Tscheck [St. Ch. Waldecke], “Die Homosexualitat fiir dem Staats-
anwalt,” Die Tante. Ein Spott- und Kampf-Nummer der Kunst-Zeitschrift “Der
Eigene,” 1925, no. 9, pp. 391-8.
31. H. Natonek and A. Brand, “Das Ende unsere Kampfes fiir die Abschaf¬
fung des §175,” Der Eigene, 1929, no. 1, pp. 23-31. See also F. Thiess, “Ueber
die Aenderung unserer Kampfmethode,” Der Eigene, 1929, no. 2, p. 34.
32. Brand to British Sexological Society, 21 February 1934, Humanities Re¬
search Center, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
Harry Oosterhuis 25
33. Brand to British Sexological Society, 29 November 1933 and 21 February

1934, Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
34. Brand to British Sexological Society, 21 February 1934, Humanities Re¬
search Center, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
35. See I. S. Kon, Freundschaft, Geschichte und Sozialpsychologie der
Freundschaft als soziale Institution und individuelle Beziehung (Reinbek bei
Hamburg, 1979).
36. J. Fentener van Vlissingen, Een psychologische theorie van de vriend-
schap op grond van enige literaire exempla (Arnhem, 1966), p. lx.
37. Quoted in W. Rasch, Die Freundschaft bei Jean Paul (Breslau, 1929),
p. 31.
38. Quoted in H. D. Hellbach, Die Freundesliebe in der deutschen Literatur
(Leipzig, 1931), p. 33.
39. Quoted in G. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality (New York, 1985), p. 74.
40. Rasch, pp. 97-8.
41. J. G. Hamann, Sokratische Denkwiirdigkeiten (Giitersloh, 1959),
pp. 114-5.
42. See E. ML Butler, The Tyranny of Greece Over Germany: A Study of the
Influence Exercised by Greek Art and Poetry Over the Great German Writers of
the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Cambridge, 1935).
43. Quoted in Hellbach, p. 41.
44. H. Fuchs, Richard Wagner und die Homosexualitdt (Berlin, 1903),
pp. 133-5.
45. Quoted in L. Jung, Dichterfreundschaft und ihr romantisches Eigenge-
prage (Saalfeld, 1934), p. 11.
46. H. Moller, Die Kleinburgerliche Familie im 18. Jahrhundert (Berlin,
1969); E. Shorter, The Making of the Modem Family (New York, 1975); Ph.
Aries, “Reflexions sur l’histoire de l’homosexualite,” Communications Ecole
des Hautes Etudes en Sciences sociale, Centre d’Etudes transdisciplinaires 35
(1982): 56-67.
47. For the difference between the romantic and the medical approach to sexu¬
ality see P. Robinson, The Modernization of Sex (New York, 1976).
48. On the medicalization of homosexuality see M. Foucault, The History of
Sexuality. An Introduction (New York, 1980); J. Weeks, Sex, Politics and Soci¬
ety: The Regulation of Sexuality Since 1800 (London, 1981); K. Plummer, ed..
The Making of the Modem Homosexual (London, 1981); G. Hekma, Homosek-
sualiteit, een medische reputatie. De uitdoktering van de homoseksueel in negen-
tiende-eeuws Nederland (Amsterdam, 1987); K. Pacharzina and K. Albrecht-
Desirat, “Die Last der Arzte. Homosexualitat als klinisches Bild von den An-
fangen bis heute,” in Der unterdriXckte Sexus. Historische Texte und Kommentare
zur Homosexualitdt, ed. J. S. Hohmann (Achenbach, 1977), pp. 97-112.
49. For Ulrichs see H. Kennedy, Ulrichs: The Life and Works of Karl
Heinrich Ulrichs, Pioneer of the Modem Gay Movement (Boston, 1988), also in
German as Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: Sein Leben und sein Werk, translated by Menso
Folkerts (Stuttgart, 1990).
50. For instance: K. H. Ulrichs, “Gladius furens. ” Das Naturrathsel der

Umingsliebe und der Irrthum als Gesetzgeber (Kassel, 1868); idem, “ Vindex. ”
Social-juristische Studien iiber mannmannliche Geschlechtsliebe (Leipzig, 1864);
idem, “Vindicta. ” Kampf fur Freiheit von Verfolgung (Leipzig, 1865).
51. C. von Westphal, “Die kontrare Sexualempfindung,” Archiv fur Psychia¬
tric und Nervenkrankheiten, 1869, no. 2, pp. 73-108.
52. R. von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia sexualis, mit besonderer Beriicksichti-
gung der contrdren Sexualempfindung (Stuttgart, 1886).
53. See M. Baumgardt, “Berlin, ein Zentrum der entstehenden Sexualwis-
senschaft und die Vorlaufer der homosexuellen-Bewegung,” in Eldorado. Homo-
sexuelle Frauen und Manner in Berlin 1850-1950. Geschichte, Alltag und Kultur,
ed. M. Bolle (Berlin, 1984), pp. 13-16.
54. See T. van der Meer, De wesentlijke sonde van sodomie en andere vuy-
ligheeden. Sodomietenvervolgingen in Amsterdam 1730-1811 (Amsterdam, 1984)
and several contributions in K. Gerard and G. Hekma, eds.. The Pursuit of Sod¬
omy: Male Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe (New York
and London, 1988).
55. For the connection between medical theories on the construction of homo¬
sexual identity, see K. Muller, “Aber in meinem Herze sprach eine Stimme so
laut. ” Homosexuelle Autobiographien und medizinische Pathographien im 19.
Jahrhundert (Inaugural-Dissertation, Munster, 1990).
56. This has been documented extensively by W. Theis and A. Sternweiler,
“Alltag im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik,” in Eldorado, ed. M.
Bolle, pp. 48-73. See also F. Huglander, “Aus dem homosexuellen Leben Alt-
Berlins,” Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen 14 (1914): 45-63; M. Hirschfeld,
Berlins drittes Geschlecht (Berlin, 1904).
57. See the “Fragebogen” in Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen 1 (1899):
26-35. Hirschfeld’s standard work. Die Homosexualitat des Mannes und des
Weibes (1914), was based on more than 10,000 “cases.”
58. See especially M. Hirschfeld, “Die objektive Diagnose der Homosexuali¬
tat,” Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen 1 (1899): 4-35; idem, “Ursachen und
Wesen des Uranismus,” Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen 5 (1903): 1-193.
59. G. Portig, Schiller in seinem Verhaltnis zur Freundschaft und Liebe sowie
in seinem inneren Verhaltnis zu Goethe (Hamburg, 1894), pp. 13-42.
60. See, for example, Zeitschrift fur Sexualwissenschaft, 1'927/28, no. 6,
pp. 109-12; no. 8, pp. 66-70, 382-8; no. 14, pp. 426-8; Sexual-Probleme, 1913,
pp. 586-91; K. Zeidler, Vorp erziehenden Eros (Hamburg, 1919); G. Wyneken,
Eros (Lauenburg, 1921); E. Spranger, Psychologic des Jugendalters (Leipzig,
1924); H. Bliiher, Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als erotisches Phanomen,
2d ed. (Berlin, 1914), p. 168f; idem, Werke und Tage (Jena, 1920); A. Weil,
“Hans Bliiher und die Homosexualitat,” Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen 21
(1921): 3-39; Numa Praetorius in Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen 14 (1914):
342-8; J. Plenge, Antibliiher. Affenbund oder Mannerbund? Ein Brief (n.p.,
1921); H. Starke, Unmoglichkeiten der Jugendbewegung. Eine Kritik des Falles
“Plenge-Bluher” mit einem Anhang: Das Urteil der Jugendbewegung (Hamburg,
Harry Oosterhuis 27
1921); S. Sturm, Das Wesen derJugend und ihre S tel lung zu Blither und Plenge,
zu Sexualtheorie und Psychoanalyse (Wurzburg, 1921); F. Graetzer, “Eine
erotische Staatsphilosophie. Gedanken zu H. Bliihers System,” Die neue Genera¬
tion, 1918, no. 3/4, pp. 71-7.
61. Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen 9 (1908): 503.
62. Ibid., pp. 724-5.
63. Quoted in C. Wolff, Magnus Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexol¬
ogy (London, 1986), pp. 72-3.
64. Eulenburg was not just pretending. In a letter to his friend Moltke he
wrote: “In the moment when the present example of the modern age, a Harden,
criticized our nature, stripped our ideal friendship, laid bare the form of our think¬
ing and feeling which we had justifiably regarded all our lives as something obvi¬
ous and natural, in that moment, the modern age, laughing cold-bloodedly, broke
our necks.” Quoted in I. V. Hull, “Kaiser Wilhelm II and the ‘Liebenberg Cir¬
cle’, ” in Kaiser Wilhelm II: New Interpretations, ed. J. C. G. Rohl and N. Som-
bart (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 193-220.
65. M. Hirschfeld, Die Homosexuality des Mannes und des Weibes (Berlin,
1914), p. 187.
66. A. Moll, “Physiologisches und Psychologisches fiber Liebe und Freund-
schaft,” Zeitschrift fur Psychotherapie und medizinische Psychologie, 1912,
no. 4, pp. 257-78.
67. Such as E. Thaer, Die Freundschaft im deutschen Roman des 18.
Jahrhunderts (Hamburg, 1917); A. von Gleichen-Russwurm, Freundschaft. Eine
psychologische Forschungsreise (Stuttgart, 1912); S. Kracauer, Uber die
Freundschaft (Frankfurt am Main, 1980; originally published in 1917/18 and
1921).
68. J. W. Jones, “The ‘Third Sex’ in German literature from the turn of the
century to 1933” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconson-Madison, 1986).
69. See, e.g., M. Duyves et al., eds., Among Men, Among Women. Sociolog¬
ical and Historical Recognition of Homosocial Arrangements (Amsterdam, 1983)
and D. Altman et al., eds.. Homosexuality, Which Homosexuality? International
Conference on Gay and Lesbian Studies (Amsterdam, 1989).
'
//. OPPOSING THE DOCTORS
Introduction
Harry Oosterhuis
Adolf Brand began his career as a homosexual activist in 1896 when he

met Hirschfeld after having read Sappho und Sokrates, Hirschfeld’s first
publication on homosexuality.1 At first they drew up plans together for a
political campaign against the criminalization of male homosexuality.
Brand supported the establishment of the Scientific Humanitarian Com¬
mittee, but it rapidly became clear that he did not share Hirschfeld’s view.
Beginning in 1899 Hirschfeld’s scientific and political opinions were criti¬
cized and ridiculed incessantly in Der Eigene, not only by Brand but by
several contributors to his periodical. The members of the Gemeinschaft
der Eigenen shared an aversion to contemporary medical theories on male
homosexuality, including the emancipatory one of Hirschfeld.
The idea that homosexuals were feminine in disposition was an abomi¬
nation for most of the writers in Der Eigene. That this idea had taken such
firm and deep root was, in their opinion, primarily the fault of medical
doctors and psychiatrists. One of them applied the unflattering term “psy¬
cho-vivisection” in 1899 to the medical fascination for the love between
men and distanced himself from the effeminate “hermaphroditic soul” to
which psychiatrists had assigned central importance.2 Again and again
writers in Der Eigene stressed that the “male eros” they advocated had
nothing to do with the branch of the human species psychiatrists and sex¬
ologists were describing as “the effeminate urning” and for whose rights
Hirschfeld’s Committee pleaded. In fact, they preferred not to speak about
“homosexuality” or “uranism” because to them these were medical
29
terms, loaded with the stigma of sickly deviation and effeminacy. Instead,
they adopted the words Lieblingminne (chivalric love) and Freundesliebe
(love of friends), which were introduced in Der Eigene in 1899 by the
poet and painter Elisar von Kupffer.
Elisar von Kupffer (1872-1942), an aesthete of aristocratic ancestry,
gained popularity in homosexual circles around the turn of the century
with his anthology of homoerotic literature from antiquity to his own
time, Lieblingminne und Freundesliebe in der Weitlit era turd Although he
included primarily poetry and prose of well-known, respected authors,
Kupffer encountered a great deal of resistance to his project in Wilhelm-
inian Germany. Influential friends were able to prevent the first edition of
the work from being confiscated, but the second edition fell prey to the
censor.
With his anthology Kupffer hoped to create a counterbalance to the
medico-sexologists’ theories of homosexuality, namely those of the influ¬
ential Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Hirschfeld. In his opinion same-sex
love should be viewed not as a medical or biological matter but as an
ethical and cultural one. His intention was not to explain the homosexual
disposition, but by using literary sources refer to certain forms of experi¬
ence of male love, namely those in the literary trends of classical Greece,
the Renaissance, and 18th- and 19th-century Germany (Winkelmann, Pla¬
ten, Goethe, Schiller, and Herder). With this, he tried to demonstrate that
a good deal of homoeroticism lay hidden under the denominator of friend¬
ship and that this had been of great importance to their respective cultures.
According to Kupffer, Greek boy-love, pedagogical eros, and the cult of
romantic friendship were discredited by the medical meddling with same-
sex love.
The highly polemic introduction to his anthology, “Die ethisch-politi-
sche Bedeutung der Lieblingminne” (The ethical-political meaning of
chivalric love), with which this chapter opens, was published in Der
Eigene in 1899.4 With this essay Kupffer set the tone for other authors in
Der Eigene; Brand considered it as a kind of program for his Gemein-
schaft der Eigenen.
The second article which I have selected for this section appeared in the
same issue of Der Eigene as Kupffer’s essay. It is a review of the first
annual of Hirschfeld’s Committee, iheJahrbuch fiirsexuelle Zwischenstu-
fen published in 1899.5 The author was the then twenty-year-old poet Pe¬
ter Hamecher (1879-1938). The tenor of his contribution, written in a
rather sarcastic tone, is comparable to Kupffer’s. Hamecher was also dis¬
pleased with the scientific interference with same-sex love; according to
Harry Oosterhuis 31
him the language of art did more justice to male eros than scientific en¬
lightenment by medical experts.
The two other texts selected for this section were written at the begin¬
ning of this century by two important members of the Gemeinschaft:
Edwin Bab (1882-1912), one of the few physicians who had joined
Brand’s group, and the zoologist and philosopher Benedict Friedlander
(1866-1908), whose substantial Renaissance des Eros Uranios (Renais¬
sance of the Uranian Eros) had a large impact on members of the Gemein¬
schaft der Eigenen .6
Intellectually they were Hirschfeld’s most challenging critics within the
German homosexual rights movement. Both put forward epistemological
arguments refuting two important presuppositions in Hirschfeld’s think¬
ing: the existence of a homosexual category, independent of morals and
culture, and the biological identification of homosexuality with feminin¬
ity. Their reasoning, reminiscent of the Kinsey scale (according to which
exclusive homosexuality and heterosexuality are mere abstractions),
pointed to eroticism in male friendships and male bonding, since they be¬
lieved most men to be essentially bisexual. Homosexual and heterosexual
behavior was predominantly determined culturally, they asserted, and the
same was true of masculinity and femininity. Therefore, the association of
homosexuality with effeminate men was also a consequence of social
processes which reflected a self-fulfilling prophecy: the theories of Ul-
richs, Krafft-Ebing, and Hirschfeld did not so much explain as model
individual behavior.
Bab expressed his criticism of Hirschfeld early in 1903 in a lecture
attended by members of the Gemeinschaft. A substantial part of this lec¬
ture, which was published some months later under the title Die gleich-
geschlechtliche Liebe (Same-sex Love) and which was dedicated to
Brand, is included in the selection that follows.7
Echoing Kupffer, Bab pointed out in Der Eigene that the “movement
for a male culture” should not be confused with Hirschfeld’s Committee,
which unjustly assigned “uranian petticoats to profound minds and he¬
roes.”8 Not only did Bab reject the connection of same-sex love with
some sort of psychological hermaphroditism, he also criticized Hirsch¬
feld’s assumption that “genuine” homosexuality was congenital and con¬
fined to a minority. Furthermore, he argued that while Hirschfeld did not
consider homosexuals as ill or degenerate, he still treated them like pa¬
tients. Bab not unjustly pointed out Hirschfeld’s affinity with sexologists
such as Krafft-Ebing and Albert Moll. According to Bab, Hirschfeld af¬
firmed the traditional dualism “natural-unnatural” because of his belief in
innate homosexuality and heterosexuality and his distinction between ori¬

entation and action. Following the reasoning of Hirschfeld and Krafft-
Ebing, “normal men” having sex with other men would perform “unnat¬
ural acts” because such practices would be biologically incompatible with
their heterosexual nature.9 Same-sex behavior could only be seen as natu¬
ral by Hirschfeld, Bab argued, when it originated from a homosexual
constitution."1 Physicians such as Hirschfeld had proclaimed themselves
the proper authorities for determining whether a person was a “genuine”
homosexual or not and so, he concluded, they had taken homosexuals out
of prisons and asylums in order to send them to a doctor’s office.
According to Bab, Paragraph 175 could not be effectively contested by
Hirschfeld’s formulations; they were more likely to be a hindrance than a
help in the fight for judicial reform. The differentiation between inborn
homosexuality and pseudo-homosexual acts was consistent with maintain¬
ing criminalization in cases where acts did not correspond to disposition.
Just like Friedlander, Bab criticized Paragraph 175 from the standpoint of
natural law: that which took place between individuals on a voluntary
basis without bringing harm to a third party or the collective could never
be criminal.
Friedlander’s views joined in with those of Bab. A cofounder of the
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, Friedlander was at the same time a prominent
administrator of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, until he headed a
secession from the Committee in 1906. Together with members of the
Gemeinschaft Friedlander planned to found a “movement for a male cul¬
ture,” which was not realized, however, because Friedlander, suffering
from an incurable disease, committed suicide in 1908. Apart from some
quarrels about leadership, financial affairs, and different attitudes toward
Christian believers and women’s emancipation, the cause of the dramatic
rupture which weakened the homosexual movement was Hirschfeld’s
“dogmatic” view on homosexuality, as Friedlander wrote in the memo¬
randum he distributed to members of the Committee.11 I have selected
some fragments from this controversial pamphlet, in which he expounds
his views on male homosexuality very clearly.
In his main work, Die Renaissance des Eros Uranios Friedlander had
explained that Hirschfeld’s third sex theory as well as Krafft-Ebing’spsy-
chopathia sexualis should be considered as ideological monstrosities re¬
sulting from a regrettable historical development in European culture.
Physicians’ thoughts on same-sex love and their interference could all be
explained historically. The feeling of being sick and aberrant, the sense of
belonging to a different species originated in Christian consciousness of
guilt. For Friedlander, most medical theories were a modern version of
Harry Oosterhuis 33
Christian superstition, condemning every form of homoeroticism as sinful

and criminal. Supported by women, Friedlander said, priests had imposed
an “ascetic” morality upon males, forcing them to suppress their homo¬
erotic leanings. By associating sensuous relations between males with
sensual paederasty, priests and women had succeeded in discrediting the
precious “uranian eros” in Western society.12 As a consequence of Chris¬
tian matrimonial morals and affirmed by modern science, only heterosex¬
ual love was considered natural, and therefore “physiological friend¬
ship,” a fundamental human passion according to Friedlander, had to
come to an end.
Other adherents of the Gemeinschaft were also of the opinion that medi¬
cal thinking about homosexuality was in line with the traditional, repres¬
sive attitude of the church and the judiciary. The Stirnerian anarchist John
Henry Mackay (1864-1933), whose poems appeared in Der Eigene under
his pen name Sagitta, asserted, for example, that the spread of scientific
knowledge on homosexuality had not only increased the visibility of ho¬
mosexuals but also their vulnerability and oppression.11 Besides, as many
authors in Der Eigene lamented, suspicion had been fastened on intimate
friendship between men and on platonic boy-love. In his novel Der Pup-
penjunge (1926), Mackay has one of its principal characters reflect on his
homosexuality: “He knew about his disposition ... He still did a lot of
reading, but did not take trouble over explanations where there was noth¬
ing to explain. What was self-evident, natural, and not in the least sickly
did not need to be excused by an explanation. Many of the theories put
forward nowadays he considered wrong and dangerous.”14
NOTES
1. M. Hirschfeld [Th. Ramien], Sappho und Sokrates, oder wie erklart sich
die Liebe der Manner und Frauen zu Personen des Eigenen Geschlechts? (Leip¬
zig, 1896).
2. Der Eigene, 1899, no. 4/5, pp. 172-5.
3. E. von Kupffer, ed., Lieblingminne und Freundesliebe in der Weltlitera-
tur (Pompeii, 1899).
4. E. von Kupffer, “Die ethisch-politische Bedeutung der Lieblingminne,”
Der Eigene, 1899, no. 6/7, pp. 182-99. Nearly ten years later, when he wrote an
article for Hirschfeld’s Jahrbuch, Kupffer expressed his opinion in a much more
moderate tone: “When the deserving pioneer and doctor Magnus Hirschfeld first
applied his talents to this subject, it was justifiable to apply the term (homosexual)
in the struggle against dogmatic-ascetic attitudes and police interventions, the
more so as he had to deal primarily with medical and forensic appraisals of those
suffering either from themselves or from their environment. However, for the
public of today and especially in judging great men in history this word is super-
fluous, even misleading” (E. von Kupffer, “Giovan Antonio —il Sodoma: Der
Maler der Schonheit. Eine Seelen-und Kunststudie,” Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwis-
chenstufen 9 [1908]: 96). Kupffer stated in a letter of 25 December 1925 to Brand
that the word “homosexual” was repugnant to him, because it reminded him of
the “fairies” in Hirschfeld’s Committee, and he requested Brand never to men¬
tion his name in such a context.
5. P. Hamecher, “Liebe,” Der Eigene, 1899, no. 6/7, pp. 236-8.
6. B. Friedlander, Renaissance des Eros Uranios. Die physiologische
Freundschaft, ein normaler Grundtrieb des Menschen und eine Frage der mannli-
chen Gesellungsfreiheit. In naturwissenschaftlicher, culturgeschichtlicher und
sittenkritischer Beleuchtung (Berlin, 1904). Friedlander also expressed his views
in Hirschfeld’s Jahrbuch: B. Friedlander, “Die physiologische Freundschaft als
normaler Grundtrieb des Menschen und als Grundlage der Sozialitat,” Jahrbuch
fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen 6 (1904): 181-213; idem, “Entwurf zu einer reizphy-
siologischen Analyse der erotischen Anziehung unter Zugrundelegung vor-
wiegend homosexuellen Materials,” Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen 7
(1905): 398-462.
7. E. Bab, Die gleichgeschlechtliche Liebe (Lieblingminne): Ein Wort iiber
ihr Wesen und ihre Bedeutung (Berlin, 1903).
8. E. Bab, “Frauenbewegung und mannliche Kultur,” Der Eigene, 1903,
no. 6, p. 404.
9. Bab referred to Krafft-Ebing’s distinction between two forms of perverse
behavior: firstly, so-called Perversion, which was congenital and therefore inevi¬
table, and secondly, Perversitat, which was acquired and should be fought.
10. Bab’s argument made sense, for an assistant of Hirschfeld stated: “In so
far as an act contradicts the nature of the actor, it can be considered unnatural;
therefore so-called pseudohomosexual acts of heterosexuals can be characterized
as unnatural, since they are not in line with the nature of the heterosexual” (Jahr¬
buch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen 8 [1906]: 534). Hirschfeld himself asserted:
“Only where the physical is an expression of the psychological can one speak of
genuine homosexuality” (Die Homosexualitat des Mannes und des Weibes
[Berlin, 1914], p. 187).
11. B. Friedlander, Denkschrift verfasst fur die Freunde und Fondszeichner
des Wissenschaftlich-Humanitaren Komitees (im Namen der Sezession des Wis-
senschaftlich-Humanitaren Komitees) (Berlin, 1907).
12. B. Friedlander, “Der Untergang des Eros im Mittelalter und seine Ursa-
chen,” Der Eigene, 1903, no. 7, pp. 441-56.
13. J. H. Mackay [Sagitta], Die Buecher der namenlosen Liebe, vol. 1
(Berlin, 1979; first edition, 1913), pp. 16, 30, 59, 63; in English in J. H. Mackay,
Fenny Skaller and other Prose Writings from the Books of the Nameless Love,
trans. H. Kennedy (Amsterdam, 1988), pp. 136, 144, 158, 160.
14. J. H. Mackay, Der Puppenjunge. Die Geschichte einer namenlosen Liebe
aus der Friedrichstrafie (Berlin, 1979; first edition, 1926), p. 198; also in English
as The Hustler, trans. H. Kennedy (Boston, 1985).
The Ethical-Political Significance
of Lieblingminne
Elisarion von Kupffer
We live in such an unmanly time, unfortunately, that every argument

for masculine rights, not to speak of privileges, is felt as an unmodern
blasphemy and disparagement of feminine predominance and is blamed as
such. So that this sentence not stand as simply an empty phrase, it is
necessary to go into the word “masculine” a bit more and, strange as it
may be, to begin by saying what it is not. (I note that it is only a practical
question of language here; an absolute definition is perhaps impossible,
given the infinitely fine gradations in life.)
To be masculine or manly does not mean: to be imbued with certain
superficial characteristics or devoid of every sense for male beauty; it also
does not mean: to be rougher and able to endure more in every connection
than the female and to place one’s strength in the service of women, so as
to protect them from dangers, and to satisfy their sexual demands. No. To
be manly means: to carry out the struggle with life by using all one’s
strengths, to work for a thriving existence, even if this means resisting
dangers in doing so. Manliness means preserving self-determination, per¬
sonal freedom, and the common good, and this last includes everyone and
everything. When man entered into the almost exclusive service of
woman and her tastes, he lost his masculinity and retained only a sham
dominion. Woman has gained personal rights for herself, also legally;
good, let her have them, as far as her personal strengths reach. But it is
also time that man think about himself and, as comical as it sounds, in
view of the emancipation, the self-estimation of woman, we need an
emancipation of man for the revival of a manly culture; and it is this that I
am advocating here.
I am not so foolish as not to recognize that we men too have also fought
battles, such as in 1870,' and yet ours is still not a healthily masculine
culture. For the promotion of a manly sense it is necessary above all that
men join together, that the younger ones have a close relationship to the
older ones, that the manly sense is nourished by constant practice in life.
35
And this will never be obtained simply by steeling our muscles and muti¬
lating one another with our blows and parading before women our sham
scars and our stronger sex, apparently sheltering them and always looking
up to woman as if to some kind of helpless god, whose existence the
worshippers prolong and yet before whom they kneel.
I am far from denying the importance of women and, like Scho¬
penhauer or Nietzsche, preaching disdain for women. Such a contempt of
women is often found, in fact, in those who make a show of honoring
women. This contradiction may be explained by the fact the such men feel
themselves tied to women and flatter them to gain their favor, but basi¬
cally no doubt feel how empty their words are and how unfree they are, so
that in moments of reflection and of satisfied lust, they experience some¬
thing like aversion. That is what is left of the manly sense, which rebels
against its humiliation.
Woman is in the first place an important factor of life as mother; and
whoever speaks with complete disdain of women has certainly not known
that wonderful emotion of human life, true mother-love, which is able to
exercise an infinite magic on the whole existence of a man, even in mem¬
ory. One thinks of the hero Coriolanus, who was moved only by the pleas
of his mother! But also as wife, friend, and girl, woman is a blossom that I
would by no means wish to have banished from the garden of life, on the
contrary. . . .
[To return to my argument] I must take a stand against the quite new
direction and oppose the harmfully sick principles of our scientific age. It
has now become the fashion in humane-scientific and, on the other hand,
closely concerned circles to speak of a “third” sex, whose spirit and body
are said not to agree with one another. The Hannoverian jurist K. H.
Ulrichs, to be sure a brave and honorable character, but not exactly a
circumspect person, even found a designation for this third sex, to which
he counted himself; this word “Urning” (from Venus Urania), along with
the adjective “urnisch” (uranian), has spread like a generalized epidemic.
It has been taken up on the scientific side, for example, by the well-known
psychiatrist Professor Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing in Vienna. The matter
has been researched, criticized, classified, hypno-medicalized, popular¬
ized, and God knows what. Finally people who, with pious and impious
shockers, wanted to feather their nests with this matter have had a go at it;
in short, we have a confused mass of sick and absurd stories that have
been of no use to our culture. And the most unpleasant part of all this is
that the peaks of our whole human history have been distorted thereby, so
that one can hardly recognize those rich spirits and heroes in their uranian
Elisarion von Kupffer 37
underskirts. On the other side, especially the philological-historical,

which was of course disgusted by such, they cheerfully continued to fal¬
sify the facts, euphemistically calling it “saving their honor.” On the one
side a belittling and distorting just to beg for pity from the legislators and
judges; on the other side a falsifying and suppressing that is worse than
counterfeiting bank notes. And now even a party of grumblers, who partly
from ignorance and partly from malice pour out their caustic comments. Is
it not enough to disgust a healthy man who still has a spark of honest sense
for reality and history?
It has by now become a moral duty, in all that confused talk of sickness
and that mire of lies and filthiness, to let fall a ray of sunshine from the
reality of our historical development. It is a thankless task, to be sure, if
one is conscious of how much ignorance, malice, and cowardice he has to
fight in doing so. It is much easier to let things go on as they have been
going, and to live one’s inclinations undisturbed in quiet. But, as I said,
when it is a question of the common good, of the healthy development of
culture, and of personal freedom, then the manly sense demands that we
act and speak without cowardly concern.
What do I understand by culture? The possibility of living out our
drives and strengths, but without acts of force. Nothing lies further from
me than to preach deliverance through an excess of sensual pleasure; no,
precisely in the repeated, voluntary limitation and restraint of one’s self
does one become master; but I would also like to repeat the words of the
Greek sage: “It shows manliness to rule over sensual pleasure, without
being subservient to it, but not to abstain from it.”
We live —as always —in a world of slogans, and little thought is given
to them. We hear of decadence and decay and name things thus without
seriously asking about the meaning of the words. What then does deca¬
dence mean? The dying out of the life force, the inability to carry on the
struggle with life, the longing for dissolution, disintegration. Only where
that is found may we speak of decadence. And now certain people —to
name no names here —come and say: Lieblingminne [a coined word, from
Liebling (favorite) and Minne (chivalric love)] is a symptom of deca¬
dence. Why? Did Socrates, for example, not honorably fulfill his posi¬
tion, did he not have a cultural, yes a moral effect? Did Alexander the
Great shy away from the struggle with life? Even chronologically their
assumption is a historical falsehood, for Lieblingminne is found at the
beginning of popular history. I am reminded of Theognis and Pindar; did
they not bring honor to their fatherland and culture? Most of them have
even left descendants in the world, although in the case of such men that is
truly not their greatest service. And now some dare to twist and turn facts
and even falsify them, while others anxiously look for a sign of the third
sex, for a purely female spirit in the poor male shell. Here a god could
become impatient! What is the purpose of all this?! Whoever does not see
and perceive the richness of nature with open eyes, no glasses will help
him.
And to speak of the men of the Christian era: Did Shakespeare not
prove the strength of his life and forever enrich culture? There are some
remarkable old birds who declare it to be impossible and unworthy that
such a superior and mature man as Shakespeare would court the favor of a
young man —a finely educated young man, who understands him and re¬
vives his youthful spirit with his own youthful freshness. And those same
gentlemen expose their gray heads to derision by lying at the feet of a
beautiful young girl, who laughs at them or gives them her hand so as
perhaps, well situated, to make a cuckold of them. That seems to me a
tragicomedy.
And Friedrich the Great, that unique man? Truly he is no symptom of
decadence, he who created the foundation of today’s German Empire
against a world of enemies. No, he is the manliest man of action, although
he loved a Caesarion and did not feel obliged to be a mistress of the state.
Granted there are people who dearly love it when a monarch raises a fallen
woman to be a servant, merely because she is a woman — I read about such
in a big newspaper that, to be sure, is more American-Parisian than Ger¬
man in spirit. It is hardly a wonder if such half-men have no image of the
dignity of a monarch, the first man of state. The monarch, when he truly
fulfills his position, is the personification of the strength of a nation, the
natural intermediary between all parties. He is the protector of the select
minority against the flood from below, but he is also the support of the
economically weak against the strong minority, for an oversize increase of
them threatens his position of power. Thus the person of the monarch is
the equalizing factor of social interests, whose power dare not be so bound
that its effect would be hindered. The strong monarch also does not have
to fear any word, if he is rooted in a manly heart. But our time, which is so
gladly ruled by woman, does not understand a manly monarch; people
long for the claptrap of demagogues and the unctuous phrases of party
egoists, just as for the babble offered in ladies’ salons. It has become
taboo to court manly strength and grace. I, for my part, hold it to be more
dignified to kiss the hand of a monarch, the representative of the entire
national strength, the heir of a powerful past, than that of Lady So-and-
So. What has become of the splendid pride of thrones, if the rulers are just
miserable henpecked husbands! Yes, that is rather decadence. . . .
If in fact it were to a certain extent the case that Lieblingminne (and love
of friends) could be more harmful to the state, to health, to morality then
the usual Frauenminne (chivalric love of women), if neither were culti¬
vated excessively, then I would be among the first to call for its limitation.
Certainly the state is there for the sake of people, not the other way
around; but we need the state, for in spite of all humaneness — homo
homini lupus (man is a wolf to man) —one person is in a struggle with the
other, and there’s nothing to complain about, that’s the way nature is. For
this reason the state and its healthy prosperity is to be judged a natural
necessity. Therefore we want to promote only that which helps and makes
healthy and strong. And precisely for this reason and only because I hold
the close relationship of man to man, of man to youth, of youth to youth to
be a strong element of the state and of culture, have I undertaken this
difficult task in the interest of the common good and free personal devel¬
opment.
Every rational and reflective person must ask himself: Can it be chance
that so many outstanding representatives of our cultural history have culti¬
vated that inclination and those love relationships or, where they were
themselves still caught up in the madness of their times, were ruled by that
inclination? If we declare it to be abominable, then we must rationally turn
away from them in abomination and also rob our culture for the future of
elements that are noble and full of life’s force. But what is the good of
declaring so many bearers of our culture to be half-crazy? What have we
won thereby, if a great part of our culture is an institution of lunatics?
What is it to us, this epidemic of clever-talking psychiatrists like Lom-
broso?! It is a sickness of our time to want to be original at any price.
Every critic aspires to rebuke you of imitating when he wants to deal you a
blow. Hence the desire of many to waft about something quite singular,
hence that pedantry and thoughtlessness, hence that search for symptoms
of sickness. The more specialized, peculiar, worn-out, faltering, the more
sensitive-small, pale-blooming, humble, and poor a phenomenon is, all
the more is it marveled at and admired. I ask again, what is the purpose of
such searching for sickness and peculiarity? It is all the same to those who
set the tone today, for we have no public spirit. Each is his own world, his
small self, and he appears to himself monstrously important. Here we
again stand before two catchwords: objective and subjective. One is an¬
cient and obsolete, the second is modern and new. As if the ancients did
not experience themselves just as personally! How much a Pindar differed
from a Euripides! How much an Aeschylus from an Aristophanes! Those
men were endowed with a manly spirit, their deeds give proof of it; and
the petty madness of their enemies and false friends can take nothing from
them. It is like crickets chirping at pyramids.
Now to the meaning of Lieblingminne. I point out that this word is a
new coinage of mine; I had to find a word that —until now-had not been
dirtied in the mouths of people. I selected a double title so as to indicate by
Freundesliebe (love of friends) that in this collection is much that is less
consciously characteristic of Minne (chivalric love), much in which this
feeling perhaps unconsciously pulses under the surface. Every expression
of life that is suppressed grows secretly into an ugly shadow-plant. It is,
therefore, the task of a rational state to draw into the sun of public life
whatever is not an act of force against the state and the common good,
such as murder, robbery, theft, etc.; so too the intimate relationship of
man to man. A first condition for this, of course, is that the penal code
contain no dirtying paragraph against it, except against an act of force.
That is indeed the basis for a healthy development, but it is not sufficient:
we see that in practice in today’s France and Italy, where Lieblingminne
enjoys legal freedom and yet has attained to no cultural bloom, conse¬
quently has not become useful to public life. It is not a question of closing
one’s eyes to a vice or tolerating an insanity. That is a fruitless half¬
measure. It is much more a question of drawing an advantage from a
phenomenon of life. It is not my purpose here to make propaganda for the
governing legislature to take pity on certain of life’s “disinherited,” who
have been neglected by nature; no, it is my purpose to point out that we
are passing up a source of strength.
Yes, a source of strength: these relationships can be such. If we leaf
through the pages of history with open eyes, we will also find proof of
this. In the first place stands ancient Greece —not to speak foolishly of
antiquity, for the Romans and the Greeks resembled one another as much
as the French and the Germans. The Greeks were certainly not an unblem¬
ished ideal people. Where was there ever such! But whoever supposes that
this love was to blame for the fact that they failed politically only shows
how little he knows history or is willing to know it. It would be just as
foolish as to suppose that Christ was to blame for the horrors of Christian¬
ity. Carelessness, disunity, and the growing democratic lack of under¬
standing of great politics and great men, as well as the growth of external
forces (Macedonia and Rome) were to blame for the downfall of Greece.
Thus too declined the great power of Sweden through the growth of Prus¬
sia and Russia. And which people will become history next? Precisely in
the time of decline did the Lieblingminne disappear in Hellas as an honor¬
able factor of the state, at the same time as the crumbling of all the great
old institutions. It goes without saying that this is not a question of the
seduction of children. That was also not the case in Greece.2 It is also
quite arbitrary and only a result of our customs when someone asserts that
the offering of oneself is not compatible with a man’s feeling of honor; it
has always been compatible up to the present day. From what absolute
spirit can such an idea be wafted!
And precisely in the case of us Germans, who in spite of everything
stand closest to the Greeks, do we encounter that intimate relationship of
man to man that finds its highest expression in love. From France, from
the courts of Provence came that idolatrous worship of women that gained
its consecration from the cult of Mary; the idolatry of women was dictated
from the court of the German archenemy Louis XIV and that of the king of
mistresses, Louis XV. Indeed it is still said today that the German is not as
gallant as the Frenchman; this means: the German still has not yet lost his
remainder of manliness, in woman he sees a comrade, not a lady, and he
still sees the comrade in his friend. Let them make fun of it on this or that
side of the Rhine, the victories speak for the Germans. . . .
In war as in peace these relationships are able to be of high moral and
civil importance. As things stand now, one man regards the other as a
competitor for the booty of a third and as the fellow-paramour for the
favor of a beautiful woman, or as the booty of an ugly one. Very seldom
does a close, intimate influence from man to man take place, and precisely
that is the best education. What is the gain if we drum more or less into
ourselves in school if we are not schooled in what is practical for the
struggle of life through the love of those who are experienced? Impersonal
warnings have all too little effect on the boy or youth who does not feel the
beat of a heart in them. How harmful are they not, such educators and
teachers of youth, who without heart, yes often with malice show off their
knowledge to boys! Whoever sees boys as only school objects, yes who¬
ever is unable to love them, will almost never be an inciting, stimulating
teacher. And the youth notice this.
What do wise teachers and parents think about the manly youths, who
only in the second half of their twenties or even later are able to take the
step to marriage? Little or nothing. Who thinks about the fact that many
harm their nervous systems because no concern is taken for their natural
functions, which still have to go their own way, and who must seek their
release now in self-depletion, now in infected prostitution. How long is
this neglect of God-given nature to limitlessly increase the nervousness
and contamination of the sexes! Instead of massively promoting the senses
and spirit with open eyes to become fit, we leave them to grow in dark-
ness, so as to let our lazy limitation run its usual course. We ignore and
deny what is really there, or raise an idle lamentation over secret sins and
depravity.
Youth must enjoy youth in an open joining with one another. In joining
to another a person forgets to think only of himself; in the love and con¬
cern and teaching, which the lad experiences from his lover, he learns to
know from his youth on the blessing of giving of himself; in the love that
he demonstrates, in the small and large offerings of an intimate relation¬
ship, he becomes accustomed to the giving of himself to another. Thus
indeed is the young man educated to be a member of the community, a
useful member, who does not always and only have himself in mind. How
much closer the individual grows to the individual here, so that the whole
in fact feels itself as a whole. This appears ridiculous to many today,
because they cannot lay aside their selfishness. Our student fraternities
have fulfilled their national task and are now only of minimal, superficial
usefulness to the community, even if they incidentally promote many a
faithful relationship. Mostly the one just faces the other as an eventual
enemy, who must be challenged as soon as he gets a wry look; there is
always the kernel of a miniature civil war, and that is truly not good for
the state.
This crude intercourse of man with man chokes off the seeds of a finer
culture and lets that subservient tone come about that contributes so little
to making a people noble. It makes me think of the conversation that the
wise Solon had with the barbarian Anacharsis in Lukianos. The Scythian
thought much as people do today, and Solon taught him the meaning of
the esthetic education of Athens: Women themselves could only gain
thereby, if men brought with them a more finely schooled spirit.
The close relationship of men has the further effect that one instinc¬
tively and not without reason joins with the other; therefore if the one is
respectable and honorable, then it is up to him not to let the other bring
shame to him. Thus there arises a band of moral responsibility regarding
excellence. And what can better promote public life than that the individ¬
ual members feel themselves responsible for one another? It is just this
which makes up the national consciousness, the strength of a people: that
it is a whole in itself, where one feels in himself an attack on another.
Such connections can be of the highest social value, as the family is.
Precisely in the hour of danger is the effect of this togetherness proved, for
where the one stands or falls with the other, where self-sacrifice, schooled
in small things, has become at the same time a warm-hearted instinct, then
there is a force of incalculable importance, a force that only madness
could little respect. The steeling strength of these connections has already
proved itself in practice, for example, in the Sacred Band of Thebes,

which won the victory of Leuctra (see Plutarch, Epaminondas, and
Flaubert). This can indeed be explained in a highly natural, psychological
way: where anyone feels himself bound body and soul to another, should
he not stimulate all his strength to be useful to him, so as to demonstrate
his love to him in this way? Whoever cannot or will not see this —his
understanding or good moral will may rightfully be doubted. Of course
there will always be subjects who only indulge great egotism and the
satisfaction of their immediate instincts. We will never root out those
elements; we have to reckon with them always and under all laws. It is
however, to put it mildly, a madness to judge the good according to the
bad elements. . . .
Only one glance more from the standpoint of the Christian religion. It is
said that one forgets the soul of a person if he will not reckon with the
religion of Christ. Religion is in general a human need. . . .
Phenomena that in the history of mankind have become gray with age
cannot be thrown onto a shelf with a few phrases; one must carefully
examine and explain them. True, we have to reckon today with a Chris¬
tianity that on the whole is only a caricature. That is the fate of all ideals,
that they become caricatures. If we wanted to call Christian everything
that has happened in the course of the past fifteen centuries, that would be
ridiculous. Almost the entire history of Christianity is a protest against the
personality of Christ. Hatred and persecution, the shedding of blood and
fierce battles, a mutual lacerating without mercy for one’s neighbors. And
all that in the name of Him who gave the command to love his enemies, in
the name of Him who said: “My kingdom is not of this world”! And all
that abuse and dirtying, the rage, the kicks given out —in the name of the
morality of Him, who demanded that we turn everything to the good. Is it
not a stupid blindness to misunderstand the crying contradiction there?
According to the view of Christ it is above all the conviction that deter¬
mines the unworthiness, the sin of an action. . . . The kingdom of Christ
is not of this world, therefore he also has no civil laws in this world. To
whom would it then occur to make the genuine ethical demands of Christ
into laws? That would be much too uncomfortable for the rulers, for al¬
most everyone would have to sit behind lock and bars. Or are the rulers
finally so righteous that they have fulfilled all the commandments of
Christ? Then indeed we don’t require a savior anymore. The Catholic
Church is right when it considers unbelief to be worse than any other sin.
For Christ himself said so: “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor
hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the
dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the
land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city”
(Matthew 10:14-15). But Christ also had for this no earthly punishments,
not to mention prison and scaffold. Truly, a God who created heaven and
earth just has no need of police spies and jails to uphold his majesty; those
are human, purely civil institutions. His kingdom, however, is not of this
world. Truly Christ did not hold back his words, he reproves where he
wishes to reprove. Relationships such as this Lieblingminne entails, such
he never judged with one public word. No such passage is found is all the
gospels. Would not a warning against this have been probable, precisely
in the orient where such relationships were usual and especially in a time
when the Greek spirit had spread so strongly in Palestine? We hear of only
one thing again and again, that Christ had a disciple whom he loved above
all, although indeed it went without saying that he loved him as his neigh¬
bor; but it is always emphasized that he had an intimate personal relation¬
ship with him. And the whole of Christian art has understood it in no other
way than to represent this disciple John as a beautiful youth with tender
feelings. Thus I am still not drawing over-hasty conclusions.
And yet our so-called Christian world clings solely to the former Phari¬
see Paul, who not once was in personal touch with Christ and only in
whose writing is such a passage found, which proves how little Paul had
the ethical meaning of those relationships in view and that he thereby only
thought of merely one-sided relationships of satiety, such as bought plea¬
sure still brings with it today. That also concerns only the Jewish-Roman
believers in the strict letter of the law. Whoever as a Christian holds only
to the person of Christ finds nothing against it and will not shut his eyes to
the knowledge that Christ is greater than Paul and that the latter, when he
wrote that, had not acquired sufficient insight into the matter, such as is
also the case even today with many honorable men; for Paul, as a Phari¬
see, was strictly reared in the old law, which also says: “An eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth,” against which Christ indeed addressed himself
with reproach. In no case did Christ forcefully intervene into civil life, for
his kingdom was not of this world. Granted, the Christian churches are
here in their own right and legally; but in the future they will tell them¬
selves that they have made more enemies than friends through persecution
and ignorance, have lost more faithful than they have won; and this insight
is not lacking already.1 It is only a short while ago that witches were still
being burned-in the name of Christ! But let us not forget that it was a
Christian, the Jesuit Friedrich von Spee, who first raised his voice against
this madness. And Christians will also not shut themselves off forever
from my perception. . . .
Thus the phenomenon in question here has been illuminated from two
sides: on the one hand those who cannot do enough in the way of hateful
slander have been rejected, as have, on the other hand, those too who
through their sick theories (of Urnings and effeminacy) confuse and dis¬
tort everything. I will not deny, of course, that there are such extreme
phenomena, for nature is inexhaustibly rich, but Lieblingminne is in no
way identical with it. And I hope that this collection will do what it can to
show how wrong both parties are, how much they do violence to truth
through their generalization, that principal fault of all mankind. By con¬
trast, Goethe correctly said of J. J. Winckelmann: “He lived as a man,
and died as a complete man.”4
The German national is in the end still a person in today’s cultural
world, who takes something seriously, and thus it is difficult to convince
him, very difficult; but when he attains something in his thoroughness and
conscientiousness, then it becomes a cultural factor for him, in contrast to
the French and the Italians, whose insight appears quickly, but does not
penetrate deeply. Their sense of freedom and their “Laisser faire” is
mostly a superficial compromise of blunt opposites, by which one can live
well under the circumstances, if one does not have too bad a conscience
nor a strong, candid sense of honor —but new cultural possibilities arise
there with difficulty. Thus I am happy with the German, although he
appears backward in many things, and I would never wish to be anything
else, nor to write in another language than in this abundant, beautiful one,
which comes closest to ancient Greek, which has the tenderest lyrical
tones and at the same time is able to pour out a mighty current. . . .
From all this the reader will conclude ahead of time that for the editor it
was not a matter of a sensational work, nor of an erotic collection, but
rather of an ethical cultural deed. To what extent it has succeeded is
another question. Under a dishonest work I would not have set my honest
name, of which I have all reason to be proud. Intentionally only what has
been previously printed is presented here, with the exception of the late
poet Verlaine, so that there is not a single sensational discovery to be
found. Therefore much had to be left out that would also have shed an
explanatory light on well-known living persons, on personalities who
have a social reputation among us. . . . This work, for which I expect no
thanks, although voices of moral courage are already being raised,5 I
hereby give over to the public —to the future.
Pompeii, 1899
Original: “Die ethisch-politische Bedeutung der Lieblingminne,” Der

Eigene, 1899, no. 6/7, pp. 182-199.
NOTES
1. [Von Kupffer is referring to the war Prussia waged against France in 1870-
1871 under the leadership of Bismarck. The German victory was at the same time
the birth of the second German Empire (1871-1918). HO]
2. That the Greeks (just as Hafiz) did not understand relations with physically
immature children by so-called boy-love is undoubtedly cleared up through count¬
less passages. “Boy” is often an expression of tenderness, as “girl” is today, or
even “little one” and “my child.” Where the feeling for tenderness is lacking,
the word appears incorrectly in a limited one-sided meaning. On this subject our
language has remained poor in every respect through artificial, complete suppres¬
sion. To give a picture of the richness of the Greek manner of expression, I offer
here a series of words without being in any way exhaustive. [In the original Kupf¬
fer gave the original Greek spelling as well as the Roman transcription, which is
given here. HK]
andropais — young man

antipais = grown boy (Euripides and Sophocles)
ephebos = youth from 18 on
hebeter = post-puberal youth
eitheos = post-puberal unmarried youth
eiren = youth (Spartan) from 20 on
kuros = youth
leiax = boy without beard
meirakion = youth
meirax = boy
meirakyllion = boy
neanias = youth
neaniskos - young man, youth
neaniskarion = youth (tender diminutive)
neax = youth (poetical)
neoi — youths, young men into their 30s
nearos = boy
pais = boy, youth, young man
sideunes = boy about 15 or 16 years old (Dorian)
aites = beloved (Theocritus)
erotylos = beloved (bucolic)
eromenos = beloved
paiderds — boy beautiful as Eros, or lover
paidika = darling
eispnelas - lover
erastes = lover, also paiderastes
3. Thus reports from modern Greece, which until now I have been unable to
check on the spot, relate that there is a sort of marriage there between youths,
blessed by priests of the Christian church. As a documentation of this: Anastasius,
Fahrten eines Griechen im Orient, by Urquhart, an English envoy (in German,

1830-1840). [This is probably David Urquhart (1805-1877). HO]
4. [The author is quoting here from a study of Goethe about the famous 18th
century art historian Winckelmann: Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert (1805). In
this study Goethe suggested that Winckelmann’s predilection for the sculpture of
ancient Greece was related to his homo-erotic leanings towards young men. HO]
5. As striking proof, I add a passage from the well-known political satirical
paper Der Kladderadatsch, where in the issue of 12 February 1899 is found:
Munich. A. S.: In the General-Anzeiger der Miinchener Neuesten Nach-

richten (No. 52) was announced: “Young gentleman wishes to become
acquainted with a somewhat musical young gentleman with a view to mar¬
riage. . . .” In Berlin, too, all enlightened people are indeed of the opinion
that §175 of the German Penal Code must be repealed, but no one yet, as far
as we know, is thinking of a marriage between two men. We would not be
surprised, however, if a similar advertisement should pop up in the
che Zeitung.
I also recall the petition to the German Reichstag, which was signed by so many
famous men.
Love
Peter Hamecher
Review of: Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen, unter besonderer

Beriicksichtigung der Homosexuality (Yearbook for sexual intermedi¬
ates, with special reference to homosexuality), vol. 1 (1899). Edited by
the Scientific Humanitarian Committee. Leipzig, 1899. Verlag von Max
Spohr.
“To you, my Gustav!”
It was in the stormy period of my fifteenth year that the image of

Freundesliebe (love of friends) first appeared before my eyes in flaming
color and I lost all feeling for woman as a sex. A cute, slender boy with
lively and yet sometimes so deeply sad brown eyes bewitched me; he lived
in the same house as I. Love flared up in me in wild passion and I lived
through all the deepest torments and joys of loving hearts. Other relation¬
ships came later; but I always clung with love and gratitude to the one who
had awakened me to myself. Even that relationship which fills my whole
being, which has given its goal to my wild, boundless, and often to myself
frightening longing has not been able to destroy that sacred image.
Then, however, I also had to learn for the first time that this love, which
appeared to me more holy and noble than the lust of men rutting for
women, was despised and ridiculed by the masses. It hurt me terribly
when they then sought to sunder that intimate and tender bond of friend¬
ship: and consequently an indomitable, downright brutal hatred against
everything that reeked of the masses showed itself in me ever more
sharply.
I learned to see a problem in “homosexuality” however only at eigh¬
teen, when I was finally allowed to turn my back on school. In a short
time I found I was excellent in the role of a “champion of the equal rights
of homosexuals equal with the other sexes.” But how soon I was to un¬
learn it again. Lor most of those people do not at all deserve what is being
done for them by men such as Max Spohr, Dr. Hirschfeld, etc. I have had
bad experiences in the matter. Not only did I incur the displeasure of my
friends, relatives, and acquaintances; those people from whom I had
49
hoped for understanding even dared to further accuse me: I was harming
them merely through my efforts!
Thus I doubly value an undertaking such as the Urning Yearbook. One
may indeed argue over the relative merits of the work. But such courage
deserves respect and recognition. For the editor and the publisher of the
work surely must expect to have mud thrown over them by every newspa¬
per-writing urchin. Besides, the Yearbook is indeed meant to be contro¬
versial, and therefore the lines are already drawn for its collaborators,
within which they must write as they do write.
In the meanwhile that kind of writing has become irritating to me. I do
not have the slightest feeling of gratitude for the magnanimous tolerance
that is extended to us by the physiologists, psycho-physiologists, patholo¬
gists, etc. who “expatiate on this matter.” And all the attempts at expla¬
nation that they have concocted leave me terribly cold. I don’t know at all
what there is to explain! If now and then marks of degeneration go hand
and hand with homosexuality, this is still a long way from saying that this
phenomenon is a degenerative phenomenon. I altogether hold the sexual
instinct, in all its apparent determinacy, to be something very intangible,
something swinging back and forth between extremes. It seems to me
infinitely ridiculous that on a subject whose equal right is proved so obvi¬
ously through its natural necessity (existence in nature) yet another moun¬
tain of paper must be written.
Certainly there are enough homosexuals who will find a colossal plea¬
sure in the “literature of sexual intermediates.” It’s the same for those
people as for the man who eagerly studies medical writings and immedi¬
ately feels himself plagued with all kinds of sickness. It promises so beau¬
tifully: this being sick, that bit of degeneration, and then the limp hands of
pity! . . .
It will also be this kind of people who will answer the Yearbook’s
questionnaire. I can already picture them! The questionnaire itself con¬
tains very many absurdities, namely in the section “Bodily characteristics
and functions.” Moreover, the nonsense that will arise in answering it!
The “Urnings” will find exquisite opportunity to be coquettish about
their valued bodily and mental characteristics, such as they are: dazzling
white skin, curly hair, beautiful eyes, a preference for Heine’s “Book of
Songs,” for cooking, embroidering, knitting, sewing, and such, not to
forget looking in the mirror. Oh how splendid! Oh how lovely!
An example of such a man was probably also Count Platen, whose love
life according to his recently published diary is related by Ludwig Frey.
That a work is being undertaken on this poet was indeed suggested. Per¬
sonally, I find Platen very disagreeable because of his feminine complain-
Peter Hamecher 51
ing and clamoring. But I still believe that the publication of diaries and
sketches of famous personalities will do more to overcome prejudice
against homosexuality than is possible through the most zealous propa¬
ganda. And it really depends first on the “leading spirits.” The masses
will quickly follow along. In this sense the publication of the letters of
Ulrichs is also welcome.
As for the article on blackmail: the work in itself suits its purpose very
well and furnishes excellent material. But is there no getting at those ex¬
tortionists? I am not talking about a law in the matter. Should homosex¬
uals not take care that they simply do not fall into their hands? I believe we
should leave prostitution and related institutions to the “eternal femi¬
nine.” Or is the noble Greek love also to be dragged through the mire?
Then, friend Eros, wrap your heart with iron and cleverly plead in the
German Reichstag against the repeal of §175. . . .
I pass over in silence the last part of the work, the well known petition
for the revision of §175 and the speeches in the Reichstag connected with
it. Not because of the so praiseworthy undertaking of the Scientific Hu¬
manitarian Committee, but rather because I do not wish to upset myself on
account of the stupidity of certain people.
Now finally, a word to homosexual artists: Dear friends! So many pos¬
sible and impossible things have been written about us. Let us finally
create! Create people of our flesh and blood! Step out of the dusk of your
temple into the bright light of day. If we too are sinking, what is our
fault!? Our best, our love cannot expire if we are able to enchant its noble
spirit with eternal forms. Let us create! Even if the mob around us shouts
and cries, let us not listen to them; it is nothing to us. Others may put up a
fight in the alley of stupidity. Let our struggle be to show our brothers who
are still living in the closeness and stuffiness of their own souls the way
that leads out to the light.
Original: “Liebe,” Der Eigene, 1899, no. 6/7, pp. 236-238.

Same-Sex Love, or Lieblingminne:
A Word on Its Essence
and Its Significance
Edwin Bab
I dedicate this writing to my dear, respected friend Adolf Brand in grateful

recognition of much inspiration, encouragement, and support. May this
little book always be for us a remembrance that in defiance of all hostility
and malice we must stick together in our fight against injustice and humili¬
ation, against lies and hypocrisy, for beauty, truth, and right!
One or another of you, ladies and gentlemen, has probably already

heard a lecture by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld or has read one of his writings.
In his explanation of homosexuality he connects it with embryology, i.e.,
the fetal development of the child in the mother’s womb. In his opinion,
the seed from which the human being arises does not yet show in the
beginnings of its development any signs of sexual difference. Even this
assumption is open to question, to the extent that we cannot say if these
signs of sexual difference are not present or perhaps are imperceptible
with our instruments. I myself believe that we must reject the view of Dr.
Hirschfeld, and this on the basis of the following considerations: The
honeybee lays two kinds of eggs. She has herself fertilized by a male. She
retains the seminal fluid for years. Whether or not she fertilizes with it the
eggs she is to lay lies in her discretion. From the fertilized eggs always
develop females, from the unfertilized, males. Here, then, the sex is al¬
ready completely determined before the development of the egg begins. A
case where the opposite might be shown in the animal kingdom is un¬
known to me; until such is proved, one must therefore assume that every¬
where the determination of the sex of all animals occurs before the devel¬
opment of the egg. Since we know today that the human being is not
outside the limits of the animal kingdom, but rather belongs to it, we must
apply the example of the bee to people also. Thus one has not the slightest
reason to see in Hirschfeld’s assumption more than an unlikely theory. It
is more probable that the sex is already determined before the develop-
53
ment of the egg begins and that only our instruments do not suffice to
show us the sexual differences in the first days of fetal development.
During the development in the womb an influence on the development
of the seed is indeed possible: this can just as easily concern the sexual
organs as it can lead, for example, to the formation of a clubfoot. Here I
can again recall the example of the bee: it entirely depends on the external
influences to which the egg is exposed whether a female is to develop as a
so-called “queen,” or a female worker with stunted sexual organs. We
can very well explain, therefore, the fact that we find men with fully
developed breasts, that conversely they have remained stunted in the case
of females, without having to assume a bisexual bodily design and a
“third sex.”
Such bodily characteristics as the developed breast of a woman or the
beard of a man, which are characteristic of one sex without making up the
essence of that sex, are called secondary sex characteristics in contrast to
the primary, which determine the sex itself, such as testicles and ovaries.
As was mentioned, the bodily secondary sex characteristics in many cases
develop in a contrary way: many a woman must, to her greatest anger,
have herself shaved daily, while a large number of adolescents squander
their pocket money in vain to acquire the latest beard-growing remedies.1
Now the question is whether besides the bodily there are also psychic
secondary sex characteristics. Are man and woman to be distinguished
from one another psychically? Moebius2 answers so strongly in the affir¬
mative that he even speaks of a “physiological feeblemindedness of
woman.” This view appears to me to rest absolutely on an error; I assert
that there is no difference between man and woman in the psychic and
intellectual characteristics. It is asserted that man is productive, woman
reproductive and receptive. But only our customs, which make every pro¬
ductive activity highly difficult for the woman, are to blame for the fact
that the number of productive women is relatively small. On the other
hand, there is indeed only a vanishingly small percentage of all men who
are productive. Therefore, to the whole distinction is to be ascribed no
objective value at all. That was only arrived at through an analogy with
the conduct of the egg cell and the sperm cell. The egg is inactive and
receptive, the sperm cell mobile and active. An argument by analogy from
this fact would only be justified, however, if it could claim general valid¬
ity. But that is in fact not the case. For Bonellia viridis, an echiuroid, the
male is a minute dwarf that lives in the intestine of the female as a para¬
site. Which is active here? Obviously it is the female, who along with
herself must nourish the sponging little male. Consequently the rule of
Edwin Bab 55
universal female passivity is broken, and we may no longer uphold it. We

may no longer assert that every female that is actively taking part in some¬
thing, in short all our feminists, belong to the “third sex,” as Dr. Hirsch-
feld has in fact done.3
Hence there remains only one characteristic psychic difference between
man and woman with which we must concern ourselves. Allegedly a man
can only have sexual feelings for a woman, and a woman for a man. Yet
this difference too appears to me not to hold water. In itself it would
already be striking that such a unique psychic sex characteristic should
exist without counterpart. But one can indeed very well say besides: it is
so in general that the man feels himself drawn more to the woman, and the
woman to the man. But this need not be the case. Exceptions occur with¬
out giving for that reason occasion to speak of a “third sex” or a patho¬
logical phenomenon. Am I now placing myself somewhat on the stand¬
point of the dilettantes in our field, who want to cling to the idea that
homosexuality is a characteristic acquired through sexual excesses? By no
means! To solve the homosexual problem one must take the single indi¬
vidual into account much more than has been done up till now. The indi¬
vidual person from the beginning on has feelings to a certain extent for
persons of the same and of the other sex. Mostly through public prejudices
one feeling is reduced to traces; occasionally however it is so strong from
birth on that it attains indomitable validity because the types to which the
person concerned reacts are found almost exclusively in only one of the
two sexes. But a homosexual feeling is found along with the heterosexual
in almost every person. This view appears to me to indicate in no way a
step backwards compared with the latest researches; it is rather more far-
reaching than that of Hirschfeld. I say that the congenital plays an ex¬
tremely important role in the contrary sexual feeling, yet homosexuality is
congenital in a small degree in every person.4 The closest to my views are
those of Elisar v. Kupffer, who has likewise fought against the assumption
of a third sex.
One thing more! One never loves women or men after all, but rather
one quite distinct woman or one man. And the number of “grandes pas¬
sions” in the life of an individual is never very great. Who is able to say
that, when he has three times loved a woman, his inclination will not fall
on a man the fourth time! At most the threefold inclination to a woman
creates a strong suggestion that the person concerned could feel only for
women sexually, when his whole environment declares the opposite to be
a disgrace, indeed a downright crime.
I would now like to say some things to you about Paragraph 175 of the
German Penal Code (along with some things in general about the law as
far as it touches on the contrary sexual feeling):
Unnatural lewdness that is committed between persons of the male

sex or by persons with animals is to be punished by prison. Loss of
civil rights may also be imposed.
This is the wording of §175. I am not well informed on juridical logic,

to be sure, but from the standpoint of ordinary logic the concept of “un¬
natural lewdness” is already meaningless. Further, how is the relative
clause “that is committed between persons of the male sex or by persons
with animals” to be understood? Is it supposed to be an extension or a
limitation of the concept “unnatural lewdness”? Is by “unnatural lewd¬
ness” to be understood a lewdness that is committed between persons of
the male sex or by persons with animals, or is only that unnatural lewd¬
ness that is committed between persons of the male sex or by persons with
animals to be punished? One seeks in vain for an answer to this question.
What is lewdness that is committed between persons of the male sex? A
state attorney can understand all kinds of things under this, perhaps even
bathing in common by two naked men. But the jurists will say to me, the
judges, not the legislators, have to give to the paragraph a meaning —
pardon! —an interpretation. And thus we have to occupy ourselves from
now on with the interpretation of §175, an interpretation that can hardly
be exceeded in arbitrariness. The courts had to decide what definite sexual
acts between men were “unnatural lewdness.” The answer was for the
judge just as difficult to give as for us ordinary mortals. Since there was
nothing firm to hold onto, they arbitrarily choose one interpretation.
Before we consider it more closely we must occupy ourselves a bit with
the acts that occur in homosexual intercourse. The man in the street usu¬
ally thinks that the most widespread act is paederasty. As is known, he is
not thinking here simply of Lieblingminne, which would indeed be a lit¬
eral translation ofpaiderastia, but rather in particular of immissio penis in
anum, also called “pygidialism.” This act is relatively rare, but does
occur often enough. Further, we know about coitus per linguam, then
coitus interfemuralis and finally mutual onanism. Of all these forms mu¬
tual onanism is most frequent. In many cases the Urning is satisfied in¬
deed with gazing on and at most kissing the object of his love. The last
mentioned cases are naturally eliminated for the judge. For the rest the
learned judges have given the following interpretation: Mutual onanism is
not to be punished, whereas in the first place paederasty is to be punished
and after that all the so-called “acts resembling coitus.” The impunity of
Edwin Bab 57
mutual onanism is not unlimited. If one of the two accused makes a small
movement during this act, then again an “act resembling coitus” is
present.
But all these acts are only punishable if they are carried out by men with
one another, while women may do as they wish and likewise man with
woman!! How absurd, how unfair such a stipulation is! What is allowed
between women, and between man and woman, is a dreadful crime if it is
done between two men! Then and only then does our “people’s sensitiv¬
ity” see in the sexual act not only a vice, but even a crime!!! Thus the
motive for §175 asserts itself.
All of this strikes us by a first glance at §175. If we occupy ourselves
more thoroughly with this legal monster, then we must first pose the ques¬
tion whether so-called “perversities” should be punished altogether. . . .
As I explained in the first part of this lecture, perversion and perversity
cannot be separated.
It is indeed correct, as has been repeatedly emphasized, that there is a
series of persons who feel themselves drawn to members of the same sex,
that is, men who are only able to love men, the homosexuals or Urnings.
We have also seen that these persons are completely without blame for
their misfortune, since a congenital constitution made the homosexual
drive much stronger than these persons were able to suppress. They now
have the choice: either to renounce every sexual activity during their
whole lives or be considered inferior at least in the eyes of the public,
since even if they are not to be sentenced to a dishonorable punishment,
they are to be socially damned only because of their love of men. The
majority of those present know that I demand continence outside of mar¬
riage for husband and wife. The man who has intercourse with a prostitute
even commits a crime, since he thereby makes himself guilty of the
spreading of “people’s diseases.” For the man of Lieblingminne I must
consequently demand continence, yet here one thing is to be noted: The
man of Frauenminne can marry and satisfy his sexual drive without dan¬
ger to himself or others, but the man of Lieblingminne cannot. In my
opinion, every person has a right to sexual satisfaction; this is just as much
a natural right as that to subsistence. The sexual drive, just as the need for
nourishment, is invincible in every human being. Consequently we must
demand that every person be allowed to satisfy his sexual drive in some
kind of way, just as he is allowed to satisfy his hunger^But if, in defiance
of this human demand, we forbid intercourse among' men, then we must
logically at least punish every extra-marital sexual intercourse in general.
But probably none thinks seriously of doing this today; consequently the
judge may also not ask whether the extra-marital intercourse was carried
on by persons of different or of the same sex. . . .
What is actually to be punished then? Absolutely every intercourse of a
man with a boy under fourteen years.5 Here penal servitude is doubtless in
place, not because it is a question of a perverse activity of the sexual
drive, but rather because an immature being is harmed morally and per¬
haps also bodily to the highest degree. The required punishment takes
place without §175, however, on the basis of §176.3.6 The situation is
different for children under sixteen. The seduction of a 14- to 16-year-old
girl is indeed punishable on petition of the parents or guardian according
to § 182.7 Not so that of a boy the same age. Here it is of concern to
provide for a revision of the penal code that would extend this paragraph
to boys also, such as by replacing the word “girl” with “person.”
With regret I must state that the rape of a man or youth is only punish¬
able by §175. The §177s would have to be changed so that the word
“Frauensperson,” which is tasteless besides, be replaced by “person.”9
As far as “paederasty” is concerned, it is mostly believed that it can have
harmful consequences for the passive party. Moll has discussed this ques¬
tion in the chapter of his Die kontrdre Sexualempfindung in which the
forensic aspect is treated. He states, in contrast to older authors (e.g.,
Nicolai), that almost never are such injuries provable in the case of pas¬
sive paederasts.10 Even a widening of the anus is not found in most cases.
Consequently paederasty as such likewise does not need to be placed un¬
der punishment. If, however, an injury should be present, we have indeed
§230, which places negligent bodily injury under punishment. One cer¬
tainly cannot speak of an intentional bodily injury."
By its mere existence §175 calls forth great dangers, and not only for
“contrary sexuals.” It has bred a special form of extortion: Rupfertum or
Chantage [“fleecing” or blackmail]. This circumstance should already
prompt us to work for the quickest possible elimination of this accursed
paragraph. It does not matter to the blackmailer if he himself is likewise
punished —what does a couple of years more or less of prison matter to
such depraved creatures-and thus they are able to calmly threaten the
Urning who belongs to the higher social classes. And if the latter gives
even just a trifle, he thus exposes himself to a vicious circle. The extor¬
tionist does not let go of him until he has reduced him to complete beg¬
gary. As soon as the unfortunate man has again come up a bit he has to
give his recent gains anew to the insatiable person and, in spite of it,
constantly fear a denunciation and with it, besides the loss of his wealth
also that of his reputation and respect.
Edwin Bab 59
A law that produces such consequences should only be kept in place if it

fulfills a positive purpose. I am not a jurist; as far as I have heard, how¬
ever, there are mainly four theories of criminal law. The punishment is to
have four goals: that of atonement, of deterrence, of reform, and of ren¬
dering harmless.
First, that of atonement. What is to be atoned?12 Who has had any harm
done him?
Second, the law should deter. Whoever has looked around in uranian
circles knows that §175 lacks any deterrent effect, so that the punishment
indeed can be applied to only a vanishingly small part of the cases.
The third goal of punishment was reformation. Such is excluded by the
nature of homosexuality.11
Fourth, rendering the criminal harmless is only to be obtained by ex¬
cluding the homosexual for life from the outside world, in a prison or in
another institution. This is nonsense, since the offence against §175 really
harms no one; and to make a harmless person harmless is too absurd to
seriously think of carrying out such a task.14
Thus Paragraph 175 is of no value according.to the usual penal theories!
But it is surely directly harmful, for, as we have seen, it breeds downright
criminals; the blackmailers, from whom in part male prostitutes are re¬
cruited. . . . Male prostitution has the disadvantage that every prostitute
can be transformed into a blackmailer, which indeed happens often
enough.
“What does that matter to us? We have nothing to do with black¬
mailers,” the “normal people” could reply; and they also say it often
enough. Apart from the fact that such views betray a short-sighted egotism
and show a lack of any sympathy for people who are different, the objec¬
tion, unfortunately, does not hold true. The blackmailers take any unsus¬
pecting person and brazenly say to his face that he has violated §175. The
man spoken to may be ever so innocent; in many cases, in order to escape
further bother, he will pay the sum demanded for silence. With that he has
completely given himself over into the hands of the blackmailer, for the
latter can say that the person threatened has declared himself guilty by
paying. Thus there is a great danger for the whole public, for the educa¬
tional efforts have not yet had the success that everyone set on by a black¬
mailer right away drags him to the police. In that case the police, happily,
never agree with the extortionist, since they know very well what such
hooligans are up to.
The paragraph absolutely must fall,15 and it will fall; that is guaranteed
by the attitude of the governing coalition. The State Secretary in the De¬
partment of Justice, Dr. Nieberding, once declared to Herr Dr. Magnus
Hirschfeld: “Enlighten public opinion, so that people will understand the

government if it should do without §175.” The paragraph does not matter
to the government at any rate. We understand this in view of the numerous
highly placed Urnings who are known to the government.
A penal clause for same-sex intercourse does not exist in all countries.
In France and Italy, for example, it is exempt from punishment. In Austria
the intercourse of women is also punished.16 But in Italy, despite the lack
of a penal clause, they throw stones at a man if it is supposed of him that
he has intercourse with men or youths. This clearly shows that the repeal
of the penal clause is not sufficient to correct the present sorry state of
affairs: still needed absolutely is the enlightenment of the people about the
essence of Lieblingminne. Certainly the question of the essence of homo¬
sexuality cannot yet be answered in all points with certainty, but so much
is sure, that same-sex love is neither a vice-not to mention a crime —nor
a mental illness. . . .
The Urning demands much more than pity: equal rights. Equal rights
for him must be fought for and attained!! For that not only is the repeal of
Paragraph 175 required, but rather in the first place enlightenment also.
The Scientific Humanitarian Committee in Charlottenburg and Leipzig,
along with its subcommittees in numerous German states, has been pursu¬
ing this goal for years. The Committee has earned its name completely.
Just as the scientific research of the contrary sexual feeling has been sub¬
stantially promoted, namely through the publication of the Jahrbuch fur
sexuelle Zwischenstufen, so too a mighty humane task has already been
fulfilled in part, while part remains to be done. Since judges and relatives
of homosexuals have been furnished with educational material about ho¬
mosexuality, many unfortunates have already been preserved from suicide
or a dishonorable sentence. But the greatest services have been given by
the president of the Committee, Herr Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. As you have
heard, ladies and gentlemen, my scientific views differ from those of
Hirschfeld not inconsiderably; on the field of battle against antiquated
prejudices and laws I can express to him only my fullest, most uncondi¬
tional recognition. The discretion and tact that he brings as president to the
amply attended sessions of the Committee prompt our greatest admiration
again and again. He has known how, through selfless, untiring work in the
interest of the cause, to direct the attention of the police and government,
of doctors, jurists, and artists to the homosexual question. He has repeat¬
edly approached the representatives in the Reichstag; petitions for the re¬
peal of Paragraph 175 have been presented for signature to every personal¬
ity whose name enjoys a justified esteem among the German people and
Edwin Bab 61
then, covered with numerous signatures of the best of our nation, have
reached the Reichstag and the Federal Council. May the efforts of the
Scientific Humanitarian Committee be granted a quick success! That they
must succeed is as clear as daylight; just as the new age always suppresses
obsolete customs, this New Age must conquer over the Middle Ages.
From my experience, Herr Dr. Hirschfeld is in error when he believes
that the people only condemn homosexuality because they think its drive
is not inborn. The great mass of people are rather of the opinion, as unbe¬
lievable as it sounds, that the Urning violates children, or they believe that
the paederast-that besides pygidialism there are other kinds of satisfac¬
tion of the same-sex drive is as good as unknown —causes thereby injuries
and harm to those yielding to him. Whoever has been enlightened on these
two points usually soon gives up his prejudice about same-sex love —all
the more if he becomes acquainted with the ideal side of this love. But one
directly creates a prejudice —I have a sufficient number of experiences for
this-if he preaches again and again that there are only certain persons
with distinctive bodily and psychic characteristics who indulge in same-
sex love, and for their sake §175 must be repealed. Thus in No. 16 of Die
Peitsche17 a Herr von Passeyer protested against the repeal of §175 with
the reasoning that only those may remain unpunished who have been de¬
clared homosexual on the basis of an objective diagnosis. Why one should
punish those offending against §175 remains unclear. I hold such views to
be possible only through the fact that precisely through writings such as
those of Hirschfeld aversion to same-sex love is plainly suggested. For
there a fight is continued against a prejudice that in my experience does
not exist at all in the mass of the population.
The legal prohibition of “unnatural lewdness” is also not to be ex¬
plained the way Dr. Hirschfeld would like one to believe. Christianity
held every sexual act to be a sin, to be “lewd,” but permitted “natural
lewdness,” i.e., that which makes reproduction possible, provided that its
priest had blessed the union between the two persons concerned. Every
other “lewdness” is considered by Christianity, the enemy of sensual
pleasure, to be “unnatural” and punishable. And today people oppose the
repeal of §175 either from stupidity, because they have altogether never
thought about the matter, or from being enemies of sensual pleasure, be¬
cause of which they would also like to place onanism and every extra¬
marital sexual intercourse likewise under punishment, or, because they
have learned from Dr. Hirschfeld —or rather have uncritically let it be
suggested to them —that there is in fact “unnatural lewdness,” namely in
the case of “non-homosexuals,” who are homosexually active.
Besides, the Urning has to claim not only mildness and sympathy on the
part of the people, but rather the same respect as every other decent person
and equal rights for his love. . . .
With his work Dr. Hirschfeld seeks, as was said at the beginning, to
furnish the proof that homosexuality is never produced through external
causes, nor training, but rather is constantly inborn. (In contrast, we were
of the opinion that the direction of the drive toward certain types, irrespec¬
tive of the sex, was inborn!) To this end Hirschfeld first seeks to prove
that in the case of the Urning the feminine type may already be seen in the
male child. Thus he is occupied in the first chapter with the uranian
child. . . .
One can only speak of a “uranian child” at all if one holds the uranian
feeling in man to be a female characteristic and in the woman to be a male
characteristic, something that I, in contrast to Hirschfeld, am unable to
do. Dr. Hirschfeld, however, again assumes this from the beginning, in¬
stead of proving it. If he wanted to prove it, then he must do two things
where he speaks of the uranian child:
1. Present a statistic of all the Urnings known to him and determine

what percent of them showed the supposed feminine characteristics
in childhood.
2. Present just as carefully about the same number of normal feeling
people and determine what percent of them showed the same charac¬
teristics.
If it results thereby —I assume that the persons questioned would not

have been tendentiously influenced —that the relevant percentage of the
Urnings was essentially larger, then proof would have been furnished for
the existence of uranian children and the feminine nature of the Urning.
We find nothing of all this with Dr. Hirschfeld. Not once is there a state¬
ment of how many of the homosexuals known to him reported feminine
characteristics in their childhood. The scientific value of this chapter is
therefore extremely minimal. Dr. Hirschfeld simply assumes the correct¬
ness of his statement, instead of proving it, and presents individual exam¬
ples that confirm his assumption, with no consideration for the fact that
just as many examples of the same kind regarding non-uranian children
could be presented. A not very critically inclined reader must certainly
gain from the chapter the impression that Hirschfeld’s assertion fits in
every case, that he wanted to present only a few particularly striking
cases. Even if I naturally do not assume that Hirschfeld consciously
sought to evoke this illusion, the regrettable fact remains that it is evoked
all the same.
Edwin Bab 63
Finally, the examples themselves are by no means unobjectionable.

Thus it is seen as a feminine characteristic of uranian children that they
gladly help with the cooking and baking, adorn themselves with ribbons
or prefer to occupy themselves with the playthings of their sisters than
with whip, rocking-horse, and tin soldiers. Against this I can only express
my opinion, on the basis of a careful study of the child psyche, that merely
rearing and habit cause boys to prefer soldiers and girls dolls, cooking
stoves, and such as playthings. Where siblings of mixed sexes and ap¬
proximately the same age are reared together, such a distinction is not
observed.
It is just as little boyish when a uranian girl climbs into the highest tree;
the girl in question is simply uncommonly wild. Otherwise she would
certainly leave it alone, since girls’ clothing hinders climbing.
According to Dr. Hirschfeld, mothers prefer to employ uranian children
in all kinds of household activity. Dr. Hirschfeld says about this literally:
It is not to be believed that these feminine characteristics are only

produced through rearing; in the case of a non-uranian child mothers
would not seek to employ them thus at all.
Why would they not do it? asks the reader in vain. Are all cooks Urn-
ings, or even only the majority? For cooking is indeed, according to Dr.
Hirschfeld, feminine household work. . . .
In the chapter “The Harmony of the Uranian Personality” Hirschfeld
seeks to prove that the Urning, in his psychic life as well as in his bodily
structure, possesses characteristics that clearly distinguish him as a mem¬
ber of a “third sex” from man and woman. If it were otherwise, then
these people “who sense a repetition of their inclination” would offer
“something discordant, something monstrous.” Why? for what reason?
how so? —we question in vain.
That there are transitions among the three sexes constructed by Dr.
Hirschfeld is granted; but it is asserted that by a certain sum of feminine
characteristics the man, and by a certain sum of masculine characteristics
the woman, has uranian feelings. In this —unproven!! —system bisexual¬
ity certainly does not enter.
Hirschfeld begins with an enumeration of the psychic characteristics of
the uranian person. First comes a general characteristic:
If we have seen the nature of the pure male psyche in activity, that of
the woman in passivity, then we may say of the Urning psyche that it
is more active than the feminine, but not so active as the masculine;
further, that it is more passive than the masculine, but not as passive
by far as the feminine psyche appears.
Many words, but no sense at all. As I showed in my lecture, one cannot

exactly distinguish the masculine from the feminine psyche. The essence
of man lies as little in activity as that of the woman in passivity: at least
none has proved it, and none can prove it until a thermometer for activity
and passivity has been constructed. Dr. Hirschfeld has consequently char¬
acterized the Urning as the intermediate stage between two limits fluctuat¬
ing back and forth!
Besides, according to Dr. Hirschfeld, the Urning is inclined to a soft
temper, is moody and compassionate. Therefore he is also not a strict
superior. He easily sets himself above class prejudice and shows no
marked sense of honor. The Urning seeks as much as possible to make
people happy and to smooth out differences. Moreover he shows a certain
indolence and aversion to people’s talk. He prefers intellectual to manual
work. His emotional life dominates over sober reason; accordingly there is
an interest in the arts, especially music. Often a preference for the “new
directions” is prominent. Finally Dr. Hirschfeld ascertains a tendency to
ferret out and collect books, works of art, and antiquities of all kinds.
Part of the characteristics mentioned are immediate consequences of the
uranian sensibility, for example, the lack of strictness regarding subordi¬
nates. For this is just as easily explained as the lack of strictness of the
boss with regard to shop girls or female clerks. The female clerks are often
directly disliked by their male colleagues because their boss acts far more
sensitively with them than with the male employees. With regard to a
person whom one likes, one is only seldom a strict superior. Further, that
the Urning stands above class prejudices applies likewise only when he is
in love. Otherwise, according to my observations, which to be sure in¬
clude only about 300 Urnings and not 1500, this does not hold true at all.
That one loves beneath his class is also true of people who are full of class
prejudices. It is even considered a privilege of our “jeunesse doree” to
seduce poor bourgeois or working girls. Marriage is certainly another mat¬
ter; and the Urning has altogether no need of this with the object of his
love. The pedagogical inclinations of numerous Urnings also apply only
to persons they like.
The remaining characteristics presented by Dr. Hirschfeld are found in
all men. For the assertion that they are especially frequent in Urnings the
statistical proof is lacking. From my experiences I cannot confirm the
observations. I found the tendency to collect things, for example, in only
one of the Urnings known to me, whereas this inclination is in general
Edwin Bab 65
very widespread. I recall the current craze for collecting picture postcards,
the postage stamp collectors, the coin collectors, etc. That the zoologist
collects insects, the botanist plants, etc., comes with the profession. In the
case of the inclination for intellectual work the source of the error is appar¬
ent: Those who do not belong to the working class almost always prefer
intellectual to manual work, and the relatively few workers who may be
found among the Urnings known to Dr. Hirschfeld must be above the
average of their colleagues; otherwise they would not have interested
themselves in the homosexual question and Dr. Hirschfeld would not have
become acquainted with them.
And the other characteristics: soft temper, compassion, unpronounced
sense of honor, inclination to smooth out differences and mediate, interest
in the arts, etc. —all good characteristics —must have been concluded by
Dr. Hirschfeld from their own reports, since he could have become ac¬
quainted with the private lives of only a few of the 1500. And he can
hardly require that the Urnings speak ill of themselves.
With a bit of criticism then Dr. Hirschfeld’s characterization of Urnings
melts through our fingers and with it all the conclusions drawn from it. In
what way this complex —if it is present —clearly differs from the mascu¬
line and the feminine nature is unclear to me. Cannot each of the charac¬
teristics named be found just as well in a man as in a woman? . . .
Dr. Hirschfeld admits that there are perhaps very feminine men who
feel themselves to be “normal” all the same, just as many Urnings make a
thoroughly manly impression. By which, moreover, an objective diagno¬
sis of homosexuality is already impossible. But —Hirschfeld concludes
this section:
Among 1500 I have not seen one homosexual who does not differ
bodily and psychically from a complete man and I will not believe in
his existence until I have become acquainted with him personally.
I feel exactly the same way, only I would make this assertion not only
of homosexuals, but rather of almost every man. . . .
The chapter under review —which, in a critique I recall, was pointed
out as something quite remarkable —obviously has the least scientific
value in the whole book. Everything is floating about in this characteristic
of the uranian personality. If I have therefore stated that there is no such
well-characterized “uranian personality” at all, then Dr. Hirschfeld has
in no way refuted my statement. . . .
Dr. Hirschfeld correctly attacks the assumption that homosexuality is
inherited or even a symptom of degeneration.
If I have repeatedly had to sharply contradict Hirschfeld’s views, I am
far from underestimating in any way the value of his work. It has finally
swept away the view that homosexuality is a curable illness caused by
excesses. Everything that Dr. Hirschfeld says against the representatives
of such an opinion is of the greatest service and to be recognized. I find
faulty, on the other hand, the positive things Hirschfeld brings against it:
the assumption of a third sex, which differs bodily and psychically from
man and woman, whose origin is due to a developmental inhibition during
the life of the embryo. According to Dr. Hirschfeld, the homosexual is no
longer mentally ill, but is indeed deformed, just like the owner of a hare¬
lip. Doubtless, for the Urning too, hardly a welcome thought, but above
all one completely unproven. At first same-sex love was held to be a
crime, like robbery and murder; then they made it a vice, like alcoholism
and addiction to morphine; later it became a symptom of a mental illness
dangerous to the community; finally the act of deformed people. I have
tried to present it as the expression of a self-evident, natural drive, dwell¬
ing in all people, but mostly suppressed. Dr. Hirschfeld has drawn the
Urning from the prison and the madhouse and brought him into the offices
of the medical doctor and philanthropist: truly a great step, but not yet the
last.
I have dared something further: out into fresh, thriving nature and into
strong, pulsing, flourishing life.
Original: Diegleichgeschlechtliche Liebe (Lieblingminne): Ein Wort iiber

ihr Wesen und ihre Bedeutung (Berlin: Hugo Schildberger Verlag, 1903).
NOTES
1. Dr. M. Hirschfeld also speaks in such cases of “sexual intermediates,”

and he assumes that the exercise of the sexual drive is principally present in people
whose secondary sex characteristics have developed in a contrary way. But this
assumption is false. I know numerous homosexuals who possess no kind of femi¬
nine bodily characteristics; on the other hand, I have repeatedly observed numer¬
ous abnormally developed secondary sex characteristics in men and women with a
thoroughly “normal” drive, i.e., directed toward the other sex. I am reserving the
presentation of such examples for my next, more detailed work.
It is completely impossible to make an “objective diagnosis” of homosexu¬
ality. It is due to this wrong thought, which Dr. Hirschfeld unfortunately very
strongly advocates (see his article in volume 1 of the Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwi-
schenstufen), that there has originated the unfortunate, scientifically completely
untenable distinction of “perversion” and “perversity.” As soon as the concept
of “perversity” falls, then everyone is homosexual who carries out a homosexual
act for its own sake. Besides, if an objective diagnosis of homosexuality were
possible, then the homosexuals would no longer need to demand the repeal of
Edwin Bab 67
§175 at all. It would be sufficient that everyone be acquitted who was to be

viewed as homosexual on the basis of an objective diagnosis. Then, in fact, with
every certification by which an accused person was declared homosexual on the
basis of an “objective diagnosis” a hindrance would be put in the way of repeal¬
ing §175. If one really believes in an objective diagnosis, then he should do that,
but he should not still demand the repeal of §175 as being in the interest of homo¬
sexuals. In fact, an objective diagnosis of homosexuality is impossible and the
repeal of §175 is a necessity.
2. “Ueber den physiologischen Schwachsinn des Weibes” on page 189 of
his Stachyologie (Leipzig, 1901).
3. In Der umische Mensch Hirschfeld somewhat limits this very bold asser¬
tion, which he has made in several lectures.
4. Since I doubt that homosexuality is only an inborn characteristic, I cer¬
tainly admit that influences during life can be important for the development of
homosexuality. Among such influences I understand, however, neither excesses
with women nor frequent onanism; from my experience homosexuality never
arises from those two factors. On the contrary, precisely homosexual intercourse
at the time of puberty could exercise such an influence —but, nota bene, only as a
factor and not as the single determinant. To this may be added: unfavorable expe¬
riences in intercourse with a woman (such as failure of an erection, contagion with
a disease, etc.), individual preference for a certain type that is more frequent in
men than in women, etc. At any rate, however, the direction of the drive is almost
always decided during puberty; that through poems or writings that glorify
Lieblingminne an acquisition of homosexuality in normal persons could be ef¬
fected, as Herr cand. med. Karl Meyer opined in the discussion, is doubtless
excluded. Also the view of Schopenhauer, which Herr cand. jur. Kurt Fontheim
presented in the discussion, according to which men under 25 and over 40 feel an
inclination toward other men, is of course only a product of his fantasy, for which
hardly a fact from experience can be presented. Thereby the conclusions of Scho¬
penhauer about the natural goal of same-sex love are likewise untenable.
It was a pleasure for me to confirm that both in the discussion and privately
several completely normal men in the audience admitted that they had observed a
remainder of suppressed same-sex love in themselves. But because of it they do
not need to defend themselves, as happened, against the “accusation” of homo¬
sexuality: only he is homosexual for whom the love for men or for one man stands
in the foreground of his sexual life.
5. Herr Adolf Brand demands in general a punishment everywhere that an
injury to personal freedom is present —a very clear principle and one to be ac¬
knowledged. In intercourse with a child under fourteen such an injury is present,
since children under fourteen in general have an insufficient idea of the signifi¬
cance of their action.
6. Whoever undertakes lewd actions with persons under 14 years or induces
them to exercise or tolerate lewd actions is to be punished by imprisonment with
hard labor up to 10 years.
7. Whoever seduces a sexually intact girl, who has not completed her six-
teenth year, to have intercourse is to be punished by prison up to one year. Prose¬

cution arises only on petition of the parents or the guardian.
8. Whoever through force or through threat of force with present danger to
life and limb compels a female person to endure extra-marital intercourse, or who
misuses a female person by extra-marital intercourse after he has put her in a will¬
less or unconscious state for this purpose is to be punished by imprisonment with
hard labor. If mitigating circumstances are present, then the punishment is simple
imprisonment for not less than one year.
9. Occasionally it is demanded that the Urning is to be punished if he seduces
a normal man to homosexual intercourse and likewise the normal man who under¬
takes homosexual acts. Apart from the fact that such a provision can be quite
arbitrarily interpreted, since an objective diagnosis of homosexuality is very diffi¬
cult, in my view even unthinkable, it must be emphasized again and again that
what an adult does voluntarily, without harming a third person or the state, is the
business of none, least of all the judge in court.
10. Moll, Kontrare Sexualempfindung, 2nd ed. (1893), p. 310.
11. The question of paederasty gave rise to long debates. Herr Dr. Max Katte
declared paederasty to be unesthetic, whereas Herr Brand correctly pointed out
that passion justifies any sexual act. One can further add that the intestine is no
less esthetic, or if you will, just as unesthetic an organ as the male member as
carrier of the urinary passage. Herr Brand also noted the frequency of precisely
the pygistic act in intercourse between man and woman, which is undertaken,
e.g., to prevent pregnancy. The punishment of paederasty was demanded only by
Herr cand. jur. Arno Rogowski, who was the only speaker altogether in the dis¬
cussion who demanded the retention of §175, without indeed presenting definite
grounds for his views.
12. If the assertion held true that homosexual intercourse must be punished
because it impairs the increase in population, then every hindrance to pregnancy
in normal intercourse, such as onanism, must consequently be punished. The
result of such a measure would be further impairment of the increase in popula¬
tion, since the whole population would be sitting in prison!!!! Of course such a
penal clause would be just as powerless as §175, since, given the great mass of
punishable actions, always only a few cases can be brought to court.
13. The attempts to treat homosexuality have failed for the most part up to
now. Neither through threat of punishment, nor through punishment, nor through
the marriage of Urnings has favorable results been obtained. Only hypnotic treat¬
ment has apparently had success in a few cases. To discuss this question in a few
words, i.e., in a footnote, is unfortunately impossible. In an eventual second
edition I will go into more detail about the treatment of homosexuality.
14. In the discussion Herr cand. jur. Julius Fleminger gave expression to his
view that the jurists simply could not let the penal clause drop until the question of
the nature of homosexuality had finally been solved from the medical side. A final
solution of a scientific question is unthinkable. But this much is beyond doubt: the
Urning is, at any rate, not a criminal and not mentally ill.
Moreover I do not agree with Herr Adolf Brand when he demanded in the
Edwin Bab 69
discussion that the law should protect morality. It should indeed, yet one must not
understand something fantastic by “morality,” but rather the duty of every person
to protect the rights of the other.
15. The thought that same-sex love would increase with the repeal of the penal
clause is refuted by the fact that in countries where such a clause does not exist
homosexual intercourse has not risen. It is said by experienced researchers that
there are even fewer Umings in Paris than in Berlin.
Besides, the increase of homosexual intercourse is not such a great misfor¬
tune as is the strong run of customers regrettably enjoyed by female prostitution,
the focus of several contagious diseases. But an increase is only to be expected
when the prejudices against Lieblingminne have disappeared.
16. §129 of the Austrian Penal Code.
17. Published by Berthold Manasse, Berlin. On page 506. The paper no
longer appears.
v
Memoir for the Friends
and Contributors
of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee
in the Name of the Secession
of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee
I. SCIENTIFIC POINTS OF DIFFERENCE
. . .The importance of our separation for the whole emancipation move¬

ment . . . lies chiefly in the area of theory: The path is open for a less
dogmatic, more impartial, and more correct evaluation of same-sex love.
Let it be sharply emphasized here that we lay far less weight on a scientific
theory than Herr Hirschfeld and see the question much more from the
standpoint of natural rights as one of personal freedom.
The forces that heretofore have been placed in the service of the Urn-
ing-farce, partly from genuine conviction, partly on the grounds of a de¬
ceptive opportunism, and mostly in the absence of something better, have
already become free in part and are partly becoming free in a progressive
measure. Already three years ago I declared that the exclusive or prepon¬
derate medical leadership of a movement that in the final analysis amounts
to a demand for personal and social freedom has to be understood as in
itself an abnormality and only a transitional stage, if perhaps necessary at
the beginning. This intermezzo has now, with the separation and new
foundation of a different kind of organization, reached its definitive end,
or at least made a great step toward that end.
Not a few of Hirschfeld’s contributors hold to the “intermediate” the¬
ory less from conviction than in the belief that the doctrine of the “inter¬
mediate nature” of same-sex love is especially suited to the fight for the
repeal of §175.
I myself have heard from persons who stand close to Herr Hirschfeld
that other scientific theories are less fruitful for public discussion, perhaps
71
even harmful. Now, it is an old experience that science cannot flourish

where respect is paid to opportunistic motives. One asks less for the crite¬
ria of truth or probability of a theory than for the agitation effect to be
expected. Genuine science, or better said perhaps —since the word science
has been sullied by too many —an honest searching for truth asks less for
the agitation effect and has no diplomatically pliant motives. It is true that
it is mostly exposed to stronger hostility than one with concern for the
ruling prejudices and the unjust power of a stew of the correct and incor¬
rect. If one fixes his eyes on a longer period of time, then the victory is on
the side of impartial science. Those contributors should think about this,
who themselves hold the Ulrichs-theory represented by Herr Hirschfeld to
be basically false but yet support it with clinking coins because they sup¬
pose it to be indispensable for agitation. . . .
The Secession protests not only against the organizational and financial
troubles of the old Committee, but also against its beggarly theory —a
theory that is shabbily borrowed and is used to beg for pity. Although we
too —to emphasize it immediately— neither make propaganda for same-
sex love, at least not for its more material, sexual side, nor “glorify” it,
but rather only want to research and spread the truth about it, we still
intend to take a road that is more direct, perhaps somewhat steeper, but at
any rate shorter than that of the old Committee. And since this is in part a
matter of temperament, it has already been shown and will in the future
more clearly appear that our conception can from the beginning count on
sympathy in the circles of the more virile friends of male youth —no mat¬
ter whether they have “sexual” intercourse or not, since that is for the
unbiased a relatively secondary matter and at any rate a purely private
affair; whereas the extremely feminine “homosexuals” will, on the
whole, feel more comfortable in Hirschfeld’s camp. . . .
Now, just what is the science of the Scientific Committee?
Not only Hirschfeld but the medical writers all together have spread
about, with small divergences and insignificant additions, the contents of
the twelve brochures of the jurist K. H. Ulrichs. Ulrichs was a sincere,
courageous, and original man. With his appearance, which for that time
was truly pioneering, he had seemingly little success. A generation later,
when the question was no longer so un-discussable, there came eager
medical doctors, armored with their authority, who believed that they had
tracked down a new field of activity for theory and practice. And their
scent did not deceive them. Ulrichs was shouted down at the meeting of
jurists in Munich in 1867 and died alone in 1895 in Aquila in Abruzzi; the
medical men who followed him had, each in his own way, pretty fair
Benedict Friedlander 73
success with money, esteem, or both. One satisfied himself with commer¬
cial speculation on the need for sexual excitement of the public, who
bought numerous editions of his so-called Psychopathia sexualis; others,
for a fee, through hypnotism and suggestion therapy, took away love for a
friend and turned it into love for a woman; still others carried on success¬
ful agitation activities. . . .
In truth the medical writers on homosexuality presented to the public,
partly in thick volumes, partly in tract format, everything that the Han¬
noverian Amtsassessor had brought into the world, supplied with the
stamp of medical authority almost without any criticism, partly translated
into the jargon of medical quackery, and decorated with so-called “case
histories.”
For the knowledgeable, these latecomers betray themselves as such
principally through the fact that they even copy the errors and tasteless¬
ness of the original —exactly the way that the plagiarist is most surely
betrayed by taking over typographical errors. Thus the dependence of the
medical literature on the truths and errors of Ulrichs is seen externally by
the fact that the silly, ungrammatical, and tasteless word “Urning,” in¬
vented by Ulrichs in an evil hour, has by now, along with its derivations,
come into circulation with the serious aspect of a “scientific” technical
term. It’s supposed to have come from Urania; having been amputated,
however, it rather recalls urn or Urner Lake in Switzerland —or what¬
ever—than the heavenly goddess.
Essentially, however —in spite of a few partial predecessors, which
cannot be discussed here —Ulrichs is the inventor of the theory, celebrated
in propaganda and subsidized by thousands, of the “sexual intermedi¬
ate,” the theory of the poor female soul that languishes in a male body,
and of the “third sex.”
Certainly there are “sexual intermediates.” Earlier they were called
hermaphrodites. They are the rare malformations, which may be esti¬
mated to make up —at most —a small fraction per thousand. Of those who
are aware of their same-sex feelings, however, there are whole percents; if
one counts together the totally and partially homosexual, then on the basis
of statistical inquiries one reaches a full six percent; and if one does not
limit the concept of same-sex love to crude external factors, one would
attain still larger numbers. This monstrous difference alone in the orders
of size of objectively perceived hermaphrodites and those with same-sex
feelings makes the theory of sexual intermediates extremely unlikely.
A glance at the non- and pre-Christian cultures is sufficient to prove the
complete untenability of the theory. In ancient Hellas in particular most of
the generals, artists, and thinkers would have to have been hermaphro-
dites. Every people from whose initiative in all higher human endeavors
every later European culture fed must have consisted in great part of sick,
hybrid individuals, and indeed especially before and at their golden age.
For it is directly the older Hellenic literature in which by “love” only the
love of youths is understood, while the love of woman became more ap¬
parent only with the emergence of the relatively emancipated woman to¬
ward the period of decline. The ancient Hellenic cult of youth, therefore,
has been a suppressed and avoided stumbling-block. That custom was
indeed much, much too universal to have been able to be borne by the
assumed 1.5 percent of “homosexuals”! Rather, it was obvious that that
state of affairs rested predominantly on the very much larger number of
so-called “bisexuals” and the idea at least suggested itself that a certain
degree of “bisexuality” was still more widespread than the modern statis¬
tic shows and only with us could be artificially brought to shrivel up
through effective suggestion from youth on against everything that even
remotely reminded one of homosexuality.
All that was discussed in detail by me three years ago in my Renais¬
sance des Eros Uranios. Until then there was little talk of bisexuals in the
Urning camp, since it was unsuited to theory and agitation, and it was
only my writing and also, perhaps, the results of statistics that forced the
champions of the theory of intermediates to concern themselves a bit more
with bisexuality. The state of Hellenic customs, the great number of bi¬
sexuals, and the considerations connected with them appeared critical,
that is, since they could give the opponents a ready assumption that a
repeal of §175 would bring with it the Hellenic customs and social condi¬
tion, against which there exists a nearly insurmountable prejudice, princi¬
pally borne by the interests of womanhood.
The answer to that reflection would not be difficult; a glance at the
countries without §175 proves —one may complain about it or rejoice over
it —that such a result in no way comes about, since custom is much
stronger than law. Custom is Argus-eyed and affects the slightest approba¬
tions; the law must be limited to sharply definable, coarse events and of
these sees only a downright vanishing fraction. On the other hand, close
observation of society in Germany shows that an approximation to the
Hellenic cult of the adolescent is very well possible in not entirely small
circles in spite of §175. In this sense the Hellenic condition just depends
much less on any such paragraph as on custom, which in this case pre¬
dominantly rests on the social position of women. As long as women, by
operating merely with social weapons through their social omnipresence,
are able to proscribe and make difficult the love of youths, which they
Benedict Friedldnder 75
hate as a kind of unfair competition, then that condition is impossible to a

wide extent, with or without §175. But as soon as a nation or individual
groups have got rid of the European valuation of woman, then, with or
without §175, the formation of a Hellenic social condition or an approxi¬
mation to it is the inevitable consequence. . . .
Recently the most productive of the medical doctors who have been
writing about things sexual have wanted to separate Hellenic paederasty,
sanctified by national custom, as a “pseudo-homosexuality” connected
with bisexuality from “genuine” homosexuality. That this national cus¬
tom was based in a much higher degree on bisexuality than on pure homo¬
sexuality is correct of course, as has been said, and this was long ago
emphasized by us and others. But since it is still a matter of true love
among those truly of the same sex, it is simply incomprehensible what
should be “pseudo” about it. . . .
In spite of its lack of originality the medical literature has doubtless
been extremely useful. The medical authority that spoke of “observations
of illness” was allowed expressions otherwise made difficult by the
touch-me-not stamp of prudery and suppressive laws. Only through the
intercession of several doctors, no matter whether through selflessness or
self-interest, could wider circles be educated about the mere presence of
same-sex love and the fact be made the object of universal knowledge,
that there is really a large number of purely “homosexually” inclined
men— something asserted till now by only a few and doubted by others.
And only thereby has that movement come about that is constantly draw¬
ing in wider circles and can surely no longer be stopped by any power. Far
be it from us to underestimate the significance of the medical agitation.
Through its undivided dominance, however, the movement has fallen
into a fateful one-sidedness that, if allowed to continue undisturbed, must
in the end do more damage than the whole medical propaganda has other¬
wise done good. For one would finally get rid of §175 on the basis of
purely juridical considerations, just as the analogous penal clauses in other
countries have passed away without medical help.
The mere circumstance that the larger public always sees only doctors
at the head of the movement must further the error that it is a question of a
sickness or at least a pathology. With sicknesses one can have pity, of
course, and act “humanely” toward the sick, and even seek to “cure”
them; the equal rights of those alleged to be physically inferior will never
be recognized.
Now, it is true that the more progressive among the medical men have
expressly dropped the doctrine of the sickness of same-sex love: they also
had to do it, for otherwise their clients would have run away from them.
But a remainder of the error is left and can only disappear along with
the false “intermediate stage” theory. An admixture of feminine charac¬
teristics, that is, an approximation to an at least physical hermaphrodite,
such as the Ulrichs theory teaches as an explanation of same-sex love,
must of course always give the appearance that all men who have com¬
plete or partial same-sex feelings are to be considered to be not quite
whole and afflicted with an incompleteness. As long as the love for a male
being is presented as a specific and exclusively feminine characteristic —
something that applies to non-social creatures, to be sure, but not to highly
social human beings —it will not help to deny sickness: there remains an
unavoidable image of a partial hermaphrodite, that is, a kind of psychic
malformation. Here too one cannot claim respect, but only at most beg for
pity and at best tolerance.
The medical direction has occupied itself all too exclusively with the
coarser and crudest side of the question and at most only touched on the
psychic and cultural part of the question. That amounts to the same thing
as wanting to concentrate one’s point of view exclusively on the possibly,
but not necessarily occurring physiological-animal sexual acts in the case
of man-woman love in life, art, and literature. Granted, the grotesque
penal clause, in the case of man-man love, concerns only the sexual act
and it only under certain limitations.
But number 175 is also not the main point. Certainly the legal monster
creates a great amount of undeserved misery, in that it yearly sends to
prison like thieves and swindlers 500-600 men and youths who have never
caused the least harm to anyone. For the whole of the nation, however, the
decisive disadvantage is the impediment to friendship and bonds between
men that comes from that superstition and the clause that belongs to it.
That prejudice weighs, namely, on all men and youths who feel them¬
selves more or less drawn to one another, but who mistrust their natural
instinct because they have been taught to view the possible extremes,
which could happen, as a horrible vice and, strangely, even as a “punish¬
able act.”
Thus the tabu of same-sex love among men contributes very essentially
to the improper absolute rule of woman-love, to the suppression of male
friendship, and thereby to a feminization of the whole culture. A compari¬
son of the appreciation which that friendship enjoyed in classic antiq¬
uity —without regard for the foolish and indiscreet question of whether it
came to “sexual” acts or not!-with our condition makes that all too
clear. At that time there was still no one who seriously talked that non¬
sense about the equal intellect and equal rights of women. In the case of
the whole white race it has come to a fateful exaggeration of the family
principle-that most primitive form of socialization, which human beings
share even with the beasts of prey-which breaks up states and eats away
the national unity. The other, world-enriching love, which is reserved to
the social species, which Walt Whitman called “love of comrades,” and
which is most closely connected with so-called homosexuality, has on the
contrary withdrawn entirely into the background.
Poor Whitman! What hope you had for the love of comrades for your
United States! And you forgot that over there by you the prevailing “lady-
economy” will never allow the love of comrades, which reaches beyond
feminine show and family life.'
Of these cultural-scientific connections, which indeed give more of¬
fence to our enemies, but because of their truth also represent a much
greater moral force than talk about Urnings, there is basically nothing said
in the medical literature.
Still, that would also have been asking too much for the beginner. The
public is even less ready for the last and highest branch of the homosexual
question than it is for the physical foundation; it was perhaps an indeed
regrettable, but necessary precept of wisdom to keep silent about it in the
agitation in the beginning. But it certainly should have been exceptionally
emphasized that man-man love is capable of the same spiritualization and
emotional depth as man-woman love. ... But what is one to say when the
principal spokesman, Herr Hirschfeld himself, in a half-literary, half-pop¬
ular scientific form talks about “Berlin’s third sex” and leads the reader
into a sort of “thieves’ den” milieu, as if that belonged to the essence of
the matter! In my Renaissance I rather warned against forming a judgment
in the matter from the doings of this “third sex” in the well-known bars,
since one gets to see there only some of the symptoms of degeneration
caused by the pressure of modern morality.
Through such presentations the cause advocated will, without need and
against the truth, be degraded and harmed. Certainly the seamy side may
sometimes be shown and the sad consequences of the unhealthy pressure
that —with and without a penal clause —weighs on Hellenic love in Chris¬
tian Europe; that should have been done in a passing way by another party
and not by the spokesman in the liberation movement. There are really
enough bright sides to the love of friends! Let us just not hide the fact that
most really intimate and passionate young friendships, even those that
later predominantly incline toward women, are permeated by the spirit of
Eros Uranios —no matter whether it thereby comes to sexual trifles or not!
Let us just understand that no one can be a good educator who does not
love his pupils! And let us not lie to ourselves that in love the so-called
“spiritual” element can ever be completely detached from its physiologi¬
cal foundation. It is an eternal verity: Only a good paederast can be a
complete pedagogue. Here the word “paederast” is not to be understood,
of course, in the meaning that medieval slander imposed on it by con¬
founding the similar sounding words paiderastia and pedicatio. . . .2
At the time I was writing my earlier booklet I did not yet know the work
of Heinrich Schurtz. . . .3 What I discovered by the physiological-analyti¬
cal path, namely the presence of a “physiological friendship,” or, as
Schurtz says, “sympathy” between persons of the same sex and the ne¬
cessity of that affect for the sociability of our species, Schurtz had already
discovered before me on the synthetic path of a cultural comparison of
numerous examples, even though he explained and evaluated it somewhat
differently. The diversity of the paths that Schurtz and I took guarantees
my complete independence, and the similarity of the results found by us
guarantees the essential correctness of our doctrines. These, however,
unanimously attest that an instinctive, i.e., physiological sympathy be¬
tween man and man is a normal basic characteristic of our species and is
necessary for sociability, indeed is more important than the family princi¬
ple, which in Christian Europe is exaggerated, at the cost of male friend¬
ship, to the disadvantage of national unity. That Schurtz expressly distin¬
guishes what he calls “sympathy” of men and especially of youths from
sexuality does not change the matter. One needs only to read the descrip¬
tions in Schurtz of the men’s unions and men’s houses, in short the life
together of the men and especially of the mature male youths of many
primitive people, to gain the well-founded conviction that in those men’s
clubs and men’s houses —even when women could enter —Venus Urania
must not be less secret than, say, in our boarding schools and cadet insti¬
tutes, all the more since those primitive people, at least before their Chris¬
tianization, could not have had any kind of superstitious prejudice against
lust.
The curious idea, that a pleasant feeling and its mutual arousal is in
itself a wrong, a “sin,” really goes back historically to the priesthood of
the early Middle Ages and is therefore at present, even if in weakened
form, limited to Christian and, with a somewhat different stamp, Buddhist
cultural circles. The physiological analysis further shows that sexuality is
altogether not a simple and inseparable instinct, but rather the result of a
series of elementary sensitivities. That, however, Schurtz’ alleged entirely
asexual “sympathy” between youths has some of these tropisms in com¬
mon with undoubted sexuality, consequently is connected with it in its
root, and therefore is distinguished only by mixture, degree, and nuance,

but by no means completely, nor can be distinguished in any imaginable
way— this I believe I have proved on the basis of sound science and strict
logic. . . .4
To sum up precisely: the Urning theory proceeds from the false premise
that love for a male being is an exclusively female characteristic, a “sec¬
ondary female sex characteristic.” That indeed holds true for the non-
social species, but is false for the social species, for whose unity a physio¬
logical force of attraction also between those of the same sex is necessary.
This is taught by a thoughtful consideration of every social species; it is
proved by the trivial universal fact that mere family instinct, that is man-
woman love and parent-love, by no means leads to socialization, as we
may see in the case of beasts of prey. Schurtz and I, independent of one
another and on diverse paths, found the analog for the human being. This
“physiological friendship,” as I called it, or “sympathy,” as Schurtz
says, necessarily has several tropistic roots in common with sexuality and
so is not a completely different kind of thing altogether; it therefore, as the
observation of all peoples and all periods teaches, also very easily leads to
the practice of sexual acts. That in some of the relatively few extreme
cases of homosexuality there is also present a genuine sort of hermaphro¬
ditism—that is, for a minority of the most extreme constitutions the theory
of intermediates is at least approximately correct —is very well possible
and even, from various grounds, not unlikely. But it certainly won’t do to
attribute such an extremely frequent phenomenon as homosexuality and
bisexuality to such a rare phenomenon as a partial hermaphroditism. It
really is more obvious to think about the fact that, in the case of a human
being as a social creature, there normally exist physiological-tropistic
forces of attraction also between those of the same sex, which, since these
cannot be entirely separated from sexual attraction, easily lead to sexual
feelings and acts. By this means, and only thereby, does the great fre¬
quency and universal extent of bisexuality and homosexuality precisely in
our species become comprehensible. . . .
The connection between love of friends and men’s unions is obvious
besides. Diihring,5 in his latest work Waffen, Kapital, Arbeit, expresses
the view that paederasty is originally a dowry of militarism. I hold that to
be not precisely false, but indeed too narrowly conceived. It appears ev¬
erywhere to a certain extent and sometimes, in noble form, develops to a
salutary people’s custom, wherever men’s unions exercise a greater influ¬
ence, no matter whether these men’s unions have a military character or
not. But the connection is reciprocal. Just as the restraint of men’s unions
and the social omnipresence of women reduce paederasty, so too, the

other way around, through an excessive tabu of paederasty the formation
of a purely male society is made difficult, since this is then suspect and
unpopular. A general revision of the highly important cultural-historical
and cultural-technical chapter on “Men’s unions and paederasty” is a
scientific desideratum. . . .
Thus the Urning theory by no means has remained without contradic¬
tion. Not only the experts on Hellenic antiquity, not only the cultural
historians, and not only the poets with their more emotional expressions,
but also the presentations of natural science as well have entered a re¬
peated and searching protest. Every contradiction, however, remains as
good as without any practical effect —at most that the science of the medi¬
cal men, which is held to be competent in the question, has found occa¬
sion to go more closely into what in jargon is called bisexuality and which
consists of the union of the ability for woman-love with that of
Lieblingminne.
That the Urning theory, in spite of multiple disclosures of its untenabil-
ity, could still be widely held and only occasionally, such as through the
recognition of so-called “pseudo-homosexuality,” suffer some limita¬
tions, has a very simple basis in the economic fact that the Urning theory
acts toward the others somewhat the way a subsidized steamship line acts
toward one not subsidized. A theory that in contrast to competing views is
supported yearly with so and so many thousand marks through the free
distribution of its books and tracts to the leaders of public opinion is as
good as assured of the final victory in our busy and commercial age. In the
year 1905 alone, besides thzJahrbuch, Urning publications to the value of
4000 marks (!) were distributed gratis to “newspapers, periodicals, ex¬
perts, authorities, libraries, etc.” (see Jahrbuch 8, page 939)! That, of
course, is the private matter of those who give their money for it —what
we are emphasizing here is the consideration that, under these circum¬
stances, scientific truths can be established even less than is usually the
case. Henry George, I believe, says or quotes somewhere —I don’t recall
the author —that even the law of gravity would be disputed if important
interests stood in the way of its recognition. It can be asserted, the other
way around, that one can make successful propaganda for any true or false
theory, if one spends the money necessary for it. The connoisseur who
observes the budding of a new “author” will at times be reminded of the
rise of a new wine firm, which knows how, through clever advertising,
travelers, and correspondents, to introduce itself “in the best circles,”
even when its wine is watered. If it may be shown in a certain case.
therefore, that a theory has grown large through systematic advertising,

reminding one of a commercial enterprise, that indeed does not prove that
the theory must be false; it does prove that its victory over competing
theories is not really due to its correctness. But those sums are available,
on the one hand, because many believe that the Urning theory will lead
quickest to the repeal of §175, and partly just because the only influential
organization is based on Ulrichs’s theory. If our new organization suc¬
ceeds in uniting a large part of the opposing elements under one banner,
then that will probably change in a short time, all the more so since we do
not at all wish to establish any special biological theory of paederasty —
not even that which I personally hold to be correct. For the needs of
agitation it is completely sufficient to point to the numerous instances of
exclusive homosexuals and the still greater number of so-called bisexuals.
A learned scientific discussion may here and there arouse interest; for all
practical questions, in particular for the repeal of the penal clause, purely
moral and juridical considerations are sufficient, according to which it is
extremely immoral to act as guardian of the sexual lives of others by
trailing and spying and is a juridical absurdity to punish acts by which
every harm is lacking. But that is the subject of the following section.
II. OUR PROGRAM
It now only remains to briefly explain our program. From a scientific

view, regarding the theoretical judgment of same-sex love we reject the
Ulrichs-theory of intermediates for the reasons set forth above. Thus we
shall not speak of “Urnings,” nor of the “third sex,” nor yet of “sexual
intermediates.”
We are further of the opinion that through the exclusively medical treat¬
ment of a general human matter a basic error has been made. The object of
the doctor is sicknesses; therefore he is inclined, because of his profes¬
sion, to classify everything possible under the concept of sickness or pa¬
thology. We are of the view that the scientist who does not have a one¬
sided medical training, the physiologist and anthropologist, is by
profession at least as competent an expert to scientifically judge the ques¬
tion of same-sex love as the medical man, whose general scientific educa¬
tion is mostly poorly cultivated. We are of this opinion for the reason that
at any rate most cases of same-sex love are not in the least pathological,
but are rather completely normal. Only in the extreme cases —as, after all,
in all extremes! — may one raise the question of pathology.
Otherwise, however, we shall establish no special medical or scientific
theory at all. We are rather of the opinion that the last word on the nature,
significance, and goal of same-sex love either has not yet been spoken at
all, or that it will last a long time before in fact a definite conception will
have banished all competing conceptions from the field by the inner force
of its truth. For this question is burdened with grave material interests. We
believe, however, that we also do not need a theory admitted to be abso¬
lutely correct. Sufficient for us is the fact of the presence and frequency of
same-sex love, in connection with the axiomatic principle of the demand
for personal freedom in all cases where no rights are injured.
We likewise believe that comparative cultural history must be called
upon for a judgment in the question. In particular, we place value on the
proof that male friendship and every more intimate relationship among
men, in short all men’s unions in the ethnological sense, is affected and
made difficult by the excessive tabu of sexual forms of male friendship.
This especially holds true of the pedagogically quite irreplaceable deep
personal relationship between mature men and youths.
As for the worst in our question, that is, §175 itself, we shall fight it
from purely juridical and moral viewpoints. For whereas the medical the¬
ory is controversial and in part really quite vacuous, the juridical and
moral consideration is clear, simple, and convincing:
Two responsible people, freely consenting and without harm to a third
or even merely to themselves, produce for each other a pleasant feeling.
Then comes the state —if by exception it once learns of it —and locks up
the culprits, as if they had done something wrong!
On the basis of §175, every year 500-600 men who have made no one
suffer in the least, nor have done harm to anyone, are “sentenced” to
prison, exactly as if they had swindled or stolen!
That is as absurd as any tabu of wild primitive peoples. Truly no biolog¬
ical or pathological theory is needed here, and an actual refutation of the
justification for §175 or even a begging for pity is more superfluous than a
corresponding attitude to the clause against heretics would be. One rather
asks in such cases how the nonsense came about historically. From history
there follows automatically not only the refutation, but also the path to
combating it in practice.
Now, it turns out that §175 is only a partial symptom of a wider super¬
stition and fraud. We mean the ascetic madness spread by the Christian
priests of the early Middle Ages, according to which everything sexual
was suspicious, and a feeling of lust-without regard to the question of
harming a third —was posed as sinful in itself. That was partly superstition
and partly fraud. Just as doctors live from healing sicknesses, those medi¬
eval priests lived from the forgiveness of sins. Thus, just as the doctor is
dependent on the presence of the real or imagined sick person, so too the
medieval priest was dependent on the presence of people who held them-
selves, with or without reason, to be “sinners.” Now, the amount of

genuine wrong, that is, the sum of all unjust harm between one person and
another, did not suffice for the needs of the all too massive and pretentious
budding priesthood of the Middle Ages; it therefore made the attempt to
produce in all people, even the best, a sort of hypochondriac madness of
sinfulness —and that succeeded most surely by pretending that something
was sinful which every healthy man has need of from time to time or at
least bears an intensive desire for. Hence the propagation of the ascetic
spirit, borrowed in part from Buddhism. Man-woman love could not en¬
tirely be made tabu; the priests had to be satisfied with making its admissi¬
bility dependent on their sanction. Same-sex love, however, whose neces¬
sity is not so obvious as man-woman love, could be posed absolutely as
sinful.
In fact, it turns out that even today the most vehement and numerous
adversaries are to be found in those circles where the medieval doctrine, to
be sure strongly changed and weakened, still very audibly resounds: in the
orthodox circles of the Protestant and Catholic churches. The circum¬
stance that many churchmen of both confessions are notable exceptions
and stand up for the equal rights of same-sex love should not mislead us in
judging the average. Thus we shall fight against §175, as far as we treat it
at all, as a juridical and moral monstrosity and emphasize its origin from
the ascetic fraud overcome by the modern Weltanschauung.
It is precisely this sincerer, stronger, and more manly change in direc¬
tion that the representatives of the Urning theory have made an accusation
and pose as dubious; they fear it will heighten the resistance and animosity
of the opponents. We reply, first, that our view obviously has truth on its
side and, further, that the opposition in the two orthodox camps can prob¬
ably not become stronger than it already is; further, that it is our change in
direction that makes the so-called homosexual movement recognizable at
all as a part of the modern freedom movement and therefore must awake
sympathy in all liberally thinking people.
Open attacks on the ascetic fraud of the medieval priesthood and its
painful consequences in a weakened form up to the present are indeed no
longer something really unheard of today; the whole modern sexual free¬
dom movement, of which the homosexual movement is only a part, pro¬
ceeds, consciously or unconsciously, from a protest against the ascetic
morality of the Middle Ages.
Just take a glance, for example, at the movement for so called “protec¬
tion of mothers” and the attacks of emancipation-hungry womanhood on
the existing form of marriage and sexual morality: one will see that those
women today are truly more honest, more courageous, and more manly,
so to speak, than the men —at least those men whom Herr Hirschfeld has
gathered around him! The “mother-protectors” openly and frankly de¬
mand the right to sexual satisfaction for the female sex, even outside of
marriage, by the most daring disregard of tradition and morality, yes, in
our opinion even of justified morality. . . .
Neither to glorify, nor to detract on the basis of inadequate theories or
one-sided presentations of the nature of prostitution —that will be our pre¬
cept.
Since we renounce in principle making propaganda for homosexual ac¬
tivity, viewing sexual matters rather as a private affair, and fight against
§175 on purely juridical grounds, and since that which we positively ad¬
vocate is nothing other than male friendships and men’s unions —our
propaganda will be strictly legal and much safer from police intervention
than that of Hirschfeld, which on the basis of its medical theory is forced
to go into all kinds of sexual details openly in public.
Original: Denkschrift fiir die Freunde und Fondszeichner des Wissen-

schaftlich-Humanitdren Komitees, (Berlin: Privately printed, 1907).
NOTES
1. See my booklet Mannliche und weibliche Kultur (Leipzig, Deutscher

Kampf-Verlag, 1906), in which the masculine culture of Japan and the effeminate
condition of North America are contrasted as extreme opposites to one another.
2. Unfortunately, in my Renaissance I too still used the word “paederasty” in
a false sense. The slander that the word suffers under should be a spur to honest
people to win back for it the good, old, platonic meaning through consistent cor¬
rect use. Then the factually veiled and formally hideous linguistic monsters, such
as “homosexuality” and others, will little by little become superfluous.
3. [Heinrich Schurtz was a German ethnologist. Friedlander is referring here
to his study Altersklassen und Mannerbiinde (Age-Groups and Male Societies),
published in 1902. In this book Schurtz expounded his theory about the two basic
human instincts, the “Geschlechtstrieb” (sex instinct) and the “Gesellungstrieb”
(social instinct). Whereas the sex instinct was the foundation of the female-domi¬
nated family, the social drive, which was, according to Schurtz, reserved only for
men, was the prerequisite for more developed social forms, such as political orga¬
nizations and the state. HO]
4. See Renaissance des Eros Uranios and especially the “Entwurf zu einer
reizphysiologischen Analyse der erotischen Anziehung,” Jahrbuch fur sexuelle
Zwischenstufen, 1905.
5. [Eugen Duhring was a German political theorist of socialism. His views
were criticized by Friedrich Engels in his Anti-Duhring. HO]
III. THE AESTHETICS
OF THE MALE BODY
Introduction
Harry Oosterhuis
“We are the better ones. . . . We are those who love only beauty, only
love for beauty’s sake. . . . They cannot grasp our soul, they who dissect,
analyse, encase, and classify everything.” In this way the poet Caesareon
(a pen name), who opens this section with a little essay, formulated his
aversion to modern science. (The essay was a foreword to a collection of
poems which were to appear under the title Sein Name ist Schonheit.)
Most of the writers in the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen were of the opinion
that science was unable to grasp the essence of the “nameless love,” as
Sagitta called it.1 Scientists relied only on external appearance and could
not plumb the depths of spiritual and aesthetic motives. The latter could be
represented or verbalized only in art. Thus, Otto Kiefer claimed in Der
Eigene that societal tolerance of the love of men found its expression in
the high esteem of masculine beauty in the plastic arts.2 Conversely, the
resurgence of the “Hellenistic sense of beauty” would stand in good stead
for the emancipation of that love.
Many writers and poets who supported and contributed to Der Eigene
were of the opinion that the language of art more closely approximated the
truth of their love than that of science.1 In this chapter I included a review
Peter Hamecher wrote of Sagitta’s Die Bucher der namenlosen Liebe (The
books of the nameless love). Although the review did not appear in Der
Eigene but in another journal, it reflects the views of many members of
85
the Gemeinschaft very well. In it Hamecher made a plea for literature as a

means to draw attention to the social position of homosexuals. “Art is
more than science,” he wrote, “for it yields no dead schematics, but
rather life in its unity, and makes it into experience, the only form in
which life can truly be comprehended; i.e., it lets it be felt.”
The emphasis on art and aesthetics in Der Eigene implied that, as
homoerotics, the authors felt not only different from everybody else, but,
because of their idealism and artistic sensibility, even better. This stereo¬
type permitted them to consider themselves, not as pariahs, but as elite
critics of modern society. Homoeroticism was presented as a way to de¬
velop individual uniqueness and artistic qualities, to raise oneself above
everyday mediocrity and materialism. A good example of this approach is
also Hanns Fuchs, who wrote a book on the composer Richard Wagner
and homosexuality.4 In this book, in which he recommended art as a
means for homosexual emancipation, he distinguished between “spiritual
homosexuality” and homosexuality that consisted exclusively of desires
of the flesh. The former need not result in bodily contact, but when it did
occur in this form of male-male love, it was never the intended goal, but
rather a more or less coincidental consequence of an intimate friendship.
Spiritual homosexuality, according to Fuchs, was preeminently the mark
of great artists and thinkers, such as Wagner and Nietzsche. Not only were
the intellectual abilities of the man of genius greater than those of the
average man, but his emotional life was richer and more differentiated.
While the man of the masses, who was only after material gain and sen¬
sual pleasure, turned to woman, the man with a refined aesthetic sense
preferred a (male) friend. The man of genius did not place his sexuality in
the service of reproduction. In friendship the physical passions were con¬
quered and sublimated in works of art.
On several occasions a distinction was made in Der Eigene between a
superior and an inferior form of the love of men. The authors employed
words different from those of Hirschfeld and company because they in¬
tended to refer to other things. According to Kupffer, effeminate urnings
were decadent monsters. The kind of love (Lieblingminne) that he had in
mind had nothing to do with weakness or decay. Paul Vois, a pseudonym
of Peter Hamecher, pronounced the love of friends and homosexuality two
different phenomena.5 Homosexuals were effeminate, degenerated types.
The love of friends was neither pathological nor irreconcilable with real
masculinity.
In the Gemeinschaft distance was clearly kept from the homosexual
subculture. Thus Gotamo wrote that it was a product of mendacity and
Harry Oosterhuis 87
hypocrisy, and as such a reflection of the perversion of modern urban

society as a whole. According to Sagitta and Hamecher, not a single bit of
support could be expected from that little world for the social emancipa¬
tion of male-male love. The majority of the homosexuals were concerned
only with satisfying their own lust. In his review of Sagitta’s work, Hame¬
cher accused sexologists, and even Hirschfeld himself, of placing so much
emphasis on the “lower passions” that they gave ethically inferior sub¬
jects license to abandon themselves to their urges and to corrupt youth.
Benedict Friedlander called “erotomanic” the effeminate homosexual,
about whom Hirschfeld had spoken in his Berlins drittes Geschlecht
(Berlin’s third sex, 1905), since they supposedly were not able to restrain
their sexual drives. Precisely these “degenerates” served as models in the
medical literature and rapidly got into trouble with the legal system. While
the Wissenschaftlich-humanitares Komitee was comprised of effeminate
urnings, the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen was, Friedlander maintained, for
real men, thus invoking the medical doctor Gustav Jager who, in his Ent-
deckung der Seele (1884), had argued that homosexuality and masculinity
were in many cases inextricably connected.6 Jager distinguished between
active and passive “paederasts.” While the passive paederast was femi¬
nine, the active one was always masculine, even hypervirile and as such
even more masculine than the “normal” male because he could enchant
other men with his scent. (According to Jager, attraction and repulsion
between people, and especially among homosexual men, were closely
associated with scent and the sense of smell.) The homosexuality of these
hypervirile men had, in contradistinction to the tendency of the passive
paederast, no relationship to pathology or degeneration. On the contrary,
these Uebermdnner (supermen) were superior and had often played an
important role in history.
In the circle around Der Eigene these views were accompanied by an
ambiguous attitude with respect to sexuality between men. On the one
hand, sensuality and physicality were glorified and attacks on the
Wilhelminian prudishness and Paragraph 175 were quite fierce; on the
other hand, drawing public attention to sexual acts was scrupulously
avoided. Medical doctors, according to adherents of the Gemeinschaft,
placed too much emphasis on the “coarse desires” whereby friendship
and the Mdnnerbund might appear in a bad light. For this reason Bab
deplored the fact that the majority of the public confused the movement
for manly culture with the militant wing of the homosexual movement, for
the abolition of the legal clause referring to sexual contact had no priority
for the Gemeinschaft. Bab praised Kupffer for introducing the word
Lieblingminne, because this term referred to spiritual as well as physical

sentiments. According to Kupffer the substance of (manly) culture was
created by the voluntary control and restraint of drives, which however
did not mean that men who associate with men should have to hold them¬
selves back.
The ambiguity emerged most distinctly in Friedlander’s publications.
For him the ideal was the sublimation of the “lower passions.” With the
assertion that the uncontrollable physical passions had urning eros less in
its grip than the man-woman relationship, Friedlander attempted to re¬
move the suspicion in advance that his defense of the love of men pro¬
moted homosexual acts. Although he emphasized that the power of attrac¬
tion between men was founded on a physiological basis and that friendship
was always sensual,7 the fulfillment of the need for love did not require
sexual contact. Friedlander explained the qualitative difference between
heterosexual and homosexual relations with the assistance of twin con¬
cepts borrowed from the sexologist Albert Moll — Contrectation (attrac¬
tion) and Detumescenz (discharge). The first referred to social needs in the
broadest sense, the second to the sexual act. In homoerotic friendship the
first did not necessarily lead to the second, the attraction could be experi¬
enced as the goal per se, as an adequate emotional complex. But on the
other hand, no more than the others in the Gemeinschaft did Friedlander
demand chastity of men among themselves. He did not consider the sexual
desire and act absolutely objectionable, because in his view the power of
attraction, of intellectual and psychological union and sympathy via aes¬
thetic pleasure and bodily contact to sexual discharge, formed a single
continuous chain, which could only be broken by will power.8
For Friedlander homosexual acts were something of minor importance,
of which not too great a fuss should be made. According to Friedlander,
Hirschfeld had fallen into the trap of priests and their confederates. Due to
his starting point Hirschfeld was forced to delve into all sorts of unadorned
sexual details, and in so doing placed a not particularly exemplary minor¬
ity in the spotlight, whereby the friendship of men was brought into dis¬
credit and homosexuality could be played off against the uranian eros. In
one of his essays selected for this chapter, which was a pre-publication to
his main work Die Renaissance des Eros Uranios (1904) and appeared in
Der Eigene in 1903, Friedlander asserted that precisely the tabu against
sensuality in Western “ascetic” culture had led to a “sexualization” of
the body, to a secret preoccupation with everything having to do with
sexual life. In so doing, Greek paederasty had received an explicitly sex¬
ual meaning and was easily stigmatized. Furthermore, the medieval sup-
Harry Oosterhuis 89
pression of all physicality, of all erotic sensuality, had led to excesses and
disorders: prostitution, sadism, masochism. Besides, the tabu of uranian
eros had led to a large increase in “solitary onanism” which was far more
damaging than mutual masturbation, since the former went hand in hand
with immoderation and egoism.
Friedlander’s view greatly resembled that of Heinrich Pudor (1865-
1941), one of the founders and ideologues of the Freikorperkultur move¬
ment (nudism).9 In an essay written for Der Eigene in 1906, which I
included in this chapter, Pudor glorified the beauty of the male physique
and he asserted that the sex life of modern man had been ruined by the
suppression of all natural experience of the body. Christianity had made
the body into the slave of the spirit, whereby modern man in the Western
Kleiderkultur (clothing culture) had become a somatic fetishist. As soon
as the least bit of the body was exposed, he became sexually aroused. This
had not been the case among the Greeks, Pudor maintained. They no more
knew shame than prudery. They were not yet alienated from their own
bodies and made no distinction between body and spirit. Their perception
of the body and their ideal of beauty, which placed a higher aesthetic
value on the male body than that of the woman, were for Pudor the model
of a healthy sensuality.
The adherents of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen could agree with the
ideals of the Freikorperkultur movement in regard to a healthy perception
of the body. Besides Brand, several members, including Friedlander,
Kupffer, and Jansen, were adherents of nudism. Moreover, not only Pu¬
dor but also other pioneers of Nacktkultur, as it was also called, contrib¬
uted to Der Eigene, such as Karl Vanselow, the editor of the first nudist
journal. Die Schonheit (1903-1932), and Fidus (Hugo Hoppener, 1868-
1948), whose paintings and drawings reflected the elevated aims of Ger¬
man nudism, namely the genesis of a new, better type of human being,
who was one with nature and had reached physical as well as spiritual
beauty.10
The admiration for Fidus was expressed in Der Eigene by Hans Bethge
(1876-1946), a poet, dramatist, and translator, whose name is still known
because he translated the Chinese poems which the composer Gustav
Mahler used for his Das Lied von der Erde. In his essay on Fidus, in¬
cluded in this anthology, the ideal of natural purity stands out. Although
the champions of nudism cried out against “unnatural prudery,” they
resisted license at least as strongly as traditional sexual morals. The
beauty of the Hellenic and German blond, blue-eyed hero was the symbol
of purity and chastity and embodied the metaphysical union of man and
nature. The aesthetic dimension of homoeroticism could only be experi¬

enced when alienation from the body had been overcome. Following
Greek aesthetic values, the male body was considered to be superior to the
female, and whereas heterosexual love was in the interest of physical pro¬
creation, homoerotic relations were justified by the aspiration toward
unity between body and soul and by the longing for spiritual beauty and
perfection. The male nudes pictured in DerEigene often reflected spiritual
and nationalist virtues: they were depicted in unspoiled German nature
(the photographs of Brand, for example) or in settings that remind one of
the Greek or German past (respectively Gloeden and Fidus); their poses
often expressed firmness and strength (as in the paintings and drawings of
Sascha Schneider, who also illustrated the books of Karl May) or, with
their faraway looks, innocence and purity (the paintings of Kupffer, for
instance).
Elisar von Kupffer and his friend the philosopher Eduard von Mayer
(1872-1960), who also contributed to DerEigene, even set forth a philos¬
ophy and a lifestyle based on such an aesthetic equation. They contrived
an esoteric doctrine called Klarismus, for which they built the Sanc-
tuarium Artis Elisarion in Minusio (Locarno) in Switzerland, which was a
temple and a museum in one. The center of this miniature paradise on
earth was a round room whose walls consisted of a monumental painting
by Kupffer, the Klarwelt der Seligen. On top of this were portrayed
eighty-four strikingly similar naked ephebic youths in various positions.
Eros filled an important role in Klarismus. Contemplating physical beauty
and harmony would enable an individual to release himself from the em¬
pirical “world out of order.” Aesthetics became the means to escape from
both an authoritarian God as well as from deterministic laws of nature. A
new morality, in which there was room for sensuality and desire, would
surely restore human integrity. Eros could bring people together, forge
unity between feeling and reason, and span the gulf between the mascu¬
line and the feminine."
In the light of their ardent pleas for masculinity at the beginning of the
century it is remarkable that Kupffer and Mayer elevated androgyny as the
state of human perfection in Klarismus. Kupffer did not portray stout,
brawny, blond Aryan heroes, but plump feminine boys. In Mayer’s
Mysterium der Geschlechter (1923) the feminine was plainly given greater
value than in his earlier works in which he had pronounced that male
qualities were far superior. (See the introduction to Chapter V.) The man
of genius would unite the masculine, actively aspiring with the feminine,
the passively receptive. In Mayer’s view Prussian Germany had devel-
Harry Oosterhuis 91
oped itself in a too one-sidedly masculine direction. He himself asserted

that contempt for the homosexual was closely connected to male disdain
for woman. In Der Eigene he wrote in the twenties that “the pure man,
the pure woman, and the pure homosexual are and will remain incomplete
and chaotic-egoistic, as long as they fail to acquire the complementary
psychological characteristics (of the other gender).” This ideal of androg¬
yny would be able to prevent culture from falling victim to Massenbarba-
rei (mass barbarism).12
For most of the adherents of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, however,
eros remained an exclusively masculine matter. In this respect the circle
around the poet Stefan George (1869-1933) was a guiding example.
George and his disciples, who revivified Holderlin’s concept Griechen-
deutschen (Hellenic Germans), contrasted in their poetry and lifestyle the
“eternal spring of homoerotic friendship” from the family, “the lifelong
sorrow of bourgeois existence,”11 masculine eros and creative power from
the feminine procreative and homemaking impulses. The material de¬
mands of marriage and family suffocated the spiritual drive of the male.
For this reason room should again be made for the Mannerbund, which
was supposedly superior to male-female relations.
NOTES
1. J. H. Mackay [Sagitta], Die Buecher der namenlosen Liebe, vol. 1 (Berlin

1979; first edition 1913), p. 16.
2. O. Kieffer, “Der schone Jiingling in der bildende Kunst aller Zeiten,”
Der Eigene, 1903, pp. 13-26, 103-14, 173-81, 244-54.
3. See, for example, Hadrian, Phantasien eines Eigenen. Prosa und Versen
(Leipzig, 1905).
4. H. Fuchs, Richard Wagner und die Homosexualitat. Enter besonderer
Beriicksichtigung der sexuellen Anomalien seiner Gestalten (Berlin, 1903).
5. P. Vois in Der Eigene, 1903, p. 152.
6. G. Jager, “Ein bisher ungedrucktes Kapital iiber Homosexualitat aus der
Entdeckung der Seele,” Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen 2 (1900): 53-125.
7. B. Friedlander, “Die physiologische Freundschaft als normaler
Grundtrieb des Menschen und als Grundlage der Soziabilitat,” Jahrbuch fiir sex¬
uelle Zwischenstufen 6 (1904): 181-213.
8. B. Friedlander, “Entwurf zu einer reizphysiologischen Analyse der eroti-
schen Anziehung unter Zugrundelegung vorwiegend homosexuellen Materials,”
Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen 7 (1905): 389-462.
9. H. Pudor, Katechismus der Nacktkultur. Leitfaden fiir Sonnenbader und
Nacktpflege (Berlin, 1906); idem, Nacktkultur (Berlin, 1906).
10. On Fidus see J. Frecot, J. F. Geist, and D. Kerbs, Fidus 1886-1948. Zur
asthetischen Praxis biirgerlicher Fluchtbewegungen (Munich, 1972); J. Her-
mand, Der Schein des schonen Lebens. Studien zur Jahrhundertwende (Frankfurt
am Main, 1972), pp. 55-127; R.-P. Janz, “Die Faszination der Jugend durch
Rituale und sakrale Symbole. Mit Anmerkungen zu Fidus, Hesse, Hofmannsthal
und George,” in “Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit’’: Der Mythos Jugend, ed. T.
Koebner, R.-P. Janz, and F. Trommler (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), pp. 310-37.
11. E. von Mayer, “Der KJarismus,” Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen
13 (1912/13): 120-2; E. von Kupffer [Elisarion], Heldische Sicht und froher
Glaube, vol. 1 (Locarno, 1950), pp. 123-31; J.-C. Ammann, “Otto Meyer-Am-
den, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Elisar von Kupffer,” in Textbeitrage zu Otto Meyer-
Amden, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Elisar von Kupffer (Basel, 1979), pp. 30-6. The
Sanctuarium Artis Elisarion, now Centro Culturale Museo Elisarion, has been
preserved as a museum by the municipality of Minusio and is also used for cul¬
tural events.
12. See E. von Mayer, “Elisarion von Kupffer und sein Werk,” Der Eigene,
1921/22, no. 7, pp. 219-22.
13. J. Aarts, “Stefan Georges pedagogische provincie” (doctoral diss., Am¬
sterdam, 1976); idem, “Alfred Schuler, Stefan George and their different grounds
in the debate on homosexuality at the turn of the century in Germany,” in Among
Men, Among Women. Sociological and Historical Recognition of Homosocial Ar¬
rangements, ed. M. Duyves et al. (Amsterdam, 1983), pp. 291-304.
A Word in Advance
to the Better Ones
Caesareon
Oh you, who seek your highest and best in the depths of knowl¬
edge, in the tumult of action, in the darkness of the past, in the
labyrinth of the future, in the graves or above the stars! Do you
know its name, the name of that which is one thing and everything?
Its name is Beauty!
Holderlin, Hyperion
I believe a greater and more festive morning has dawned. See how the
first redness announces the day. Now will beauty, sublime and illuminat¬
ing, soon make its entrance.
The reappearance of the great conqueror “Beauty” has illuminated my
poor human soul. Let me sing a hymn to it.
I speak to you better ones, who, full of longing, await with me the
victory of beauty. We are the better ones; do you not know it? We are
those who love only beauty, only love for beauty’s sake. We are those
who know the name of that one thing and everything, as Holderlin sings.
We know “its name is Beauty.” We adhere to it and live for it. The
longing for beauty is the guiding light of our creativity and our loving.
How they have all tried to turn and twist us around and most heartily
misunderstand us. They are unable to comprehend where we are coming
from, where we wish to go. They cannot grasp our soul, they who dissect,
analyse, encase, and classify everything. Indeed, for those people, who
are poor in longing, our yearning had no value. Perhaps they were also
afraid of us. Always, when longing for pure beauty stirred, arose, made
its way to the towering heights of the conqueror and victor, their closed
and petty spirits were done for.
Thus it was in Greece —once, once! Oh you blessed ones from that
time, do not be angry with me for invoking you. Thus it was also in
Rome. We, who delight in beauty, must first seize its banner before the
sun of civilization will reach its zenith.
93
We were the just, we were always the victors. We will also be victors
this time. Before beauty the others must lay down their arms.
There is only one beauty, without subdivisions and intermediate stages.
Beauty exists: Beauty is the ultimate, the highest, the completion.
Beauty knows only one law —its own —that given by itself. It is like a
flame, beauty’s law, illuminating and glowing, overflowing everything
with a sea of light and splendor. Those, however, who come too close to
it, who wish to darken it with their ugly fingers, it scorches. It blinds their
eyes and dries up their spirits.
The better ones, however, who greet the sunrise with open, delighted
eyes, will clasp hands and form a chain of the blessed. They all are one;
they love beauty. None will ask another: What do you love, whom and
how do you love? They love only “Beauty,” beauty however and wher¬
ever it shows itself.
Then, when they are all united, these laws will be given: new laws,
dictated by the only just judge “Love,” love of beauty and humankind.
And one, a greater one, will step out before the others who have so long
closed the way to justice, and he will speak thus: “Your time is at an end.
The brilliance of the new day has made your laws fade away. Your tablets
are shattered. You spoke of guilt and did not know what you were judg¬
ing. Your law, you said, was justice. But I say to you, the true judge is
human love. You did not know it. Therefore justice was lacking from your
decisions. Our law is called love of humanity!
“See how the veils of guilt now fall like the fog from many whom you
called sinners.”
Look there friend! Oh do you not see it? The morning is dawning. The
first rays are rising up and warming our souls, giving us courage for the
battle and for joy.
Be you full of hope!
Original: “Ein Wort voraus an die Besseren,” DerEigene, 1903, pp. 7-9.
The Tragedy of Being Different
Peter Hamecher
I see the shadow of the blow that lay

Over me since childhood’s day.
I wish to speak about a book; a book that works like fate. Of a tragic
human experience, caught in the spell of a book, of a series of poems and
manifests. For the sake of justice I have to speak about it; for the picture of
an existence that will be erected here stands for a thousand others, as an
accusation that will be heard and not allowed to fade away into the empti¬
ness of an existence betrayed of the meaning from which it comes.
This book deals with love. Not with spicy jokes. And also not with
instinctual drives. But rather with love as a force of the soul. With love as
the great longing of nature to emerge from the torment of solitude and in
the other to vividly feel and embrace life, the world. It deals with love,
which is manifold in form and yet, in its core, only one thing: a basic force
of human existence and of life altogether, eternally acting and yet, in its
innermost law, with which it is anchored in the infinite foundation of the
earth, unfathomable.
Further, the book deals with the tragedy of being different; with the
destiny of those who were born on the isle of the damned, that bare, rocky
island which the Dane Herman Bang1 created as a metaphor for the destiny
of those driven out, who are homeless in the world through being different
by birth and nature, without belonging, and without a place where they
could affect the whole, rootless, wasting away.
The book deals with that special form of love, which appears to those
distant from it as a vice or as a curious paradox of nature, but to the one
filled by it a law of nature and a law of the world; with the outlawed love
of a man for a man, and with him who, through it, uncomprehendingly
and guiltlessly, has become a despised man without rights. It is called the
nameless love in this book; for every name that is given to it today is
abusive and insulting. But once it had its special eros, and it was cele¬
brated in its highest intellectual realization as the embodiment of genuine
longing for beauty and perfection.
95
Christianity outlawed and proscribed this love. Granted, it only meant

to touch its transgressions, the blasphemous sins of Sodom; for the pla¬
tonic eros indeed stands in the middle point of the Gospel that bears the
name of Saint John. But it created a prejudice in which the superstition
and feeling of strangeness, which everyone has for someone who does not
belong to his kind, are closely married, a prejudice that, passed into the
blood, remains effective beyond its original goal long after it has come off
its historically grounded view. It touched not only the external form, but
the feeling itself, and for the common conception, which does not see the
path from the outside to the interior, the drive became the essence of this
love. And with it support was given for all kinds of monstrous suspicions
about this inclination.
Science, for which the phenomenon, something strange, became a
problem for consideration when it again appeared publicly out of the dark¬
ness of centuries, seized on it at a time when scientific thought was held to
be an infallible ability for world knowledge and changed nothing; it only
shoved prejudice in a new direction and gave things new names, which
still remain only names and do not touch the core. The problem is basi¬
cally not soluble so long as the problem of erotic attraction and repulsion
are not solved altogether. But with that the riddle of the universe would be
solved! Science cannot get beneath the skin of things. It can only deter¬
mine a sum of accidental characteristics and individual conditions, and
bring them into a general formula. It can also confirm “innateness.” But
it remains stuck in the physiological; it makes this its alpha and omega.
What the force of the feelings is, becomes in it the force of the action, and
it kills, figuratively, the spiritual and moral motivations that dwell in
every love. Certainly it has transformed the concept of vice into that of
guiltless abnormality; but its opinion of the inferiority of the subject, the
bearer of the feeling, has remained. Scientific superstition has replaced
that of the church.
For the sake of the system into which it has clamped moveable life and
for the sake of its comprehension, science has kept itself to inferior mate¬
rial, which shows the greatest number of externally measurable devia¬
tions, while the superior types have not at all come into view or have not
been considered. Only Benedict Friedlander is the exception here. It has
thus falsified the picture and transformed life into a wax-figure cabinet
full of monstrous caricatures of humanity. Although not consciously
guilty, it has above all also drawn in through its theory really evil side
effects. In the common judgment the distorted picture has been placed for
a long time in front of life. But then ethically inferior subjects were given
Peter Hamecher 97
a license to carry on a downright shameless activity, which can be ob¬

served in all the large cities; to freely chase after the male youth, which
has the moral ruin of uncounted young people as result. The concept of
abnormality and a few other euphemisms serve as excuse. Those, how¬
ever, for whom the friend is no mere object of lust, but rather the festival
of the earth, see themselves clasped inescapably by the trite phrases of this
doctrine and, through the equating of them with those low elements who
stand out in public, feel the highest worth of their love, which is some¬
thing spiritual, dirtied and the development of moral, life-building
strengths in it destroyed. Granted, things seem grotesque and ugly when
one tears them away from their basis in feeling and isolates the action,
which may then not be understandable even for the participants. But as
false as it is to suppress the sexual, it is just as false to improperly shove it
into the center of attention. That, however, constantly happens here, and
it has furthermore become customary to evaluate the phenomenon, not by
its highest possible content, but rather by its degenerations. This love,
too, is above all a spiritual feeling, which seizes the whole being, and the
release of the drive is only a subordinate moment in the whole complex.
Like every love, this also does not want a part of the individual; it wants
the other as a spiritual-corporeal unity, as the complement of its own
being, and it is, beyond the sensual desire, a spiritual drive, which means
mutual increase. And if the love of man and woman has its ultimate justi¬
fication in bodily procreation, this has it in the spiritual. The male eros of
Plato is no chimera! Here too, above the depths in which dissolution sim¬
mers, is raised that ideal of love as a moral force that works creatively in
the growing together of souls. But today no one dares to tell this truth.
This, however, is the complaint of him who, under the name Sagitta,
wrote those “Books of the Nameless Love,” which I wish to speak of
here: that for the sake of the outlawed love for the same sex the highest
path to the perfection of his being has been obstructed in these times; that
his existence has to consume itself in a dismal problematic and cheerless
isolation, since his nature cannot develop from the strength of love, which
is the strength of the world, and must either lead a life of lies or the life of
a Chandala, coupled with disgrace and crime. Sagitta complains of his lot:
loneliness. For he is the proud one, who will not bend; but also the one
who can be injured, who is no match for the powers that be and hence
flees within himself. Others have gone different ways. Wilde chose the
artistic life, the mask. Bang saved himself through the tragic denial of his
own self. Only one was capable of the highest, Stefan George, who
brought out the heroic ideal by overcoming the temporal and the individ-
ual. Sagitta is neither a sybarite nor a self-hater. But he also does not have
the power to free himself from the temporal and to refine the personal to a
super-personal ideal. He is the one who deeply suffers. It was his mission
to raise a complaint and tell the truth-the whole, complete truth about the
tragedy of being different. One sees a face marked with hopelessness,
pain, and outrage. One sees how elements of purest culture have become
distorted. But one also sees the noble lines, and through deep ignominy
glimmers the divine. This book is written in blood, and precisely what is
temporally symptomatic in it makes it so humanly precious. Valuable in
it, besides a few poems, are the nocturnal fantasy “Who Are We?” and
the novel Fenny Skaller, in which the heart and soul of the poet are spread
out like a map. One would wish these writings in the hands of everyone
who has up to now seen these things through scientific glasses. Art is
more than science, for it yields no dead schematics, but rather life in its
unity and makes it into experience, the only form in which life can truly be
comprehended; i.e., it lets it be felt.
Who is Sagitta? What does the person matter! He is not insignificant
and his tone is not unknown. Yet he veils his head and sings his song in
the dark, not a single individual, but rather a voice in which sounds the
song of many. Who will hear his painful complaint: “In the realms of the
world, where is our realm?” Meanwhile, Thomas Mann, in his so prettily
painted Death in Venice, teaches the German family about the transforma¬
tions of paederastic lust in an aging beautiful-but-dumb man who quotes
Plato quite out of place —and has a best-seller!
The work of Sagitta was published in The Hague by J. H. Francois
(price 4 marks). The sensitivity of the Prussian state attorney requires
these tender considerations.
Original: “Die Tragik des Andersseins,” Die Aktion. Wochenschrift fur

Politik, Literatur, Kunst, May 1914.
NOTE
1. [The Danish writer Hermann Bang wrote novels with homosexual themes.
Hamecher is probably referring to his novel Vaterlandslosen (Those without a
fatherland). HO]
The Decline of Eros
in the Middle Ages
and Its Causes
The causes of the decline of Eros Uranios can only be expressed hypo¬
thetically and by way of suggestion here. Known and firmly proven is the
fact that its decline occurred simultaneously with the downfall of the an¬
cient civilization and the budding of the medieval bondage of the spirit, a
fact that alone already gives sufficient cause for thought. In the following,
however, I also hope to correctly touch on the causal connection and, at
least in its most outward contours, make visible what forces have brought
about the astonishing phenomenon that one of the legitimate basic drives
of man could in a couple of centuries, so to speak, sink and disappear.
The religion that was imported to Europe in the first centuries of our era
was a Palestinian religion, primarily Jewish, but probably with displaced
Buddhist, that is, Aryan-Indian elements. Already in its earliest extant
documents it contained a certain ascetic tendency. Others would perhaps
point in the first place to the prohibition of the cruder forms of same-sex
love expressed in the Old Testament and eventually to the prohibition,
which is not quite so harsh and moreover not attributed to Jesus himself,
but yet present in the New Testament; only I believe that these few pas¬
sages have been far less fateful for eros than the ascetic spirit. In the Old
Testament the consumption of pork and many other things are forbidden,
about which Christianity has never especially concerned itself! The objec¬
tion that those prohibitions were only valid for the Jews is untenable, for
according to orthodox opinion, i.e., according to the medieval conception
in question, the Old Testament is just as completely valid and generally
decisive an authority as the New Testament. With such an objection one
could destroy even the authority of the preferably so-called Ten Com¬
mandments and, of course, in exactly the same way the prohibition in
question here!
Still, that direct and expressed prohibition has been able to have some
99
influence here and there; apparently, however, it was used more as a pre¬
text and as indirectly convincing proof before one’s eyes —for the Bible
“proves” —whereas in the final analysis the real opponent of eros was the
ascetic spirit and the special priestly-Christian forms it was to take on. The
question, whether Christian asceticism, the mortifying of the flesh and the
prohibition of sensual pleasure, perhaps, as many suppose, really came
from India to Palestine and Europe or arose here independently —this
question is interesting in itself, but irrelevant for our theme: it is sufficient
that the earliest documents of Christianity already contain an unmistakable
admixture of asceticism. For man was ordered to view himself and his
natural drives as wrong and sinful; he was persuaded that the whole mate¬
rial world was evil and that salvation consists in withdrawing from the
world and worldly pleasures; and that this life on earth —the only one we
know! —only has meaning as a preparation for “eternal life,” whose rap¬
turous bliss or horrible torment stands —in general —in inverted relation¬
ship to the comforts enjoyed in earthly life. Consequently, the germs of
the specifically Christian asceticism are already found in the oldest and
most authoritative documents and it makes no sense to want to gloss over
them, for the ascetic spirit in itself, so long as it refrains from the oppres¬
sion of our fellow men, is still just a rather harmless thing. But precisely
the ascetic spirit has been that component of Christianity that in the first
centuries, so to speak, in the spring of the new religion, sprang up and
grew rampantly. One example suffices here: Augustine, one of the so-
called Church Fathers, who lived in the fourth and into the fifth century,
after his conversion expressly regretted in his well-known “Confessions”
that the nourishment necessary to maintain life was bound up with sensual
enjoyment! Whoever is grieved by the fact that his food tastes good obvi¬
ously must have much stronger scruples, yes regular pangs of conscience,
over sexual pleasure. This is very drastically expressed in an old wedding
song, whose origin I do not know and which I quote by memory and so
perhaps not entirely correctly: “Anjetzo, my beloved wife, (This line is
much too coarse). Not for the sake of vile lust, but rather to fulfill God’s
command” etc. I presume the command is: Be fruitful and multiply! At
any rate, it is completely consequential when asceticism especially turns
against the highest of sensual pleasures, and therefore the pleasure of love
comes into disrepute. Now, it is indeed not possible to entirely prohibit
the intercourse of man and woman, for then humanity would indeed die
out. That may be the idol of that pessimistic philosophy that is connected
with asceticism, but it can never be the ideal of the church or the state. For
even if there is heartily little concern for the individual man and for man¬
kind, yet along with mankind, church and state too would go to ruin.
which obviously would be quite dreadful. Thus man-woman intercourse,

despite the sensual pleasure that is —unfortunately!-connected with it*
cannot be held up as something completely objectionable under all cir¬
cumstances. One has to be satisfied with making its acceptance dependent
on the previous granting of permission by the priest. What was conse¬
quently not possible in the case of man-woman intercourse, proceeds eas¬
ily, however, in the case of man-man intercourse, in the case of Hellenic
eros, for this appears as pure sensual pleasure and thus, according to the
ascetic mania, as something wicked, without being able to point to the
excuse of the baby and the Biblical law of preservation of the species.
The ascetic1 tendency alone does not explain everything, however. For
in itself it would —as has been the case of Buddhism, to its eternal
honor-only just lead to the practice of self-asceticism and the advising of
others against sensual pleasure, but not to setting it under punishment.
Fanatic superstition, however, has indeed often brought about many of the
most unbelievable things —in all races, in all times, and in the most di¬
verse forms. So long as the actions arising from those fixed ideas concern
only the person acting —as in the case of monastic existence, of suicide
under the Indian “Car of Juggernaut,” and of self-castigation of all
kinds —so long, in fact, may superstition alone adequately explain every¬
thing. As soon, however, as the carriers of it pass over from the madness
of self-castigation to the outrage of castigating others, instead of them¬
selves, or forcing them to self-castigation —in other words, as soon as
asceticism becomes a forced asceticism —then, as in the case of every
crime, and especially of that crime against nature which is incorporated
into laws and customs, one must ask according to general psychological
principles: Cui pro [For whose benefit]? How has it come about that the
step from merely foolish self-asceticism to criminal forced asceticism has
been made? There is indeed a mighty difference, whether one stands on
his head because he imagines this position to be the normal, the moral, the
sacred, and the only saving one, or whether he wants to compel his fellow
men with force to stand on their heads. The first is only foolishness, the
latter is a crime. By all restrictions on freedom and especially such as go
against natural rights, one has to ask: Who has the advantage from it?
Who has a selfish interest in it? Naturally in this investigation one must
guard against the banal error of taking objections for reasons. Unjust indi¬
vidual, group, or class selfishness has always known how to put on a
deceptive cloak and pass itself off as the representative of the general
interest, of eternal salvation, and I don’t know what all. Such hypocrisy
belongs to unjust, aggressive egoism as advertising does to business; it is
necessary for success. So let us look at it: Who really has had a material
advantage or a growth in power from the ecclesiastical-medieval forced
asceticism, who from that monstrous intervention into personal freedom,
and especially, who from the prohibition of Eros Uranios?
The preaching of asceticism or even forced asceticism will always be
suspicious. It is much too convenient to represent to others the joys of life
as worthless or as sinful! In our case we now run up against two classes of
people who always and everywhere belong together, who mutually
strengthen their influence, and one of which in the Middle Ages completely
seized power; the other also, in comparison with antiquity, has come up
and is socially very much higher. I mean priests and women. That is to
say, through the aspired to and also superficially attained form of things
something was created that one can frankly designate as the love monop¬
oly of women and priests. Whereas in antiquity love was free on the
whole, and in particular the youth had universally been recognized as a
worthy and suitable object of love, it now became different: women at¬
tained the expressed monopoly on love, and the priests that of its conse¬
cration. Since, however, the principle yearning of natural man tends to be
love, it is immediately clear that they must have attained a great power,
those who knew how to get the key to that earthly paradise into their
hands. Priests and women as a rule do indeed understand one another very
well; woman is just the first and last refuge of belief in priests and there¬
fore of priestly power! For if superstitious fear did not exist, then mankind
would have no need of priests; superstition and mystical terror are, how¬
ever, many degrees more stubborn in women, because of the smaller de¬
velopment of their reasoning, than in the male sex.
Thus it has come about that, with the decline of the ancient civilization,
a greater influence has been allowed to precisely those two classes of
people to whom, according to Schopenhauer’s eternally noteworthy ad¬
vice, one should guard against making concessions: women and priests!
Erotic love became, on the basis of the declared notion of its monopoly,
punishable contraband, namely the violation of the privileges of women
and priests. Thereby one surely felt or suspected that with this a basic
drive of man had, to a certain degree, been outlawed and banned. For this
reason they punished precisely this monopoly violation so extraordinarily
cruelly —more cruelly than many genuine crimes! Therefore they sur¬
rounded the matter with such an astonishing confused mass of the coarsest
special superstitions: earthquakes, pestilence, and, as Ulrichs reported,
“especially fat, voracious field mice” were supposed to be the conse¬
quence of the questionable “sin against nature”! Such expense of effort
on quite exceptional and unusual means of discouragement lies close to

the thought that no real crime is present, for which the witch-hunts and
thereafter surely the medieval fight against same-sex love offer the most
obvious examples.2
And, as the ruins of that fire-, death-, and destruction-spewing medi¬
eval fortress, stands §175 of the German Penal Code: a weak descendant,
a half-fossilized heirloom of the faded glory of the superstition, but yet
still harmful, yes murderous enough!
Of course, in elucidating a historical collective psychology one does not
presume a clear insight into the mass of those involved, i.e., in our case a
kind of conspiracy of priests and women. Rather, the aspiring for an in¬
crease of power takes place almost unconsciously and will, so to say,
instinctively find the paths and alliances that at any time lead to the goal.
Further, I admit that my explanation of the decline or rather apparent
death of Eros Uranios is a hypothesis. But the more I think about it, the
deeper I search into it, and the longer I twist and turn it, it appears to me
all the more probable. I believe that, by an unprejudiced examination, it
will prove to be correct, as far as in such things an unconditional correct or
false exists at all and as far as one can speak, in things of this kind, of the
proof of a hypothesis. Moreover, a confirmation of my supposition will be
found by everyone in the circumstance that the two classes, which I hold
responsible for the medieval decline of eros, are even today still those
which on the whole are opposing its renaissance —however much they, in
instinctive cunning, take pains to shove into the foreground other persons,
interests, and slogans, and to mask their own interest in the matter, since it
is a selfish one and they fear that it will be noticed. At the very least,
however, I hope that my conjecture can serve as a guide, should anyone
take on the suggested history of prudery and sexual hypocrisy in Europe.1
Many things that otherwise remain unintelligible become somewhat more
transparent in the light of my conjecture.
What influence has been exerted on the whole and in particular by that
basic superstition of the Middle Ages —the fable of the fundamental and
original sinfulness of the natural drives —cannot be overlooked in its en¬
tire extent by one who has himself overcome that delusion. But it is cer¬
tain that its harm to the strength and joy of life is downright immeasur¬
able. For that false doctrine, along with its infernal otherworldly view,
which was invented by priests and disseminated by them, and which
serves them, truly must have attacked the roots of the feeling for life, so
long as and to the extent it was taken seriously. All this is true far beyond
the highly important, to be sure, but still not unique area of Eros Uranios.
At least its nearest neighbor or, so to say, higher placed area of sensual
love altogether, that is, gynekerasty must be obscured by those sinister
shadows. One could confidently conceive of the whole fantasy of the fun¬
damental sinfulness of the sensual drives of man as a true fixed idea, if not
precisely in the meaning of the doctors of the insane, as a kind of mania
toward groundless self-accusation-a psychic plague from which the
priesthood lived and which it therefore promoted through suggestion,
through influence on the childlike brain, moreover also with scaffold and
torture chamber, and held in flower for some fifteen centuries. How, un¬
der the consequences of that delusion and of the other components of
priestly Christianity, closely bound with it, everything truly and in a
higher sense human declined, fossilized, degenerated, became distorted
and stifled, and almost fell into oblivion is sufficiently well known. Still
let us limit ourselves to the narrow field that we have marked out here and
seek to evaluate the psychological consequences that must take place on
the average in a person in whom the delusion of the sinfulness of the
sensual drives has seriously taken root. The human being cannot long
conceal that he is not as he —according to the teaching of the priest —
“should” be. The consequence of this is, of course, regret, anxiety, and
in a higher degree broken-heartedness (the “contritio” so very much de¬
sired by the priests) and fear of the mystical “punishment”; and in this
fear man turns to the priest, as the true or imagined sick man turns to the
doctor. This had indeed been foreseen from the beginning; it was the
purpose of the suggestion.
Ancient civilized peoples had in truth enough myths and other supersti¬
tions; but they were free from a delusion so extremely harmful to the
whole conception and formation of life as that of the fundamental sinful¬
ness of the human drives and their satisfaction, which harms no one. And
that may be one of the deep-seated, ultimate causes of the classic great¬
ness, as its opposite is of the medieval eccentricity.
The ancient ideal of virtue consisted in the development and heighten¬
ing of the best characteristics of the human being: wisdom, bravery,
thoughtfulness, and justice. With regard to the sensual drives a mastery
over them was aspired to, not in the sense of an attempt to suppress them,
but rather in that of a just, beautiful, and measured satisfaction. In place of
that sensible and healthy ideal there now entered the imposition of sup¬
pressing the sensual drives and mortifying the “flesh.” According to the
character of the people who believe in the justice of this demand, the
attempt of that “mortification” will either be undertaken with complete
seriousness and complete energy, or the struggle will be carried out only
half-heartedly or even only in appearance. In the first case there results by

some strength of character the “saints,” who have overcome flesh and
sensual lust. They are the victors in the battle; they are the victors over
themselves and their natural drives. They have overcome-their own na¬
ture. Now, as much as one may admire the proven strength of will in
itself, someone free of the medieval delusion will nevertheless decisively
regret that this precious strength has been wasted on such an insane and
useless goal. For, speaking as a rational human being, who or what has
any kind of advantage from the successful “mortification of the flesh” of
individuals? The fundamental war against the natural drives is not only the
hardest, but also in its fruits, in the rare cases of victory, the hollowest.
They are truly not of this world —the only one we know —and truly not for
this life, the only one that really is. Only with the rabble of the intellect,
therefore, can the admiration of such an effort of willpower be the pre¬
dominant and lasting impression; with the intellect that looks farther and is
not tainted by superstition, the upper hand will be won by displeasure over
the weakness of intellect that was required to direct all its strength to such
a foolish goal. Yes, the difference between the Christian mortifier of the
flesh and the Indian fakir, or the suicide under the wheels of the Car of
Juggernaut, will appear critically small; and if we give any priority at all
to the Christian victory over evil sensual pleasure, then it probably has a
basis only in the fact that even the enlightened European does not face the
phenomenon that in time, place, and tradition lies closer, as objectively as
he does the exotic forms of fanatical superstition. The whole stance of the
medieval spirit regarding the facts and drives connected with sexuality can
also be called an intellectual Skoptsism —after the name of the Russian
sect that practices its hatred of sexuality even to the point of bodily self-
mutilation, whereas the majority is satisfied with an intellectual proscrip¬
tion.
The earnestly and energetically carried out struggles against the “old
Adam” of the sensual man, however, has on the whole been the exception
and with the increasing senility of faith has become more so. In place of
serious thoughts and feelings, more and more enter conventions, custom,
tradition, and the various forms of hypocrisy. One acted and acts as if he
despised and detested sensual pleasure according to the rule —and in¬
dulged it in secret. The more the kernel rotted, which did deserve a certain
degree of respect insofar as it consisted of an honest, even if wrong con¬
viction, all the more weight had to be placed on the shell, the exterior, the
appearance. This is how I explain to myself that with the weakening of
genuine faith, that is, since the Middle Ages in a strict sense, hypocrisy in
that direction has not diminished but rather increased. Prudery appears to
have been not greater, but rather less in the Middle Ages than in the
beautiful “present day.” Sensual pleasure was something forbidden in
general by the so-called “moral law.” To enjoy it openly and moderately
would not and will not do; it must hide itself and is thereby already con¬
demned to a large extent to a sort of shadow life, in which it naturally
degenerates all the more. In place of moderate enjoyment enter secret
lasciviousness and playing hide-and-seek with everything that has any
kind of connection with sexuality, especially the covering of the naked
body. It has come so far that as a rule, apart from the face, we are ac¬
quainted only with a person’s clothing! And even on the exceptional occa¬
sions that make necessary a removal of artificial covering, such as in
bathing, public modesty, or however prudery may be called, demands at
least the covering of those parts in which and toward which the sinful
inclination tends to be concentrated.
This whole European, medieval-modern, so altogether ridiculous little
model of morality has, therefore, its ultimate origin, as I believe I clearly
see, in the worst components of the medieval Christian church. In the
framework of ascetic madness the sexual is something unpopular, on the
basis of the forced asceticism something even forbidden. Since everyone
practiced it nevertheless or at least desired it, there resulted through the
opposition between secret nature and arrogant priest-ridden un-nature a
painfully comic noli me tangere [touch me not]. In fact, this whole moral,
or rather immoral ensemble, that is, the unspeakable prohibition of same-
sex love, the shyness before someone naked, and the hide-and-seek with
everything that has any kind of relation at all to sexuality appears to be
limited to those peoples who have fallen to the most tyrannizing of all
authorities. The nakedness and ingenuousness that we call “classic”
reigned not only in Hellas and in Rome, but everywhere that the spirit of
the medieval Christian church with its delusion of sinfulness did not sow
its harmful seeds.
The causal connection is therefore, in my view, this: the first error, the
fundamental falsehood —against which, therefore, thtprincipiis obsta [re¬
sist beginnings] is to be applied in the future — is the judging of the natural
drives as “bad” and the pleasure connected with their satisfaction as
“sinful.” This first chiefly theoretical error then produced the outrage of
a forcible and inquisitorial interference in the most private personal af¬
fairs, all the more since thereby the power of the growing and ambitious
new priesthood was promoted in its characteristic way. For these and sim¬
ilar infringements of an authority setting the course at any given time,
since they are typical occurrences, one should also have a special expres¬
sion: one could designate them as clerical sacrilege against natural rights,
whereby, under circumstances and especially in recent times, in place of
clerical sacrilege is rather to be read state’s sacrilege-or, if you prefer,
state crimes4 against human sovereignty. Thus, besides the theoretical
condemnation of the natural drives, one soon also had in practice the
punishableness of their satisfaction. Now, however, those drives do not
allow themselves to be eliminated: they continue to exist despite their
“sinfulness” and despite their “punishableness.” What is more natural
than that they generally hide? Than that one acts as if that whole side of
human life were not present? Than that one avoids and conceals every¬
thing that has even a remote and indirect relation to it? In short, than that
in place of the classical nudity of the body and ingenuousness of the soul
conditions enter in which man consists of face and dress and in which
there prevails a universal hide-and-seek and a hypocrisy become second
nature? I doubt that anywhere and at any time, since the fall of ancient
civilization down to our time, there has existed a more extensive and
intensive hypocrisy than in relation to eros. Whoever seriously wishes to
reform things here has not only to fight against the outgrowths of old-
maidish prudery, but rather must destroy the evil in its roots; he must
therefore lay down the following principles: 1. The human body exists by
right and does not need to be hidden, if it is otherwise well-built; the joy in
the sight of beautiful bodies is harmless, is useful to the individual and
society, and the embittering of this joy is as foolish as it is unjust. 2. The
natural human drives, in particular the physical and psychic love drives
exist by right and are not sins. Only cleverly tyrannizing powers have,
partly through error, partly from a mania for guardianship, and partly
from ambitious selfishness handed out those deceptive sayings. The satis¬
faction of drives is not wrong, if no one is unjustly harmed thereby. 3. The
question of right and wrong is completely independent of the customs and
fashions present at any time and place, and is of course just as independent
of approval or disapproval by priest or state. What is truly wrong will not
become right through the blessing of the priest or being registered by the
state. What, however, is not wrong according to natural right, can also not
be magically transformed into a wrong by social prohibition and its codifi¬
cation of some kind. Rather, those prohibitions and those laws are them¬
selves wrong, or in the language of religion, “sins.”
Original: “Der Untergang des Eros im Mittelalter und seine Ursachen,”

Der Eigene, 1903, pp. 441-455.
NOTES
1. Significant, too, is the shift in meaning which the word asceticism has
undergone. In Greek it meant exercise, especially bodily exercise. We neverthe¬
less understand by it exercise of virtue, whereby virtue has precisely that vile,
partly mad, partly hypocritical meaning of an eradication of the natural drives.
This shift in meaning into approximately its opposite is often found; one thinks of
“gymnasium” then and now [in Germany a Gymnasium is a type of high school;
in Greece, thegymnasion was the place where exercises were practiced — the word
gymnos means “naked”], or of “Platonic love” itself!
2. As we shall see, in recent times there has appeared in place of the fat field
mice the phantom of a diminished growth in population, and in place of “crime”
the “sickness” delusion. Superstition does not die out, but rather modernizes
itself; that is, it appears in the dress of “science.” A man’s own reason is not
enough for him; he must have someone he can look up to in timid reverence. He
no longer believes in the church; but “science”— that is infallible. Its very name
says so!
3. Later the Christian forced asceticism gained yet another powerful ally in
syphilis. Granted, its activity lies more in the area of unconsecrated love of
women. But at any rate the effect is apparent, in that the superstition of the sinful¬
ness of unconsecrated sexual pleasure gained credibility, so to speak, through this
all too present disease.
4. Here, of course, crimes by the state is meant, not crimes against the state!
Nudity in Art and Life
Heinrich Pudor
The ideal of beauty of the ancient Greeks is essentially different from

ours. For them the object is the person, for us the person’s head, espe¬
cially his face. With that is said at the same time that the Greek ideal of
beauty stands infinitely higher than ours —in other words: the Greeks had
an ideal of beauty, we have none. For it is clear that an ideal of beauty that
refers only to a small part of the object, but leaves out of consideration the
whole object, must be defective.
We must first of all demonstrate and comment on this assertion that the
Greeks seek beauty in the person, we only in the face.
^ The question proposed is closely connected with the culture of clothing.
Greek clothing did not have the goal of hiding the forms of the human
body, but rather in part to protect them from possible inclemency of
weather, and in part to set them off, so as to bring about an effect or even
to coquette with them. It was essentially decoration, in small part protec¬
tion. At the same time, however, Greek clothing left the forms of the body
partly uncovered, such as the lower leg, the arms, the breast, a part of the
back. They were not at all timid about uncovering the female breast, least
of all from a feeling of shame. But above all in Greece one had sufficient
opportunity to see and look at the nude body, namely during the games,
both the daily games and the national games. Through all this, first, the
person as a whole and, second, the person in his naked beauty was some¬
thing familiar to the eye of the Greek. What one had for clothing was not,
as with us, suit and coat, but more like wraparound and shawl, which did
not firmly sit on the body the whole day without slipping, but rather fol¬
lowed every movement and with every change in the attitude of the body
changed position and exposed now this part of the body and now that. As
a result, the Greeks felt their bodies, they felt themselves as bodily beings,
not as with us, as people of faces, heads, clothing; for, apart from the
excessively passionate person, we feel the dress and not our body —the
latter has more or less died away; we drag it about with us, but life does
not stream through it. We feel the coat, not the breast, not the blood
surging in the breast; we feel the boot, but not the foot, which has been
109
coffined and is, so to speak, half a corpse; the toes are unmovable, help¬
less, the flow of blood to and from them is restricted; the root of the
human trunk is unable to draw new sap or new strength from the earth, nor
to send them to the trunk and the crown. Precisely in our badly neglected,
disfigured, and withered foot is seen how very one-sided we moderns are
as head and face people. And therefore also we can form no kind of image
of the Greek ideal of life and beauty. Their ideal of beauty was precisely
their ideal of life. The whole person, not just the head, not just the face,
not just the spirit or the soul, but rather the human being as he naturally
lives, with all his parts and organs, interior and exterior, with heart and
soul, with spirit and body, with head and feet, was their ideal of beauty -
which they lived. I say, we can form no concept of that life, we who live
only with the head. The happiness and bliss of life is closed off to us.
Indeed, we always carry around with us a corpse-cum grano salis-
namely our withered body, our lifeless skin, our coffined feet. And when
we undress, we appear to ourselves “so naked,” it appears to us that
something is lacking, we can no longer feel comfortable in our own skin,
we freeze then not only in our skin, but also in our imagination, for we
seem to have taken off our skin with our clothing —so unnatural, so very
much head and brain people we have become.
The Greeks, in contrast, felt their bodies, not just when they were sick
and their body hurt —sickness in our sense was unknown to them —but
rather when they were healthy and because they were healthy (by the way,
health too was unknown to them in our sense, it was as natural to them as
their nudity). The seat of life was not, as with us, only in the head, but
rather in the whole person; the whole body was, as it were, a harmony of
life. As familiar as our hand is to us, with which we write and eat, just as
familiar was the whole body to the Greeks. For us, in contrast, our own
body is something strange, it is foreign to us; the clothing is more familiar
than the limbs that hold us up and carry us. The pulse of life goes, not
through our clothing, but also not through our body, it stops at the neck —
head and face are one-sidedly everything to us: life, culture, art. As a
result we move our legs like sticks fastened by hinges to the upper body,
and our feet like stilts that lack any movement of toes. The Greeks, in
contrast, had an elastic step; the pulse of life flashed through every part of
the body all the way down to the individual toes —one cell carried the
other, so to speak. The person floated more than he walked or carried
himself.
And since we as head-people to some extent draw a line under life at the
head, we have provided that place on the body with an armored ring: the
Heinrich Pudor 111
collar. The collar divides the man into a living and a dead part. It hinders
the vapors and exhalations that rise up from the whole body for release at
this place from being given off to the air; it hinders the communication
between head and body; it hinders the flow of the life stream from the
head into the body and again from the body into the head; it forms the
genuine sign of Cain of the modern head-man, who has forgotten to take
his body into life with him.
From the harmonic Greek view of man now follows something impor¬
tant in regard to sexual feelings. All those parts of the body that are espe¬
cially able to attract sexually, such as, in women, the breast, the mons
veneris, in men, the sexual parts, the line of the hips, were, like the whole
body, not something that one hid from the eye on purpose, but rather
something that one from childhood on, without shyness, without prudery,
without lasciviousness saw and looked at, which therefore could not exer¬
cise the attraction of the forbidden and veiled, which were only sexually
arousing when the chemical-tactile conditions were present. We, by con¬
trast, who cover the whole body with the exception of the head, are
aroused by every part of the body as soon as it is uncovered, merely
through that temporary unveiling, no matter whether that body part is
beautiful or ugly, congenial to us or not. In this sense we are somatic
fetishists. Not the human being as such, but rather parts of him attract us,
above all, of course, the sexual parts. On this rests a good part of the
sickness of our sexual life. When the Greeks loved, they loved the whole
person, not the eyes or the beautiful neck or the small feet, but rather the
person as he was “embodied” and alive before them. We commit the
great sin against the race of marrying a woman of whom we have only
seen the face; prudently, even afterwards we don’t see her body. But what
does sexual hygiene say about coitus carried out in clothing or underwear
or under blankets, in the sultry air of a room, instead of in sunlight or
starlight, on a green meadow, by a rushing stream, or in a green forest?
Thrice woe to those human beings who are begotten by today’s clothing-
people! Begotten in the sweat of consumptive clothing-people, instead of
in the open air by laughing human-people!1
We have now reached the point where we can more closely approach
the investigation of the question of nudity in art. The answer now im¬
presses itself onto the reader: “nudity” did not exist at all for the Greek,
since he did not know clothing in our sense. He was not acquainted with
putting on and taking off clothing. Therefore also no nude person. And so
for him so-called nudity was natural and thus Greek art shows there,
where it is natural, the naked person, and only when it becomes unnatural
(in Greek-Roman times) the clothed person, while we, on the contrary,
artistically represent only the clothed person, which is natural to us, and
become unnatural when we represent the naked person; then the cloven
foot comes out, then we represent the whore, the model who has un¬
dressed and allows her body to be seen for five groschen an hour. Only
geniuses of the first rank, such as Rodin and Sinding, go beyond the
whore and are able to find the natural human being in the nude woman.
The great mass of sculptures, however, is bordello ware.
Compare the Aphrodite of Melos with that of Capua. The former’s
gown is unaccustomed and unnatural, an addition of which she is
ashamed. For the latter, on the contrary, nudity is unnatural, she is
ashamed of her nakedness, she is clearly looking for clothing, she reminds
one of Susanna bathing. Between the two works of art lies a gap, a cul¬
tural divide, just as there are continental divides. That gap is filled by the
clothing culture. The Aphrodite of Melos comes from a time when nudity
was natural and was natural for people, the Aphrodite of Capua from a
time when clothing was natural. As works of art the former stands as high
above the latter as the culture of that time over this.
Or think of male examples. To represent man in his naked beauty, in his
natural bodily beauty, which leaves that of woman so far behind that one
does not like to mention the two in the same breath —for that even a Rodin
is not capable. The most important works of Rodin and Sinding are repre¬
sentations of women, while the most important works of Greek antiquity,
in spite of the Aphrodite of Melos, are representations of men and youths.
For if one could still create in so much later a time such an admirably
exalted work as The Praying Boy, what works must the older classical
period have created, which chose for itself the powerful figures of the
epics of Homer as models? Already the pediment figures of the Parthenon
show wonderful works of the beauty of the male body, above all the youth
symbolizing Mount Athos at sunset, which reminds one of Alcibiades as
he reclined next to Socrates on the couch. In the Aeginetan sculptures
artistic freedom is not yet excluded, man was not yet conscious of his
body, while he already coquettes with his body in the Pergamon sculp¬
tures, lets his muscles be tested, as it were, his behind turned out, with its
well-known passionate possibilities.
I am of the opinion that as a result of an unfortunate accident — apart
from the cult of women —the most elevated works of the cult of male-
Greek beauty have been lost to us. For the works most prized up to now,
such as the Dying Warrior, the Apoxyomenos, the Boy With a Thom are
basically genre representations, feuilleton-sculptures, which are certainly
Heinrich Pudor 113
not to be ascribed to the golden age of Greek sculpture. The torso of

Heracles in Munich is one of the best works preserved for us, but likewise
already belongs to a later time.
That in the Christian era natural, that is, nude people could not be
conceived artistically is clear from all that has been said above. For it the
body, that divine vessel of the human soul, was hell and the cesspool of
sin, from which it fled and which it now misused in night and sin, even if
under the mantel of the sacrament of marriage. And only now was the
whore really discovered and invented. Originally the word whore meant a
demigoddess of fertility and of spring. The whore as a “Freudenmad-
chen” (girl of pleasure) —what all must such a defenseless language have
to put up with — was discovered and invented only in a time, godless in the
true sense, that worshiped clothing and cursed the body. Even the very
great, such as Titian, Giorgione, Rembrandt, always show us the model,
to be sure, in the sweetest colors, in the most exquisite light, in the most
charming forms —but the flesh has no spirit, no intellect, it is and remains
flesh —naked flesh, not body, not human in the Greek sense. Therefore it
is significant that all three artists just named have not represented for us
man in his body (when Rembrandt tried it, he took the corpse as model).
Earlier Diirer was capable of it. His Heracles killing the birds of Lake
Stymphalus is not just an indifferent allegorical picture, but rather a mas¬
terpiece of the representation of the male body.
Raphael rarely made an attempt at the unclothed body. The.School of
Athens, for all its greatness of composition, shows only mute roles. For
that he idealized the clothing far too much.
For the greatest artist of the Christian era, Michelangelo, however,
woman was against nature. He saw only the man, and he saw in the man
the human, not the clothing, he looked at him down to the bones and into
the life cells and sex cells. The struggle of the generation against its sex he
represented in the Slaves, men whose same-sex sexuality comes to con¬
sciousness for the first time, in his statue of Lorenzo de’ Medici the virile
homosexual man, in Moses the uranian graybeard.
Original: “Die Nacktheit in Kunst und Leben,” Der Eigene, 1906,

pp. 12-20.
NOTE
1. “Human-people” in the Greek meaning, since I would prefer to avoid the

expression “naked people,” which for me contains a tautology.
Fidus
Hans Bethge
He stands entirely off to one side; the path that leads to him is a singular
one and until now no one has creatively followed him on it. Fidus will also
hardly fashion a school for the simple reason that his pupils must acknowl¬
edge not only being students of his art, but above all being students of his
intellectual views, for both are really inseparable with him! Whoever
wishes to creatively follow in the traces of his art must also have traces of
his soul and indeed rich traces, for with him the soul means everything.
He sees less with his eyes than with his soul! He feels less with his heart
than with his soul!
He stands apart from life; he is a hermit, his own quiet man. He does
not mix gladly with people and he has few external experiences; his inner
life is everything. . . .
He is a North German and accustomed from childhood on to looking
over the sea and the broad plains of heather, which let the eye travel
limitlessly and let one give himself dreamily to the feeling of infinity and
eternity. It is certainly not an empty word to suppose that people of the
broad, flat land with a very remote horizon are accustomed to being more
persevering and with a greater need of high intellectual views than those
whose development occurs in a district narrowly limited by nature, in
which all things appear closely shoved against one another and restrain
both the eye and intellectual flight.
Fidus comes from Ltibeck. . . .When he does escape the vicinity of the
metropolis, he turns to the North; Norway attracts him the most. He has
never seen Italy, it does not draw him. The northern sea is his love, along
with the northern mountains. He is attracted by what the South lacks and
the North has so richly: the quiet melancholy of the evening mood, the fog
that stretches over the sea and over the fields, the rustle of old pine and ash
forests, the poetry of the heath and the moor.
One can just as little characterize the Weltanschauung of Fidus as one
can the expressions of his art. He has a close connection with pantheism
and Buddhism. For him, nature in its smallest appearances is life and soul;
he is a worshipper of nature. He sees the spiritual in all material things
115
alike. Every landscape and every speck of dust in that landscape is for him
a living piece of the incomprehensible divinity. The rustle of the forest,
the wind that goes through the grass, the movement of clouds rich in
forms, through which the moon throws its pale silver light, the murmur of
the sea and the mysterious sounds in the air —all these are for him signs of
mystic, supernatural forces, endowed with souls, to which he submits and
allows to work their strength on him.
Every feeling that nature gives him he carries into his tender art. This
art achieves its effects almost entirely through its lines; it is a technique
entirely free of complications. It is a quite simple manner of drawing,
only lines and again lines, so that the eraser is hardly used.
Fidus comes into consideration first as a drawer. Only as such has he
been known up to now in wider circles; but a rich nature like his just
cannot avoid color. He himself has said that it is not his strong side. But
when one observes the rather numerous works in oil that are found in his
atelier, only too often left as sketches to be sure, then one has to regret that
for years he has entirely turned away from color. Among the oil sketches
are many that are striking through the intimacy of their colors. I have in
mind especially several subjects from the region of the midnight sun; and
then a sombre Brandenburg landscape, a stretch of moor with a pine forest
in the background, of significant mood content, splendidly colored. Sev¬
eral pastel portraits likewise testify to his feeling for color.
When one once becomes clear about which are the basic elements that
prevail in the art of Fidus and give it its charm, then one easily reaches the
conclusion that they are longing and innocence. Every line that Fidus
draws contains longing, every nude innocence. His people struggle for
happiness and consume themselves in longing for it. He likes to draw
juvenile figures with fluttering hair, who longingly storm the peak of a
mountain and beseechingly stretch out their hands to the heavens and
stammer their burning wishes for recognition. And these figures are na¬
ked. But the nudes of Fidus are virginally innocent, we hardly experience
them at all as nudes. They are ethereal like a lovely scent —like the tender
scent of the lily. When I consider the drawings of Fidus, I always have to
think about this flower; it is the favorite flower of the artist. Among the
trees he favors the palm, among the seasons, spring. His sensitivity is
entirely German, and he has given moving expression to that most Ger¬
man feeling, nostalgia. It extends through his whole art like a tender mood
of homesickness, which is also nothing more than a special mood of long¬
ing.
Fidus makes few compositions, he likes to isolate from everything ac-
Hans Bethge 117
cessory so as to allow the individual figure, which in his case is almost

always the juvenile body, to have its own effect. The naked, juvenile body
always attracts him the most. His nude studies, mostly female, are encir¬
cled by a transfiguring magic of purity. The lines of these nudes are al¬
most always of a supernatural slimness, dreamily lost like a fleeting scent,
rich in spirit. At the same time he has at his disposal lines that are strong
and firm, as if of bronze. They are the lines of affliction and need. They
form themselves into old, care-worn features with deep furrows on the
forehead, with collapsed cheeks and empty eyes, out of which the torment
of a cruel existence without pity speaks.
But these themes are rare; he is drawn again and again to youth —and
often too beyond the longing youth to the naive, the purely childlike, still
entirely caught in slumber. We may not forget his child subjects; they are
true pictures of peace, true pictures of nirvana. Even purely superficially
they awaken in us Buddhistic ideas. The large-eyed children with their
tender little arms and long hair rest on the broad leaves of the lotus flower
and smile toward heaven, which is their home. And among them sprout
the white, Indian, regal blossoms, and their scent transfigures the sweet
bodies with a quiet radiance. Or the children are playing with snakes,
whose teeth do not yet conceal poison, or they are riding on wild animals,
which gladly permit the lovely burden, or they are dancing on flower
stalks or laughing, rejoicing in a round dance into the sun.
Thus is Fidus —a religious man without a religious confession, a brood¬
ing nature, outwardly quiet, a primal German, filled with a constant long¬
ing, but in equilibrium with himself. He is still young; the maturity of his
creativity still lies before him. May it be rich for him and us in noble fruit.
Original: “Fidus,” Der Eigene, 1903, pp. 419-423.

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IV. EROS AND MALE BONDING
IN SOCIETY
Introduction
Harry Oosterhuis
Contrary to the Wissenschaftlich-humanitares Komitee, the ultimate

goal of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen was not equal rights for a homosex¬
ual minority. Abolition of Paragraph 175 and the elimination of prejudice
against homosexuals were seen only as initial conditions for cultural re¬
form affecting male relations in general. This perspective was formulated
in an optimistic and self-confident tone in Der Eigene in the first issue of
1903 by an author who used the pen name Gotamo and whose identity
remains unknown. Gotamo’s essay “In die Zukunft!” which opens this
chapter, is on the role that male eros and male bonding, according to the
members of the Gemeinschaft, could and should play in society. Homo¬
eroticism was held to be closely related to the social nature of males. Male
bonding constituted the prerequisite for the ideal of masculinity, which
numerous adherents of the Gemeinschaft considered to be fundamental for
cultural achievements, education, and patriotic and military virtues. Liter¬
ature, history, and ethnology provided them with evidence to argue that
homoeroticism existed, sometimes latent, in friendships and male soci¬
eties, such as Mdnnerbiinde. As Sagitta put it, every man, married or not,
carried part of the Greek heritage in him.
In this connection, too, the tone was set by Kupffer, who proposed a
“revival of male culture.” In the introduction to his literary anthology on
homoeroticism, he deplored culture as no longer masculine. Males should
119
free themselves from their “exclusive dependence on wives and families”

and put an end to their economic and sexual rivalry. They should join
ranks; youths were to be educated in friendships by adult males, because
male bonds formed the foundation of the state and culture. Especially in
Germany the “love of friends” ought to regain its social functions, for the
Germans were to be held the heirs of Greece.
Apart from the classics, much attention was given in Kupffer’s anthol¬
ogy to the Sturm und Drang and German Romanticism, eras when pas¬
sionate friendships among males had been cultivated in literary circles. In
the same period (1760-1830), a golden age for German literature, a re¬
vival took place in the study of Greek art and philosophy, which was
stimulated strongly by the German art historian Johann Joachim Winck-
elmann. For him, Greek aestheticism was manifest in ancient sculpture, in
which the male body was the main object. Although the philosophical
debates at that time reached the conclusion that Plato’s ideal was pure love
without sensuality, a number of German writers and philosophers gave
expression to their opinion and experience that male friendship incorpo¬
rated sensuousness. (See the section “Romantic Friendship in Germany,
1750-1850” in Chapter I.) The poet August von Platen (1796-1835), for
example, who confided his preference for men to his diary (not published
until 1896-1900), followed the example of classical antiquity. The first
pleas for homoeroticism in the German language prior to Ulrichs, Heinrich
Hossli’s Die Mdnnerliebe der Griechen (The male love of the Greeks,
1836/1838) and J. H. D. Zschokke’s Eros oder iiber die Liebe (Eros or
about love, 1821), were part of this cultural tradition, one which, as Kupf-
fer lamented, had been superseded by modern medical science.
Numerous adherents of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen called attention
to the literary friendships in German Romanticism and also to those of
such famous German thinkers and artists as Friedrich Nietzsche and Rich¬
ard Wagner as an alternative model to Hirschfeld’s concept of homosexual
emancipation.1 One of them even stated that modern scientific knowledge
on sexuality was nothing compared to the insights formulated by philoso¬
phers and literary men around 1800.2 Exemplary in this context is a cul¬
tural-historical study on friendship by the Bavarian baron and aesthete
Alexander von Gleichen-Russwurm (1865-1947), a great-grandson of
Schiller, who seems to have been a member of the Gemeinschaftd In his
voluminous work published in 1912, the word “homosexual” does not
appear.4 Gleichen-Russwurm wanted to point out the historical impor¬
tance of male friendships as being fundamental socially for a communal
sense in armies, city states, and feudal society, as well as culturally.
Harry Oosterhuis 121
since, as he wrote, few scholars and poets in European history would have
been able to achieve greatness without the stimulating influence of male
companionship.
Friedlander had the best grounding in current social theories about male
bonding. Together with examples taken from literature and history,
Friedlander followed the example of the ethnological study by Heinrich
Schurtz, Alterklassen und Mannerbunde: Eine Darstellung der Grundfor-
men der Gesellschaft (1902). In this comparative cultural study, which
was a best-seller and set the tone of the ideology of the Mannerbund in
Germany, Schurtz expounded his theory of the dual primal impulses in
man, the sexual and the social drive. Woman, according to him, was
governed completely by the urge to procreate and provide for, inherent in
her sexual impulse. From that he concluded that her capacities were re¬
stricted to what he considered to be the most primitive social unit, the
family. Schurtz emphasized that the social impulse, the drive to create
communities and political institutions, was reserved only to the male. The
“instinctive sympathy” between men was the precondition for social life.
Although Schurtz did not interpret this sympathy as erotic, Friedlander
invoked his findings to assert that social organizations beyond the family
could not exist if men restricted their emotional and erotic relations to
women. According to Friedlander, “physiological friendship” between
men was fundamental not only for the unfolding of man’s creative and
intellectual qualities, but also for patriotism and military virtues.6 Like
Schurtz, he was of the opinion that the female sphere of the family had
become overdeterminant in the “bourgeois” era.
From a similar perspective, intimate friendships between adult men and
youths or boys were propagated by members of the Gemeinschaft. In
1903, in an introduction in Der Eigene, Brand made a strong case for
“intimate relationships between youths and men.” The Greek cult of
friendship should be revived to become the foundation for “the physical
and spiritual education” of boys.7 Although Sagitta, being a militant boy-
lover who published poems in Der Eigene, charged the leaders of the
Wissenschaftlich-humanitares Komitee with discrimination for holding on
to an age of consent of sixteen in their proposals for legal reform, his
sexual radicalism was not shared by most of Brand’s followers. In gen¬
eral, they only took up the socio-cultural aspects and purifying effect of
so-called “pedagogical eros.”
Some members of the Gemeinschaft suggested that the love between a
man and a youth was superior to a homosexual relationship between adult
men. Gotamo, for example, in his article “In die Zukunft!” distinguished
homosexuals who felt themselves attracted to adults and men who were
susceptible to the beauty of youths. Homosexuality, according to him,
was based on psychological predisposition, boy-love on bisexuality and
an aesthetic sensibility. A pedagogical bond of friendship with a man
would not only offer boys an individually directed education, but could
also save them from prostitutes, venereal diseases, and masturbation.
Edwin Bab, who also brought these arguments to the fore, added that
women would benefit, too, since they would be treated less as sexual
objects. Thus, Greek-inspired boy-love could be an important contribu¬
tion to the solution of modern sexual problems and pauperizing overpopu¬
lation.8
Gotamo’s essay is followed by articles of Bab and Brand, published in
DerEigene in 1903 and 1930, respectively, and fragments from the pro¬
gram of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, written by Brand in 1925. Con¬
necting the defense of homoerotic male bonding to population politics and
public health they stepped into contemporary debates on sexual hygiene
and education. In this debate health and naturalness were the main stan¬
dards by which sexual behavior was judged.
With their ideas on Junglingsliebe the authors of Der Eigene showed
their affinity to other movements in Germany at that time. Above all there
were some connections between Brand’s group and the youth movement
of the Wandervogel, in which the ideals of “pedagogical eros” found
fertile ground.1' This youth movement, which emerged at the end of the
nineteenth century, may be considered the expression of a generational
conflict, an endeavor to escape the authority of home and school.10 The
creation of a youth culture was a nonpolitical, romantic form of protest
against several aspects of modern industrialized society, against “alien¬
ation.” Youths set off together in pursuit of nature in order to reestablish
contact with the unspoiled Germany of the Biedermeier era. Communal
experiences on the hiking expeditions served as a means to establish close
bonds of friendship between the youths.
The connection between the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, with its ideal¬
ization of the purity and beauty of male youthfulness, and the Wandervo¬
gel movement was not merely ideological. Wilhelm Jansen (1866-1943),
who was a cofounder of the Gemeinschaft and a wealthy financial sup¬
porter of Brand, became, although he was an adult, an important leader
within a section of the Wandervogel movement, thanks in large part to one
of its first members, Hans Bliiher, who introduced him to the group. For
several years, Jansen was the center of a more or less homoerotically
oriented circle within the movement, until he was accused of “paederasty”
and had to resign his position in 1910. Thereupon he, Hans Bliiher, and
others founded a new group, the Jung-Wandervogel, which in contrast to
the rest of the youth movement never admitted girls as members.'1
Jansen introduced Bliiher to Friedlander and urged him to write a his¬
tory of the Wandervogel based on his own experiences. Influenced by
Friedlander’s Renaissance des Eros Uranios and the writings of Sigmund
Freud, Bliiher caused much sensation in 1912 with the third volume of his
history, Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als erotisches Phdnomen
(The German Wandervogel movement as an erotic phenomenon),12 in
which he asserted that homoerotic friendships, fostered by the sex-segre¬
gated education in Wilhelminian Germany, were essential for the cohe¬
sion and the popularity of the Wandervogel. Later Bliiher turned out to be
one of the most important right-wing ideologues of the Mannerbund,
propagating a purification of German society under the guidance of all¬
male brotherhoods, in which members would be devoted to each other by
homoeroticism and charismatic leadership.13
Besides Bliiher, another esteemed figure in the youth movement whose
ideas agreed with those put forward by the Gemeinschaft was the educa¬
tional reformer Gustav Wyneken. Idealizing male youths, he emphasized
the importance of personal contact and affection in education as well as
the unity of body and mind. His educational program was inspired by the
ideals of German Kultur and showed affinity to the visionary poetry of
Stefan George in which Germany’s male youth was glorified as the neuer
Adel (new aristocracy) and the neues Griechentum (new Hellenism),
which would save modem culture from materialism and mediocrity.14
At his “Free School” in Wickersdorf, Wyneken tried to put into prac¬
tice his ideal of “pedagogical eros.” In 1920, he was accused of immoral
acts with some of his pupils, whereupon he defended himself by writing a
booklet about the role of homoeroticism in education.15 His views were
echoed in Der Eigene: “Just as Plato understood eros, it is the naturally
grounded force of the attraction of those of the same sex for one another,
but on the other hand, the ennoblement —today we say sublimation —of
that force in order to effect the most noble deeds of education.”16
A regular contributor to Der Eigene, Otto Kiefer, a teacher who was
involved in educational reform projects in the famous Odenwald school,
in 1902 under the pseudonym Dr. Reifegg, published a booklet on the
subject: Die Bedeutung derJunglingsliebe fur unsere Zeit. In this booklet,
from which fragments have been selected for this chapter, Kiefer asserted
that Jiinglingsliebe could be essential to a form of education and instruc¬
tion in which the individual was shown to his best advantage, social con-
flicts were overcome, and the hierarchical teacher-pupil relationship was

replaced with mutual affection. Other writers preferred the medieval
squire and page as models for an education based on personal loyalty.
Such models undoubtedly added force to the rejection of so-called “level¬
ling” tendencies in mass education.
More modern is the curious little essay which appeared in DerEigene in
1903 about the raising of homosexual boys. With this piece whose author
is not known-the name Lucifer is a pseudonym-this chapter closes.
NOTES
1. P. Hamecher, “Heinrich von Kleist. Eine Studie,” Der Eigene, 1899,

no. 8/9, pp. 254-60; idem, “Heinrich von Kleists Liebesleben,” Der Eigene,
1906, pp. 154-66; H. Fuchs, Richard Wagner und die Homosexuality. Enter
besonderer Beriicksichtigung der sexuellen Anomalien seiner Gestalten (Berlin,
1903); A. Brand, Die Bedeutung der Freundesliebe fur Fuhrer und Volker. Ein
Flugblatt fur mannliche Kultur (Berlin, 1923); St. Ch. Waldecke, “Der schop-
ferische Mensch —Drei Studien —Jean Paul Friedrich Richter 1763-1825,” Der
Eigene, 1921/22, no. 6, pp. 168-71; H. Hohendorf, “Nietzsche und die Jugend,”
Der Eigene, 1926, no. 2, pp. 34-6; E. Kampf, “Aus Nietzsches Briefen,” Der
Eigene, 1926, no. 6, pp. 175-80; O. Kiefer, “Nietzsche und der Eros,” Der
Eigene, 1931, no. 5, p. 129.
2. St. Ch. Waldecke, “Was will der deutsche Eros?” Der Eigene, 1924,
no. 7/8, p. 306.
3. J. S. Hohmann, DerEigene. Ein Blatt fur mannliche Kultur (Frankfurt am
Main, 1981), p. 327.
4. A. von Gleichen-Russwurm, Die Freundschaft. Eine psychologische
Forschungsreise (Stuttgart, 1912).
5. On the impact of Schurtz see J. Reulecke, “Das Jahr 1902 und die Ur-
spriinge der Mannerbund-Ideologie in Deutschland,” in Mannerband, Manner-
biinde: Zur Rolle des Mannes im Kulturvergleich, ed. G. Volger and K. von
Welck (Cologne, 1990), vol. 2, pp. 3-10; idem, “Mannerbund versus Familie.
Biirgerliche Jugendbewegung und Familie in Deutschland im ersten Drittel des
20. Jahrhunderts,” in “Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit”: Der Mythos Jugend, ed. T.
Koebner et al. (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), pp. 199-223.
6. B. Friedlander, “Schadet die soziale Freigabe des homosexuellen
Verkehrs der kriegerischen Tiichtigkeit einer Rasse?” Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwi-
schenstufen 7 (1905): 463-70.
7. DerEigene, 1903, no. 6, p. 332.
8. See, for instance, E. Bab, Frauenbewegung und Freundesliebe. Versuch
einer Losung des geschlechtlichen Problems (Berlin, 1904).
9. On the connections and similarities of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen and
the Wandervogel see F. Krohnke, “Wandervogel und Homosexuellenbewegung.
Harry Oosterhuis /25
Zum erotischen und literarischen Ideenkreis der Jugendbiinde 1890 bis 1933,” in
Hohmann, pp. 345-73.
10. On the German youth movement see H. Becker, German Youth: Bond or
Free (New York, 1946); W. Z. Laqueur, Young Germany: A History of the Ger¬
man Youth Movement (London, 1962).
11. On Wilhelm Jansen see R. Mills, “A man of youth: Wilhelm Jansen and
tbe German Wandervogel Movement,” Gay Sunshine, no. 44/45 (1980), pp. 48-
12. H. Bliiher, Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als erotisches Phano-

men. Ein Beitrag zur Erkenntnis der sexuellen Inversion (Berlin, 1912).
13. H. Bliiher, Die Rolle der Erotik in der mannlichen Gesellschaft. Eine
Theorie der menschlichen Staatsbildung nach Wesen und Wert (Jena, 1917).
14. T. Maasen, De pedagogische eros in het geding. Gustav Wyneken en de
pedagogische vriendschap in de Freie Schulgemeinde Wickersdorf tussen 1906 en
1931 (Utrecht, 1988).
15. G. Wyneken, Eros (Lauenburg, 1921). Although they were somewhat
more reserved, other educational theorists in Germany also defended the pedagog¬
ical eros. See, for instance, K. Zeidler, Vom erziehenden Eros (Hamburg, 1919)
and E. Spranger, Psychologie des Jugendalters (Heidelberg, 1924). See also M.
Wawerzonnek, Implizite Sexualpadagogik in der Sexualwissenschaft 1886 bis
1933 (Cologne, 1984).
16. Quoted in Krohnke, p. 366.
17. Dr. Gravell, “Das Pagentum,” Der Eigene, 1906, pp. 52-67.
■
'
Into the Future!
Gotamo
As an introduction to his collection Lieblingminne Elisar von Kupffer

wrote an essay on the ethical-political significance of the love of a man for
a man. It is difficult, after that really excellent presentation, to say any¬
thing further essentially new. And yet, allow me here to return once again
to that theme and also discuss a few points of that essay more closely.
Doubtless we find ourselves in a decidedly transitional period. The
whole civilization of western Europe is based on Christianity. But this
foundation has been badly shaken by the Enlightenment of the 18th cen¬
tury and in the 19th has received so many terrible blows, through the
enormous progress that science has made in all fields in a truly dizzying
pace, that it will hardly recover. Let us not deceive ourselves about it! Let
the Christian churches build ever so many more “God’s” houses, seek to
shore up the shaky faith by suggestive means in thousands of prayer ser¬
vices, and with an expenditure of enormous amounts of money convert
yearly a couple of thousand heathen souls: these external manifestations
cannot cover up in the long run its inner apostasy and disintegration! In the
colossal development of power especially in the Catholic Church we meet
with a sign quite similar to what characterized the last varnishing of the
Roman political Weltanschauung. There too, with a completely neuras¬
thenic overrefinement, they madly built temple after temple and invented
new forms of worship and new gods. And the masses cheered them on and
did not feel how the storm winds of Christianity were already rumbling,
which were to overpower the beautifully decorated, but rotten and empty
edifice. Today the representatives of Christianity know, to be sure, that
the struggle for life and death is unavoidable and they are arming them¬
selves for it! And thus we are experiencing the curiously splendid drama
that the beginning of the 20th century shows a high point of priestly power
such as it hardly had before, whereas a century ago one could have held
Christianity to be nearly conquered. All its forces are being united for the
final battle, and a fine tragedy could result if the modern world were not to
act so sober, so businesslike. There is also a change in the Weltanschauung
127
of whole peoples. Everything is in a ferment. From the slight doubts of the

schoolboy, who is told that God created the world in seven days, to the
mountain-moving exultation of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra over the death of
God is only a step. And yet, all nuances of the transition have been re¬
tained. One doubts, one still seeks to persuade himself that he believes, or
one is honest with himself and only lies to the others. One learns to lie so
well! Then one day someone comes and coins the expression of the con¬
ventional lie. People read it and find it so true that they say it is really
nothing new, but then they shrug their shoulders and continue to lie. And
the great number of those who also think Nietzsche correct help in the
lying. Everyone must lie; all instinctively feel that the shaky edifice of
social order is built on lies and fear the truth more than pestilence and
death. And yet there are so many who would gladly have the truth, and all
of them consciously feel the longing, the great longing for a new civiliza¬
tion. (Kupffer: “Civilization is the possibility of fully living out our
drives and strengths.”)
We have to lie somewhat more than the others, we, in whom the ele¬
ments were so mixed that our eyes perceive above all the beauty of those
of our own sex, that the seething passion of our senses show where to seek
our complement, the primal wonder, the mystic, and thousandfold myste¬
rious love. They let us wander a couple of years in darkness by an artifi¬
cial concealment and by making open expression impossible. And when
we then discovered ourselves and have found the way, we see with horror
that it leads over centuries-old fossilized prejudices, which glare at us
threateningly. No matter, we must go through! Anagke, the force of ne¬
cessity! And here each must help himself as best he can. But the world,
the wide world, in which the received morality is carefully protected, is
astonished that homosexuals are so eccentric, so bizarre, so unprincipled,
so given to lying when it occasionally stumbles upon one who through
years-long playacting has ruined his moral foundation even more funda¬
mentally than his “normal” fellow human beings, whom these character¬
istics do not hinder from belonging to the exclusive “pillars of throne and
altar.”
We may safely grant that homosexual society, at least as it presents
itself in Berlin, stands on no higher civilized standpoint than the other,
rather the opposite. The mystic twilight of being unknown, of the hidden,
and of the forbidden, with which this society forms a state within the state,
is not suited to bringing the better characteristics of its more or less effem¬
inate members to development. Therefore there are in fact many to whom
those bad characteristics may correctly be attributed. They are just women
Gotamo 129
and can become hysterical like the true ones. On the other hand one finds
among the male prostitutes exactly the same smut and the same ethical
inferiority that, according to all reports, distinguishes their female col¬
leagues.
It is wrong, however, to generalize these reproaches.
Precisely the noblest, the most distinguished, and the most masculine of
those who are devoted to this eros come to light the least and are observed
the least. For them, however, there lies in their being forced to hide a
slander and an insult that often enough does not allow the most splendid
dispositions to develop and which leads to an embittered isolation from
human society. And human beings need other human beings so much!
Thus we see that a numerous class of people, through the prejudices of
the crowd, has gotten into a truly piteous position, from which few are
able to raise themselves with their own strength. The majority will not
even feel how shameful their continuing hypocrisy is. One is weakened,
goes recklessly on, and seeks forgetfulness in a frantic intoxication of the
senses, in ever new refinements of pleasure. And indeed in the large cit¬
ies, in the very large cities, it is so easy to accomplish that. One goes to
Friedrichstrasse' and fetches himself a boy. Nothing simpler! The story
repeats itself and people gradually become incapable of a greater, more
beautiful love! And if his drunkenness once carries someone away and his
mouth overflows with him who fills his heart, then the whole honorable
society of the guardians of Zion cry bloody murder and all the well-inten¬
tioned people excommunicate the imprudent man like a mangy dog. The
more strict call for the penitentiary and corporal punishment, the mild
shake their heads and are of the opinion that if one is like that then he
should at least just keep silent and not give public offense! Then they
speak a few interesting words about sexual psychopathology and deca¬
dence, and afterwards —keep silent. Behind them, however, hobbles the
state’s attorney, who drags out some mummified paragraph or other so as
to teach morality with the power of the law to the all-too-daring man who
worships the god in his heart with praise and sacrifice instead of denying
him. Truly, it is a poisonous sump into which they have forced us. We
must get out, cost what it will!
Let us make use of the opportunity. Everything is pressing toward a
new civilization. Here we must also raise our voices and engage our
strengths so that what is to come will be more beautiful and higher than
before. Through our own lives we must demonstrate to those who have
learned to see at all that this prohibited love, to which Elisar von Kupffer
gave the lovely name Lieblingminne, in fact represents a quiet, powerful
fountain of strength and that it is a sin against the holy spirit of creation if
one seeks to dam up this fountain or to poison it. Let us, each in his own
sphere, let it spring up and become a mighty stream, and then shall the
enemies see how that stream fertilizes its banks!
But first, people must learn to see! They must know what it is that is
being discussed. Here the book of Kupffer was indeed a stroke of ethical
culture. But it is not the concern of all people to work their way through a
literary collection, and then —as incredible as it may seem —there are still
enough people who, after their reading, quite simply explain: Yes, if it is
so, then all those great men are to be viewed as pathological; there is
degeneration everywhere! And occasionally there comes someone who
swears by Lombroso2 and finds here material suitable to support the hy¬
pothesis of the connection between genius and insanity. All these will
only believe that we are healthy if either they are able to observe us them¬
selves or if science points it out to them. Therefore we should gratefully
accept the help that this has provided us in recent times. On this point I do
not agree with Kupffer. I too am no friend of those dissecting investiga¬
tions and psychological doings that have here and there been the conse¬
quence, perhaps even the prerequisite of that strange, late-born science of
“psychopathia sexualis.” But in fact the writings of Krafft-Ebing, Moll,
and Hirschfeld have had an uncommonly informative and instructional
effect in wide circles. Above all, they bring to the eyes of the lawgivers
the necessary “scientific assumptions” to alter the legal code. Already, at
least in the large cities, almost all educated people are convinced that a
change must take place here, whereas twenty years ago such a proposal
still would simply have been ridiculed. If these men, and with them as
many others as possible, do not cease to announce their ceterum censeo
paragraphum esse tollendum [but I am of the opinion that the paragraph
should be removed], then after a couple of decades our present legal code
will appear completely medieval. And on this we are probably all united,
that the first outward success that we are aiming at must be the removal of
that disastrous paragraph which has crept into the laws of almost every
state. That this is not enough, however, has also been emphasized by
Elisar von Kupffer with reference to conditions in France and Italy. But
the repeal of this law is the necessary starting point for all further develop¬
ment. This law will not run away without a violent struggle, certainly. All
the better! For that gives us the possibility of fighting with a goal before
our eyes and will assure us the collaboration of all enlightened people.
This fight will then force public opinion to occupy itself with us. And
when the paragraph falls, which must happen sooner or later, then in the
Gotamo 131
eyes of many that will mean a greater success, the longer and more des¬
perately we have had to struggle for it. This success will equally mean for
them the recognition of Lieblingminne. This fight must be carried out,
therefore, with all our strength, and we should welcome all our fellow
citizens who wish to stand on our side.
But when we have attained that goal, oh then, upwards! upwards! A
new day draws us to new shores! Unimaginable, immeasurable cultural
perspectives open up to us and we already see the clear, sunny civilization
of ancient Hellas renew itself. But we will not even content ourselves with
that. Our civilization is to become even higher and more splendid.
When finally the justification of our love is granted, then must we
above all come out in public and prove by deeds not merely that we have
earned tolerance, but rather that Lieblingminne is in ethical significance,
in strength and beauty, equal to the formerly only justified Frauenminne
[love of women]. Then we will also attain the goal of being allowed to
publicly court a return of love and friendship, and fathers will no longer
shortsightedly warn and restrain their sons from relations with friends. On
the contrary, they will be happy when a competent man courts the favor of
their sons and a smart youth will find in his attachment to his lover many
things that will have a valuable meaning for his whole life, which the
school and often even his parent’s home are unable to offer him. . . .
It is surely no accident that the majority of Hellenes felt themselves
drawn above all to the youthful representatives of their own sex. The
opposite probably also existed, but the number of persons completely “in¬
verted” in their sex drive was, relative to the entire population, only
small, exactly like today. Therefore attention was not very much directed
toward them. We can only explain the extraordinary extent of Socratic
love in Hellas through the doctrine of bisexuality, and through it every
apparent puzzle is solved by itself. Dr. Hirschfeld has shown that in the
case of an innate “contrary sexual feeling” it is a question of intermediate
stages, transitional types from the complete man to the complete woman.
Along the way all nuances are found, and psycho-sexual hermaphrodit¬
ism, bisexuality, is discovered to be the transition from normality to ho¬
mosexuality. The history of antiquity teaches us that numerous outstand¬
ing men found pleasure in the mature form of woman and then again in the
blooming beauty of youths, and we absolutely cannot assume that all of
them did so from vice, craving for pleasure, satiety, or because it was the
general custom. Poets such as Anacreon and Horace celebrate their lovers
of both sexes with the same ardor. In those Greek states where the So¬
cratic love enjoyed special recognition or was even protected and regu-
lated by the state, such as Athens and Crete, the whole culture, as far as it
is connected in any way with sexual life, appears to be based on a bisexual
foundation. The homosexual part of the sex drive of the bisexual was
directed above all toward youthful individuals who were to some extent
related to the feminine type, and the whole Greek cultural history is the
most telling proof of the splendid, moral heights to which this drive can be
advanced.
The opponents of the repeal of §175 have also already based their stand¬
point on the indication that, after the repeal, the number of homosexuals
would increase. They are not entirely incorrect. To be sure, the repeal in
and of itself would not change the situation very much. But when “public
opinion” recognizes our love as having equal rights, when an arising new
culture has again established the basis of esthetic feeling, when also, per¬
haps, an urgently necessary transformation of our male clothing again
allows the recognition of the splendid lines and proportions of well-
formed bodies, then surely thousands will reflect on themselves and also
bring to development their homosexual drive, which in addition to the
“normal” one was asleep in them and which our contemporary culture
has suppressed and destroyed with a hundred thousand influences. But a
bisexuality on such a basis appears no danger to us. When thus the possi¬
bility of living out our tendency is offered, then must the level of civiliza¬
tion be raised and then too will a noble form be found for all. Our athletic
fields will play a role similar to the gymnasia of Athens. And then we will
regain for youth its lost adolescence!
How one can see in such efforts a danger to society is incomprehensi¬
ble. As a rule they finally take shelter behind the fear that an eventual
“sexual intercourse” could harm the boy in body and soul. First, how¬
ever, this “intercourse” is just not the most important thing and many
will in the future also endure life quite well without it. On the other hand,
solitary masturbation, which is carried out by at least four-fifths of our
youth —which only a ridiculous hypocrisy and prudery dares to deny —is
certainly more harmful by far to virtue and health. Boys just satisfy their
drive in one way or another, whether through masturbation, that “sad
caricature” of normal satisfaction, or with the help of prostitutes, by
which they acquire the seeds of the degeneration of their whole families,
not to speak of the moral damage.
Others have feared that women could again fall into a degrading posi¬
tion similar to that in Greece. I hold this danger to be very slight; women
are already defending themselves today. Elisar von Kupffer is quite right
when he speaks of the necessity of the emancipation of men and compares
Gotamo 133
our efforts with the well-known women’s movement. One does not know,
of course, to what extent women will achieve their demands —at any rate,
precisely to the extent they deserve. And if their sex then stands opposite
the male sex in a greater independence, that is still a long way from mean¬
ing the battle of the two parties. Women can only gain if men cease to
view them as the exclusive object of courting. The relation of the two
sexes will be freer on both sides, therefore nobler and happier.
One may hold all this to be utopian. But we see that something new
must take shape and thus may we picture the surging chaos developed.
Truly, in spite of all difficulties, it is a splendid time in which to live! We
may fight in the conviction that we are laying the foundation for a new
civilization.
And thus we look confidently into the future.
Original: “In die Zukunft!” Der Eigene, 1903, pp. 64-73.
NOTES
1. [The Friedrichstrasse was one of the busiest streets in the center of Berlin
where, already at the beginning of this century, as appears from this article, boys
prostituted themselves. In the twenties Mackay described this scene in his novel
Der Puppenjunge. Die Geschichte einer namenlosen Liebe aus der Friedrich¬
strasse (Berlin, 1926). HO]
2. [C. Lombroso was a well-known Italian criminologist, who tried to prove
that crime was connected with personality types and was biologically determined.
HO]
•
■
The Women’s Movement
and Male Culture
Edwin Bab
It has been said many times that human culture is climbing upwards in a
spiral. Humanity apparently returns again and again to its old place, but in
fact it has climbed to a higher turn of the spiral. The correctness of this
statement may be proved in numerous fields. Today we wish to concern
ourselves with the position of women in different times as well as with the
solution of the sexual problem in different times as determined by the
position of women.
The position of women at the present time is characterized by the most
severe contradictions. If woman appears sometimes as the ruler of man,
who slavishly fulfills her every wish, if she occasionally appears as his
demon, who drives him to all possible foolishness or even to crimes,
without his being able to withdraw himself from her devilish influence,
she is again, on the other hand, man’s servant, deprived of rights, who
must allow him to prescribe her laws, without being able to make her
influence felt in any way. If, on the one hand, woman as mother, as sister,
as wife, as daughter is man’s object of highest reverence, who must be
protected from every attack, on the other hand, the woman who stands
further off is only the object of his sensual passion, whom he seeks to
make serve his lusts by every means. And just as much as our society
treats with a high regard the man who has robbed as many decent women
as possible of their innocence and perhaps has led them into the arms of
prostitution, so too it has disregard for the unfortunate victim of his plea¬
sure-seeking.
In the closest connection with this doubly wrong —on the one hand
privileged, on the other hand without rights —position of women in our
social order today stands the burning necessity of a satisfactory solution of
the sexual problem. By sexual problem is generally understood the ques¬
tion: In what way can and should the young man obtain his sexual gratifi¬
cation? The simplest and most natural way, of course, would be for him to
enter into marriage as young as possible. But precisely that has been made
135
impossible for him in our social order today. For through marriage he
assumes the duty of caring not only for himself, but also for his wife and
his children. That can be done by a young man of twenty-one today,
however, only in the rarest cases, quite apart from the fact that the sexual
drive normally demands its rights already in much earlier years, without
the laws allowing him to enter earlier into marriage:
Thus the young man today is required, on the average for fifteen years,
namely from his fifteenth to his thirtieth year, to seek another outlet.
There are primarily three such outlets:
The first is intercourse with prostitutes. Unfortunately, in spite of all
attempts at education, the dangers of this outlet are not sufficiently well
known, so that one is again and again required to call attention to them.
Prostitution is the focus of numerous contagious diseases, of which two,
gonorrhea and syphilis, have already taken on the character of the worst
endemic diseases. All attempts to make prostitution healthier, above all
the infamous police regulation of prostitution, based on §361.6 of the
German Penal Code,1 which has directly delivered all women of Germany
to the exceptional law, which provokes mischief—I say, all these attempts
have remained unsuccessful up to now. The young man who thus has
sexual relations with a prostitute under the prevailing circumstances
places himself with great probability in danger of an infection. And he
thereby harms not only himself, but becomes from now on a source of
poison for his whole environment. Thus it is not going too far to declare
the intercourse of a young man with a prostitute to be thoughtless and
criminal: thoughtless, if he does not know the significance and the danger
of his action; criminal, if he has been sufficiently enlightened about the
possible consequences of his step. And this hard judgment cannot be tem¬
pered by saying that the number of young people who injure the people’s
health in a criminal way is very large. Rather, this sad fact only shows
how urgently help must be called forth in this sorry state of affairs.
A large number of other young men seek another, the second outlet —
and they go on the prowl for respectable young girls. What a responsibil¬
ity the young man generally takes on himself when he offers such an
uncorrupted, chaste creature on the altar of his lust —of this he is aware
only in the rarest cases. And if he possesses this awareness, it will hardly
hold him back from committing an act that, under current views, is held to
be not only natural, but even praiseworthy. When later the consequences
of the dreamy, blissful hours show themselves, then many a young gentle¬
man would perhaps be happy if he could undo his action. He is threatened
today by the dreaded payment of alimony-by the way, the state lets him
Edwin Bab 137
bear only a quite small share of the penalty, whereas he has burdened the
woman, who is certainly not more guilty, not only with torment and
shame, but also with the greater part of the costs. Not seldom is the at¬
tempt made to put the deed along with its consequences out of the way
through abortion, but —apart from the fact that an abortion not directed by
a doctor is not without grave dangers for the mother —here a penal clause
threatens, whose justification has often enough been doubted and which
has already caused unspeakable harm. In other cases the young man has
been more clever from the beginning by giving the unfortunate girl a false
address and a false name: if she becomes pregnant, then he stays away and
all efforts of his victim to find him remain in vain. I do not deny that there
are exceptional cases where the relations between man and woman may
not be judged in such a sharp fashion as has been done here. I recall the
“free marriages,” which, if they are entered into seriously from both
sides, must by all means be considered as marriages. In general, however,
the man who seduces a respectable girl is carrying out a wicked game,
which cannot be decisively enough denounced, precisely with the very
being that should be for him the most sacred in the world, with the object
of his love. How often in the end is such an unfortunate creature driven
out by her parents, relatives, and friends, to wander about helplessly with
the living fruit of her lapse, sinking from one level to another, driven into
the arms of prostitution! Do not plead in favor of the seducer that the girl
is just as guilty, or that whoever lets herself be seduced is no better than
the seducer, or similar things. In such an unequal game, where the man
has almost nothing to lose, the girl nearly everything, the man is and
remains the guilty party. Even if the girl offers herself to him and if she
seduces him, he should (generally speaking!) have the moral strength, in
view of the coming harm, to reject the offered or even importunate victim!
When one has once made clear the relations described here and then
sees how state and society act regarding them, one cannot refrain from
shuddering. The state, which, without any demonstrable reason, threatens
sexual intercourse between men with degrading punishment, forbids the
seduction of a girl over sixteen by no kind of penal clause and society even
rewards it, not only through the regard paid the seducer, but above and
beyond that, by directly forcing the homosexual, who does not feel the
slightest inclination for a woman, to take on the seducer role. For in gen¬
eral the person “suspected” of homosexuality can only regain public re¬
spect by seeking to drive an innocent woman to disgrace through se¬
ducer’s tricks! And that is called morality!
The third outlet is the satisfaction of the sexual drive through masturba-
tion. Nearly all young men masturbate occasionally, many know no other
kind of sexual activity. And with it they at least offer no danger for soci¬
ety. But they expose themselves to an even greater danger. For there is no
barrier to masturbation except the unfortunately often failing one of en¬
ergy of will. And thus we find most frequently precisely in onanists the
serious harmful effects of sexual excess. Certainly we know today that
masturbation in itself brings no danger, given that it is not carried out in a
violent way. Its harmful effects are brought about solely by its leading,
here as everywhere, to an unhealthy excess.
We see, therefore, that every possible kind of satisfaction of the sexual
drive brings with it grave dangers for the young man or even for state and
society. Thinking women also saw this a long time ago and they promised
themselves help from the equal rights of women in public and private life.
There arose the women’s movement, which, not least, also seeks to give a
solution to the sexual question. If the woman, just like the man, does
professional work from youth on and is no longer dependent on the man
for support, then she too can share in the support of the family and so
already in younger years the man will be in a position to bring about the
simplest solution of the sexual question through his marriage.
A number of enlightened women have gone even further. They demand
respect also for the woman who has fallen, principally through the fault of
men. In prostitution they even see their sisters in the prostitutes them¬
selves, whom one must raise up again instead of shoving them ever deeper
into the mud through general contempt. They perceive especially in the
police regulation of prostitution a monstrous degradation of the whole
world of women. And thus there arose the abolitionist movement, repre¬
sented so often precisely by women, which would like to do away with
prostitution itself along with the police regulation. The means for this can
be gained, of course, through a change in the position of women. In any
case, whether the women’s movement alone is sufficient to bring about a
radical change and improvement appears questionable in the highest de¬
gree.
* * *
If we now leave the present and view the position of women and the
state of the sexual question in ancient Greece, then we find first, and it
must astonish us most, that there was no sexual question in our sense at
all. There it was quite simply solved through same-sex love among men.
For it went without saying that the young man would enter into an intimate
friendship with an older, with whom he also had sexual relations. At that
time-and it was certainly not a time of degeneration, but rather a time of
Edwin Bab 139
the highest blossoming of culture-no one found in such relationships

anything immoral or even “unnatural.” The older of the two friends-the
relationship arose mostly between a man and a youth; “boy-love” in the
German sense of the word was of course altogether unknown —took care
to exercise an extremely valuable educational influence on his favorite, as
the works of numerous poets and writers prove. It is clear that under those
circumstances a sexual question for the youth, i.e., a sexual question in
our sense, could not be raised.
But how did they arrive at this solution to the riddle that appears to us so
difficult? This question, too, is not difficult to answer if we look at the
position of women at that time somewhat more closely. There we find
women in a position much more without rights than with us. Quite apart
from public life, not even in private life did they play any kind of substan¬
tial role. Even the rearing of children was confided to them only in their
tenderest years.
What wonder if the man did not deign to give his love to such a dis¬
dained servant who had to care for his house, if he gave it to him who was
a cultivated comrade of his own sex?
The blossoming of Lieblingminne in Greece, which most researchers of
today cannot explain, was caused by the disdain of women.
Or are we really to believe that the whole, vigorous —as the statues
show us —genuinely masculine men’s world of Greece consisted at that
time of those half-women that today’s men of Lieblingminne have been
branded by certain scientific authorities? A powerful lot of one-sidedness
and stubbornness is required to answer this question in the affirmative.
One thinks of an Alcibiades or an Epaminondas as Urnings in the sense of
an Ulrichs and his followers, and shudders over the absurdity of such a
thought!
If the ancient Greek culture was far ahead of ours today in regard to the
solution of the sexual situation, it was behind ours in regard to the position
of women. There must already also have been in ancient Greece currents
that are comparable with our women’s movement today. Here belongs in
the first place the hetaerae. The hetaera did not wish to wait until a man
was gracious enough to reduce her to a slave through marriage. She made
herself independent and faced him as a free person; she was also as culti¬
vated as him, or more so. Thus an Aspasia, as the free marriage-partner of
Pericles, could play a larger role in the history of Athens than all the
decent housewives and spouses taken together. But even if the hetaera was
not a prostitute in today’s sense, she could still never represent the ideal of
woman, for only a few of these women were joined with one man, as in
the end a woman must always be, as long as the family remains the basis
of the state.
Besides the hetaerae we also find in Greece sapphic love, the love of
women for one another. Originally this was obviously a counter-current to
the Lieblingminne of the men, but a counter-current that drew the woman
away from the man just as little as Lieblingminne would have been able to
keep the man from marriage and the founding of a family. Since the man
often preferred to rest in the arms of his friend rather than in those of his
wife, the wife, who indeed was also unable to free herself from sensuality,
had to seek a substitute in the arms of her girl friend.
* * *
The ancient Jews showed us the ideal of family life. At the time of
puberty, i.e., after completing his thirteenth year, the man was declared
of age and married as soon as possible. Girls married in even younger
years, which could happen because puberty occurs earlier with oriental
peoples than with us. A sexual question, under those circumstances, could
not be raised at all. And thus we also find, in contrast to Greece, only a
few references to same-sex love in Palestine. In the Talmud, as a friend
thoroughly knowledgeable in the Talmud told me, there is found nothing
at all about same-sex love, although otherwise the sexual life of people is
discussed there with refreshing frankness, and occasionally— for exam¬
ple, about masturbation —quite modern-sounding views are developed.
It was this model of Jewish conditions, beside the Christian enmity of
the sensual, that influenced the Christian legislation in sexual questions.
Today, however, old Jewish conditions, however complete they may ap¬
pear, can no longer set the standard for us, since with us it appears impos¬
sible to allow the youth to marry already at the time of puberty.
Just as little can we wish to reintroduce Greek sexual life, with its
position of slavery for the decent woman and its hetaerae. We must rather
examine everything and claim the best for ourselves, and thus seek to
solve the sexual question along with the women’s question.
* * *
One movement that can bring us closer to this goal has already been
named by me: it is the women’s movement. By making marriage possible
for the man in younger years through making the woman self-supporting,
it brings us closer to ancient Jewish conditions. Since, however, the old
Jewish condition presents an unreachable ideal for the modern time, the
Edwin Bab 141
women’s movement requires a complement in order to make a complete

solution of the sexual question possible.
And this complement is the still quite young movement for male cul¬
ture, which is represented by the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen and its organ,
the artistic journal Der Eigene.
Until today the nature of the two movements has become clear to only a
small circle indeed, while the great mass of people confront them with
scornful smiles or even with hate and disgust. This is true for the male
culture movement in an even higher degree than for the women’s move¬
ment. Yet the latter too has fairly well had to fight the universal lack of
understanding. I pass over the ridiculous phrase that the woman belongs in
the home. For that just means that every woman has the duty, simply
because she was born a woman, to choose the profession of cook, servant,
and nursemaid for her husband. According to this, to begin with every
woman who has still not found a husband by a certain age, say 25 years,
must be slaughtered, and further, so that this is not the fate of too many
women, polygamy must be introduced. Besides, our culture would have
to do without women as an essential factor, occasioned simply by a brutal
act of force of men. Women, if they had the power, could with the same
right demand that men remain in the home while they claim public life for
themselves. In contrast to this, the women’s movement demands the same
rights for both sexes. More important is the objection that women are not
suitable for all professions. But this just means wait and see. It is indeed
not to be doubted that women will in the long run be active only in profes¬
sions that they are able to fulfill. In the final analysis, women cannot be
treated alike any more than men can be. As little as every man can become
a doctor, just as little can every woman become one, but many a woman
will be capable of fulfilling even this profession.
What the movement for male culture proposes, however, has up to now
been too ambitious even for many readers of Der Eigene. The majority
confuse it with the movement for the benefit of homosexuals and the re¬
peal of §175. This confusion has not helped either of the two movements.
Thus a clarification is urgently needed. The homosexual movement starts
from the notion that there are individual persons, men and women, who
feel themselves drawn only to those who belong to their own sex. A part
of these persons find complete sexual satisfaction only through practicing
acts that are punishable today as unnatural lewdness according to §175 of
the German Penal Code. Accordingly, the homosexual movement, orga¬
nized in the “Scientific Humanitarian Committee” of Charlottenburg,2
addresses itself against §175 and seeks to disseminate information on the
existence of such homosexuals.
The movement for male culture is different. We may consider the be¬
ginning of this movement to be the appearance of the essay. Die ethisch-
politische Bedeutung der Lieblingminne (The Ethical-Political Signifi¬
cance of Lieblingminne) by Elisar von Kupffer, which was first published
in Der Eigene in the first two issues of October 1899 (new series, vol. 1,
nos. 6/7), and which was placed as an introduction to the collection pub¬
lished by von Kupffer, Lieblingminne and Love of Friends in World Liter¬
ature In this ingenious work, Kupffer demanded in addition to the eman¬
cipation of woman also an emancipation of man: an emancipation of man
from the subjection to female taste and female beauty. But at the same
time he addressed himself against the homosexual movement, which he —
very correctly!—accused of distorting the great men of our human his¬
tory, so that one could hardly recognize those rich intellects and heroes in
their uranian petticoats! Only, from his side, he should not have made
generalized accusations against science because it stubbornly insisted on
generalizing individual experiences. He demanded that one should not
close his eyes to Lieblingminne as to a vice, but that one should seek to
draw advantage from it and not let such an important source of strength
escape him. In short, Kupffer decisively demanded once more an approxi¬
mation to Greek culture. He sought to prove through his famous collection
that Lieblingminne is found in almost all the great men of world history,
without one needing to see “homosexuals” or even half-women in those
people. However, what significance male culture must possess for the
solution of the sexual question was sufficiently emphasized, to be sure,
neither by Kupffer nor by Eduard von Meyer in his article “Mannliche
Kultur” (Male Culture; January 1903 issue of Der Eigene). Gotamo, the
author of the essay “In die Zukunft” (Into the Future; in the same issue of
Der Eigene), already sees it much more clearly. After what has been pre¬
sented earlier, however, we are able to express ourselves with perfect
sharpness and say: The movement for male culture demands of the youth
that he join in the closest friendship with a man who suits him, that he not
comply with the generally posed demand that he may love only women
and repress his same-sex love-drive; that he not endanger himself, his
family, and the state in the arms of a prostitute; that he not go on the prowl
for decent women; that he also not rob himself of his most valuable
strengths through excessive masturbation in early youth and work at the
degeneration of the nation.
Through the movement for male culture there will certainly be talk of a
spread of Lieblingminne, which is still often held to be a vice, but pre¬
cisely with this, one will soon stop seeing in it a vice or a sickness! In no
Edwin Bab 143
way, however, could this movement have as consequence an increase of

male prostitution, as is foolishly feared by short-sighted people. Nothing
is more suited to putting an end to prostitution, male or female, than a
spreading of Lieblingminne\ For when male youth finds its satisfaction in
the union with a beloved friend, it will no longer need repulsive and con¬
temptible prostitution. And in this the movement for male culture forms
an important complement to the women’s movement and also to the aboli¬
tionist movement. Male prostitution-with its harmful blackmail, with its
bars, which one would like to call bars served by a tender male hand, and
such like —could only come about because the homosexual does not dare
to reveal himself to his friend. With the victory of the efforts for male
culture, male prostitution and female prostitution become superfluous!
The regrettable confusion of the movement for male culture with the
homosexual movement was probably also what prompted the state attor¬
ney’s office to confiscate several issues of Der Eigene and to take a posi¬
tion against the efforts of Der Eigene. Otherwise they could never indeed
have seen in the publication of Der Eigene a glorification of “unnatural
lewdness.”4 A paper that thinks of again calling forth a cult of the ideal
friend in the sense of the ancient Greeks —and in addition an artistic jour¬
nal—can never be tasteless enough to want to glorify lewd acts, no matter
of what kind. As little as a love poem can be a glorification of sexual
intercourse, just as little can Der Eigene be a glorification of “unnatural
lewdness.”
Does the movement for male culture not also wish the repeal of §175?
Certainly it wishes this; but it does not lay chief value on this wish. As
long as the penal clause stands it must be taken into account by the adher¬
ents of male culture. Lieblingminne need not lead to such acts as those
placed under punishment according to the current interpretation of §175
by the Supreme Court!5 Nevertheless this can occasionally be the case,
and since Lieblingminne will not stop being seen as a vice until §175 has
ceased to exist, a decided protest against its existence must therefore be
raised also from the standpoint of the movement for male culture.
If the reinstatement of Lieblingminne in its ancient Greek rights, just as
at that time, also has a rise in the love of a woman for a woman as conse¬
quence, that is no detriment. But what must be avoided is that
Lieblingminne draw with it a disdain for women corresponding to the an¬
cient Greek position of women. Kupffer already emphasized what an im¬
portant factor of life the mother is; he emphasized that as wife, friend, and
girl, woman is a flower that we would not want to see banned from the
garden of life. The women’s movement is there to attend to that, to work
in that sense. The women’s movement and male culture are not opposites,
they are absolutely necessary complements for a practicable solution of
the sexual problem.
Humanity is climbing upwards in a spiral. The women’s movement is
leading us back to ancient Jewish ideals, the movement for male culture to
ancient Greek ideals. But we shall have advanced a turn higher on the
spiral: both cultures are melting together to a higher, more perfect one. No
longer will woman alone control the taste of man and require his love; she
will also no longer be his slave, but rather his companion with equal
rights, his equal. So let there one day bloom for us, through the emancipa¬
tion of women and male culture —and hopefully in the not-too-distant
future —a truly human culture. Followers of Nietzsche would say, super¬
human.
Original: “Frauenbewegung und mannliche Kultur,” Der Eigene, 1903,

pp. 393-407.
NOTES
1. With prison is to be punished: a female person placed under police surveil¬

lance because of prostitution, if regarding this she acts contrary to the prescribed
police regulations for the assurance of health, public order, and public decency, or
who, without being placed under such surveillance, practices prostitution.
2. [Charlottenburg was a suburb of Berlin, where Hirschfeld lived. HO]
3. Now: Verlag von Max Spohr in Leipzig. Price: 5 marks, sewn.
4. [Bab is probably referring here to the accusations of a moral-purification
group against Brand. In 1903 it accused him of distributing “lascivious writ¬
ings,” upon which the state attorney took action and Brand had to appear before
the court. HO]
5. [At that moment the Supreme Court had decided that the legal phrase
“actions resembling coitus” referred especially to anal penetration. HO]
Friend-Love as a Cultural Factor:
A Word to Germany’s Male Youth
Adolf Brand
All the opponents of our movement are still seeking today to be guard¬
ians of the male youth and to convince them that friend-love is a vice or a
crime and that intimate relations with a friend are at least unmanly, so as
to keep them away from cultivating such relations.
But no reasonable and freedom-loving person is still able today to shut
out the insight that every love is a private affair—just as religion! —no
matter whether it concerns a woman or a man. And in every good society
it is already viewed today as entirely a matter of course that an interfer¬
ence of a third party in that affair, especially every guardianship by the
state, is an impudent, shameless crime against the right of personal free¬
dom. For the state has no cause to forbid the joys of life and to threaten
with punishment the joys of friendship and friend-love, since no one is
harmed by it and since the enjoyment of male-to-male sensual desire
means for many hundreds of thousands of our best and most able men a
happiness and rejuvenating source of strength!
Much more sense and reason would lie in the demand to mercilessly
punish all those men who seduce a respectable girl to bed and who irre¬
sponsibly and unscrupulously make her a mother without having married
her, since they thereby corrupt the good reputation of the girl in the first
place, and in the second place, by quite unnaturally withholding their duty
as fathers, they consign their own progeny to cruel misery and the ques¬
tionable care of strangers.
At any rate it would be easy to show that in almost all cases of such
normal sexual intercourse, whose thoughtlessness and reprehensibleness
state and church allow completely without punishment many thousand
times every day, there is without doubt a severe moral and material harm
to a third party. For not only is there harm to the seduced girl, her family,
the community, the state, and all taxpayers, who must care for the illegiti¬
mate children of such libertines, but even more to the illegitimate children
themselves, since in most cases they have to pay severely for the unscru-
145
pulousness of their fathers and the illegitimacy of their birth in today’s

society through some kind of degradation and disdain.
What a scandal, however, would be evoked over Germany if all those
so-called normal men had to be publicly put in the pillory and even had to
go to prison, who were strongly at fault in that direction!
The prisons would certainly not suffice. And there is indeed no political
party that is free from such sinners and that would not constantly have a
great part of its members behind bars.
All the more disgusting are the moral doings of such opponents of prog¬
ress when they sit haughtily in judgment over others, who also want to
enjoy life, and when they disdainfully and contemptuously revile friend-
love, which they neither know nor understand, as a vice.
It is therefore high time to finally make a thoroughly clean sweep of that
double morality and stubborn hypocrisy of the dying generation, and to
again obtain full equal rights for friend-love in the German fatherland
through a sincere, fearless, body-affirming, and manly-thinking male
youth, full of the joy of living, such as ancient Germany, like ancient
Greece, already possessed, and to again fight for its place in the sun,
which is without doubt its due as a very valuable cultural factor in addition
to woman-love.
Always, at any rate, the voice of the people only calls vice a base and
ignoble passion that carries in itself the kernel of injustice toward others or
toward oneself—which can become a dark, devastating fate —and which
at least brings harm to the one or the other, without precisely bringing
about that bad effect with an expressed intention.
A crime, on the other hand, is that misdeed which under the application
of raw force or base deceit is directed against property or the life and limb
of our fellow human beings and which with full consciousness and full
intention unscrupulously makes a victim of the other.
Friend-love, as may easily be seen, has not the least to do with all these
things. For it neither intentionally nor unintentionally causes harm to oth¬
ers.
This already results from the fact that friend-love carries on its fore¬
head, not the mark of greed and unscrupulousness, but rather the sign of a
willingness to sacrifice and an encompassing concern for the welfare of
the other, and it is not a question of the most primitive sexual things, as
our adversaries falsely believe, but rather of the deep, quiet joy in the
whole man and in the joyfully devoted care and enrichment of his whole
personality.
Unfortunately, however, most people have no idea at all what love is,
but rather usually understand, when they speak of love, merely the most
Adolf Brand 147
stupid sexuality, whose satisfaction they consider to be much more crude,

stupid, and mindless than the way animals do it.
But the wiseacres who say that love is there only for the sake of propa¬
gation are telling you lies. For those falsifiers of facts and deceivers of the
people know perfectly well that the union of the two sexes in all of nature
serves the lively deliverance and discharge of superfluous forces, which
bestows quiet, well-being, and new courage for life, of which at most a
quite insignificant and quite ridiculously tiny part is used for propagation,
while its tremendous richness is without exception otherwise completely
lavished in wonderful liberality and prodigality, since its immense full¬
ness is not at all needed for the propagation of new living beings on this
little earth.
In order to be able to bring about as richly and as often as possible the
deliverance and discharge of this tremendous superfluity of forces, which
become lively in our blood and from day to day ever more loudly and
fiercely demand activity as soon as we reach the years of puberty, nature
at the same time combines this necessity with an irresistible, overpower¬
ing feeling of desire and with an ever greater increasing pleasure, so that
every single individual has a strong interest, important for his life, in the
occurrence of that discharge and in the explosion of those forces, which
immediately brings about their extinction and which in their place again
gives us the necessary inner freedom and quiet for our work.
This feeling of desire and its following satisfaction are, therefore, the
most important thing in sexual intercourse, since they possess the greatest
importance for the daily work of adult men. For without that feeling of
desire and without its constant satisfaction, which is willed by nature, all
civilization and all progress on earth would simply be impossible. Propa¬
gation, on the other hand, is a matter of secondary importance. For many
millions of male sperm cells must, in a whole chain of sexual acts, be
made sterile and destroyed before a single one of them can lead to fertil¬
ization and serve for the incarnation of a new human being.
It is, therefore, simply a conscious lie that is served up to the male
youth when they are told that love has only the goal of bringing about
propagation. For the dissipation and destruction of many millions of liv¬
ing sperm cells through the sexual act proves the contrary.
Love is, however, doubtless much more than sexual activity and mere
bodily feelings of pleasure. It is the joy of one human being in another, in
his beauty, in his character, in his creation, in his activity, in his learning,
and in his art; the effort to understand him; the yearning to live with him;
the great longing to merge body and soul with him and entirely to become
one with him. It is the redemption of the one through the other, the over¬
coming of their loneliness, the doubling of their being and their strength.
Nature crowns this uniting into one, when man and woman embrace in
love, now and then, and under relatively quite rare cases, as we have
already seen, through the joy of motherhood and the pleasure of being a
father in the act of creating a new human being.
Father and mother, however, should only be quite mature persons who
are noble and flawless in spirit and body. For just as in the production of a
noble race of horses or dogs only quite flawless, selected, first-class ex¬
amples are considered, so too should it also be in an even much stricter
way with humans. Whoever brings mentally ill, weak-minded, infirm, or
crippled individuals into the world sins against his progeny, his family,
and his nation!
People who act so unscrupulously, who misuse and degrade the inti¬
mate intercourse of the sexes among themselves to something mean and
whose low and base way of thinking then understandably results in the
most pitiable deformities, such as today fatally fill all hospitals, infirma¬
ries, and insane asylums, act as irrationally as poor beasts and truly have
no right to throw stones at the others, who are disgusted by their tales of
so-called “normal” womanizing and who with their male-to-male incli¬
nation stand highly elevated over such sexual morality.
In ancient Greece, where the sun of Homer illuminated the people and
where the state everywhere possessed attractively beautiful sculptures
with which to acquire beautiful people by their viewing, since the law of
beauty was also the highest precept in the procreation of children —there
all that baseness and unscrupulousness of today’s normal sexual inter¬
course was never found. At this moment, however, whole armies of un¬
fortunate beings, which the criminal recklessness of the “normals” day
after day has brought into the world, are already concealed in all the
homes for cripples and institutions for idiots of all countries, where they
are artificially kept alive at the cost of the communities and states, al¬
though a quick death would be the greatest blessing for them. They are the
frightful martyrs for the monstrously low level of Christian morality,
which has brought all natural feelings of pleasure and every elementary
happiness in beauty into disrepute as a vice and sought to kill them off as
sins, instead of granting to those basic forces the powerful vibrations of
spirit and soul and putting them into the redeeming ardour of a great love,
which frees them from all dregs of harmfulness and bestows on them the
creative and blessed grace of divinity. That is why the church has never
succeeded in bringing about even the least improvement in moral condi-
Adolf Brand 149
tions and creating a genuine sexual culture through which all disgraceful
acts and vulgarities of intimate sexual intercourse are voluntarily and sys¬
tematically entirely excluded. We shall only attain the fulfillment of that
task when the bodily union of two people in our society is no longer a
profane and soulless business, as it occurs among the wide masses, but
rather a religious act of creation that is to guarantee the nobility in beauty
of whole races, and a sacred and responsible occasion to which only noble
men and noble woman are called and chosen.
In contrast, every other man who has no wife and does not want to
become a father, should, like the married man, also daily perform his
work so as to care for his loved ones and for the welfare of his people.
And so that he can do it, so that he finds always new courage and always
new strength to fulfill those moral obligations, nature also allowed to blos¬
som strongly and consciously in every genuine man the joy of man in
man, the joy in male heart and spirit, the admiration of male strength and
beauty-allowed to arise respect for male freedom and greatness, and at
the same time gave him along with that deeply sensual and strongly spiri¬
tual inclination the love for his own sex, by which every bodily procre¬
ation is excluded from the beginning, but which destiny has given a much
more important and much greater task than bringing bodily children into
the world. For one may assert with full right that the love for the same sex
is the most excellent means that nature itself can apply to hinder an over¬
population and pauperization of the world. It is to be the invisible check
that compensates, if possible, for the planless and irrational procreation of
children of all too many, and makes it bearable in that, through its model,
it brings so-called normal men and women finally to self-reflection and to
the recognition of the truth that it is a much more important task to first
think about oneself and to arrange one’s own life comfortably —to arrange
it as needed so that it is for us all finally worthy of human beings — than to
follow the senseless and, under the current miserable conditions, doubly
criminal demand of all deceivers of the people —“Be fruitful and multi¬
ply!”—and thereby load on oneself the guilt for the fact that the pauper¬
ization, the deterioration, and the enslavement of the lower classes is
growing without bounds in Germany!
For, by limitlessly giving vent to crude sensuality always only the silli¬
est stupidity of the wide masses is enticed. And only it is again and again
disappointed, in that it again and again created a new, large army of poor
slaves, through whose unfeeling exploitation those in power were con¬
stantly able to insure their rule.
Never ever did that unscrupulous recipe have in view the improvement
of morality and ennoblement of man. And least of all the promotion of

love, which wishes the enrichment of the neighbor and the welfare of all,
in that it creates, not bodily progeny, but rather children of the spirit,
through which man will be brought out of the animal realm and raised
above it, and which gives him the nobility of divine freedom.
The preachers of propagation, who take an interest only in the demand
of the most stupid and brutal sensuality and never in spiritualization and
refinement, bear the greatest guilt for the fact that, in the circles of the
petite bourgeoisie and in all classes of the workers, for a long time woman
was only a child-bearing machine, whose sole task consisted in constantly
creating new canon and machine fodder in the exclusive interest of indus¬
try and capitalism, and from generation to generation delivering ever new
human flesh to the Moloch of war-madness and imperialism.
Friend-love, by contrast, leads to a spiritualization of that crude and
brutal sensuality, in that its adherents give every young man the good
advice not to marry and not to have sexual intercourse with a woman until
he is bodily, intellectually, and economically mature for marriage —but
under all circumstances to marry only from love —to bring at most two
children into the world, so that, in the current unsure and bad times, they
can also be well nourished and well brought up; and further, to effect the
strike in the production of children with all resoluteness —yet renouncing
every abortion, so that the beloved wife will not be harmed in body or
spirit; naturally also to avoid prostitution and to diligently learn to this end
how one is able to calm and satisfy the dark pressure and the loud storm¬
ing of his blood even without the use of that evil, and how it is possible for
every one to systematically extend his youth and with full health into old
age keep spirit and body fresh and pure.
And yet the love for a friend also presents at the same time the over¬
powering demand to grow far beyond oneself with his heart and his soul,
and the ability to create spiritual offspring in place of bodily, namely, to
bring into the world deeds of noble-mindedness and self-sacrifice, in
which others can rejoice and which bestow glory and honor everywhere
on that great love and passion toward the same sex!
Friend-love is, therefore, not something contemptible, but rather the
sacred wish and the moral force to live with and for the other, to think
about him, to work for him, and voluntarily, without force of state or
church, to make all kinds of necessary sacrifices for him; to educate him,
to promote him, and to raise him up; with him to create, to weep, to shape
existence into something bearable; to suffer and to enjoy with him; to take
delight with him in this beautiful world and not to esteem gods who fill
our hours with grief and sorrow!
Adolf Brand 75;
The great male friendships of the Bible and the powerful male bonds of
antiquity are world famous.
David boasted of Jonathan that he had great joy and bliss in him and
that his love surpassed the love of women. John, the disciple whom Christ
loved, had to rest on Jesus’ lap during meals and as the favorite disciple of
the master share table and couch with him. The Sacred Band of Thebes, in
which every fighting youth was closely bound to the others through
friendship and love, carried off the brilliant victory of Leuctra, spurred on
and supported through that great love, which overcame all difficulties and
dangers. And in ancient Germany, blessed through blood-brotherhood,
which was practiced everywhere, there were similar famous male bonds
and friend-love stood just as high in honor. For the Edda1 plainly says that
“man is the joy of man.”
Friend-love is, therefore, from time immemorial already something
good, useful, and noble. A rich, precious treasure, which everyone should
faithfully cherish, and of which, among reasonable men, everyone can
also openly and honestly be genuinely proud.
Therefore all the great men of world history have devoted themselves to
friend-love, or at least have glorified its high value with praise. We find
among those who courageously avowed it the most virile men of action —
the most important war heroes, such as Alexander the Great, Caesar, and
Friedrich the Great; the outstanding philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato,
and Nietzsche; the most celebrated poets and artists, such as Anacreon,
Pindar, Virgil, Horace, Hafiz, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Goethe, and
Schiller —in general all the German classics and likewise also all the great
German writers and talented men of the present.
The love for a friend has founded schools and gymnasiums, conquered
tyrants and defended the republic in Hellas, conjured up from the earth
temples and churches, theaters and athletic fields, founded monasteries,
and sent knightly orders to the Holy Land; it has furrowed the ground with
bullfights, and with temple dances, carried out by chosen, beautiful boys,
it has succeeded in inspiring the community as much as the altar; brought
armies and bands of volunteers to their feet; covered the wide land with an
invisible network of powerful secret unions; and beyond this, has left
behind the most splendid memorials of literature, music, art, and free¬
dom, which are eternal witnesses of its greatness.
It is not to be wondered at that in ancient Greece among the male youth
who thought well of themselves it was considered as a dishonorable shame
not to possess a friend and lover. Every young man contested with his
peers to show himself ever more love-worthy and desirable and to distin¬
guish himself in all the manly virtues, so as to be loved by the idol and
hero of his soul and thereby conquer his lasting friendship. For the enjoy-
ment of such friend-love was considered by every young Greek of free and
noble birth as a proud and worthwhile goal and was seen as a testament to
his beauty and the nobility of his race.
Let us therefore take ancient Greece as model and also finally grant
friend-love the place among us, in public as in private life, that it de¬
serves, so that in our days too, both in a moral as in a social viewpoint, it
again attains alongside woman-love the same equal right and high evalua¬
tion that it already had at the time when Hellas, precisely through its
expressly male culture, stood in the greatest esteem and highest blossom.
The male youth of Germany, which in a ridiculous way is now com¬
pletely forbidden by law every same-sex intercourse, must by this general
sweeping away of all old musty prejudices itself courageously make the
first beginning.
No German youth should let it happen to him that the right of self-
determination over body and soul loses its validity for him as soon as it is
a question of friend-love.
Every German youth must make it quite clearly understood to the
schoolmasters in the Reichstag that this right of self-determination over
body and soul is the most important basis of all freedom, and that the
enlightened gentlemen have indeed lost their reason, who encourage the
young men to keep to the strictest priest-like asceticism until their twenty-
first year.
All German youths in the whole empire must immediately prove
through action that they are no longer children and that for them the time
has long since passed when it made sense to let themselves be dictated and
kept in leading strings in the interest of the parents.
Millions must be in agreement on the fact that they, precisely in the
bloom of youth, have an unconditional right to love and that they, in the
fullness of their strength, would have to miserably pine away and cruelly
wither if the natural storm and stress of their elementary feelings of desire
and their fierce longing for understanding and tenderness come to be
forcefully suppressed through ridiculous and unnatural penal regulations.
Millions and millions more must rebel against this beastly oppression
and show through firm solidarity and systematic action that in the matter
of love they will let regulations be made for them neither by the police nor
by the Reichstag and that they can defend themselves all alone from un¬
scrupulous seducers.
One must say to the other that the prohibition of all same-sex relations
for male youth is a monstrous swindle of the people and a severe mortal
sin against our race, since such reactionary measures only drive the young
Adolf Brand 153
men into the arms of prostitution and into the poisonous bath of general
contamination.
All should finally know that natural and moderate sexual satisfaction of
young lads and men among themselves is no sin, but rather a clever outlet
of nature in the time of puberty, which is a transition to genuine sexual
intercourse and which one may rationally neither hinder nor suppress, as
the insanity of medical charlatans and the sanctimoniousness of our cur¬
rent Reichstag demands. One should rather give this clever self-help of
nature all imaginable help and consideration and carefully guard against
disturbing the sacred charm of such harmless joys of life through senseless
prohibitions and interferences. Indeed, one should even follow the goal of
regarding the general cultivation of such intimates services of friendship
as a matter of the public welfare and make the close joining to a friend a
self-evident duty of every young man, since through the continual concern
for the other and through the voluntary relations of loyalty to him the
awakening sexuality will immediately be so strongly sublimated that it can
never become dangerous to anyone.
Every German youth should, therefore, choose for himself a friend of
whom he can openly boast in the circle of his comrades and to whom he
swears inviolable loyalty, until the time when he marries or when death
separates the two.
But it must be a friend who means his ideal, who understands him, who
participates in his adventures and shares his studies with him, who corre¬
sponds to all his needs, who promotes him as a comrade and enriches him
as a human being, and who is ready with desire and love, for the sake of
his beauty, his character, and his personality, to render him every imagin¬
able service. For only through such love and loyalty to our friends can we
also again come to a stronger love and loyalty to our people, which again
makes us great and ripe to fulfill serious social and national tasks.
It is the only salvation from the frightfully lewd and dissolute life of the
postwar period, whose unbridled sexuality and disgusting vulgarity has
gripped our people like a ravaging fever from the time the noblest and
most capable of our race were murdered like innocent sacrificial victims
on the battlefields of the insanity of industry and the urge to become a
world power.
It is the sole path to rebirth, which can finally lead us again to healthy
relationships: to simple, noble forms of life, to plain, honest cultural
work, to the removal of all sexual vulgarities, to the elimination of every
social need, and finally also to sincere tolerance between all peoples on
the whole earth!
It is the calm and proud impulse that will bring Germany’s reascent to
new heights and assure its development to the inner greatness expected by
all reasonable persons, which has nothing to do with force —whose gold is
genuine and does not bear the false glitter of bygone times!
Original: “Freundesliebe als Kulturfaktor: Ein Wort an Deutschlands

mannliche Jugend,” Der Eigene, 1930, no. 1, pp. 1-8.
NOTE
1. [Brand is referring to an old Germanic epic. HO]

What We Want
Adolf Brand
“Let the friend be the festival of the earth to you!”
Nietzsche
1.
MEN OF THE RENAISSANCE
The G.D.E. (Gemeinschaft der Eigenen = Community of Self-Own¬

ers) addresses only people who know that the deepest experience that the
earth bestows is not to be sought in animal lust, but rather in the inexpress¬
ible delight and bliss of the old heavenly gods, which transfigured every
desire through beauty, and for whom the joy of one person in another was
the sanctity of life itself. People who know that this is altogether the
unique and mighty difference between sensuality and love; whether the
chaos of elementary feelings of pleasure, which at the time of puberty gain
power in us, makes a person into a god or an animal —whether it raises
him up to the light of self-ruling grace and freedom, or throws him down
into the dull, gloomy night of inextricable chains and self-imposed tyr¬
anny. For love is the elevated and sacred, voluntary offering of eternal
beauty, goodness, and honor for the joy and happiness of the other. Giv¬
ing vent to unbridled sensuality, however, is common robbery and murder
on all mankind. Therefore the task falls on us to master and gain control of
it, to make it noble and transfigure it, and to bring it into the wholesome
and beneficial domain of human knowledge and human art.
2.
FREEDOM AND LOVE
The G.D.E. teaches that the right of self-determination over body and
soul is the most important basis of all freedom —and that sexuality and
love are the deeply interlaced roots and the golden crown of our being,
from which human work and creation draw their inexhaustible and eternal
155
strengths. The G.D.E. advocates the right of personal freedom and the
sovereignty of the individual to the ultimate consequence. It promotes in
every area of human feeling and human collaboration the free play of
strength, the abolition of every monopoly, and unlimited free competi¬
tion, since it is the only thing that guarantees again and again the estab¬
lishment of healthy relationships and that holds the whole of life’s blood
in an eternal, salutary circulation. For this reason it also strives for a
radical improvement in morality, without force or hypocrisy, and a beau¬
tiful harmony precisely in the human relationships that are most intimate
and important for life, and it seeks to do this only by again awakening,
beside the sense of female beauty, also the sense for male beauty, and by
again setting friend-love beside woman-love as having completely equal
rights in the intercourse of the sexes among themselves, such as, before
the victory of Pauline Christianity and its view so inimical to life, was
always the case in ancient Greece, in ancient Rome, and in ancient Ger¬
many to the advantage of all mankind. . . .
4.
SEXUAL CULTURE
The G.D.E. is of the opinion that sexuality is obviously just as neces¬

sary as eating and drinking —but it believes that a person of intellect and
culture will always strive to accomplish the most important function of life
as much as possible at a beautifully set table and in pleasant company-
and that the satisfaction of the sexual drive requires at least the same
careful cultivation and refinement. If the G.D.E. occupies itself with these
sexual things, then we do it at any rate, not to create for some libertine or
other a license for sexual excesses or to recommend that immature persons
follow the so often misused doctrine of free love, but rather to show peo¬
ple that it is unworthy of them to live as wild animals and to suggest to
them, precisely also in these things, how to keep a beautiful measure in
every enjoyment of life.
5.
BISEXUALITY
The G.D.E. stands on the point of view of a bisexual tendency of all

people, which we have inherited from father and mother, and which is the
primary form for all varieties of love. It therefore views the presence of a
more or less strong inclination to both sexes as an elementary and healthy
instinct of the individual. It is likewise able to see in every case only a
Adolf Brand 157
source of strength in the natural and wise satisfaction of this inclination to

the other or to the same sex. The G.D.E. is convinced that only this
bisexual tendency of all people and its recognition in every individual can
yield the new and powerful foundation on which a mutual understanding
in sexual questions is still possible at all, and on which alone the fight for
the equal rights of love of friends in addition to woman-love can lead to
victory.
6.
SEDUCTION OF GIRLS
The G.D.E. is convinced that the seduction of decent young girls, with¬
out wishing to marry them, is a great meanness and a severe wrong, which
harms not only the seduced girl and her family, but also the illegitimate
child and the whole community, and which, therefore, a young man, if he
has understanding, heart, and character, will allow himself to commit
under no circumstances. The G.D.E. naturally advocates full equal rights
for the unmarried mother and her illegitimate child along with the married
mother and her legitimate child.
7.
PROSTITUTION
The G.D.E. fights just as decidedly against the common sale of love as
a focus of people’s contamination and of corruption, which has increased
to such a terrible extent only through the false morality of society, and
which only through a new morality, through an absolute openness and
honesty in the discussion of all sexual things can be successfully over¬
come. The G.D.E. sees in the irresponsible sexual intercourse with prosti¬
tutes, male and female, a disastrous lack of a sense of social responsibil¬
ity, a danger to the population, and a self-abuse that every nobly thinking
man should be too proud to engage in. It condemns the phrase “necessary
evil,” used by the men-about-town of all camps of sexual variety and
addiction to pleasure, as unscrupulous and a sin against humanity, since
every practice of prostitution is a spiritual rape of youth by the abuse of
money. The G.D.E. shows the young man the right path and right means,
with whose help he can avoid the evil without any difficulty.
8 .
ONANISM
The G.D.E. would like to protect every young man just as much from
the unhealthy consequences of sexual satisfaction carried out in solitude.
For this can very easily become a sexual excess and a sexual vice, if, in
the case of strong sexuality and lack of every control, the addiction to
sensual excitement drives him to a continued repetition of the sexual act.
But the G.D.E. tells parents, teachers, and doctors that only the excess
of the pleasure is harmful, whereas kept to a judicious and prudent mea¬
sure the matter absolutely cannot be harmful. It is rather a much worse
offence to completely forbid sexual self-satisfaction to young people un¬
der the threat of foolish punishments. For it is clear right off to every
physiologist and psychologist that such a prohibition cannot be kept, since
the sexual drive in the young person is of course an elementary one, which
absolutely requires practice and satisfaction. And since forbidden fruit are
doubly enticing, instead of promoting self-control and voluntary renuncia¬
tion, the attraction of acts not permitted only powerfully contributes to the
attainment of sexual self-satisfaction under all circumstances and by all
means. Namely, secretly, in hiding, and concealed. And only through this
forced secrecy and solitude, which is lacking in every trust, every good
advice, and every help of another person, does self-satisfaction, which
otherwise means something quite natural and healthy, become a sexual
excess and a sexual vice, which must naturally be harmful to the young
person. Done moderately it would be on the contrary quite without dan¬
ger. The G.D.E. also suggests in this matter the right path and the right
means to achieve healthy proportions without difficulty.
9 .
FRIENDSHIP
The G.D.E. sees in the friendship of youth the sure and uniquely possi¬
ble path, as well as the proven and reliable means, to overcome the hor¬
rors of prostitution and finally get out of the sexual misery of our time. It
sees it as its most important task to protect girls and women from infection
and to avert the poisoning and polluting of their blood in the interest of the
health of their children and for the blessing of coming generations, and to
make the contamination of the family impossible. And it therefore shows
every young man that he, through a close union with a friend, can calm
the dark pressure of his blood, extend his youth, and keep body and spirit
fresh and pure. It teaches him about the fact that the natural and moderate
Adolf Brand 159
satisfaction of boys and lads among themselves is no sin, but rather a

sensible expedient of nature, which is the transition to sexual intercourse,
and which one should not stupidly hinder and suppress, as the madness of
medical charlatans and sanctimoniousness of today’s schools does. The
G.D.E. rather demands that one should give to this first self-help of nature
in the time of beginning puberty all imaginable care and respect, and that
one must guard against destroying the secret charm of such a harmless joy
of life through senseless prohibitions and interferences. The G.D.E. even
pursues the goal: that the general cultivation of such intimate services of
friendship become the concern of public welfare and that it must become
an affair of school and state to foster in eveiy direction this close union
and these first proofs of friendship of boys and youths among themselves,
since they are the first proud stages of awakening manhood toward the
quiet sanctuaries of genuine love. The G.D.E. advises the young man to
have sexual intercourse with no woman before marriage, but rather until
then to seek his highest joy of human contact, his moral strength, his
bodily release, his spiritual calm, and his inner peace in the intimate inter¬
course with a friend. With a friend who means his ideal, who understands
him; who joins in his adventures and shares his studies with him; who
wins influence over him in every way, who emotionally and bodily gives
him all, who furthers him as a comrade and enriches him as a human
being; and who is ready with desire and love, for the sake of his beauty,
his character, and his personality, to render him every imaginable service.
The G.D.E. is convinced that such a cultivation of friendship and mutual
affirmation of body and soul are absolutely necessary, and that it not only
lies in the interest of the spiritual and bodily improvement of our race, but
also assures us for all time the thriving and flourishing of an always cheer¬
ful and happy youth.
10.
MARRIAGE
The G.D.E. suggests to all young men to marry only when a really
great, noble love binds them to the girl of their choice and when they find
also in a woman, in a new and different noble form, that which only their
friend gave them so long in the value and beauty of life. A basic condition
for this is that both partners, man and woman, are truly mature for mar¬
riage, bodily, emotionally, and economically, so that the children that
result from their union also will be the most vigorous, beautiful, noble,
and intelligent children possible, so that they never need be ashamed of
this fruit of their bodies. Man and woman should be, therefore, both at the
same time equally spotless in body and soul, so that their love will be for
them an inexhaustible source of strength and blessing for their work and
an immeasurable treasure for the enrichment and refinement of their lives
on the whole. The G.D.E. is convinced that the position of woman and the
institution of marriage will only win through the competition of friendship
and that through the latter a sublimation of the polygamous inclination and
of the insatiable addiction to variety on the part of the man will be possible
to such a high degree that in the future a wife will only seldom have to fear
the unfaithfulness of her husband. Infidelity and infection of the family
from crude, sensuous lust may in the future be something quite unknown,
as soon as the husband can also go to his friend to seek a halt to the raging
of his blood with the comrade of his youth.
11 .
NUDISM
The G.D.E. holds it to be obvious that only beautiful and noble persons
should mate through love, and that no young man should marry before he
has seen his beloved in the nude, just as he also sees the comrades of his
youth and the companions of his games nude. . . . Therefore the G.D.E.,
in the interest of racial improvement, sexual health, and advancement in
general, calls for the promotion of a noble nudism, further the generous
support of the whole open-air movement in the German Empire, as well as
the encouragement of every sport establishment that does not degrade peo¬
ple to machines in a revolting way, but rather elevates the pleasure of
every individual and the joy of our whole people in bodily strength and
beauty. Our demand for careful sexual selection before marriage would
then doubtless no longer resound unheard. A large establishment for
swimming, open-air and sun bathing in natural nudity is to be opened next
year by the G.D.E. itself.'
12.
POPULATION POLITICS
The G.D.E. judges all population politics as unscrupulous and gener¬

ally dangerous that starts from the premise of bringing as many children
into the world as possible by every means, so as to furnish again for the
military and capitalism massive and cheap cannon fodder. The G.D.E.
shows young people that the procreation of children is not at all the goal of
love —and not even the goal of sexual intercourse. At the very least it is
not a question of the quantity of the rising generation but rather its quality.
Adolf Brand 161
For we already have enough sick and stunted people, imbeciles and idiots.
It must be impressed upon every young man, and he be told at the same
time, that he is an infamous scoundrel if he misuses his wife and if
through merely animal satisfaction he makes the mother of his children
into a child-bearing machine, instead of thinking in the first place of eas¬
ing and beautifying her home, of enriching her inner life, as well as trans¬
figuring and blessing her small world.
13 .
THE REBIRTH OF THE LOVE
OF FRIENDS
The G.D.E. advocates above all the moral and social rebirth of the love
of friends, the recognition of its natural right to exist in public and private
life, just as it existed, promoting art and freedom, in the time of its highest
regard in ancient Greece. The G.D.E. wishes to cultivate in word and
picture, .through art and sport, a cult of youthful beauty, such as was the
custom in the golden age of antiquity. And it wishes to become a mighty
union of all those for whom the friend is the festival of the earth!
14 .
THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE
OF THE LOVE OF FRIENDS
The G.D.E. wishes that man once again take delight in man, in the
interest of freedom, fatherland, and culture. It therefore promotes a close
joining of man to youth and of youth to man, so that through respect and
mutual trust, and not least through the offering of the one to the other,
through the care of the older for the younger, through assistance in his
education and progress, as well as through the promotion of his whole
personality — to educate each individual to loyalty, to voluntary subordina¬
tion, to civil virtue, to a noble ambition, free from all social climbing, to a
noble courage constantly ready to act, and to a sacrificing willingness and
joy in working for the national cause! In a word: to make the love of
friends great and mature again, to fulfill serious social and national tasks!
And it will risk everything so that finally in our manly youth a new spirit
will again rise up, such as was present in the time of our classic authors,
which will show Germany the path to the heights and inner greatness!
15 .
THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE
OF THE LOVE OF FRIENDS
The G.D.E. is an international union of all those for whom the friend is
the festival of the earth! The G.D.E. knows that no international collabo¬
ration is still possible today under disregard and surrender of national
plans and national necessities of life.
Therefore it fights for the conviction that, after the madness of war, the
right to self-determination of all races, nations, and religions must be for
us the unassailable foundation to successfully work together for the recon¬
struction of the world. For it is of the opinion that all races, nations, and
religions are extremely valuable for the many-colored diversity and beauty
of human life, and that it is not the equality of all people that is the salva¬
tion of the world, but rather only their absolutely individual inequality in
nature and ability that creates the wonderful harmony of life, as well as its
primal strength and eternal charm.
The G.D.E. is the only union that has the courage to openly express this
truth. But it is also the only one that establishes from race to race, from
nation to nation, and from leader to leader the connection necessary for
life, which builds from land to land and from continent to continent the
golden roads and bridges, which serves the understanding and cultural
work of all nations, through the ideal of friendship, which holds us to¬
gether.
The G.D.E. wants to bring every nation to the knowledge that the love
for a friend is the natural regulator, which should hinder every overpopu¬
lation on both sides of national borders, and which is able everywhere to
contribute that the rising generation of a nation does not grow without
limit and that every imperialistic hunger for power in the world at the cost
of neighbor states ceases.
The G.D.E. makes it clear to everyone that the love for a friend does
not come from animal desire nor serve animal purposes, but rather that it
springs from the divine spirit and divine drive to create, which has allotted
it the great task of renouncing bodily creation and progeny in favor of
pursuing intellectual creation —not to work, that is, in a family way but in
a social way, and to see its most distinguished duty to provide education,
art, freedom, and well-being, not only for the welfare and blessing of our
fatherland, but also for the good of the whole world!
The G.D.E. shows people that the deepest meaning and kernel of
friendship and the love of friends is not in receiving, but in giving. The
voluntary offering, the conscious enrichment and making happy of the
Adolf Brand 163
other from the overflowing treasure of one’s own strength! The pleasure
of incessantly lavishing one’s own personality, of the highest joy of life
and the highest value of life not only in all close relationships from person
to person, but also in all the wider and widest connections from nation to
nation!
The G.D.E. wishes, therefore, to make the love of friends into a cul¬
tural factor of the first rank, which does not proceed from robbery and
murder, nor promote hatred and eternal revenge, but rather which assures
the sociability of the whole world and the mutual help of all nations!
Which repudiates war and likewise class struggle as a means of arranging
a stage of development, which now belongs to the past and which has
been just as unworthy of mankind as of men. Yes, the love of friends
should become a cultural factor that gathers around us the quiet heroism of
all nations, which sees its only fame and its only greatness in honorable
cultural work that no longer concerns the state but humanity.
The G.D.E. is to be an international fraternity and fellowship of all men
who generously and clear-sightedly serve only a liberal socialism, which
is not programmatic, but individual-not regulative, but naturally deter¬
mined-not dogmatic, but earth-born-and which nowhere strives for po¬
litical power. Which pursues no leveling mania, which rejects every dicta¬
torship and fights every use of force. Which in all establishments and
organizations leaves the leadership and administration of things only to
competent experts, to whom every reasonable worker subordinates him¬
self on his own initiative. And which places only those leaders at the head
of the nation who are born leaders and great personalities. Which does not
forbid private property, but rather makes everyone an owner. And whose
most important and vivid goal in the sense of our great German classics is
the dismantling of the state and its dissolution into purely private adminis¬
trative bodies and work groups.
The G.D.E. calls this international fraternity and fellowship of its mem¬
bers to the common struggle against the spirit of unnaturalness and sense¬
lessness that surrounds us and which until now has constantly hindered all
nations from deciding to reach out their hands to work in common for
peace and culture, since the meaning and sun of life, the love of friendship
is lacking. It expects from each of its representatives in the whole world
that they be inspired by no other goal than to help in the elimination of
human need and human misery in the service and for the blessing of their
own countrymen. To perform deeds of noble-mindedness and works of
exemplar)' friendship and sacrifice, to bring about a flourishing welfare
for all, in which the rest of the world can also find a lively part, for the
glory of all those who bear a human countenance!
The G.D.E. wishes to be a fellowship of voluntary fighters and a frater¬

nity of all leaders, for whom the friend is the festival of the earth. Leaders
who do not wait for payment or recognition before fulfilling their ideals,
but rather for whom the simple joy in every work that benefits others is
their most powerful stimulus, their highest reward, their greatest satisfac¬
tion, and also-together with their friend-their most precious happiness
in life.
16 .
THE EQUAL RIGHT OF THE LOVE
OF FRIENDS
The G.D.E. claims for the artist and writer the unconditional right to
celebrate the love for a friend just as highly as the love for woman, and
through word and picture to represent and glorify love of friends and the
beauty of youths, with all their peaks and abysses, just as is usual for
woman-love and the beauty of girls, as well as to procure for them every¬
where in the world the highest appreciation and recognition.
17 .
STATE AND PHILISTINE
The G.D.E. shows that the mendacity of the state and the hypocrisy of
the Philistines are our worst enemies, since they stamp as a vice the most
harmless and the highest pleasure of life, the joy of man in man, and since
it is precisely they who have no respect for all the wonders and blessed
secrets of love.
18 .
REPEAL OF THE LAWS
The G.D.E. therefore advocates the repeal of all laws that are inimical
to life and natural rights, which again and again hinder us from being
human, and which pour poison and gall into every cup of joy. It demands
of the current government and legislature in particular the repeal of §175,
since it benefits only male prostitution and blackmail and since it is a
constant crime of the state against the right of personal freedom. It like¬
wise demands that §184 finally be set aside,2 since the guardianship that it
presents is a lasting offence to all adult persons, who are able to protect
themselves from smut in word and picture all by themselves, and who
Adolf Brand 165
under no circumstances need either the state or the church as censor for
their untroubled delight in reading a book or for their untroubled pleasure
in a work of art. Especially since art and literature are only afflicted and
unbearably hindered in their free creation when the narrow-mindedness of
subordinate officials and stubborn bigots persecute their works and can
forbid entirely at their discretion the creations of their souls and dreams.
And thirdly, the G.D.E. also demands that §218 of the penal code like¬
wise fall,-1 since it is a woman’s affair and hers alone to do with her body
and its fruit whatever she will. For she is clear about what she is doing.
And of course she has to bear all alone the consequences of an operation.
The G.D.E. expressly emphasizes, however, that it demands the repeal of
all these laws solely in the interest of personal freedom. It would not in
any way think of calling good all those acts that today still remain under
punishment. Every sexual excess and every sexual dissolution is of course
decidedly to be advised against. For they are at least ugly, or sins, as the
church says. But so long as no third party is harmed through such sins, the
state has no right to intervene with monetary fines or imprisonment. The
reformation of such sins is rather to be left exclusively to religious and
moral education.
19 .
WORK IN QUIET
The G.D.E. rejects in principle every noisy agitation and therefore sees
as its most distinguished task to pave the way for its ideals through quiet
action from person to person, in the manner of the Freemasons’ lodges, as
well as through purely artistic, scientific, and athletic offerings and
events, but above all, through the creation of a great and firmly united
organization, to strive for the closest joining of all those like-minded, who
acknowledge the above principles.
20.
NO POLITICS
The G.D.E. receives in its ranks men of all political creeds. It is not a
political union and lets itself be taken in tow by no political party. For, in
the interest of its cultural work, it dares not let itself plunge into the whirl¬
pool of party wrangling, since it needs the liberal and sensible thinkers of
all parties.
Original: “Was wir wollen,” in Satzung der Gemeinschafl der Eigenen

(Berlin: Die Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, 1925).
NOTES
1. [Brand planned to establish such a facility for the members of his society in
the countryside near Berlin. Because of lack of money, however, the plan was
never realized. HO]
2. [Brand refers to the article in the German penal code that penalized the
creation and distribution of so-called obscene writings and images. HO]
3. [By this article abortion was made punishable. HO]
The Significance of Youth-Love
for Our Time
Reiffegg
Therefore the flame, which nourished itself inwardly, obtained freer

pleasure for itself through publicly praised goals and institutions; but
it also came thereby under the limiting control of the laws, which
need it as a real driving force for the state.
Herder in Ideen zur Philosophic der Geschichte der Menschheit.
INTRODUCTION
The above statement of our poet and inspired philosopher of history,

expressed about Hellenic youth-love, which he viewed with affectionate
understanding, should be proclaimed today not only in the widest circles
of politicians and statesmen, no, in the widest circles of the people, who,
still caught under the spell of a centuries-old prejudice, at best keep totally
silent in disdain about a natural phenomenon that, through a wise politics,
they could use as a driving force of a beautiful cultural development. As is
known, there is a movement, which is spreading yearly, whose goal is to
remove §175 from our penal code; almost more important than the re¬
moval of this long outlived paragraph appears to us, however, the enlight¬
enment of the masses of the people about the existence and extent to
which the noblest manifestation of homosexuality, youth-love, i.e., the
ideal love union of a mature man with a growing adolescent, can be of the
greatest social value, if only, as once in the best times of ancient Hellas,
one is willing to give that phenomenon the necessary light and the neces¬
sary air for its free development, if one finally stops looking askance at
such unions and takes them as what they could be and, if one allows them
freedom, what they could become, namely equally valid parallels to “nor¬
mal” love relationships. In our opinion, the already rather rich literature
on homosexuality has still said little about precisely this side of the ques¬
tion. . . .
167
I
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF YOUTH-LOVE
FOR EDUCATION
The great scholar Johann von Muller, whose sacrificing heart beat for
the youth, reported in his autobiography that “his skill with regard to the
education of immature male youth was never great.” And still today it
will appear to most professional pedagogues as something monstrous,
when E. v. Kupffer says in the introduction to his splendid book
Lieblingminne und Freundesliebe in der Weltlitteratur: “Whoever views
the boys only as school objects, yes, whoever cannot love them, will al¬
most never be a stimulating teacher.” And the pedantic fathers, whose
love for their boys can be measured by the number of blows of a stick
given them, will cross themselves before teachers who love boys, since
they suspect only born sexual molesters among them! And the learned
gentlemen will prove to us that not seldom does a “perverse” boy-love
tend to be bound up with an irresistible drive to corporally punish the
beloved youth, which in its blindness inflicts unjustly degrading punish¬
ments on the alleged “beloved” boy! And if all this does not fit one or the
other case, it will be further objected that the preference and passion for a
certain pupil will rob the educator of an impartial view, he will see only
good in his favorites, will spoil them, whereas he prevents the rise of the
others, who are perhaps more gifted, and the partiality, which is now so
complained about —whether justly or unjustly is all the same here —will
gain ground in a way expressing scorn for all justice. Now, granted that all
these dark sides —which, for that matter, are already present today —could
appear, and even would appear in individual bad subjects, one still must
not leave unnoticed the tremendous advantage produced by an education
based on genuine love over one that rests on the educator’s rigid feeling of
duty— as happens so many times today. Let us take a look at history! Who
have been the great educators of the young? Orbilius of the abundant
blows, whom Horace ridiculed, or the mild, youth-loving Socrates; the
fanatic Benedictine monk of the Middle Ages, who in pathological eager¬
ness swings his rod over the poor unclothed boy, the orthodox Protestant
Haberlin, who brought into his school practice 36,000 well-counted blows
of a rod, or that unique friend of children, who, with the words “It were
better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast
into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones” [Luke
17:2] has given for all time an illuminating ideal of thoroughly human
education; the dry pedant of today, who beats wisdom into his trembling
Reiffegg 169
kids with the surly face of sour fulfillment of duty, or the enthusiastic
genuine teacher, for whom it is daily a new delight to observe and pro¬
mote the intellectual development of the young human souls entrusted to
him, who revere and love him above all, him who finds his deepest satis¬
faction precisely through awakening and promoting the better self of the
apparently most sullen and most badly-behaved boy through untiring,
constant, distinct mildness? I think the answer is not difficult. Admittedly,
whoever does not see with us the goal of every education in making the
best possible out of the given characteristics of every young human soul
and bringing to the best possible development that kernel that is present in
the single individual, he will contradict us from the beginning, seek his
ideal in the most boring “discipline,” which kills individuality in favor of
allegedly objective “laws,” and will later be very astonished when the
boys who have had “fear and discipline” beaten into them do not become
ideal human beings, but rather at best empty duty-machines like their
teachers! If that already holds for the classroom teacher, it holds in a still
higher degree for the director of boarding-schools and the tutor of individ¬
ual boys! Precisely under the two last named categories, even more often
than in the educational circles more open to the light of publicity, are
found those pedantic tyrants who perhaps only from the necessity of earn¬
ing a living have dedicated themselves to the profession that they inwardly
hate, since their unsatisfying, always grumbling pedantry is felt as inimi¬
cal by the youth with a healthy instinct; they pay back the mistrust brought
to them and the direct, but very understandable rejection of their dismal
“laws” with a regimen of brute force of the stronger or, what is still
worse, find the only dull satisfaction of their profession in the sensually
exciting beating of their pupils! Whoever has undertaken the difficult po¬
sition of an educator from enthusiasm and love of youth as such can per¬
haps in a weak hour have battles to fight out with his overflowing heart —
genuine love will preserve him from being lost in filth —but there goes out
from his whole being a life, a fire, which is involuntarily transferred to the
pupil and is able to carry him along, so that he too takes in the apparently
most boring material and takes his revered teacher, whom he finds more
like an older brother than a dignified “educator,” as a model of accom¬
plishment to strive after. Whoever has had the rare luck in his youth to be
the pupil of such a teacher will still recall his teaching with joy in later
times, he will have saved much more out of it than from the bleak or
dreaded hours of cold people of duty!
So much for the influence of youth-love on the relationship of the edu-
cator to his pupil. But youth-love led in the right paths can also have a
favorable influence on the relationship of the pupils among themselves
and thus have an educational effect. As things stand now, certainly,
through prohibition of all-too-tender friendships among boys, a phenome¬
non that is in itself neither moral nor immoral, but simply natural, is
driven into the dark, where it tends to develop into a vice, like every drive
forced into darkness. If, then, it becomes too glaring in this or that insti¬
tute, in this or that school, then a court of terror is held with cane and rod
for a pair of poor misguided souls —and the matter remains otherwise just
as it was. And they call that moral-religious upbringing of youth! If on the
contrary, as was done by the unaffected Hellenes, they did not look
askance at the alliances of boys and youths, which is in itself ideal, even if
ever so ardent, but rather saw in it something beautiful, splendid, and
which gives them, through inciting mutual self-sacrificing and offering,
through sincere admiration of the pure fire that flames here, a firm mean¬
ing that becomes ever clearer, which entirely by itself pushes the sensual
into the background, if it is already awakened —then the poisonous
growth, growing in darkness, into which such a relationship not rarely
degenerates today, would have no room at all to develop. And finally, E.
v. Kupffer was not so incorrect when he frankly states that even a sensual
relationship of that kind does not have as bad a consequence as the nerve-
shattering self-depletion and the abominable purchased gratification —
“love” it just cannot be called! “Instead of allowing the demands of the
senses and the emotions to be met in a measured way, we let them grow in
the dark, so as to allow our lazy narrowness to run its usual course.” And
the often named fear of the “infection” of genuine homosexuality in a so-
called “normal” person finally is a standpoint now scientifically surely
overcome forever! In this regard, in the intimate friendships of boys and
youths, which so often have an unconscious homosexual base, be it from
one side only or from both, there likewise lies no “danger” for the public.
It is exquisite, what is said by the anonymous author of a splendid little
work only just published,1 which illustrates in a pertinent case the tragedy
of homosexuality, in a passage on such a deeply poetic relationship: “On
later reflection I have often found that there must be a time for boys in
which they all have feelings for their own sex. It is in the first transition
into puberty. A still unconscious sexuality begins to swell up and is di¬
rected toward the people whose characteristics seem to us most worthy of
love, whose interest we ourselves court, toward our friends. Observe the
youth, how they associate with their intimates, how they open up their
Rdffegg 171
souls in sweet reverie, how, wandering aside in close embrace, they take
delight in everything beautiful and sweet. Precisely the most gifted and
most developed are touched most intensely.” Certainly the eternally in¬
curable Philistine, who cannot now or ever grasp man’s noblest and high¬
est-“rapture”-will always raise his discordant croaking about danger
and immorality, by which he understands everything that cannot be mea¬
sured by the only measure familiar to him, that of the mediocrity of the
“eternal yesterday,” and just seeing the not infrequent fact of a friendship
that is prepared for self-sacrifice without any “reason” awakens in him a
quiet shudder. If already now in our material, egoistical time boys and
youths who let themselves be beaten bloody for the beloved friend, as
Schiller reports of Don Carlos, are becoming rare, then it would be all the
more indicated, precisely from the standpoint of those who still see the
foundation of practical morality in an unexaggerated altruism —and that is
indeed the majority of official pedagogues! — to promote and support rela¬
tionships that let the boy from early on see gratitude and offering to an¬
other, of the same age or older, whom they have “bewitched,” as some¬
thing quite natural and beautiful! Instead of that, one youth is supposed to
see in another at most a comrade, in the teacher and educator, in contrast,
a cold, unapproachable “person held in respect,” for whose physical or
moral thrashing he has to be thankful with dog-like mendacious humility!
If the heavens opened and finally once again let a ray of Homer’s sun
illuminate us, how different it could be then for teacher and pupil!
II
FROM A SOCIAL VIEW
Here too E. v. Kupffer has already anticipated the main point with
gifted sight and in striking words that touch on the matter: “Crude man-
to-man intercourse chokes off the kernel of a finer culture and lets that
tone of a subordinate arise that brings little to the ennoblement of the
nation with it.” This non-culture could, as Kupffer rightly thinks, be thor¬
oughly changed, if only the youth were accustomed to see in man his
natural model friend, and if, in the cases where the man could be even
more for his beloved youth —if it were not seen as morally objection¬
able—his contemporaries were willing not to condemn, but rather to un¬
derstand! There would by no means set in something like a universal lack
of marriage of young men, a universal disdain of the female sex —for that
there are just much too few homosexuals; but those born with this condi¬
tion would not, as now, have to spend their lives at best in tortured strug¬
gles, which often rob their work of all joy, in the destructive clutches of
vile blackmailers, with the constant prospect of prison or of coming for¬
ever under “degrading” investigations, but rather in noble courtship of
the beloved display their best, open up the whole depths of their often
golden souls, carry the beloved away to splendid deeds, draw him up into
the not seldom very pure upper atmosphere of their world-view, and thus
exercise the best influence on his intellect and character. Even in the prob¬
ably few cases where the lover may meet with a youth who rejects his
love —such is much more rare than is generally assumed —this kind of
relationship would still ripen to an intimate friendship of a superior kind,
in which the beloved would look with quiet admiration on the many offer¬
ings of his lover, which let an idea of the nobility of the human soul dawn
on him; and he himself would, if he is not precisely subject to a complete
lack of gratitude, enter into a noble contest in mutual accommodation with
the heartily loved friend, whose soul he sees rise aloft to greater and
greater deeds of love in a kind of painfully sweet longing. In such relation¬
ships sensuality would in truth be pushed far into the background entirely
on its own. The lover, perhaps at first storming for embraces and demand¬
ing kisses, would more and more try to be satisfied and be content, pre¬
cisely out of love for him, whom he sees only suffer under his sensual
demands, with the much more intimate, much deeper and lasting spiritual
association with his beloved, if he only hears the beloved lips speak, sees
the beloved eyes light up with joy! Such an intimate friendship could also
last if the beloved married, to the extent that the lover’s love possesses
that supreme strength that is capable of the final offering, of renunciation.
Over these unions, on which always —people being what they are —a
breath of tragedy will rest, there would be, however, that rare, unique
kind of relationship in which love is returned with love and not only with
friendship; and precisely they are threatened the most by the views of
contemporary society, although they would perhaps develop, if only given
their freedom, more splendidly than most of today’s average marriages, in
which that ideal vitality is missing, as is well known. That the general
public could only gain, if it could bring itself to meet such phenomena
with an unprejudiced view, is really obvious: through relationships in
which love is returned with friendship the lover at least finds a partial
satisfaction, a partial complement of his heart, which is consuming itself
in longing, but where his love is returned with love, he finds the complete
Reiffegg 173
complement, which he needs as much as his differently disposed fellow

citizens, so as to fulfill his tasks in life from that basis. In both cases,
therefore, the general public has gained a force fresh with life, of which it
is robbed through its current inimical position. And that not seldom do the
first rank geniuses of humanity walk through the world furnished precisely
with this disposition is taught by a glance at men like Socrates, Plato,
Epaminondas, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Friedrich the Great, Winck-
elmann, just to name a few of the best known. Through the current moral
views is attained, regarding all those so inclined, nothing other than that
they either turn their backs on the fatherland and emigrate to other lands,
where they can live their lives fully in the way necessary to them, or that
in spite of all enmities they seek out their satisfaction in secret and
thereby, to be sure, not seldom draw themselves and others into ruin;
never have today’s views made a born homosexual someone who feels
differently, a “normal,” on the contrary, precisely through the obtuse
resistance of the environment the better and more courageous homosex¬
uals learned to unite and fight together, as is always the case when a
certain class of people have to suffer under the unjust pressure of the
surroundings. And this is certain, the less today’s society meets the justi¬
fied wishes of the homosexuals, all the more energetically will they em¬
phasize their right to exist and not rest until they have carried through a
change of opinion. Yet a further point is to be touched on here: it is often
said, if we again had the universally recognized youth-love, as in Hellas,
then the female sex would have the most disadvantage, since a much
greater number than today would just be left “sitting,” then too the gen¬
eral position of woman would again sink to the level that it had in ancient
Hellas. Against this is to be replied: it has long since been scientifically
disproved that homosexuality is transferable, as was already touched on
above, in the sense that a homosexual lover could ever make his hetero¬
sexual favorite —his best friend —homosexual; there will thus be —as ex¬
perience in other lands also teaches —even if the views on homosexuality
were to change, no more and no fewer girls neglected by men from that
cause. Further, if through the general tolerance of youth-love the position
of woman would be changed to the extent that she would no longer be, as
so often today, the nearly pathologically worshiped ideal even of the best
men and consequently not seldom the cruel, wanton gambler with men’s
fortunes, if the fausse position of today’s “ladies,” already —and not
without right —contested by Schopenhauer,2 were again to change a bit in
favor of genuine femininity, would that be such a great harm? Today’s
woman knows only too well that she will see the majority of the world of
men at her feet, if only she is beautiful and coquettish, and therefore in the
course of time has been forced up into the unnatural position of the “bet¬
ter” sex. If she knew that she had to share her husband with the younger
men, as in ancient Hellas, how salutary an effect would this insight not
seldom have on the arrogance of many an empty-headed, but pretty
woman! How much effort they would all have to make to become, also in
a spiritual regard, what once only male friends could be for him! And
finally woman would have a direct gain, if she received her “intended”
from the loving arms of his friend instead of from the enervating ones of a
prostitute, as is almost always the case today. For certainly no one will
contest the fact that there is a difference between a young man faithfully
cherished and educated to all things good and beautiful by his loving
friend and the person become blase in selling lewdness. And then one
should finally not underestimate what tremendous significance youth-love
can gain not at all rarely for the whole life’s happiness of a talented, but
much lower standing, poor youth. Already today there are not a few ho¬
mosexuals who, in selfless love, take in poor but talented maturing boys,
share with them everything that fortune has given them, bestow on them a
good education and rearing, and finally help to secure them a position
corresponding to their talent, whereas they demand nothing for them¬
selves from their beloved than the grateful look of their eyes and a sincere
friendship of the heart. How beautifully such unions could develop, if
only they were not viewed so askance by the public as today! How they
could help to bridge the social gap between rich and poor, high and low!
Where then are the social harms that are supposed to grow from the re¬
lease of youth-love? Does there not perhaps remain this, that a vile class
of subjects, well fed, certainly, through the current views and legal
clauses, the so-called “fleecers,” the male prostitutes, through a change
of views would all at once have taken out from under them the basis on
which they are able, unfortunately, to carry out their so profitable and
generally harmful activity?
Allow this section to be closed with a word from Goethe, who certainly
cannot be generally designated as homosexual, but indeed was far-think¬
ing enough to understand this phenomenon too; in his biography of
Winckelmann he says about the homosexual love-unions of the ancients:
“The passionate fulfillment of loving duties, the bliss of inseparability,
the offering of one for the other, the expressed decision for the whole of
life, the necessary accompaniment to death set us in astonishment at the
union of two youths, yes, we feel excelled when poets, historians, philos-
Rdffegg 175
ophers, speakers overwhelm us with legends, events, feelings, convic¬

tions of such content and merit.”
Ill
IN ART
The art of each time is always a kind of reflection of the social condi¬
tions prevailing in the epoch concerned and of the ideas that move that
epoch. In the best times of the Hellenes, that is, approximately in the
epoch of Pericles and shortly thereafter, youth-love occupied poets such
as Sophocles, philosopher-artists such as Plato, sculptors such as Prax¬
iteles, and found in numerous works, which today are still admired as
eternally perfect models, a splendid and until today never again attained
immortality. The early Middle Ages, under the pressure of a gloomy ide¬
ology inimical to the world and the senses, created in its art, for us today,
curiously touching pictures of saints and scenes of martyrs, and would
have held the representation of the purely human to be a damnable work of
the devil. Only in the period of the so-called Renaissance did human na¬
ture, slumbering until then, slowly begin to recall its splendid heritage
from the once beautiful bygone spring days of pure humanity, the bonds
of a Weltanschauung that killed culture were very gradually shattered, and
precisely the great artists such as Michelangelo again represented the hu¬
man without any disturbing ulterior motive, purely from joy in the beauti¬
ful form, and thereby necessarily had to turn a lively interest again to —
viewed objectively, see Schopenhauer!—the most beautiful embodiment
of the human, the body of a youth: besides Michelangelo’s Madonnas
there are, in the first place, his John, a tender figure of a youth, his David,
his drunken Bacchus, his sleeping Amor, his Hercules and Cacus, his
uniquely beautiful “Slaves,” intended for the tomb of Julius, which have
made his name so great. In addition, Michelangelo was a poet, and his
sonnets, which are as perfect in form as they are rich in content, are
devoted almost exclusively to his love for a beautiful youth. ... In the
eighteenth century it was Winckelmann’s homosexual feelings which
gave us his immortal works on the art of antiquity and thereby created a
not insignificant cornerstone in the edifice of modern art. ... It is, of
course, far from us to wish to attribute all sculptural representations of
youth-love to the homosexuality of the artists concerned, but it must cer¬
tainly be assumed that an artist whose eye is not capable of resting with a
certain pleasure also on the charms of the blossoming age of youth, will
dedicate the principal part of his artistic strength to the glorification of that
part of humanity for which his eye is made, that is, woman. Among the
German poets of his time Platen possessed the courage to express his
homosexual inclination in more than one poem perfect in form. . . .
Another poet of those days, the unhappy Holderlin, in his novel Hype¬
rion, a masterpiece also with regard to form, glorified a love-friendship,
just as he had celebrated it in several of his poems in longing for the days
of ancient Hellas. . . . Among the modern and most modern artists there
are, to my knowledge, none among the sculptors who has expressly glori¬
fied the beauty of youths. ... In general there prevails today just precisely
in the plastic arts the representation of woman in all imaginable poses,
now purely artistic, now also more with the intention of awakening sensu¬
ality, so that one could often be of the opinion that a Praxiteles had never
lived and that it had been forgotten in the circles of the sculptors that the
youthful male body is at least the equal in beauty to that of woman! This is
only yet another proof for today’s unnaturally lofty position of woman. To
be greeted with pleasure, therefore, is the fact that sun, air, and sport
baths are more and more coming in use, also from the side of the homo¬
sexuals; it is to be hoped that precisely also among the “normals” more
understanding for the beauty of the youthful body will again be awakened,
so that the artists can unhindered at least dare again to cultivate this direc¬
tion, something that indeed at present in many heads is supposed to al¬
ready appear as “immoral” in itself! And what is the situation with mod¬
ern poetry? Here too, as is known, the real “leaders”—whether they will
still be seen as such in fifty years is all the same to us-are occupied
exclusively with woman, so that one often thinks that there are no more
problems in the world that are not connected with the sexual relations of
man and woman. Beside this, to be sure, there is today —we may be
glad-a whole series of independent artists, pushed less into the fore¬
ground by drummed up publicity and cliques, who, in spite of all the
enmity of the artistic rabble, do not let be taken away from them nor leave
the unique problems, the still scarcely suspected beauties, which the ho¬
mosexual love-union brings with it. . . . If one often hears today that
homosexual literature is mostly unartistic, to the extent that it strives to
represent the homosexual love drive as noble and the “normal” as igno¬
ble, the only reply is that such an unartistic tendency, which is not to be
denied in individual works, is to be seen as only the natural opposition to
the mostly still prevailing damnation of homosexuality by today’s society.
Only when the morally equal right of homosexual love with “normal”
love has been recognized generally will this unpleasant, but necessarily
accompanying appearance of a time of battle, as today, disappear; finally.
Reiffegg 177
as far as the artistic right in general to the appreciation of homosexuality is

concerned, it has been emphasized precisely by the modern artists-and in
this they are right —that there is no area of the human that the poet is not
allowed to treat! And precisely in the matter in question as in no other, in
my opinion, is such a rich output to be expected from genuine artists. The
still unsolved problems here are so many and so unique that, for him who
has once received only a presentiment, it is as if he has come into sight of
a still unknown land after a long sea voyage!
We will consequently not go amiss if we expect precisely for art the
most beautiful gain from a universal change of views on youth-love.
CONCLUSION
Our investigation, which, as becomes a brochure that only wishes to

stimulate, has only briefly and rather sketchily touched on the many prob¬
lems in question, will be grumbled at by opponents of progress of all
kinds, will be condemned. I would almost like to view it as a gain, if it is
really grumbled at and condemned, for it will then at least have been read.
And if it finds only one reader who is prompted by reading it to occupy
himself more closely with the problem of homosexuality and thereby per¬
haps his previous prejudices vanish, then it will have completely attained
its goal.
Original: Die Bedeutung der Jiinglingsliebe fur unsere Zeit, (Leipzig:

Spohr, 1902).
NOTES
1. Derneue Werther, eine hellenische Passionsgeschichte by Narkissos. Leip¬

zig: Max Spohrs Verlag.
2. See Parerga II, p. 656ff. (Rectam edition.)
'
■
On the Rearing
of the Homosexually Inclined Boy
Lucifer
One of the most difficult areas in the rearing of a boy is that of sex
education. The various teachings on rearing from pious old Niemeyer up
to the most modern are unable to say anything intelligent about the un¬
avoidable fact that even thoroughly healthy boys from about their six¬
teenth year have almost without exception “fallen” into so-called “sexu¬
ally bad behavior,” “vices,” etc. Only the doctors think about it more
cynically, perhaps more correctly; they advise us that most of these boys
will nevertheless become excellent husbands and that the lamentations of
the old maids of both sexes are not to be taken so tragically! To be sure, a
certain percentage of these boys becomes —or better —is homosexual and
as such, thanks to our “morally strict” laws, face no rosy future. This
outlook has become the occasion for many to investigate whether the ho¬
mosexual inclination, if it cannot be exterminated, can still be led into so-
called “moral” paths by taking certain measures already in early child¬
hood. The doctors, as those most deeply knowledgeable, again have none
too optimistic an outlook on the favorable result of those measures; they
are also very cautious in suggesting such and directly warn, for example,
against such means as corporal punishment, as having a downright inflam¬
matory effect on the sexual drive. On the other hand, others with —or
without —a calling for research in homosexuality are full of the rosiest
hopes; they are more or less charlatans or whatever. And to such people
belongs also the well-known De Joux,' who, among other things in his
bombastic book “The Hellenic love today,” also discusses the means
against the “homosexual vice.” While he admits, on the one hand, the
tenderer, finer nature of the homosexual boy, which is more receptive to
every feeling, he warns, on the other hand, against every tenderness with
regard to such a child, even of the father and brother, thereby uncon¬
sciously forcing the child, who needs tenderness precisely as a necessity
of life, involuntarily into the arms of those standing further off, who,
whether through genuine inclination or from desires that have become
179
perverse, offer the boy what he must be striving for, offer it in a form that
perhaps would have been more esthetic if the boy had not been forbidden
finer relations. Now of course De Joux zealously inveighs against the
“boy fallen into vice”! The older accomplice must be driven away in
“shame and disgrace”; against the poor boy “mildness has no place at
all”! No, he is to be “stretched over a bench” “in the military fashion”
(we ask, what military??) and with a stick or a rod be “corrected” with a
“plentiful number” of “strong” blows!!! De Joux is here expressly talk¬
ing about 14- to 17-year-old boys! That he does not go on to construct
whipping machines and illustrate in pictures this famous advice for a good
rearing, larded with highly learned —empty— phrases, is really astonish¬
ing. Whoever is willing to see certainly already has enough. And this
book, this “genius,” is still considered today, even in wide circles of
homosexuals, as “pioneering,” as “liberating!” One should be of the
opinion that more clearly and plainly than in the passages quoted a man
cannot manage to show his total inability for a correct treatment of homo¬
sexuality than De Joux has done with his almost pathological joy in “plen¬
tiful” whippings. We scarcely need to point out the complete folly of this
kind of rearing to “moral purity”; it is well known that this has indeed
already been done by all those genuinely knowledgeable in the matter.
Bock, for example, already expressly warned in his book about “healthy
and sick people” against corporal punishment of boys. Unfortunately, in
many “Christian,” even in many “free” families something similar to
what De Joux wished occurs; from ancient times people have been in¬
clined to prefer corporal punishment precisely for the so-called “sexual
vices”; and many parents who close both eyes to the simple onanism of
their boys lose all reason if they discover the much less harmful mutual
sexual intimacy of their boy with someone older or of the same age. Of
course, a good part of this is the fault of our ingenious laws, which allow
the one and punish the other, possibly with prison!
But what are we to do then? readers will cry. Very simple! Stick to De
Joux, lock your poor boys away from everything that their tender, love-
needy hearts require, as the blossom does the sun, and prefer to strike
them dead immediately if they seek a way out on their own, for you will
never “heal” them by stick and rod! But if you have finally attained the
free, sunny world-view of modern science, then treat your pitiable boys
with redoubled love, give their emotional lives the necessary develop¬
ment, their hearts the necessary restoration, let them be smitten with ar¬
dent bonds of friendship —the merely sexual will win the upper hand in
this way much more seldom than under De Joux’s despotism —and when
Lucifer 181
your boys have become mature youths, whom, if they were heterosexual,
you would direct to a woman, talk with them rationally about their excep¬
tional situation and then allow them to choose between their kind of activ¬
ity, which is bound up with constant struggles against a stupid world, and
its suppression, which is bound up with constant struggles against that
which means life’s happiness for them! One may certainly suppose that
the kind of rearing that “Aurelius” so masterfully described in his unique
Rubi would have long since brought such a phalanx of truly courageous
men against our infamous penal code that we would no longer be exposed
to the unjust cruelty of that very code!
Original: “Zur Erziehung des homosexuell veranlagten Knaben,” Der

Eigene, 1903, pp. 216-218.
NOTE
1. [Otto de Joux was the German author of numerous popular books on sexual
matters, including homosexuality, which appeared around the turn of the century.
Lucifer is referring here to his Die hellenische Liebe in der Gegenwart. Psycholo-
gische Studien (1897). HO]
•
.
V. POLITICAL ISSUES
AND THE RISE OF NAZISM
Introduction
Harry Oosterhuis
The members of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen did not share a common
political orientation: leftists, conservatives, and even some Nazi sympa¬
thizers contributed to Der Eigene. When Brand started his journal he was
inspired by a kind of anarchism which should not be confused with the
main current of socialist anarchism. The Stinerian anarchism Brand felt
attracted to has more in common with left-wing liberalism. Beyond Max
Stirner’s Einziger (unique one), Friedrich Nietzsche’s Uebermensch (su¬
perman) was the model for the radical individualism disseminated in Der
Eigene. In its first issue. Brand dedicated the journal to “strong individ¬
uals” who organized their lives according to their own standards and who
refused to conform to “the morals of the masses.”1 In a poem entitled Der
Uebermensch, written nine years later. Brand expressed his desire to fight
“beyond good and evil,” not for the sake of the masses, since the happi¬
ness of “the weak” would result in a “slave mentality,” but for the
human being who proclaimed himself a god and was not to be subdued by
human laws and ethics.2 In this elitist anarchism, individual regeneration
was considered to be more effective than realizing the ideal of social and
political equality, which originated with the French Revolution. For
Brand and his adherents, the rise of socialism and the beginnings of wom¬
en’s emancipation were indications that the striving for equality taking
183
place during their lifetimes was accompanied by a levelling, resulting in a

drab society of the masses in which creative individuals could not express
themselves.1
On the whole Brand’s political views were not very straightforward;
like those of his followers, they were not only based on the position politi¬
cal parties took on homosexual issues, especially the abolition of Para¬
graph 175, or social and economic interests, but also on aesthetic values.
Besides, Brand seems to have been rather opportunistic in accepting any¬
one who might share his dislike of Hirschfeld. After the Second World
War, Kurt Hiller, a leading man in Hirschfeld’s Committee, described
Brand’s attitude as “characterized by anarchistic and German-volkisch,
that is, extreme left-wing and right-wing leanings,” which made it diffi¬
cult to cooperate with him. Indeed, Brand’s writings show a constant vari¬
ation of radical opposition to the prevailing social system in Wilhelminian
as well as Weimar Germany and a somewhat naive-sentimental patriot¬
ism. Besides, his nationalism seems to have been no obstacle to his (un¬
availing) attempts to transform the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen into an in¬
ternational union and his claim that Der Eigene was a cosmopolitan
journal.4
The first essay in this chapter is a polemic article of Brand, “Homosex-
ualitat und Reaktion,” which was published in 1911 in his Extrapost des
Eigenen. Attacking the right-wing and center parties he advised his read¬
ers to vote for the social democrats in the next elections for the national
parliament. Here Brand still showed his confidence in democratic social¬
ism. Later in the twenties he seems to have lost faith in parliamentary
democracy in general and socialism in particular —not without reason.
The attitudes of the German social democrats toward homosexuality were
rather ambivalent. Officially they supported the efforts of the gay move¬
ment to abolish Paragraph 175, as their leader August Bebel had declared
in the Reichstag in 1898, but in practice on several occasions they tried to
exploit politically the aversion of the general public to homosexuals, as
became evident in the scandals about Krupp, Eulenburg, and later the
Nazi leader Ernst Rohm. Moreover, in the twenties the social democrats
and the communists did not make haste to reform the law; obviously ho¬
mosexuality was not a popular issue with their constituency. In this re¬
spect the gay movement faced a dilemma: on the one hand they contended
with the conservative and reactionary forces in Germany, on the other
hand democracy did not guarantee that their aims would be realized.
Hiller, one of the leading men of Hirschfeld’s Committee, was highly
aware of that when he opposed a proposal to let the German people in a

referendum decide on Paragraph 175; he expected, probably rightly so,
that the gay movement would lose.
Perhaps this dilemma explains why Brand and other members lost faith
in parliamentary politics and the leftist parties, and distanced themselves
from the Weimar Republic. Characteristic of this state of mind is the sec¬
ond piece in this chapter by St. Ch. Waldecke, who called himself an
anarchist and who was in the twenties the link between the Wandervogel
and the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen. In his contribution to Der Eigene in
1925 about eros in the German youth movement he discarded the politi¬
cally inspired socialist and communist organizations and approved of
those groups which were alleged to be inspired by a somewhat mystical
eros; to be sure, a lot of these groups were rather right-wing and national¬
istic, although this did not always imply that they embraced Nazism.
From the beginning of the century several important members of the
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen voiced a kind of elitism and anti-modernism.
The plea for a male culture in Der Eigene was frequently accompanied by
criticism of contemporary society worded in Nietzschean rhetoric. On the
whole, spokesmen of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen were discontented
with social and political developments that were transforming Wilhelm-
inian Germany into an industrial and urban society based on practicality
and profit, within which the proletarian masses had begun to have an
impact in politics. By glorifying the “love of friends” as a way to raise
oneself above bourgeois mediocrity and the materialism of the common
people, they stressed the individual’s feeling of uniqueness and rejected
“dull” reason which brought “mere” prosperity, freedom, and equality
to everyone. Friedlander, for instance, was of the opinion that Western
culture was decaying, for which he blamed not only Christianity but also
the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The striving for political
equality and the emancipation of workers and women had resulted in so¬
cial levelling and the “feminization” of society.
Using the same reasoning, Gleichen-Russwurm postulated that in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries creativity and individual genius had
been saved from the defilement of democratic and materialist mass society
only by an elite of spiritual men tied together in strong friendships. Being
incompatible with social levelling, true friendship had been of greater
value for cultural development than Christian and humanistic virtues such
as compassion and solidarity. Even more anti-egalitarian was Kupffer’s
concept of male culture, as we have seen in Chapter II. He argued that in
ancient Greece, the “growing democratic ignorance of high politics and

great men” had been responsible for the decline of boy-love and, subse¬
quently, of culture. His own “unmanly” times were also marked by a
lack of reverence for strong men and monarchs. Instead, people preferred
to listen to the humbug of party bosses, to demagoguery, and to female tea
party gossip, Kupffer said, thus associating parliamentary government
with the submission of males to female taste. In such countries as France
and England, he wrote, many men had already lost their manhood as a
result of “female ascendancy.”5
For many contributors to Der Eigene, women’s emancipation was the
most objectionable consequence of democratization. Hirschfeld, on the
other hand, stressed that equal rights for women were in the interest of
homosexuals, and he cooperated with some feminist organizations. Not
only Kupffer, but also his friend the philosopher Eduard von Mayer
(1872-1960) and Friedlander declared that women, despite their inferior¬
ity, exerted too much influence in modern society. In their view, mothers,
mistresses, and wives made too many demands upon men, so that intimate
male friendships were thwarted, to the extent that these had not already
been discredited by hypocritical prudery. Beyond Christian asceticism,
Friedlander also criticized the romantic ideal of matrimony according to
which husband and wife were equals and were totally wrapped up in each
other. The secluded privacy of the modern nuclear family, Friedlander
and Mayer said, was used by women to consolidate their power over men
and to prevent male independence and solidarity. Although they were not
against marriage per se —like others in the Gemeinschaft, including
Brand, Bab, and Kupffer, they were married themselves —the family
should not engross a man too much, since the tasks of reproduction and
housekeeping were primarily women’s concerns. Being dependent and
merely practical by nature, according to Friedlander and Mayer, women
had nothing to offer men intellectually. In fact, man’s idealism and cre¬
ative drive were suffocated by exclusive emotional ties to women and by
the material obligations entailed by marriage and family. Wives urged
their husbands to pursue professional status and money instead of higher
values. Since they thwarted male bonding, women, being materialistic
and superstitious, were held responsible for cultural decline. Homoerotic
friendships were considered superior to conjugal life, and a reassessment
of the relationship between man and woman was therefore recommended
by the spokesmen of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen. Since marriage did
not rule out homoerotic bonds and most men were bisexual, passionate
friendships between married, so-called heterosexual men should be fos-
tered to make them less dependent on women and, so it was claimed,

more masculine.6
Above all, Friedlander and Mayer were obsessed by the notion that
female influence in culture and in politics was devastating for the vigor of
civilization. According to Mayer’s philosophy of culture, which bore the
stamp of Johann Jakob Bachofen’s influential Das Mutterrecht,7 modern
industrial and democratic society foreshadowed a decline to the prehis¬
toric level of the “matriarchate,” under which male spirituality had been
stifled by collective materialism and primitive superstition.8 The rise of
culture had only become possible when Mannerbiinde broke through the
torpor of matriarchal rule. By waging war, the all-male brotherhood-in¬
arms had subjugated women and “inferior races,” thus laying the founda¬
tion for aristocratic states. Male bonding was the proper means, Mayer
said, to settle accounts with modern egalitarianism and “slave morality.”
For Mayer, a healthy culture was inherently masculine, aristocratic, and
racist; and so it was for Friedlander, too, as is apparent in the two publica¬
tions by him that I selected for this chapter.9 In his Male and Female
Culture, published in 1906 as a booklet and later reprinted in his collec¬
tion Die Liebe Platons im Lichte der modemen Biologie: Gesammelte
kleinere Schriften (1909), he elaborated theoretical types of male and fe¬
male cultures, imputing to the latter all signs of degeneracy, such as dem¬
ocratic levelling, desire for luxury, sexual hypocrisy, and also monogamy
for men.10 The Muslim countries and the warrior culture of the Japanese
samurai corresponded to his ideals of a male culture. As Kupffer had done
before, Friedlander argued that countries such as the United States, En¬
gland, and France had already fallen victim to “feminization,” which he
considered dangerous for the supremacy of the white race. In his “Seven
Propositions,” written a few weeks before his death in 1908, he warned
against the decline of the white race and pointed to the danger of the
“yellow.” It was clear to Friedlander that the German nation had to stop
further feminization of Western civilization by making the Mdnnerbund
the core of the state, safeguarding the exalted goals of male friendship
such as moral strength, self-sacrifice, and spirit."
In the twenties and early thirties, various authors in Der Eigene and
Brand’s journal Eros gave voice to similar opinions. On the whole, they
were not at all happy with Weimar democracy. Not only “bolshevism,”12
but even more dangerously the spread of American civilization was
viewed as threatening the German spirit, since capitalistic consumerism
and the desire for luxury were accompanied by cultural feminism leading
to the “sexual slavery” of German males.11 The German genius could
only be saved from decadence by a homoerotic male culture. The leading

Mdnnerbund, as some of them hoped, could be realized in the “war gen¬
eration” that had experienced male solidarity in the trenches of the First
World War and in the Freikorps, the nationalistic military troops that
fought against left-wing revolutionaries in the civil war after Germany’s
defeat.14 In 1925, Brand’s firm published a booklet, Mdnnerheldentum
und Kamaradenliebe im Krieg (Male heroism and comradely love in
war),15 in which “the love of friends” was praised for making a perfect
army. Homoeroticism was beneficial for military loyalty and sacrifice, the
author said, and therefore was of great value for the German state. War
should not only be considered a good education in manliness, but also in
true comradeship and “physiological friendship.” Fragments from this
curious booklet by G. P. Pfeiffer are included in this chapter.
Although Brand from time to time raised objections to the ultra-nation¬
alistic views expressed in his journal, he did not stop giving ample scope,
to put it mildly, to dubious viewpoints. Endorsing an article in which the
author stated that men like Ulrichs and Hirschfeld did not deserve to be
revered as pioneers of homosexual emancipation because they lacked a
deep feeling for German culture16 was only a minor fault compared to the
fact that in 1924 and 1925 anti-Semitic attacks on Hirschfeld and his asso¬
ciate Kurt Hiller —both were Jews —were published in Der Eigene.'1 Es¬
pecially an article by Karl Gunther Heimsoth, who was not only a psycho¬
analyst with several scientific publications to his name and the inventor of
the conception “homophile,”1* but also a member of the Nazi Party and a
friend of SA leader Ernst Rohm, was grossly racist. Heimsoth criticized
Hirschfeld by asserting that the “homosexual feminism” of the “Jewish
Committee” was dangerous to the “German eros.”11' Instead of refusing
the article or expunging the anti-Semitic phrases. Brand only wrote a pref¬
ace stating that he did not agree with all of the author’s views.
Yet Brand knew that the Nazis were a serious danger for homosexuals.
In 1928 he conducted a poll of the political parties concerning their opin¬
ions on Paragraph 175. The answer of the NSDAP, headed by the slogan
Gemeinnutz tiber Eigennutzl (Public interest above self-interest!), was the
party’s first public statement on homosexuality, which it rejected as detri¬
mental to the German people. At the same time Brand was strongly aware
that some homosexuals might be attracted to fascism, because the Nazis,
organized in all-male troops such as the SA, celebrated masculinity and
physical beauty. The leader of the SA, Ernst Rohm, was not the only
homosexual man in the Nazi movement.20
An anonymous member of the SA explained in 1932 in the newsletter
of the Wissenschaftlich-humanitares Komitee why, in his opinion, homo¬

sexuality did not present any problem in the Nazi movement. He asserted
that he had many comrades in the SA whom one “knew about.” They
were accepted because they fulfilled their duty and had the trust of other
SA members with whom they resolved their problems in a brotherly fash¬
ion. “What two people do at home or in the hayloft is nobody’s busi¬
ness,” this SA man wrote, reproaching Hirschfeld and his Committee for
placing too much emphasis on “coarseness” in their struggle against the
criminalization of certain sexual acts. He considered them also guilty of
stigmatizing homosexuals because they placed emphasis on the degener¬
ate types who were incapable of controlling their drives. “Inversion”
would not be a problem in the Nazi movement, according to this SA
member, if it concerned “healthy straightforward fellows, youths from
the Wandervogel movement, officers, or sport enthusiasts,” who in
strong camaraderie with other men, regardless of whether they were het¬
erosexual or homosexual, fought for the new order. Thus he invoked the
“creative significance of male-male eros” and called the philosophy of
Hirschfeld’s Committee Marxist and liberal— qualifications considered
un-German.21
These arguments agreed with similar utterances of some members of
the Gemeinschaft. Brand knew that some men who had supported him and
who had contributed to Der Eigene, such as Heimsoth,22 the writer Hans
Heinz Ewers, who was the official biographer of Horst Wessel,21 Fidus,
and the pioneer of nudism, Heinrich Pudor,24 became Nazis or sympa¬
thizers of the Hitler regime. Perhaps they applauded the Nazi movement
because they thought their ideal of the Mcinnerbund would be realized by
it. For some time Brand himself seems to have reasoned along the same
lines. In 1932 he wrote that the homophobic utterances in the Nazi press
did not correspond to the true historical foundations of National Social¬
ism, since homoerotic relations between warriors had been held in high
esteem in the Germanic past which the Nazis glorified.21 Still, he did not
make overtures to the Nazi movement as did Radszuweit.2,>
In the end he took a firm stand, as the last contribution of Brand in this
chapter shows. The article appeared in Eros in 1931 and was written on
occasion of the Rohm affair. In 1931 a campaign was launched in the
socialist press against some Nazi leaders after Hitler had appointed Ernst
Rohm commander in chief of the SA, the paramilitary troops of the Nazi
party. After journalists of the social democratic paper Miinchner Post had
started to publish articles on the homosexual practices of subordinate lead¬
ers in the SA, the press agency of the social democratic party released
some private correspondence by Rohm, which a politician of that party

had surreptitiously obtained. These letters showed that Rohm was sexu¬
ally attracted to young men. Although Brand asserted that the integrity of
one’s private life should be respected as a general principle, he made an
exception for men like Rohm and other homosexuals who were in the Nazi
movement: the publicizing of Rohm’s homosexuality proved that the Na¬
zis were hypocrites and that they were upholding a double standard. For,
in public at least, Nazi spokesmen had strongly rejected homosexuality as
detrimental to the German people and had declared that it should be pun¬
ished severely. At the same time, however, Hitler extended his protection
to Rohm, although he knew about his homosexual pursuits. In the Epi¬
logue I will go further into the ambivalent attitudes of the Nazis toward
homosexuality.
NOTES
1. A. Brand, “Dieses Blatt,” Der Eigene, 1896, no. 1, p. 1.

2. A. Brand, “Der Uebermensch,” Der Eigene, 1905, no. 6, pp. 183-4.
3. H. Esswein, “Von der Zukunft unseres Erkenntnisstrebens,” Der Eigene,
1899, no. 3, pp. 99-105; K. Hermann, “Weltanschauliches,” Der Eigene, 1899,
no. 2, pp. 46-51; idem, “Eine Wandlung im Anarchismus?” Der Eigene, 1896,
no. 3, pp. 18-21; H. Krecke, “Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung,” Der Eigene,
1899, no. 2, pp. 54-62; E. Ruedebusch, “Frauenemanzipation,” Der Eigene,
1898, no. 1, pp. 23-30; idem, “Die Schwachheit des Weibes,” Der Eigene,
1898, no. 2, pp. 66-8.
4. See Brand to George Ives, 15 October 1919, Humanities Research Center,
The University of Texas, Austin, Texas; A. Brand, Satzung der Gemeinschaft der
Eigenen (Berlin, 1925); idem in Der Eigene, 1924, no. 7/8, pp. 363-4.
5. E. von Kupffer, “Die ethisch-politische Bedeutung der Lieblingminne,”
Der Eigene, 1899, no. 6/7, pp. 182-99, here p. 190.
6. See also H. Pudor, Bisexualitat. Untersuchungen iiber die allgemeine
Doppelgeschlechtlichkeit der Menschen (Berlin, 1906).
7. J. J. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht. Eine Untersuchung iiber die Gynaiko-
kratie der alien Welt nach ihrer religiosen rechtlichen Natur (Frankfurt am Main,
1975; first edition 1861). According to Bachofen, the matriarchate, which had
supposedly preceded the patriarchate, did not create a healthy foundation for cul¬
ture since the passions could not be sufficiently controlled. The patriarchate signi¬
fied a victory over unbridled nature and a guarantee that culture was based on
spiritual values. Bachofen’s book was widely read at the end of the nineteenth
century as a warning against a relapse into materialism and the dionysian licen¬
tiousness of the prehistoric matriarchate; liberalism, socialism, and feminism
were seen as symptoms of this decline.
8. E. von Mayer, “Mannliche Kultur. Ein Stuck Zukunftsmusik,” Der
Eigene, 1903, no. 1, pp. 46-59; idem, Die Lebensgesetze der Kultur. Ein Beitrag
zur dynamischen Weltanschauung (Halle, 1904); idem, Modemes Mittelalter
(Berlin, 1906).
9. Friedlander’s political position is even more difficult to assess than that of
Brand. Before he wrote on homosexuality and male bonding, he published politi¬
cal studies like Der freiheitliche Sozialismus im Gegensatz zum Staatsknechtstum
der Marxisten (Berlin, 1892) and Die vier Hauptrichtungen der modemen so-
zialen Bewegung (Berlin, 1901), in which, inspired by Eugen Duhring and Henry
George, he advocated the joining of socialism and individual freedom, and re¬
jected Marxism. At the same time he gave voice to racism in general and anti-
Semitism in particular, although he was a Jew himself.
10. B. Friedlander, Mannliche und weibliche Kultur. Eine kausalhistorische
Betrachtung (Leipzig, 1906).
11. See Friedlander’s introduction to a popular edition of Arthur Scho¬
penhauer’s misogynist writing Ueber die Weiber, printed in B. Friedlander, Die
Liebe Platons im Lichte der modemen Biologie. Gesammelte kleinere Schriften
(Berlin, 1909), pp. 271-9.
12. For instance, E. von Kupffer [Elisarion], 3000 Jahre Bolschewismus
(Leipzig, 1921).
13. St. Ch. Waldecke, “Die physiologische Freundschaft in der Auffassung
der grossen Amerikanischen Dichter-Denker, besonders Walt Whitmans,’’ Der
Eigene, 1921/22, no. 10, pp. 293-9; Dr. Kuntz-Robinson, “Internationaler Sport-
Pobel,” Der Eigene, 1926, no. 8, pp. 233-9; G. J. Ravasini, “Die anthropologi-
sche Bedeutung der mannlichen Kultur,” Der Eigene, 1931, no. 2, pp. 33-4;
idem, “Aufstieg und Untergang der Volker im Lichte der neuesten For-
schungen,” Der Eigene, 1931, no. 6, pp. 161-3; idem, “Eine ernste Mahnung an
Deutschland,” Eros, 1931, no. 4, pp. 1-2; idem, “Einzige Rettung fur das
Abendland,” Eros, 1932, no. 2, pp. 9-10.
14. F. Rein, “Generationswechsel,” Der Eigene, 1925, no. 12, pp. 556-60.
15. G. P. Pfeiffer, Mannerheldentum und Kameradenliebe im Krieg. Eine
Studie und Materialien-Sammlung (Berlin, 1925).
16. St. Ch. Waldecke, “Was will der deutsche Eros?” Der Eigene, 1924,
no. 7/8, p. 307.
17. Valentin Scherdell, “Bucher und Menschen,” Der Eigene, 1924, no. 7/8,
pp. 363-4.
18. K. G. Heimsoth, Homophilie und Heterophilie. Die zwei erotischen An-
ziehungsgesetze Mannes (Berlin, 1925).
19. K. G. Heimsoth, “Freundesliebe und Homosexualitat,” Der Eigene,
1925, no. 9, pp. 415-25.
20. A. Brand, “Abwehr und Angriff,” Eros, 1930, no. 3, pp. 20-1; idem,
“Politische Galgenvogel. Ein Wort zum Falle Rohm,” Eros, 1931, no. 2, pp. 1-3.
21. Quotations from H.-G. Stiimke and R. Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen
(Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1981), pp. 99, 103, 106.
22. Heimsoth was acquainted with Rohm and was probably killed in the
“Night of the Long Knives” in June 1934, when the SA leadership was liquidated
by Hitler and the SS.
23. H. H. Ewers, Horst Wessel. Ein deutsches Schicksal (Stuttgart and Berlin,
1934). From the turn of the century Ewers was a regular contributor to Der
Eigene. In 1927 Brand published and introduced Ewers’ ArmerJunge! und acht
andere Freundschafts-Novellen (Berlin, 1927).
24. In his autobiography Mein Leben. Kampf gegen Juda und fur die arische
Rasse (Leipzig, 1939-1941), which he published under the pen name Heinrich
Scham, Pudor turned out to be a virulent racist.
25. A. Brand, “Wir brauchen die ehrlichen Freiheitsfreunde in alien Parteien,”
Eros, 1932, no. 5, pp. 1-3. See also St. Ch. Waldecke, “Die Freundesliebe in den
heroischen Epen des Altertums,” Der Eigene, 1923, no. 6, pp. 260-4.
26. Radszuweit endorsed anti-Semitic attacks on Hirschfeld in the Nazi paper
Der Volkische Beobachter and palliated the homophobic attitude of the Nazis;
according to Radszuweit, many homosexuals voted for the NSDAP.
Homosexuality
and Reaction
Adolf Brand
The time is ripe to finally rip the mask from the face of the contemptible
hypocrisy that reigns in the homosexual question and which is the trump
card from the top down! A strengthening of §175 has been recommended
by the government, which brings the cup of patience to overflowing! All
the assurances that the former Secretary of Justice Dr. Nieberding was
supposed to have given in his time have become empty smoke! All the
promises in the Krupp case nothing but contemptible sham! Oath after
oath was sworn in court to strike the truth dead. Infamy after infamy was
caused so as to trample friend-love in the mud! But the law that has now
been drafted carries all those infamies, all those stupidities, and all that
treachery to the cause of freedom to the extreme! It means perfecting the
bankruptcy of justice, W iich we already have now in the universally dan¬
gerous §175! It means continuing infinitely the shameless comedy and the
monstious national fraud that the state with all the means in its power has
succeeded in carrying out! It means opening the door to ever greater cor¬
ruption and ever renewed acts of force! Prisons and penitentiaries are the
new deterrents that have been thought up in order to block homosexual
activity! Prison up to five years now also for intercourse between women,
which up to now had no punishment!
Obviously, through these draconian penal measures they wish to delude
the people that those above, in the highest circles, are not at all concerned
in the repeal of §175 that we demand and that Prince Eulenburg was an
exception! It is a lovely new pose of Christian piety in the stern robes of a
mob-oriented justice, such as, happily, we have not yet had in this coun¬
try, and whose despicable power the simplest worker sees through!
At the same time, we nevertheless still have . . . that hypocritical and
clergy-ridden legal decision in the matter of §184,‘ which even without
the Heinze law has now become the practice, and which quite seriously
already puts the insane religious fanaticism of the iconoclasts of yore in
the shadow! The holy impotence of all the pious and impious celibates,
193
the dirtiest spirit of prostitution, as well as the repulsive intemperance of

that intellectual eunuchism, which the pastoral-sexual, loose, rabbit-like,
biblical-oriental propagation politics with all its social misery and poverty
unscrupulously raises to the highest law of nature: this it is, unfortunately,
which the loyal judge today almost constantly confuses with that healthy
and genuine modesty, which never pries after sensation and perversities,
and which sees as a sign of the deepest moral rottenness and intrinsic
depravity the viewing of naked beauty as anything other than beautiful!
But finally the consolation also remains that even in Germany no decent
person sets store any more by such judgments and that those who are
touched by them have long been considered in the eyes of the people as
well as of all truly educated persons to be victims of the great wave with
which the clerical and political reaction is now disgracefully inundating all
of modern life!
For the so-called “normal” feeling of shame and morality is, of course,
just as little comprehensible and provable as the good God. And the injury
to the person making the denunciation is obviously just as completely a
matter of belief for the judge as the bleeding of the consecrated host for
the poor little mother who, in her ignorance, kneels in blissful trust in the
church pew.
Truly! Worse than swindlers, worse than counterfeiters are those people
who measure the most elevated creations of the German language, the
most recognized works of world literature, and the most splendid wonders
of painting with the glazed looks of lewd lasciviousness, and who in this
disgraceful way become the miserable murderers of our writing and our
art!
Granted, this artistic idiocy and this literary chicanery, which ... are
now celebrating their stupid triumph in Germany, are only the powerful
old branches and great trunks of the reaction, with which Junker- and
clergy-ridden Prussia is spreading its gloomy shadow and mischievously
bringing ruin over all of Germany! Crudeness of the same spirit and ambi¬
tious acts of the same meanness that once also drove Heinrich Heine from
our German fatherland, and which even today grudges his recognition.
These are conditions of the most contemptible arbitrariness and the
deepest lack of culture in the German Empire! Symbols of the most stupid
barbarity and of the most unheard-of modern swindle, such as have never
existed in Holy Russia and just as little in a thoroughly Catholic country!
Prussian Germany is at any rate more Catholic and more inimical to life
than Rome by far! And there is no doubt at all that our Prussian Junkers
and clergy are opposed to the revolutionary working class and the modern
Adolf Brand 195
heroism of the educated with entirely the same fierce hate as the Jesuits
and reactionary authorities of Spain oppose all the men there who even
today ... are fighting without fail for light and freedom!
The pious wish, through one quick act of law, to deny the active and
passive right to vote to all the opponents of Prussian despotism, as has
indeed already been voiced in the press, is at any rate not to be allowed to
stand in isolation! If religion can no longer help, if the flight to the protec¬
tion of the crozier is no longer of use, if the idea of truth presses forward
in spite of everything — then a coup d’etat is finally to do it! That desperate
means of all those in political bankruptcy, which was still intended to save
the position —at least for one more moment —of all the privileged extor¬
tionists and exploiters, who feed on the good nature of the people, and all
the guardianship and morality swindles of the reaction, such as we are just
now again experiencing in Germany. Through it the demand of the people
for freedom and self-government, their efforts toward education, their
warm longing for joy and beauty, and, not least, all their good right to a
heightened enjoyment of life, which no longer asks about the decrees of
the church —all this is, if necessary, to be cudgeled and clubbed down.
War or revolution! That is the way out for those men, which, in the short
or long run, surely leads to catastrophe.
The fact that in the thoroughly Catholic countries of Latin origin same-
sex love is entirely free of legal punishment does not, at any rate, keep our
black robes of both confessions from asserting again and again with the
same impudent shamelessness that our demand, to repeal §175 and freely
allow same-sex intercourse, contradicts the basic laws of the Christian
world view! Those gentlemen, who almost always stand halfway on a
war-footing with truth, are naturally not concerned that the Greek church
not only tolerates friend-love, but even gives its blessing, and that, under
this Christian protection, social relations flourish that not only benefit the
individuals and their families, but also the whole nation there!
But the strengthening of §175, which is now planned, is the fruit of that
dishonorable pseudo-scientific fight... the consequence of that miserable
politics of intrigue and indecision, which deprived us of every success and
all respect, and through which the cultural work of the homosexual move¬
ment in Germany has been brought almost to ruin!
We must face these new dangers, which now threaten us all, with deci¬
sion and unity! The reactionary opponents of progress and the toadies of
courtier-like cowardice and lies should not triumph in this fight, in which
it is now a matter of what is highest for us: our love, honor, and freedom!
This means that we should proceed relentlessly and courageously do
our duty! It is a matter of opening from all sides the battle against the
infamous reactionary law! . . .
What counts now above all is systematically, materially, and with the
votes of all homosexuals, to support in the coming Reichstag election that
party which alone until now has had the courage to openly advocate the
repeal of §175!2
Let us all for once be clear about the necessity: the Conservatives and
the Center3 are the leaders of the reaction. They stand completely opposed
to our efforts as sworn enemies. They are the representatives of force, the
representatives of the extra-national church, and the imperialistic spokes¬
men of big business, which kills the strength of the nation.
Liberalism vacillates, however, and is also little to be trusted in the
more important questions.
Only the Social Democrats have shown themselves honorable. The
speeches of Bebel and Thiele during the discussion of the petition for the
repeal of §175 should really not be forgotten by all the adherents of our
cause. They were masterly efforts of those national spokesmen and an
infallible proof of the generosity and energy with which the Social Demo¬
crat party knows how to represent our cause!
Our opponents in the homosexual camp have depended on the police,
have trusted the empty promises of Hoflingen and high government offi¬
cials, who never had the power to keep their word.
We, the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (Community of Self-Owners), mean
to trust those who make our cause a cause of the whole people, and on
whose spirit and daring the eyes of all Europe already rest today!
The red spook can indeed only frighten today those in political nurser¬
ies. Rational people who direct their own destiny have long since stopped
believing in it! And all those in Germany who find unbearable the pressure
with which the clerical and political reaction is striving to hold down all
liberal movements of the state’s citizens are already gathering decisively
and resolutely around the banner of the German workers’ party!
All men and women who see it as a cultural necessity that intellectual
Europe, in addition to freedom of knowledge and freedom of thought,
also proclaim the freedom of love, know that the only path to this goal is
socialism! That through it the most elementary and powerful interest of
the adult and healthy person —the sexual need, with all its secret joys and
peculiarities —will be just as respected and made an affair of free agree¬
ment as is religion! That through it and through the freedom which it
brings with it love is only then formed into the wonderful source of life
and beauty in which all strength is rejuvenated a hundredfold! All joy in
work and all happiness on earth!
Adolf Brand 197
Therefore, we can have no doubt about the path that we have to adopt.
Not through beautiful words, not through legal sophistry, not through
scientific-humanitarian intrigues,4 indirect means, and begging will we
attain for friend-love the civil and social recognition of its natural and
moral right to exist —but rather through joining together courageously into
a community of common interest, in which men and women are united
and give out the slogan: In the coming Reichstag election, support none
but the Social Democrat party alone!
We must demonstrate to our enemies that we are men and that, in num¬
bers and intelligence, we stand for such a considerable power in the state
that, once having become capable of action, we can no longer be bypassed
at all in the deciding of important cultural questions!
All of us, rich or poor, must finally give up the madness that participa¬
tion in the political l ight can in any way harm us and our cause, and that it
is dangerous to forfeit the help of the government! For a government that
did not find the moral courage to respect truth and, through repealing
§175 as quickly as possible, to do away with the scandals that have taken
place-such a government just deserves at most a shrug of the shoulders.
We must learn to recognize that here and now it is simply a question of
power, that we, through the number of our votes, have the possibility of
increasing the great army of Social Democrats by a hundred thousand, and
that we can tip the scale in the deciding battle, which will then be the
victory of a world-conquering idea, the victory of truth over falsehood,
the victory of right over wrong, the victory of progress over reaction, and
finally also the realization of freedom itself!
We must show on this occasion that the majority of us are just as capa¬
ble citizens as the others are! That we are, if not better, then by no means
worse than they! That we simply do our duty as much as they do, each in
his place. And that we, whether statesman or scholar, artist or officer,
merchant or people’s representative, working men or women —on what¬
ever field of human activity it may be —never need to be ashamed of the
service that we have dedicated to the people and the fatherland!
We must especially point out to those of us who have no children and
who also are not pressured by the chains of family worries that precisely
they are particularly suited and, of course, doubly bound to work in the
most ideal sense —educationally, in the advancement of art, and so¬
cially—since they as unmarried people are more independent and no con¬
siderations hinder them from everywhere frankly and decisively, without
any cowardly scruples, openly representing their conviction! That they are
called above all to be concerned about the living conditions that guarantee
a sensually enjoyable and happy youth to the coming generation, general
welfare for the people, and the greatest possible freedom for the individ¬
ual! That we as homosexuals see our most distinguished vocation in this:
to sacrifice our strength for others, to propagate in others our ideas and our
personality, and to set ourselves happily at work for the greatest goals of
our time, for whose realization all the nations are now struggling!
If we do this, if we join together —men and women, young and old —
then we also cannot fail to attain success! We must strike out on the path
consciously and forcefully! We must draw the educated classes of the
whole world to our side! We must overcome the reaction! The clergy-
ridden management through our withdrawal from the Lutheran church; the
police command and the bureaucracy through supporting the Social Dem¬
ocrats.
If we do that, then we will finally cease to be considered as pariahs!
Original: “Homosexualitat und Reaktion,” Extrapost des Eigenen, 1911,

pp. 11-20.
NOTES
1. [This article penalized the distribution of so-called obscene writings and

images that violated, according to the law, the current feelings of shame and
morality. Because of the pictures and photographs of nude males in Der Eigene
Brand often had to defend himself against accusations that he was publishing
pornography; he claimed that his publications were a matter of culture and art.
HO]
2. [Already in 1898 the leader of the German Social Democratic party, August
Bebel, argued in the German parliament in favor of the repeal of §175. However,
this does not mean that the attitude of the socialists towards homosexuality was
very positive; on the whole they considered it to be an illness and a miserable
product of aristocratic and bourgeois decadence. HO]
3. [The Center was a Catholic political party. HO]
4. [Brand is referring to the policy of Hirschfeld’s Committee, which, ironi¬
cally, had much more Social-Democratic leanings than Brand’s Gemeinschaft.
HO]
Eros in the German Youth Movement
St. Ch. Waldecke
Jean Paul: “I prize childhood and age, but a youth is the highest.
The love of a youth is the poetry of love, spirit and love are one.”
About 25 years ago that impulse began to take effect that led to what is
called today the German youth movement. And 25 years ago, almost at
the same time, likewise was renewed that conscious recognition of the
significance of eros between males, not only for the personal life of the
individual, but also for the whole and for culture altogether. Only little by
little and after a long struggle were both currents broadened, and thus
arrived at that multiplicity that is the sign of life. It is hardly more than ten
years since the appearance of Hans Bluher’s Wandervogel books. How
difficult it was at that time, even for the “more educated,” to see in what
close connection the upswing of youth and the recognition of the signifi¬
cance of love of friends stood. Particularly hindering this was the fact (and
it is still so for many) that a part of the biological researchers of eros
between males, who understand absolutely nothing of sociology and psy¬
chology, have confused the picture and made it one-sided, thanks to the
great propaganda that was not available to the others, so that it appeared
before the public distorted and falsified. Thus “one” could dare to doubt
Bluher’s perceptions and charge him with heresy. That would no longer
be possible today. It is no longer necessary today to collect personal mate¬
rial. So many published documents exist today from all camps of the
youth movement that doubt about the fact can no longer arise. . . .
Let us first seek to become clear about what the youth movement really
is and what its essence consists of. Efforts of adults to rear the youth to be
exactly the splendid people that the older generation flattered itself to be
have long existed: Christian youth unions, patriotic athletic clubs, social¬
ist party machines for youth. All that has, of course, nothing to do with
the youth movement, is an affair of adults — it could be called —and has
been called —“youth social work.” The youth movement springs from
itself, is autonomous, has nothing at all to do with setting rational goals
199
that come from outside; it began spontaneously to run its course on its own
and it does so to the present day. . . .
But all circles that truly arose on their own and are still living indepen¬
dently or have gone down in honor —the real German youth movement —
are distinguished by one thing in common, are bound by one thing, no
matter in what wrapping or under what goal it may be hidden: the rejection
of the rational, the inclination toward the irrational. The rejection of the
rational expresses itself, for example, in such diverse facts as the aversion
to coercive institutions, in the fight against the norms of bourgeois moral¬
ity, in turning away from every materialism that allegedly explains things
“rationally” and likewise from logically constructed idealism, in the re¬
jection of political machinery, such as formal democracy has made its
own, in the emphasis on the sovereignty of one’s own “I,” in the attempt
to remain in harmony with the great laws of nature (Tao), in the recogni¬
tion of the significance of erotic elements as the principal natural connect¬
ing link between people, which all rational considerations are unable to
assist, which every force can only harm. The inclination toward the irra¬
tional is further attested through the knowledge of the “reason of love”
(Nietzsche), the “body-soul” (Kurella), through the inclination to the aris¬
tocratic in the narrowest sense of the word (Nietzsche, George, Bliiher), is
attested through the names and works of the great men in whom the youth
movement feels its blood pulse, e.g., Holderlin, Nietzsche, George;
through the turning to the Gothic, to the native and Nordic romanticism,
to so-called “folk art,” to the “magical” mysticism of a Novalis, to the
knowledge that cadence is only superficial and rhythm is the secret of
blood and art; that quantity is nothing, quality all; that one has learned to
go hungry bodily and can endure deprivations; that one can do without
small things for the sake of his great intensities; that one is “religious” in
that “nihilistic” sense (Fiedler) that stands beyond the laws of church and
morality, which arises from something instinctive. . . .
The basic motive for all these in part so diverse phenomena within the
youth movement is that “irrational rhythm” (Tepp). Not to be explained
by reason is the fact that youth, which so strictly insisted and insists on its
own evaluation of personality, was constantly so ready to give itself to
every social ideal. It earlier had an inclination to individual handiwork and
to settling in a small circle, rejected the rule of the machine, of heavy
industry and capital. It raised individualist demands in an infinitely
stronger measure than the previous generation —and yet wanted to have a
social effect. A logical error? Indeed, an error in logic, but not in the
erotic. One miracle exists, and here power and grace are only two sides of
St. Ch. Waldecke 201
one being. That is eros. Nothing is more personal than eros. Nothing is
more strongly bound to what is most characteristic of us. Eros is precisely
our individuality. And this, which is something egoistic as far as we are
concerned, has an altruistic effect. Here we have the great polar secret.
The one thing that is the source of the polarity and therefore of this world
too is something irrational, and that is now named —eros —since the erotic
is most deeply identical with it. We now recognize what brought about
that contradiction (individualism —socialism), which is no contradiction
before “god” (eros). To “blame” is that inclination of our youth move¬
ment to this irrational, which under the banner, under the image, under
the meaning appears as eros. What is to be wondered at here? Is it not
obvious that precisely the youth consciously began to create from this
eros? Those people who have been designated as the “second age class”
(Heinrich Schurtz), viewed sociologically as the most important part of
the population, among the so-called “primitive peoples” are the chief
bearers of eros between males and with it the bearers of society altogether.
Those young men, who, as everywhere, even in our own forebears, the
Gothic Germans, for example, or on the Viking expeditions, were joined
together in love bonds. Let us now, however, look for the significance of
eros in the youth movement in particular! . . .
We distinguish from the beginning four large camps in the youth move¬
ment: the proletarian, the Christian, the Free German, and the Young
German. Let us consider them in this sequence! In the proletarian youth
movement prevail, to be sure, the most diverse currents: the individual
Marxist parties have their followers, then there are outsiders and those of
an anarchist orientation. It is to be assumed from the beginning that the
last-named are not inimically opposed to eros. If they were, then they
would just be representatives of a commonly valid morality, something
that the concept of anarchism completely contradicts. In fact, I never en¬
countered opposition in circles of anarchist youth when I lectured on
Friedlander’s or Bliiher’s views on eros. By the way, it is hardly possible
to draw a boundary between the “Free Germans” and the “anarchists.”
The Marxist circles of the proletarian youth movements are conceivably
the most unfavorable for the significance of eros between males; they have
mostly not come about spontaneously, but mainly have developed out of
the “organizations” founded by the adults “for” the youth by a decision
of the “party congress.” It’s the worst here with the communists, who
have completely swallowed the regulations of Moscow. They stand inimi¬
cally opposed to efforts at self-education. They await everything from the
“class struggle” and find themselves in opposition to the older generation
in hardly anything. Their doctrinaire, rational attitude is as un-youthful as

possible, as un-youthful as Marxism itself. It has also been the proletarian
youth who made impossible every approach to the Free Germans, among
others, however much they were importuned. . . . Not even the slogan
“class struggle of youth,” to which the Free Germans were willing to
agree, satisfied the representatives of the proletarian youth, who sought to
compel the Free Germans to recognize the proletarian class struggle as the
struggle of youth. That, of course, was for most of them impossible, and
with reason, since the Free Germans were by no means bourgeois, but
were unwilling to be doctrinaire. . . . The best and most appropriate criti¬
cal judge of the proletarian youth movement is Curt Bondy, whose 1922
work on “The Proletarian Youth Movement in Germany” was published
by A. Saal (Lauenburg). He sees the most important difference between
the proletarian youth movement and the others in the fact that in the case
of the first the political type of leader predominates, in the others the
pedagogical. That is also sufficiently characteristic for the matter of eros.
Bondy believes he has noticed that the eros between males in the proletar¬
ian youth movement plays only a subordinate role, which he attributes to
the fact that here the ideology of equality of the sexes (Bebel’s stupid book
on woman and socialism) plays an important role; further, that the fixation
of the libido of the young proletarian on a determinate subject comes in
considerably earlier through the two sexes being constantly together. I
doubt that and would rather grant more room to the idea of Bliiher about
the connection of eros with the “protogenic race.” Certainly the fact is,
even in the proletarian movement, that girls play not the slightest intellec¬
tual role in it. . . . My personal experiences, collected in Berlin and Ham¬
burg, are to the effect that eros between males is not at all tabu, but rather
plays a somewhat more secret role only because of the constant surveil¬
lance by the girls.
The Christian youth movement is —this was already presented by me —
like the proletarian, for the most part more youth social work than youth
movement. . . .
The oldest part, and the most rich in diversity, of the German youth
movement is the Free German movement. It dates from the meeting in the
Meitner Mountains in 1913; its most essential forerunner is the Wander-
vogel movement. What importance love of friends played in it was suffi¬
ciently shown already ten years ago by Bliiher in his three-volume work
on the Wandervvgei, he even dared designate this movement as such as an
“erotic phenomenon.” . . .
The second important circle that flowed into the Free German move-
ment was that of the free school communities, in the first place Wickers-
dorf with its founder Dr. Gustav Wyneken. . . . Wyneken always
drew attention to the significance of eros between males for pedagogy.
. . . His most important writing is not his Eros book, but rather the bro¬
chure Wickersdorf, which appeared in 1922 from the same publishing
house (A. Saal). My visit to this “Viking foundation” showed me more
than anything else the importance of that place, of that “unique experi¬
ence. Theoretically, Wyneken is an adherent of coeducation; practical
experience in Wickersdorf showed him certainly that it is unsuccessful.
The boys suffer under it. The 16- to 18-year-old youths, when Wyneken
asked them whether the girls should stay in the community, unanimously
wanted them to go away! Wyneken writes (his “school” is established
entirely on eros) the following: “The most serious and strongest friend¬
ships that 1 was able to observe were always those between teacher and
pupil. It is indeed no longer a secret that we have no other phenomenon
before us here but that which Plato described in the Symposium and Phae-
drus, and that a troop of boys and youths bound to their leader through the
platonic eros can become the innermost and liveliest core of the sacred
order of youth, which the free school community wants to be. Out of such
an eros grew the courage and desire for its foundation, out of such an eros
the creative strength of its first upswing. And if Wickersdorf only made it
possible that such a sacred, beautiful, and enthusiastic bond of love could
blossom amidst our cold and dull world —it would have already justified
its existence as the mere shell around that noble, living core. May eros
never abandon it-there is no better blessing for Wickersdorf” (pp. 58-
59). . . .
In those strict, self-responsible circles of the youth movement they are
very serious about pedagogical eros. Their most important publisher is
“The White Knight Publishing House” (Berlin), which publishes the best
current paper of the youth movement, Der Weifie Ritter (The White
Knight). There one stands toward eros possibly more positively than else¬
where. . . . Eros as the connecting link of the high order is, in those
circles, often and gladly called the “Grail,” a symbol that seems to me
almost even more beautiful than the symbolic word eros. With reason
no. 6 (1921) of Der Weifie Ritter (“Mission”) says: “The young men
(between 20 and 30) of a nation are the class in which the nation really
lives.” Admittedly the primitive peoples appear to make better use of that
than we do. They absolutely hold to an erotically conditioned disciple-
ship. Holderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche were shattered, as we read, because
they lacked it. Jesus had his John. “The painters of the Renaissance lived
their demonic lives and Shakespeare wrote his dramas without blowing up
or being cut down. Why? Everyone who knows Shakespeare’s sonnets
and the social culture of humanistic Italy knows why.” “This force is
eros.” “Nothing, however, shows the spiritual poverty of contemporary
man stronger than the rarity of deep friendships.” . . . “On the other
hand, the primal emotional relationships, which still bestowed such bril¬
liance at the time of our classic writers, are vanishingly small in number.”
In the circles of those “new pathfinders” the sensual is to be controlled by
the spiritual. Not in the sultry atmosphere of ballrooms or banqueting
halls, but rather in open nature do they spend their most sacred hours with
one another. The common life of boy-unions, however, allows the deepest
friend-relationships to arise, which, on their part —like the love for a
girl —have the moment of longing as the most essential distinguishing
mark. Eros binds every age level, from the mature man to the just awaken¬
ing boy, and conjures up a wealth of spiritual value previously un¬
known.” . . .
I wish to close this chapter with a paragraph from the article “Return of
the Youth” by Carl Werckshagen (1923, vol. 4, no. 2), which is entirely
characteristic and correct: “A close association is not made. Where it
arises, it is a matter of an event in the happening of nature, where a fateful
meeting between boy and leader releases a fruitful, creative moment. You
meet a man, a glance of his eye touches you, you have become his prop¬
erty. You know nothing more of your old gods, you give yourself entirely
to him. He chooses you above the others, lavishes the force of his love on
you, forms your life anew. He sets you into reality, he gives you firm
measures and bases, he awakens in you the still hidden, undiscovered
vibrations, the still slumbering rhythm of your own law of life. Once
again: such a close association cannot be forced.” . . .
We have seen what tremendous significance belongs to eros in the
youth movement. There has been hard fighting over it, a sign that it was
strong, could not be hushed up. Eros is something natural to the youth
movement in its most essential part, which has not only a personal, but
rather an eminent social significance. We have seen a complete with¬
drawal of almost the whole of youth from that long overtaken and never
correct attitude toward eros between males, which coined for itself the
catchword “homosexual” and experiences its ridiculous culmination in
the “Scientific Humanitarian Committee.” Within the youth movement
one knows . . . that true pedagogy is not possible without that eros, one
knows that it is the natural basis of the community life of people, on which
their sociability rests, it is a spirit springing forth from the body, one
knows it as the ultimate basis of religion and as the source also of every
artistic creative force. . . .
Never since the days of German romanticism, now over a century ago,
has a psychic attitude of the Germans had an effect abroad. We always
only receive and then build on it. For the first time the German youth
movement goes further, lighting a sacred fire, over the borders as in the
time of romanticism and like then on the strength of this eros. Listen to
only one example. The Polish section of the “World Pathfinder Move¬
ment” carries in its constitution the statement: “As the only path that
leads to those bright goals of life, true and firm community action in the
love of friend and life is chosen! In our union we have no levels of rank.
Our leaders are those who are appointed by the hearts of their younger
brothers.” The hymn of young fascist Italy is called “Giovinezza” —
youth!
In the hands of the “noblest and best” from this German youth move¬
ment will lie in a few years the destiny of a new Germany, and with it the
destiny of the external treatment of eros between males. In it alone lies all
hope also in this connection. Never will the question of the recognition of
love of friends be solved otherwise. This youth faces it sincerely and
sympathetically, it correctly rejects its sick outgrowths. It repudiates the
rotten, the pathological. It repudiates the institutions of the past. It wants
an organic growth in their place. It does not stand with Dr. M. Hirschfeld
or even with ridiculous demagogues. It stands with Bliiher and Wyneken,
Zeidler and Werckshagen, Tepp and Klatt, with Uhde and Hesse, goes
with Nietzsche, George, and Hblderlin. If Der Eigene withdraws just as
energetically as this youth from the dead and half-dead, from the eternally
unreachable and the obstructive, then the youth will also be with it.1 What
an alliance that would be! This youth (naturally never the whole), its best,
whose writings, for example, I have quoted; which has a tragic concept of
life in the sense of Nietzsche; which gained a heroic attitude in the sense
of Spengler; which is anti-formal because it possesses style; which is ab¬
stinent, not from force, but from joy; which is not torn by longing, but
rather feels with the body; which can again be chaste; which is no longer
inimical to life, but rather overcomes life, in that it surpasses it on its own
(Jean Paul); which knows no more class opposition, because it lived as
poor as Job and yet was rich in spirit; which wandered and saw the world
and educated itself; which had a manly sensitivity again after a century of
demagoguery, feminism, mechanism, and brutality; which is not lost in
sweet daydreams, since it belongs to austere eros; which is the destiny of
Europe.
Original: “Der Eros in der deutschen Jugendbewegung,” Der Eigene,

1925, no. 3, pp. 107-126.
NOTE
1. Der Eigene effected this meaningful and clear separation already in October
1899, when no one else had the courage to withdraw from the foolish theories of
medical science, which have hoodwinked the sensation-hungry mass of the people
with books about the “Urning” and “Berlin’s third sex” and are sadly guilty of
the fact that even in the heads of educated people such entirely false, completely
distorted and eccentric representations of the nature and significance of love of
friends have arisen, as have never before been present in the German people. The
critical essay, which Der Eigene published at that time and which unfortunately
was so long suppressed and passed over in silence by friend and foe, not only
made a clean sweep of the sham homosexual enlightenment, but also attained
lasting value in that, for the whole train of thought of the succeeding writers,
whom Waldecke quoted above, it established already 25 years ago, on the largest
scale and in the most far-sighted way, the firm and unshakable foundation on
which they only needed to build further. It is entitled: “The Ethical-Political Sig¬
nificance of Lieblingminne.” And Elisar von Kupffer, its deserving author, was
thus the first pioneer to find the right path to the sanctuary of eros and into the
heart of manly youth. A youth that indeed offered their manly heroes from the
history of war and culture an enthusiastic love, since the fire of noble friendship
and bold noble-mindedness lives eternally and daily inflames again and again a
thousand young hearts, but a youth that naturally feels only anger and disgust
toward Hirschfeld’s “heroes in uranian petticoats.”
Whoever wishes to enlighten himself further about these things may be di¬
rected also to the small writing of Dr. Pfeiffer, which will appear in the near
future, “Male Heroism and Comrade-Love in War,” which thoroughly puts an
end to the medically falsified picture of the lives and characters of our great lead¬
ers and also, for its part, should restore order in their minds.
Adolf Brand
Male and Female Culture:
A Causal-Historical View
PREFACE
The causal connections of history belong to the most difficult objects of

research. If one poses the question of why the development of a nation in
the course of millennia took precisely that path and not another, then one
comes upon, not one cause, but rather a number of causal moments; and
further investigation shows that many of the individual causes are again
causally connected among themselves, and indeed not rarely according to
the scheme of reciprocal action. ... It therefore often depends on the
standpoint of the observer which of the individual causes appear to him as
primary and thus as the most important. It cannot be denied that the in¬
crease of female influence is a result of further cultural conditions; on the
other hand, however, it is certain that the increase of female influence
must react upon precisely those cultural conditions. To some extent one
has to do with a network of causal connections, in that the threads of cause
and effect are bound in many places with other causal series. All these
threads, to be sure, finally run together in a so-to-speak fan-shaped way to
two points: inherited racial disposition and natural surroundings. . . .
Now, as far as the national history is concerned, we may —indeed we
must —keep in mind that a constantly repeated reference to . . . disposition
says very little. If one nevertheless separates out from the later causal
network one of the threads, then he may not forget that he holds precisely
only one of the threads in his hand, and that there are a great number of
other causal series. If one emphasizes from the beginning and never for¬
gets these limitations, which are as self-evident as they are necessary and
which from our opponents’ side could with right be held against us, then it
is instructive to pursue the train of thought indicated in the title of this
essay and to investigate in what way the cultural development of a nation
is influenced by the position that it holds toward the female sex.
The woman’s question in the widest sense —the position of the whole
207
female sex in social life and community, family, and state —is the most
important of all social questions. Through its ranking is determined
whether the male or the female characteristics and peculiarities of thought
are to be decisive. And from this depends the history and destiny of na¬
tions in the most diverse directions.
Even the economic-social question of the present, although it appears to
us to be the most pressing at the moment, stands in basic importance
behind the woman’s question in this its widest sense; for our half-slavery
of wage labor is historically, geographically, and ethnologically much
more narrowly limited. The answer that the nations finally give to the
economic-social Sphinx will also be essentially diverse, according to the
degree to which the individual nations think, feel, and act in a masculine
way, or have fallen to social gynecocracy and its consequences.
The naive mind and untrained understanding overestimates sudden
changes and their occasions and underestimates or overlooks the slowly
and constantly working basic causes. A volcanic eruption makes more
impression than the secular rise and fall of the continents or the continuous
building up of sediment on the ocean floor. And yet these processes —
slow, but extended over a long stretch of space and time —are more conse¬
quential and far-reaching than even the greatest among the catastrophic
events.
The position and influence of women in the whole life of nations resem¬
bles those geological causes that, piling up grain on grain, or slowly rising
inch by inch, are invisible to the naked eye and yet, with time, dig out
oceans, pile up mountains, and are more decisive than all earthquakes and
convulsions. Indeed, in the history of the earth as in the history of nations
almost all catastrophes are truly only occasions for the release of slowly
and constantly working basic causes. Presumably the origin of volcanic
fields is prepared for millennia through the secular sinking of strata, and
revolutions in the life of nations are the result of social tensions that, as a
consequence of injustice, mismanagement, and general corruption, have
grown for generations before they come to a break. But what are the
causes of injustice, mismanagement, and corruption? Why were they not
recognized in time, removed, or ameliorated?
Modern sophists say that man is the product of relations, especially
economic relations or, to speak in Marxist jargon, “modes of produc¬
tion.” And in this we forget the evident truth that social conditions, the
modes of production —or, in plain language, property rights, morality,
and law-are the most characteristic work of our ancestors and ourselves.
The lack of freedom of the will may nevertheless be a necessary philo-
sophical axiom; lack of reflection and weakness of will are, however,

certainly avoidable.1 Precisely the deceptive image of that one-sided,
falsely so-called materialist conception of history cripples the consciously
creative will, both on the side of the state and on that of reform or even
revolution, since the mendacious lullaby is sung to us that all our thoughts
and deeds are in vain and all history only the fatal result of mechanically
operating relations.
The average position of woman influences in every moment and at
every time the ways of thinking and feeling of the crowd. And as small as
this influence may be in each single case, as powerful and decisive it must
yet turn out to be in its total effect in time. For the individual effects add
and multiply, since they stretch out over all individuals and sum up
through the centuries.
Only he could find fault with this conclusion, who attacks its premises
by listening to the foolish modern assertion about the original and essen¬
tial equality or “equal worth” of the sexes in things intellectual and
moral, and is in a like manner inaccessible to the facts of cultural history.
At all times and among all nations all the outstanding works of science,
art, literature, technology, and legislation have been exclusively the work
of the male sex. There was nowhere anything like a female Phidias, Gali¬
leo, Shakespeare, Archimedes, or Solon. . . . And what cultural history
shows for the intellectual elite, that the unprejudiced eye teaches for the
everyday average.
Granted, whoever dares today in Europe or certainly in North America
to speak about the intellectual and moral differences between the average
of men and of women impartially and objectively is accused of woman-
hating or contempt of women. But that is only a further proof that we have
covered a considerable distance on the path to gynecocracy. In the terri¬
tory of the tyrant one is not allowed to speak of the fact of tyranny nor
truthfully talk about the characteristics of the tyrant, without being ac¬
cused of highly treasonable views. Since when then does the expressed
and well-founded denial of equal regard mean the same as disregard?
What responsible person regards children in all respects equal to adults? Is
he therefore disregarding of children?
An exhaustive and completely objective presentation of the fundamen¬
tal differences between man and woman in the intellectual field is still
lacking, despite a beginning toward it by Schopenhauer.2 The ancients had
a more unprejudiced evaluation of those differences. No one doubted that
the male sex on average was the more intelligent, wise, and just; no one
thought it necessary to set this out in detail and furnish evidence for it,
since no one doubted or disputed it.
In our time, however, one tends to either deny the differences, pretend¬
ing that they are merely the results of rearing, or to obscure them with
empty phrases of all kinds. That is considered progressive. Naturally:
when things are declining, every step downhill is progress.
The lingering medieval veneration of ladies and the modern fanaticism
for equality, which pretends that all people, no matter what race or which
sex, are “equal” or “of equal worth,” have combined with one another
to give birth to and rear the greatest and, in its consequences, the most
fateful foolishness of our era. “Equality for everything that bears a human
countenance!” Why not rather equality for everything that has a mamma¬
lian structure?
Justice does not consist in wanting to make equal those who are unequal
by nature. On the contrary, this attempt is an unjust injury to the one who
stands higher by nature, and it is therefore also a moral, intellectual, and
material harm to the whole. Justice and blessed wisdom consist much
more in the certainly difficult and responsible task of granting the unequal
person a position suitable to his inequality, neither too high nor too low.
For this reason the woman’s question is in fact a problem for which,
corresponding to its difficulty, the development up to now in the various
nations has produced many-sided attempts at a solution and abortive solu¬
tions. Woman is by far the highest standing being on earth —after man, of
course; but how great and how constituted, then, are the average differ¬
ences between the two, and what is therefore the most just and, for the
nation, advantageous position of woman?
Those average differences between man and woman that appear to me
to be the most important for the whole of national life are the following:
First, woman is a bit more inclined to luxury. Second, she is more intent
on externals, i.e., in the more general sense of the word, a few degrees
more vain. And third, she is several degrees more uncritical and therefore
more open than man to superstition in the word’s widest sense, that is, to
belief in unproven and unprovable statements. Finally, however, woman
is on the average anti-ingenious, so to speak, or as Schopenhauer ex¬
pressed it, women are above all incorrigible Philistines. These differences
touch, I repeat, only the average. If, however, one wishes to suppose
besides that they are rather small-since indeed an exact measure for in¬
clination to luxury, vanity, credulity, and genius is lacking-our reflec¬
tion still shows that they, according to the influence of women in social
life, society, marriage, and state in the various nations, must through mul¬
tiplication by the number of individuals and through addition in the course
of the centuries effect the greatest differences in civilization. Namely, the
third point above is of great importance and above all that which is the
most immediately understandable to the public. Hardly anyone among us
wishes to deny woman’s need to believe, which is on the average greater,
credulous, and uncritical. A glance at the audience in the churches of the
various confessions proves it. Uncounted men who have long stripped off
belief in the church would also externally, officially, and monetarily turn
their backs on the church community, if they were not held back by con¬
sideration for their female appendages. Through this is promoted, first
religious hypocrisy, and then hypocrisy in various fields, especially also
in that of so-called sexual morality.
But not only is the tottering old belief artificially propped up through
the influence of the female sex, but also the newly emerging forms of
superstition. Here I am thinking less of modern exorcisms, faith-healing,
and the like (although here too, of course, women are in first place), but
rather of the so to speak economic superstitions; not of socialism, but
certainly of its authoritarian-Marxist caricature. Honest Proudhon even
declared that he would drive wife and daughter from the house if he lived
to see the introduction of the vote for women. But the Marxist-corrupted
Social Democracy is working, all the more the longer, with the influence
of women, and has its good, or rather bad reasons for it. It is no accident,
but rather only too understandable, if in Germany Marxism —and before
long the Center Party1 —is directly promoting it or anyway not quite ad¬
verse to it. Indeed: the red and the black priests!
Every party, group, or movement that supports itself by a false author¬
ity and would-be science, that is, let us say in short, every bit of clerical¬
ism, will quite instinctively draw in the female sex as helper and seek to
increase her influence.
What sense would, for example, the demand for the right of women to
vote have, if one seriously and honestly believed in the equal political
understanding of women? There would then obviously be expected only a
doubling of the votes, the relative strength of the parties would remain the
same and thus everything would be as before. Precisely under the un¬
voiced but all too correct assumption that the female understanding is
different would the extremes of the gynecocratic velleity, that is, by the
granting of political rights, have a different result than that of the highly
unnecessary redoubling of the voting efforts. In fact, one quite correctly
suspects that the increase of the so-called — and not without right — herd of
voters by an equal amount of—excuse the expression —voting cows
would predominantly benefit those parties that at any given time presume
a lack of critical thinking in the highest degree and that are the most
authoritarian-illiberal —with us at the moment Marxist state-communism,
which makes mere subordinate civil servants of the majority of mankind,

and the Center, which wants to re-establish the rule of the church.
Of the many and manifold cultural problems connected with the wom¬
an’s question will be sketched here only one, and indeed that one which is
the easiest and quickest to make understandable. The inner connection
between clerical power and the influence of women may certainly be
shown in the cultural history of fairly all nations and times. This connec¬
tion is not invalidated by certain rare and exceptional circumstances in
which a priesthood or a deceiving caste can do without female influence.
Only one has to hold all concepts, especially those of superstition and of a
caste living from intellectual deceit, widely enough and strictly collec¬
tively. In the application to individual personal examples there would very
often be an injustice. No cause has ever been so bad that a considerable
number of honest elements were not attached to it, who themselves be¬
longed in a much higher degree to the deceived than to the deceivers.
Indeed, a historical mass knavery must necessarily bear such a deceptive
character that even respectable persons, who only do not see sharply
enough, can join as active participants; for otherwise the fraudulent move¬
ment would gain no mass of adherents and no power. Much belief, a bit of
luxury and vanity baiting, and a sufficient dose of lack of critical thought —
that yields the right mixture and is the most suitable marriage with the
female influence. One should form a broad concept of “clericalism” and
of the caste of intellectual deceivers, however, for the reason that the form
changes and the matter remains. Whether someone promises, like the
church of the early Middle Ages, a paradise above the clouds or, like the
present Marxism, the kingdom of heaven on earth-that basically
amounts to little difference. And whether someone uses, like the Egyptian
priests, bits of genuine knowledge in order to deceive the crowd, or
whether he stifles everything freer and better, as is done in an increasing
degree by the modern economists, a caste through the formation of cliques
and nepotism, to maintain their sources of income and their reputation,
which in many areas of knowledge is already completely empty —that is
all more a difference of form than of substance.
After this introduction the following summary will be of some use.
Almost every point indicated there as, so to speak, chapter title demands
and invites explanation and illustration. But even without them many peo¬
ple will be able to learn many things.
Keep in mind that in the framework of a provisional, programmatic
brochure an exhaustive instruction is difficult and mostly only an initiative
is possible.
Benedict Friedldnder 213
SYNOPSIS OF SOME CHARACTERISTICS

OF PERIODS OF PREDOMINANTLY MALE
AND PREDOMINANTLY FEMALE CULTURE
Male Culture Female Culture
1. There exists unambiguous supremacy of man

in public opinion, in marriage, in morals, and
often also in the form of the law. The position
of woman is just, i.e., in relation to her
intellectual and moral characteristics, in
some cases even lower than just. Polygamy is
often legalized or at any rate tolerated through
the definition of adultery.
Gradual inclination to folly, the position of woman

equal or superior to that of man. Equal position or
privileged in marriage. Strict monogamy, at least ac¬
cording to law, polygamy never recognized. In ex¬
treme cases polyandry sometimes exists. (Celtic an¬
cient Britain. Modern Tibet. Both lands at the same
time badly priest-ridden. Compare Nr. 2.)
2. The groups or castes that live from

intellectual deceit find little support in the
small influence of women. The power of the
priests or other kinds of clericalism is small.
The castes that live on the authority of belief suc¬

cessfully use the powerful influence of the credulous
sex. Priestly power great.
3. Correct estimation of woman as spouse,

housewife, and mother.
Exaggerated superstitious veneration of woman as a

being equal by birth in every respect, in extreme cases
as superior.
4. The characteristic ideal of woman,

therefore, that of spouse, housewife, and mother.
The characteristic ideal of woman that of lady or

scholar.
5. Women play a subordinate role in society.
Women play an important role in society, in ex¬

treme cases the principal role.
6. Wealth little respected.
Wealth highly respected; something already em¬

phasized by Aristotle.
7. The classes that produce and accumulate

wealth little respected.
The classes that produce and accumulate wealth

highly respected.
8. Small danger of a plutocracy.
Danger of a plutocracy very great.
9. As a consequence of 6 and 8, the danger of

corruption small.
The danger of a gripping and consuming corruption

great.
10. Social splitting into embittered classes

inimical to each other hardly threatens, and if
it sometimes happens, reconciliation on an
equitable basis possible.
National danger of social splitting near at hand. The

corruption on both sides hinders a reconciliation on a
basis equitable to the two parties.
11. Heroic national defensive wars against

overpowering attackers.
Predatory and exploitative wars against powerless

nations with the goal of enriching the plutocracy.
12. Masculine morality. Esteem for sincerity

and justice.
Esteem of a female philanthropy, a hypocritical

pity, and a falsely understood humaneness.
13. Sexual candor and openness.
Sexual hypocrisy and prudery.
14. National art of an original kind, which

participates in the intimate, living part of
the people.
Private art of luxury and show, predominantly imi¬

tative.
15. Esteem for the beauty of youths.
Woman considered the beautiful sex.
16. Same-sex intercourse of men tolerated.

The more spiritualized relationships, bordering
on it, at times positively recognized.
Same-sex intercourse prohibited. In extreme cases

of feminized culture, threatened with legal punish¬
ment, whereby it is allowed at the same time in the
female sex.
17. High esteem and socially prominent role

of male friendship. Word and concept of love in
life and fiction applied to both sexes.
Male friendship stands very much behind woman-

love. Love monopoly of women in life and fiction.
18. Main model from antiquity Hellas before

and at its golden age.
Main model from antiquity apparently Egypt, as

well as Rome from the beginning of its downfall; yet
here more penetrating cultural studies are still re¬
quired.
19. Main modern example Japan (of the

half-civilized peoples apparently many
Muslim nations).
Main modern example the United States of Amer¬

ica. (Of half-civilized peoples apparently Tibet.)
20. Its war against Russia.
Its war in Spain.
21. Blossoming of the human sciences in close

union of teachers and pupils. The most capable
come to word and influence. The case of Socrates
is basically less bad than our trio Schopenhauer,
Robert Mayer, and Diihring.
Decay of the human sciences under the formation

of cliques and castes, propagated in the form of liter¬
ary as well as genuine nepotism, mainly through fe¬
male channels, which prevent the rise of independent-
honest thinkers.
22. Recognition, high position, and

encouragement of true genius.
Recognition, high position, and encouragement of

advanced narrow-mindedness and related careerism.
Original: Mdnnliche und weibliche Kultur: Eine kausalhistorische Be-

trachtung (Leipzig: “Deutscher Kampf’-Verlag, 1906).
NOTES
1. [As a social and political philosopher Friedlander was inspired by Henry

George and Eugen Diihring, who was attacked by Engels in his Anti-Duhring. In
1901 Friedlander published a book on socialism (Die vier Hauptrichtungen der
modemen sozialen Bewegung) in which he rejected Marxism and advocated a
form of socialism which respected individual freedom. HO]
2. [Friedlander is referring to Schopenhauer’s essay “Uber die Weiber,”
which was published in his most popular work, Parerga und Paralipomena
(1851). In this essay Schopenhauer spoke slightingly of women: according to him
they were subordinate to men because they were dominated totally by the sexual
instinct. Friedlander wrote an introduction to a reprint of this essay in which he
recommended Schopenhauer’s views. HO]
3. [The Center Party was the political party of the German Catholics. HO]
.
'
Seven Propositions
1. The white race is becoming ever sicker under the curse of Christian¬
ity, which is foreign to it and mostly harmful: That is the genuinely bad
“Jewish influence,” an opinion that has been proven true, especially
through the conditions in North America.
2. The people’s strength rests in the final analysis predominantly on the
unity, the social spirit, and the close union of fellow countrymen. Love of
the fatherland is much less love for the land of one’s father than for one’s
fellow countrymen. Since in a population of millions no one can know
everyone, everything depends on group associations. Kernel and source of
this social love, on which everything else rests, is physiological friend¬
ship, especially among young men as the flourishing bearers of the strong¬
est life-force. Prejudice and laws against so-called homosexuality (on
whose material forms there may be diverse judgments) are therefore so
extremely harmful, since they work against the systematic cultivation of
this physiological friendship. . . .
Physiological male friendship, not the family, is the foundation of the
human community, exactly as in the bee commonwealth physiological
friendship is among the females. The beasts of prey also have family
instincts. The family instincts are necessary for propagation, but without
the addition of physiological friendship never lead to the construction of
the state, as every tiger or vulture family proves. The family is necessary,
but it is not true that it is the foundation of the state or any larger human
society.
3. Every normal youth is more or less capable of physiological friend¬
ship; one must only cultivate it, instead of suppressing it. A certain degree
of “homosexuality” is consequently quite generally distributed and in
addition is necessary for the existence of nations.
4. The erotic and social pretension of women is the enemy; with it is
also often bound the tricks of a caste of priests or other deceivers, which
cunningly uses the influence of the Superstitious sex with its smaller and
simpler brain. A nation subject to these influences must degenerate in a
way that is ochlocratic, gynecocratic, and klepto-cratic, and get the worst
219
of it in the competition of nations. On the opposite of all this rested the

greatness of the Hellenes in their best, pre-Periclean period, in their vic¬
tory over the Persians, and on this rests —two and a half centuries later —
Japan’s victory over Russia.1 This is one of the few clearly recognizable
basic laws of the history of nations. The victories at Marathon and Muk¬
den, at Salamis and Tsushima may be traced back to the same causes.
5. Among people there are a number of men whose family instinct has
in varying degrees been weakened to the benefit of physiological friend¬
ship and the general social instinct; these men are, if they are otherwise
capable, the born educators of youth, legislators, and military leaders of
their people. They are of more benefit to the human community than if
they were to procreate dozens of children. For those who can see, history
is full of proof of this. Woe to the nation that does away with those men.
6. The condemnation of lust is a completely transparent trick of the
medieval priests. Naturally one has to respect here as everywhere the
rights of others, to be moderate for the sake of justice and for one’s own
sake.
7. The continuing misunderstanding of these truths must harm the entire
white race to the benefit of the yellow. Behind the 40 million Japanese
stand 400 million Chinese. It is questionable whether an effective spread¬
ing of these truths is still possible and thereby can halt the relative decline
of the white race. No time has ever lacked seers, but they were not lis¬
tened to.
Panta rhei [all things are in flux], to what goal and in which direction?
That is the insoluble problem of the world.
Written 14 June 1908.
Original: “14. Juni 1908,’’ in Die Liebe Platons im Lichte der modemen
Biologie (Treptow bei Berlin: Bernhard Zack, 1909), pp. 277-278.
NOTE
1. [Friedlander is referring to the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05. In that war

the Russian fleet was destroyed at Tsushima Strait by the navy of Japan. In Man¬
churia Japan also won the battle of Mukden. The outcome of this war caused a stir
in Europe because an upstart, nonwhite nation had defeated a European power.
Male Heroes
and Comrade-Love in War:
A Study and Collection of Materials
G. P. Pfeiffer
Physiological friendship as a normal drive of all men is clearly promi¬

nent as an essential factor in the formation of courage and strength of
character, willingness to sacrifice, and devotion to great goals in the his¬
tory of war of all periods. War and camaraderie are inseparable concepts.
A troop that is inspired by the spirit of camaraderie will always be more
than a match for another that lacks it or possesses it only in a small mea¬
sure.
Camaraderie should, of course, not stop before the higher ranks! On the
contrary! It should bind leaders and subordinates just as firmly as it forms
friendships among those of equal rank.
The Greeks and Romans clearly recognized this, since they were more
far-seeing and wiser than we are in this regard; they zealously promoted
friend-love, equivalent to camaraderie in our sense, among their soldiers.
In our time, too, the “cultivation of the spirit of camaraderie” is striven
for by all superiors, even if, in the modern “moralized and clericalized
century” (Benedict Friedlander, Renaissance des Eros Uranios), not with
the open courage of antiquity, which saw in the exercise of physiological
friendship a path on which the warrior can attain the highest and most
perfect development of his abilities!
Besides this spirit, which levels all differences and melts leaders and
followers into a whole, friendship plays an important role in all cam¬
paigns, since it allots an important task to the “male hero” [Mdnnerheld]
(according to Prof. G. Jager1 and Hans Bliiher). Through the force of his
attraction, which he exerts on young and old among his warriors, he can
obtain the greatest sacrifices, the most tremendous efforts, and thus the
most splendid successes. Or does anyone believe it accidental that so
221
many prominent generals loved, not woman, but rather the friend? Only
think of Epaminondas, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, le grand
Conde, Tilly (?), Karl XII, Eugene of Savoy, Friedrich the Great, Napo¬
leon (?), and the war heroes in tremendous abundance.
The ancients, as we said, quite consciously cultivated friend-love among
their soldiers in order to obtain the highest achievements! The historian of
the ancient heroes, Plutarch, says quite correctly: “Every lover had to
distinguish himself, both from a sense of honor, since he was fighting in
sight of his favorite, and from the deepest drive, since he was defending
his beloved; but the boys also emulated their lovers.” Epaminondas
stated: “Lovers and their beloved in rank and file so that they . . . became
witnesses of one another’s bravery or incompetence!”
Thus arose the Sacred Band of Thebes, which conquered the hitherto
invincible Sparta at Leuctra and Mantineia, and which later at Chaeronea
was slaughtered man for man by the Macedonians, since none was willing
to cowardly flee, to retreat, to bring himself alone into safety. Similar
relationships also existed in other Hellenic armies; it would lead too far to
name them all! Let us mention only Pericles, the ingenious strategist of
the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War, who besides Aspasia also had his
male favorite, and also the beautiful, much courted Alcibiades, to whom
even the wise Socrates dedicated enthusiastic praises of love, and who in
the same campaign won many a victory as a capable general!
Alexander the Great, who did not disdain the favor of women, had in
addition a series of youthful friends, comrades in arms, such as Bagoas,
Hephaestion, whose death he fervently mourned, and Clitus, who, drunk
at a sumptuous banquet, fell by Alexander’s own hand. What the king was
also able to ask from his warriors is likewise well known! No sacrifice was
too great for them if it meant accomplishing an unheard-of deed for their
young leader! For that he was-at least until the final years when the
Persian court ceremonies erected a barrier! - the comrade of every soldier
and shared with them all dangers, all sufferings of his mighty campaigns.
At the head of the phalanx the admired hero breaks through first into the
enemy s line of battle, inflaming all with his shining example; on the
march he shares all difficulties with them. In the Gedrosian desert, tor¬
mented by thirst, he disdains the refreshing drink, since it would have
sufficed for him alone; he wants to have no advantage over his comrades,
that genuine male hero! The first in battle, placing himself in need and
suffering equal with all the others! Therefore is he the admired and idol¬
ized favorite of all the soldiers, who follow him blindly into battle and
death!
G. P. Pfeiffer 223
Loyal friendships among his troops, mutual sacrifices of officers and

subordinates, loyal to the example of the royal hero, have been suffi¬
ciently reported by contemporary historians. . . .
We have passed briefly over antiquity, but most things from that time
are generally known; the high ethical disposition, which respected the
freedom of the personality and lay no chains or bonds on it, which sought
to bring all characteristics into harmonic flower, was the important ele¬
ment that produced the splendid culture of antiquity. That ethic quite con¬
sciously also preserved and cultivated physiological friendship in the mili¬
tary and the state, and its success proves it right! May we finally begin to
learn from that success!
II
That one cannot exterminate a universal basic human drive such as

physiological friendship, even if one fights against it with fire and sword,
is evident! If, therefore, we do not have so many facts from Teutonic
antiquity and the Middle Ages to report, the reason is simply that in a time
of absolute clericalism all emotions of that love had to be carefully hidden;
it was no longer allowed to enjoy the bright sunlight of universal respect
and admiration!
“Christianity gave eros poison to drink; it did not die from it, but it
degenerated into a vice!” was Nietzsche’s opinion. Or better: “it had to
hide itself shyly!”
When the Christian church first carefully stretched out its tentacles so as
to catch with its otherworldly, gloomy doctrine the free Teutons —the
worshipers of the sunny Baldur, the god of the joys of life — it still allowed
many a blossom of the ancient time to exist; one may still sing about
friend-love! The legends of the Teutonic heroes, who in part have their
roots in mythology, that is, in the highest ideals of the people, contain
numerous themes of camaraderie and male heroes in our sense. Here be¬
longs the wonderful loyalty between the Nibelung kings and the dark hero
Hagen, who has only one shining characteristic, his unconditional devo¬
tion to his lords, which is likewise returned by them, until death unites
them, since Gunther and his brothers refuse to rescue themselves through
the surrender of their man. Dietrich of Bern, too, is joined in the closest
bonds of friendship with his followers; in battle and need and victory they
stand together, the leader and his men inseparable. That loyalty forms the
foundation of the Teutonic commonwealth, is, therefore, a characteristic
that we do not need to be ashamed of, which precisely our national circles
should zealously cultivate! Joy in male beauty is not foreign to it. In those
legends the youthful beauty of a hero is frequently praised. When Dietrich
has killed the young Ecke in a duel, he mourns the death of the shining
hero. How touching is the relationship between the gray military com¬
mander Hildebrand and Dietrich, his favorite and ward! It is said of him:
“degano dechisto was er Deotriche.”

(“Of the heroes he was the dearest to Dietrich.”)
And how magnificently Hildebrand knew how to reward that love.

Similar is the relationship between Charlemagne or Arthur and their pala¬
dins, only that at least in the second circle of the legend woman-love also
plays a part, which is almost entirely lacking in Dietrich; those tales are
only about comrade-love and friend-love. . . .
Into the time of knighthood one sang and read those legends; their con¬
tent remained alive until deep into the period of unlimited clericalism.
And the extolled ideal was also still cultivated then. . . .
In the orders of knighthood friend-love was carefully cultivated in the
old way for education to the highest accomplishments in war and as ex¬
pression of an increased feeling for life. One thinks of the Knights Tem¬
plar and the Knights of Malta, who as lover and beloved fought together
for the Holy Sepulcher against the infidels, competing for the prize of the
highest bravery. . . .
In this connection may also be mentioned the bands of Muslims who
victoriously invaded the Occident, closely joined in physiological friend¬
ship, seeing in it a valuable factor in education for high accomplishments,
and the Japanese. The armies of the samurai, the ancient Japanese nobles,
were bound through the same inclination as the Sacred Band of Thebes. It
would carry us too far to speak in more detail about them. The indication
of the facts, which are documented through numerous literary references
must suffice!
Ill
Of the great military leaders of modern times who were genuine male
heroes we name first Karl XII of Sweden. Having come to the throne at
the age of sixteen, the young sovereign immediately saw himself threat¬
ened by a band of rapacious neighbors. With a small army loyally devoted
to him he went against them, beat them in a series of brilliant battles, and
G. P. Pfeiffer 225
from then on spent his entire life in constant fighting. He knew only two
joys of existence: war and camaraderie!
He never loves a woman, he drinks no drop of alcohol! A body of steel,
up to any exertions (one thinks only of his famous ride from Turkey to
Swedish Pomerania, 1600 km in 15 days!!!), he takes delight only in the
bliss that the male eros affords him. Friendship alone gives that singular
young king rapture and blissful intoxication! He constantly has his “Pa-
troclus” with him. One of his most trusted friends was the adventurous
nobleman Theodor von Neuhof, whose eventful life carried him as far as
the throne of Corsica. A Count Gorz, too, is named among the favorites of
the warlike sovereign. Young officers, noblemen, and cadets belong fur¬
ther to his comrades, with whom he celebrated blissful nights of love after
the battle and victory. Among them, in the joyous noise and the cheerful
lack of restraint of the camp, he feels at ease. The stiff ceremony of the
court is hated by him! A superman, doubtless! A brilliant intellect; known
in the history of war as an outstanding strategist and tactician! When one
views his almost wild, adventurous-romantic life, one is certainly unwill¬
ing to deny his manly characteristics! And yet this full-man loves not
woman, but rather his friends! And like him also lived the military leaders
who are described in the next section. Is anyone nonetheless still willing
to assert that the love for a friend is an “effeminate” (not female! In the
sense of Fliep, Weininger2 and others, who describe precisely the super¬
man as composed of male and female characteristics!), an effeminate, that
is, inferior, bad disposition of character?
To the greats of that time also belongs Czar Peter of Russia, who sought
to build up that barbaric land in the modern spirit; by the way, Karl XII
was his opponent in the battles of Narva and Poltava. As a young prince
he also had a love affair with a baker’s apprentice, whom he once saw in
the barrack-yard joking with the soldiers. He took him in, had him reared
and educated, and out of the little street peddler, who offered the pastry of
his master from house to house, became the well-known, all-powerful
Russian minister Menczikoff. As Peter’s adjutant Villebois chastely
hinted in his Memoirs, “an indecency not unusual (!) among the Russians
was not foreign to the relationship between Prince Peter and Menczi¬
koff!” The same Peter, whom history has rightly named “the Great,”
met on the battlefield afterwards the male hero Karl XII of Sweden.
Like Karl XII, Eugene of Savoy-, the petit abbe, was also an outstand¬
ing military leader and male hero! In France they made fun of him when
he reported for duty as a soldier: such little men with weakly bodies
should become clerics! A post as abbot was open to him, but no officer’s
position. Austria was at that time —as an exception!—wiser! Here in the
little man with the lean body they recognized the elevated, strong spirit!
And Eugene became one of the best known military leaders of the empire,
who led splendid victories against France, which had so ungratefully re¬
jected him, and against Turkey. Among others he loved the beautiful mar¬
grave Ludwig of Baden, who fell at his side near Belgrade. . . .
St. Ch. Waldecke has spoken sensitively about Napoleon in DerEigene
(vol. 9, no. 7). We refer the reader to that essay and permit ourselves to
add only a few remarks.
Waldecke emphasizes with full right that Napoleon, a “creative man”
who, like all supermen, is a mixture of male and female elements, has up
to now been falsely described. We know him from our school lessons and
from certain old German books only as the stern, merciless tyrant, who is
devoid of every human feeling. But how distorted, how false this picture
is! In truth Napoleon had a soft, feminine nature! . . .
Genuinely feminine in the great war hero is his pity toward the
wounded; what magnanimity he shows towards enemies, who treated him
so ungenerously, so ignobly, and basely! . . .
But how his soldiers also worshiped their “little corporal”! Like
Friedericus Rex he was for them “father and favorite, god and hero!” He
is almighty in their eyes. . . .
Seldom will one find more shining examples for the wonderful magic
that a genuine male hero such as Napoleon exercises on his companions
than the number of proofs of loyalty from this period that are in the pages
of history. But a male hero also knows how to awaken the right camarade¬
rie in his soldiers; for this, too, the Grande Armee furnishes us numerous
wonderful samples.. .. There one really recognizes the loyal camaraderie
that welded the Grande Armee into a compact mass, the close unity that
made their great deeds possible and from year to year allowed them to win
the brilliant victories. Just as the emperor himself, as an outstanding male
hero, exercised a wonderful magic on his associates, thereby making them
capable of the most beautiful deeds, so too did his warriors, through genu¬
ine comrade-love, become the “men of victory,” like the Thebans in the
Sacred Band inflaming and inspiring one another-in battle and victory,
need and death remaining loyally side by side and standing together for a
friendly glance, a word of praise from their beloved ruler, or for the love¬
liest reward, the cross of the Legion of Honor, which the emperor used to
personally pin on his brave men. . . .
G. P. Pfeiffer 227
IV
In conclusion a few relevant traits from the American Civil War may be
presented, and the author, who has been thoroughly occupied scientifi¬
cally with that campaign, may be pardoned if he goes into more detail here
or selects his examples with preference precisely from that chapter of
history, even though the war of 18663 or that of 1870-18714 could just as
well be brought in for comparison! But precisely the War of Secession,
unfortunately a much too little known part of modern history (for it offers
uncommonly much that is instructive and interesting in regard to politics,
strategy, tactics, cultural history etc.!), suggests a quantity of things for
our consideration. The German philistine, who falls for every, even the
simplest trick, knows only —or believes he knows! —that the southern
states of the union separated from the northern ones because they did not
want to give up slavery, whose abolition the northern provinces wanted. It
would lead us much too far to go into detail here about the causes and
motives of that four-year civil war. . . .
Through the secession of the southern provinces from the United States
of the North, whose real reason was not at all slavery or its abolition, there
arose a bloody civil war in which the southern states, which had consti¬
tuted themselves, in contrast to the Union, as the “Confederate States” of
North America, were victorious for a long time, until hunger and a lack of
war material allowed their diminished army to be overcome. In more than
one viewpoint a comparison with the World War may be found! In both
cases a numerically weaker commonwealth, but one inflamed by patrio¬
tism, defends itself against the superior opponent under leaders of genius,
until, not the victory in the field, but rather attrition through starvation and
need of all kinds bring about its collapse. And that lie, spread over the
whole world by our enemies in the World War, that Germany bears the
guilt for the bloodshed, is also found in the American Civil War, where
the press of the Union reported so long that it was fighting “for right and
civilization and progress” until one almost believed it (the German philis¬
tine believes it even today and writes it in his history books!), and yet the
truth of the matter is precisely the opposite! The southern states, the Con¬
federation, were fighting for home and hearth, for freedom and the right
to self-determination. But the Yankees inundated all countries with their
false reports. . . . After our experiences of 1914-1918, who believes the
Yankees, that they took up arms only from pure, noble motives? Just think
of Wilson and the deluge of empty words with which he flooded the world
and choked the truth under it!
But we cannot go into detail here about the causes of the war. That
fairy-tale book of old auntie Harriet Beecher Stowe, still circulated today
as children’s literature, touches the tear ducts of the philistines with its
sentimental story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Only a few, far-seeing statesmen
had the courage to side with the southern states. Bismarck belonged to
them, Napoleon III, and the leaders of English politics.
The army of the southern states was a genuine people’s army, in which
the factory manager stood next to the worker, the elegant plantation owner
next to the rough buffalo and bear hunter from Texas or Kentucky. The
soldiers selected their officers themselves; the only exceptions were the
generals of the brigades, divisions, and corps, who were named by the
government under the direction of the excellent statesman Jefferson
Davis. At the head of the army stood a line of genuine male heroes,
Robert Edward Lee, Beauregard, Jackson, Stuart, Longstreet and others!
The troops, however, were united by the true spirit of comrade-love, in¬
spired by devotion to the great cause, the fight for the freedom of the
homeland, firmly welded by mutual sacrifice and the unconditional belief
in their gifted commanding general Robert E. Lee. Two Prussian officers,
von Borcke and Scheibert, took up arms from enthusiasm for the Confed¬
eration and in their memoirs describe the great deeds of the army of the
rebellion (for the southern states were designated as “rebels” in the
Union!). How exemplary the conditions in the army of the southern states
were, is evident from, among other things, the fact that officers and men
were cared for equally! (Compare with this certain complaints of our sol¬
diers in the World War!) No officer was allowed to feast if the soldiers
were going hungry. Special treats, champagne, wine, delicacies, gifts
from the homeland to deserving generals, went to the infirmaries, follow¬
ing the example of the general-in-chief! In the hard battles the superiors
and subordinates loyally shared all dangers and difficulties. Mutual devo¬
tion and self-sacrifice are documented in numerous cases (by von Borcke
and Scheibert). Occasional feasts and holidays were celebrated together.
In the winter camp, for example, officers and soldiers together organized
great snowball fights! It is almost touching to read how General Jackson
(called Stonewall Jackson because he stood like a stone wall against the
impact of the enemy in the first battle of Bull Run!) was loved by his men.
Several examples follow! He usually wore an old, worn, spotted uniform
jacket. One day he was sent a new uniform decked with gold. When he
had put it on, the news immediately spread in the whole camp. The sol¬
diers streamed by in the hundreds to see the beloved leader in his finery.
He had to stand up at the noon meal to show himself to all sides, so that
his men could admire him, something that he did, self-conscious and un-
G. P. Pfeiffer 229
pretentious as he always was! Thundering hurrahs ended the little inter¬

mezzo, which H. v. Borcke described in a specially detailed way. Com¬
pare that now with the conduct of certain leaders of Germany in the World
War! The men of different corps often disputed over whose leader was the
best, the most capable, the most beloved by his men! When Stonewall
Jackson was fatally wounded in the so-called Wilderness, his subordinates
broke into tears! After the serious operation he lay in the infirmary by the
side of a quite young soldier. For half boys took up arms for the Confeder¬
ation; and it is likewise significant that general and soldier lay beside one
another in comradely fashion in the infirmary! Think of the diverse treat¬
ment of officers and subordinates among us in the World War! Jackson
noticed that his young neighbor was shivering from a fever. Softly, so as
to disturb no one, the mortally wounded man raised himself from his bed,
wrapped the boy in his own cover, and lay down again. On the next day
the heroic general died. This one trait speaks more than whole volumes for
the spirit that prevailed in the southern army.
Just as disconsolate for the Confederation as Jackson’s fall was also the
death of the cavalry general J. E. B. Stuart. The German officer Heros
von Borcke had been his chief of general staff; he reported in his memoirs
numerous beautiful traits from the life of that daring cavalry leader. . . .
As Borcke hurried to the deathbed of his superior and friend, who had
been mortally wounded in the defense of Richmond, the capital of the
rebellion, the war comrades, loudly sobbing, embraced one another and
kissed.
“My dear ‘Von’ (nickname of H. v. Borcke),’’ cried Stuart, “farewell!
Think of me sometimes! I have never loved a man so much as you!”
When after four years of glorious victories the army of the “rebellion,”
worn down by hunger, in need of the most necessary war material, was
beaten in the decisive battle of Petersburg, the commander-in-chief Robert
E. Lee saw himself forced to capitulate. His veterans, like Napoleon’s
soldiers in 1814 and 1815, demanded in vain that they should fight on!
Lee saw the uselessness of further bloodshed and surrendered himself to
the Yankee General Grant at the Appomattox Court House in April 1865.
Then his warriors pressed in to him, kissed his hands, his clothing; each
wanted to take personal leave from the hero who for years had been their
warmly loved, highly revered leader. The rough men, the farmers and
buffalo hunters, the old frontiersmen who had fought with the Indians, for
the most part cried thick tears that ran into their long, shaggy beards. Only
with difficulty did Lee hold back a loud sob.
“For four years I have had to lead the youth of my homeland into battle
and death,” he said after the conclusion of peace. “Now I want to dedi¬
cate the remainder of my life to the education of boys and youths!” He
took a position as teacher in the military school in Lexington, where,
beloved by his pupils, he was able to be effective for several years more.
He was a cultured man of fine form, related to that hero of freedom Wash¬
ington, who separated the American Union from the yoke of England. His
intelligent, noble face with its bright, beaming eyes and its trimmed, sil¬
ver-gray pointed beard captivated everyone. Even the Yankees, who oth¬
erwise after their victory raged against the conquered “rebels” in almost
barbaric fashion, always had a high respect for Lee. . . . Such men were
lacking in the army of the Union! Its army was of much poorer material
than that of the South, which could be called a genuine people’s army,
formed from the best elements, farmers, plantation owners, hunters; even
half-grown boys enthusiastically followed the red flag of the Confedera¬
tion. The North enlarged its army through recruiting, at least in the first
years. Often it was the worst men, the scum from the alleys of the indus¬
trial centers, who shouldered rifles for high pay. Even a Union officer,
Lieutenant of the Brunswick Rifles, Heusinger, admitted that the south¬
erners had man for man taken up arms “pro aris et focis” [for hearth and
home; literally, for altars and firesides]; in the Union army was collected
the dregs of the population. No wonder that hunger and need brought
those freedom fighters down, not the force of arms! In the armies of the
Union we find not a single male hero, no great leader who could be mea¬
sured with Lee, Jackson, Beauregard! . . .
We are at the end! Whether we were able to prove what we set out to do
must be left to the decision of the reader! The limited space forbade going
into detail, entering into the particulars of one or another point! Here it
was principally a matter of collecting material, which will perhaps stimu¬
late someone or other to elaborate and deepen our examples. War and
camaraderie are inseparable concepts! War educates to camaraderie, i.e.,
it releases often slumbering characteristics of man, the ability for devoted
friendship with the comrades of tent and battle. It does not seduce to
“homosexuality,” but it brings a beautiful basic human drive, physiologi¬
cal friendship, to operation. Whether it thereby comes to the prohibited
“sexual acts” is entirely indifferent, at least the law absolutely should not
apply! The closer the camaraderie in war is, the more intimate the bonds
of friendship between the soldiers, all the better will it be for the troops!
And another thing of equal importance: the male hero is the best military
leader! This the great names teach us, whom we have discussed in this
G. P. Pfeiffer 231
essay. Only the super-virile “superman,” whose nature it is to also pos¬

sess female characteristics and above all the drive toward physiological
friendship, the love for a friend, towers so high above the masses that he
creatively brings to light their best qualities and inspires a colorful band of
men with the spirit needed for the achievement of great deeds. He brings it
about that the offering of personal devotion is an important affair among
soldiers and officers. To his subordinates he is “father and favorite, god
and hero”; he enchants them thanks to his nature as superman and can
demand from them every, even the hardest sacrifice! As a “creative man”
he forms from the raw material a unitary, closely joined body, a true
instrument of war, and with the soldiers inspired by him he wins the most
glorious victories.
Thus the study of the history of war is justified for everyone who
wishes to learn about physiological friendship and male heroism. There is
still many a hidden source to be uncovered, which can yield valuable
material for our cause! To lead to this was the wish of the author, who
would gladly welcome it, if from the last European war the flare up of
such great, sacred comrade-love and the surpassing importance of the
male hero would be proved with evidence and facts! In memoirs, biogra¬
phies, and diaries slumbers yet many a story of friendship, many a song of
heroism! To search out and collect them was also the goal of this essay!
There is still a rich field for work here, whose blossoms could serve later
generations for reflection and emulation.
Napoleon, on St. Helena, rightly said that he had so exploited heroism
for fifty years that there was nothing left for later generations.
The World War, too, will probably have been the last occasion for the
exercise of personal bravery and ability. Not that it has been the last war!
Europe will still flare up often enough, but those next fires, corresponding
to our era of the machine, will offer only the chemists and the arms manu¬
facturers a field for work. The most unscrupulous mixers of poison, the
inventor of devilish instruments of mass murder will be the “heroes” of
those future wars. The most far-ranging cannons, the most effective ex¬
plosives, the crudest gas will decide that conflict. Whoever by a turn of
the hand destroys the armies of his opponents, the population of flourish¬
ing cities, or makes them cripples, is the “Great Man of the Future!” We
do not want to drive our rosy youth into the horrors of those wars like
defenseless animals; we protest against the madness that wants to let loose
all the surpassing cruelty of that fight! In the World War personal courage,
one’s own bodily strength could still find a place to distinguish itself; in
the war of the future mankind will be slaughtered by machines and the
lands will be transformed into heaps of ruins. Never ever should our little
publication, a high song of heroism, bodily strength, and youthful cour¬

age, be exploited by certain nationalistic inciters; that has never been the
intention of author or publisher!
We only wanted to prove that comrade-love and male heroism were the
most valuable driving forces in all wars, which effected the complete de¬
votion of one’s own person to leader and friend, to the fatherland! But
those times have passed! War is no longer a playground for pugnacious
youths delighting in victory! We have found other fields that give the two
valuable human characteristics, love of the comrade and enthusiasm for
the exemplary hero, sufficient opportunity for development and effect!
Our youth should exercise their bodies in sports and games, in the sun¬
light on green lawns in the spirit of the Greek palaestra! Here they can
rejoice in the strength of their bodies and develop them to the highest
achievement; here in cheerful competitions the friend may become “the
festival of the earth.” There is room here too for the male hero, that ideal
of healthy, life-loving boys and youths, to have an exemplary effect, to
educate the young men, to encourage their competition in courage and
strength; but also —and it may not be forgotten!— to likewise cultivate
their spirit. A one-sided cultivation of the body is as wrong as the exclu¬
sive education of the intellect! The one creates healthy, robust blockheads;
the other flabby, bent scholars. ... We want to take the golden middle
road and approximate the ancient ideal: “Mens Sana in corpore sano” [A
sound mind in a sound body]. Therefore, let our boys out of the stuffy,
dusty school rooms! Help the poor proletarian boys to come out of the
mud of the alley, their current environment, and into the air and light! Our
youth is our future. To bring up a healthy, bodily strong, but also intellec¬
tually educated generation means the salvation of Germany’s future,
means allowing our fatherland to again become great and mighty! Here
the labor leader can reach out his hand to the German nationalists: both are
working here for their goals and aims!
When we have obtained the end that our boys again learn to rejoice in
their bodies, when we allow them to grow up in genuine comrade-love, in
cheerful, comradely competitions for the highest achievement of body and
intellect, accompanied by exemplary leaders, heroes, for whom the youth
are inspired to true devotion, then we do not need to despair of Germany’s
future! Then our beloved fatherland will go to meet truly glorious times
and we can one day rightly cry out, when we view our healthy, ideally
educated, bodily and intellectually perfect sons:
“And the sun of Homer, see, it also smiles on us!”
Original: Mdnnerheldentum und Kameradenliebe im Krieg: Eine Studie

und Materialien-Sammlung (Berlin: Adolf Brand Kunstverlag, 1925).
G. P. Pfeiffer 233
NOTES
1. [Gustav Jager was a physiologist, who in his Entdeckung der Seele (3rd
ed., 1884) suggested that the homosexual who performed the active role was even
more virile than “normal” men. For these masculine homosexuals he coined the
word Mannerheld (male hero), which was also used by Blither in his theory of the
Mannerbund (male bonding). HO]
2. [Wilhelm Flie(3 was a well-known psychoanalyst. The reputation of the
young philosopher Otto Weininger was due to his book Geschlecht und Charakter
(Sex and Character, 1903) in which he stated that every man and woman was
bisexual, that is, composed of male and female characteristics. HO]
3. [In 1866 Prussia, under the leadership of Bismarck, waged war against
Austria and other German states in order to gain the hegemony in Germany. HO]
4. [The author is referring to the Franco-Prussian War. HO]
■
'
Political Criminals:
A Word About the Rohm Case
Adolf Brand
Whether someone indulges in an inclination to the same sex or not is

rationally, from grounds of personal freedom and good taste, of no con¬
cern to anyone, so long as no other person is harmed by it. Provided, of
course, that the person concerned allows this highest principle to also hold
for every other person.
For no reasonable person today will close his eyes any longer to the
insight that every sexual contact is a private matter—just like religion! —
and that every interference into these intimate things between two people,
every guardianship in this matter is something vile and a crime, and
doubtless a commonly dangerous vice that in meanness can hardly be
surpassed by any other.
That is the view of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (Community of Self-
Owners), which it has been openly representing for 30 years already. We
therefore present ourselves protectively before everyone who has to suffer
severe injustice in this direction —and we fight above all things the state,
which, through illiberal laws such as in the case of §175, which benefits
only the extortionists of politics and the street, and through mendacious
moral views commits a ridiculous assault on natural rights and an infa¬
mous oppression of the person.
In the moment, however, when someone —as teacher, priest, represen¬
tative, or statesman —plays a leading role in the midst of public life and
allows himself to be guilty of such severe injustice and such base vile¬
ness—or in the moment when someone joins a party that raises such an
indecent view to a program and would like to set in the most damaging
way the intimate love contact of others under degrading control —in that
moment has his own love-life also ceased to be a private matter and for¬
feits every claim to remain protected henceforward from public scrutiny
and suspicious oversight.
Rather, from that moment on the public has the undoubted right to be
occupied also with his own love-life, to hold up to him the mirror of his
235
strict party morality and —if only the least trace of erotic inclinations and
sexual acts are established, which his party morality publicly condemns —
to relentlessly accuse him personally, as the representative of that party
morality, of political hypocrisy and to expose him as an insolent swindler
of the people! For he is then enjoying the joys of life that he wants to
withhold from the people.
That is also our view in the matter of the homosexual Captain Rohm,
the chief of general staff of the Hitler troops, and in the matter of many
other homosexuals who, as leaders or subordinates, have been sworn to
the program of the National Socialist Party.
When the National Socialist Party openly fights the homosexual move¬
ment and when it hands out the slogan, as in fact was done in the Volki-
scher Beobachter1 on the vilification of the highly deserving teacher of
criminal law Professor Dr. Kahl — that they would drive out of Germany
or hang on the gallows all homosexuals and all backers of the repeal of
§175 as soon as they had come to power —then this party, which so gladly
declares every homosexual activity to be filthy, should not wonder if on
the occasion of the Rohm case one states without any finicalness how
strongly homosexual intercourse is spread precisely in their own ranks.
Men such as Captain Rohm, whose personal interest in the fight that we
are leading for the repeal of §175 was probably first publicly stated in the
Miinchener Post, are, to our knowledge, no rarity at all in the National
Socialist Party.2 It rather teems there with homosexuals of all kinds. And
the joy of man in man, which has been slandered in their papers so often
as an oriental vice although the Edda frankly extols it as the highest virtue
of the Teutons, blossoms around their campfires and is cultivated and
fostered by them in a way done in no other male union that is reared on
party politics.
The threatened hanging on the gallows, with which they allege they
want to exterminate homosexuals, is therefore only a horrible gesture that
is supposed to make stupid people believe that the Hitler people, in the
matter of male-to-male inclination, are all as innocent as pigeons and pure
as angels, just like the pious members of the Christian Society of the
Virgin.
In truth, however, no one thinks even in a dream of seriously presenting
that medieval play.
For otherwise indeed a quite considerable number of National Socialists
and likewise an even greater group of young party comrades, who enthusi¬
astically flock to the born leaders and “heroes of men” could today al¬
ready be carrying their hangman’s rope in their pockets, since they are all
completely ripe already for the hangman.
Adolf Brand 237
The public agitation against the homosexuals has in the meantime not
frightened any youth-friend or man-friend into deserting this party. One
knows perfectly well that all those public threats are only paper masks that
entice no dog out from behind the stove and that as a National Socialist
one always gets his money’s worth, even if, as a very rich man, he has to
sacrifice a mint of money to the party.
It is exactly the same with the sign that National Socialism hangs out,
which is supposed to serve only as an impudent bait for the wide masses,
so as to also capture for German fascism many thousands of naive de¬
serters from all the working classes.
That is, no big landowner, no big industrialist, and no big banker has up
to now let himself be frightened away from crowding into the associations
of that party, which allegedly wants to break the back of the capitalist
exploiters, or has felt prompted not to hand over his “hard won” money
in heaps, always with full hands, for the great political adventure of Hitler
to squander, which wants to attain the leveling of differences and the
pacification of the masses through dictatorship.
On the contrary. All who stand inimically opposed to the republic and
who would like to shoot to death the battalions of workers loyal to the
republic and its banners really have no fear of that red-lit sign of National
Socialism, but rather use it unscrupulously to promote their own dark
plans, since they know with complete certainty that all this is mere theater
and that they themselves will have the power in the state again immedi¬
ately if Hitler, their “king,” is the winner!
I will not name names here, although many deserve nothing else. For
the deserters from our own ranks really should be mercilessly pilloried in
public.
Until now one indeed knew in political circles only that we, who for
more than 30 years have left no stone unturned to bring about the repeal of
§175 and, beyond that, to also attain a moral and social rebirth of friend-
love—that in this fight we stand against a world of enemies and preju¬
dices.
But only the glaring illumination of the homosexual ways and doings in
the National Socialist Party through the Social Democrat press, such as
the Miinchener Post, the Berlin Vorwdrts, and the Mecklenburgische
Volkszeitung in Rostock on the occasion of the Rohm case3 has finally
opened the eyes of the German public to the fact that precisely the most
dangerous enemies of our fight are often homosexuals themselves, who
from political hypocrisy and mendacity consciously help to again and
again destroy every moral success that we effect through our fight and
through our work.
Every decent person in Germany will admit immediately that we are

certainly acting correctly if from now on we mercilessly go against such
hypocrites and traitors —and that we are completely entitled to have the
homoerotics, for whom we have until today led our fight under great
sacrifice, not give themselves over now to the madness and dishonor of
running after that party which has raised the persecution and extermina¬
tion of the whole homosexual movement to their program and who in the
most unscrupulous way are carrying out the commonly dangerous busi¬
ness of the blackest reaction!
Captain Rohm is today, of course, only the scapegoat for the whole
miserable cowardice and mendacity with which the National Socialist
Party through all the years has taken its position in such a fateful way in
the homosexual question. Unfortunately, he has to bear alone today the
entire responsibility for the whole campaign of slander, which the volkisch
newspapers have again and again undertaken to bring our efforts into con¬
tempt so as to stir up narrow-minded people of all classes against us. And,
as the sole person among many thousands, he must also suffer now for the
many follies that are intended to hinder the victory of our cultural fight,
which the whole intellectual aristocracy of Germany supported and from
whose moral conquests and practical progress Captain Rohm himself and
with him all his homosexual party comrades have drawn their greatest
advantage.
The Rohm case has become therefore a warning example for the de¬
structive and generally dangerous system of parliamentary injustice and
political unscrupulousness altogether, which governs our whole legisla¬
tion and under which all problems of civilization sadly suffer. In Rohm it
touches a man as its victim who really deserves better.
Doubtless there are in every party —even in the National Socialist —
enough decent and liberal-minded men who in their hearts secretly stand
on our side and for whom the ideals that we represent are also their ideals.
If they will one day pluck up the courage to shake off their stubborn party
morality, which daily condemns them to falsehood, then our fight will
find strong assistance and support from all sides and then will be the hour
when we have finally won the first goal of our demands!
At any rate, we have no need of hypocrites and sham actors as represen¬
tatives in the Reichstag, but rather complete and upstanding men who are
concerned for right and justice regardless of party and who, in spite of all
enemies and prejudices, also fight for the truth against a false opinion of
the people!
Adolf Brand 239
Original: “Politische Galgenvogel: Ein Wort zum Falle Rohm,” Eros,

1931, no. 2, pp. 1-3.
NOTES
1. [Brand is quoting an article which appeared in 1930 in the official party

paper of the Nazis and which probably was written by its chief editor, Alfred
Rosenberg, one of the leading ideologists of the Nazis. The article was a reaction
to the proposal of the committee for legal affairs of the Reichstag, presided over
by the liberal politician Wilhelm Kahl, to abolish the penalization of same-sex
acts of adult men. The proposal was never realized: the Nazis came to power in
1933 and two years later they tightened up the law against homosexuality. HO]
2. [The appointment of Ernst Rohm as commander in chief of the SA, the
paramilitary troops of the Nazi party, was occasion for journalists of the Social
Democratic paper Miinchner Post to publish articles on the homosexual practices
of subordinate leaders in the SA. Also the press agency of the Social Democratic
paper released some private correspondence by Rohm, which showed that he was
sexually attracted to young men. HO]
3. [After the Miinchner Post had launched a press campaign against homosex¬
ual Nazi leaders, other socialist papers also published articles on homosexuality in
Nazi organizations. HO]
VI. EPILOGUE
Male Bonding and Homosexuality

in German Nationalism
Harry Oosterhuis
The opposition between the scientific-medical approach and cultural

models among pioneers of homosexual emancipation before the Second
World War was not restricted to Germany. Also in other European coun¬
tries and in the United States some individuals and groups, just like the
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, defied the interference of doctors, psychia¬
trists, and psychologists, who, next to the traditional Christian viewpoint,
determined the public image of homosexuality to a large extent from the
beginning of this century.
In France the poet Marc-Andre Raffalovich and the aristocratic aesthete
and writer Jacques d’Adelsward Fersen, who edited the literary journal
Akademos (1909), kept aloof from medical authorities and availed them¬
selves of literature to express homoeroticism. And Andre Gide in his
Corydon (1924),1 although he referred to biology to defend male love,
distanced himself from Hirschfeld’s third sex and pronounced for the
Greek example. In England John Addington Symonds, Edward Carpen¬
ter, and a group called the “Uranian” poets showed some resemblance to
authors of Der Eigene. Symonds’s somewhat idealized vision of male
love was, like that of members of the Gemeinschaft, inspired by his stud¬
ies of ancient Greek culture and Renaissance art.2 Carpenter reinforced his
politically-toned plea for male comradeship with a literary “anthology of
friendship,” Ioldus (1902), which can be seen as the English counterpart
241
of Kupffer’s Lieblingminne und Freundesliebe in der Weltlitteratur.3 Also

the “Uranian” poets, a group of minor literary figures, whose activities
between 1890 and 1930 were directed to a rehabilitation of Greek
paiderastia, the love between adult men and adolescent boys, were com¬
parable to the poets and writers of Der Eigene.4 The same can be said of
the American classicist Edward Perry Warren, who wrote in the twenties,
under the pen name Arthur Lyon Raile, a study of the philosophical foun¬
dations of the Greek “uranian love.”5
But there were also important differences. As far as they expressed
themselves politically, most of the Anglo-Saxon cultural advocates of
homoeroticism, unlike the Gemeinschaft, made an effort to link Greek
ideals to democracy and socialism. Next to the ancient Greeks, Symonds
and Carpenter were inspired by Walt Whitman, whose poetry celebrated
male camaraderie as a means to realize democratic ideals. Although Whit¬
man was also glorified in Der Eigene, the members of the Gemeinschaft
der Eigenen were, as we have seen, oriented toward very different, typi¬
cally German trends, which were unparalleled elsewhere.
The Gemeinschaft der Eigenen can be placed in a uniquely German
tradition which disparaged the results of the Enlightenment as being mere
Western (i.e., French and Anglo-Saxon) Zivilisation, meaning a utilitar¬
ian civilization ruled by economic and political self-interest. While
Hirschfeld and his Committee drew from the aspirations of the Enlighten¬
ment such things as rationalism and humanism. Brand and his supporters
were inspired by the romantic concept of culture (Kultur), according to
which the priority of aesthetic and spiritual values was rooted in the Ger¬
man soul. Their outlook had much in common with contemporary trends
- in. the German youth movement, the Wandervogel, and in various group-
ings propagating Lebensreform (reform of life) by means of nudism, vege¬
tarianism, agrarianism, garden cities, naturopathy —aiming at a return of
^nodern man to unspoiled nature and close-knit “organic” communities
(Gemeinschaften). Capitalism and socialism were both rejected in these
movements since they were judged to be ideologies of an impersonal,
alienating, industrial, and urban society (so-called Gesellschaft). The com¬
mon element in these movements was the project of a special “third” ave¬
nue to a better society based on reforms of personal lifestyle and individual
consciousness.6 Although the Reformbewegung (reform movement) was
fully alive with religious ways of thinking, such as pantheism, theosophy,
and idealistic notions of nature, and therefore in large part nonpolitical,
the preoccupation with Germany’s special destiny revealed a tendency
toward nationalism. A similar state of mind can be seen in the Gemein-
schaft der Eigenen: Brand’s idealistic anarchism and the hazy aesthetic
visions of some contributors to Der Eigene were soon pushed aside by
nationalist rhetoric, for which the tone was set by Kupffer, Mayer, and
Friedlander.
In his inspiring book Nationalism and Sexuality (1985),7 George Mosse
has described the way that the glorification of physical beauty, notably
that of males, in nudism and in the youth movement was linked with some
ideals of German nationalism. According to Mosse, German nationalism
radiated homoeroticism in so far as the powerfully built, well-propor¬
tioned nude male —as a warrior, for example —was put on a pedestal to
represent the vigor of the nation and its aspirations. As early as the nine¬
teenth century, classical models —German nationalists liked to see them¬
selves as the heirs of Greece —were put forward to elevate the male body
as the visual paragon of beauty, serenity, strength, and inner purity, strip¬
ping it of all sensuality. As such, it symbolized a safeguard against li¬
cense, “feminine enfeeblement,” and the chaos and artificiality of urban
society. As we have seen, several spokesmen of the Gemeinschaft der
Eigenen shared this ideal of national regeneration through promoting man¬
liness.
The idealizing of male friendships and the Mannerbund as being supe¬
rior to the family was also in line with certain trends in German national¬
ism. Inspired by the anti-Napoleonic Wars of Liberation, fought by volun¬
teers, literary men and other intellectuals had celebrated male friendships
as the most tangible expression of patriotism beginning in the early nine¬
teenth century. In contrast to heterosexual relationships, these friendships
embodying male solidarity guaranteed the control of egoistic passions by
means of dedication to collective aspirations. The typically German ideal
of the Mannerbund was infused with new life at the beginning of the
twentieth century, especially by trench-war comradeship during the First
World War. Here male friendship was invested with nationalist virtues, as
it was associated with communal sense, charismatic leadership, milita¬
rism, and self-sacrifice.8 Notably in the Freikorps, as stated in several
memoirs and war novels, and later also in National Socialism, it was
linked with anti-democratic and misogynist attitudes.9 This “homoso-
cial” tendency in German nationalism was embraced by several spokes¬
men of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen', moreover, their endorsement of
patriarchy, in society as well as in the family, is striking.
Their anti-feminism can be explained to a great extent by their attitudes
towards the family. As we have seen, their advocacy of homoeroticism
did not rule out marriage, as long as the family maintained a strict division
of roles. Woman’s social role, characterized by servitude, should be re¬

stricted to the family, so that man was free to devote himself to culture and
politics together with other men. In their view, the man’s world should be
segregated strictly from that of women; the family was no more than an
institution for reproduction and the meeting of one’s daily material needs.
The GemeinschafPs plea for homoerotic friendships outside the family
showed their orientation to an idealized past in which men were not ex¬
pected to be emotionally involved in marriage and family life. However,
they saw this arrangement as threatened by the modernization of the fam¬
ily during the nineteenth century, by which its social function and inner
structure had changed. Especially in the middle class, privacy and affec¬
tion between husband and wife and between parents and children came to
be considered essential for family life. In the Gemeinschaft, this middle
class model of the family as a haven in a heartless world was regarded
primarily as an infringement on traditional sex segregation, a development
which they blamed on the emancipation of women.
It might be interesting to investigate the extent to which the extreme
misogyny of some of Der Eigene’s adherents could be accounted for by
their personal experiences within their own families and in their own mar¬
riages. To answer this question, more biographical information and per¬
sonal documents such as letters and diaries would be necessary; unfortu¬
nately, these are lacking.
All that can be ascertained is that they were not alone in Germany in
associating the central role of the family in bourgeois society with a grow¬
ing ascendancy of women. From the turn of the century also in various
branches of the youth movement an aversion to family life manifested
itself. The function of the family, so several protagonists of the male-
dominated youth movement claimed, should be restricted to female activ¬
ities like housekeeping and the raising of children. As soon as males had
outgrown the stage of childhood, for them, a Mdnnerbund should take the
place of the family. In this way the ideal of the Mdnnerbund served an
important function in the revolt of young men against the older genera¬
tions and the bourgeois families in which most of them had been born.10
But despite the revolutionary rhetoric in which the glorification of the
Mdnnerbund usually was worded-Nietzsche’s delineation of the Diony¬
sian, the irrational and ecstatic elements in Greek culture, was a thank¬
worthy source of inspiration —in many ways this ideal reflected the pre¬
vailing social values in Wilhelminian Germany. These values were for a
large part militaristic, thus masculine, and they were closely connected to
a hierarchical, authoritarian political structure, as well as to a rejection
and repression of the feminine. It is no coincidence that theories about

male bonding originated and became so popular in Prussian-dominated
Germany. Members of the ruling elite as well as intellectuals associated
the feminine not only with women as such, but to political and social
phenomena like democracy, socialism, revolution, and anarchy, and with
other nations, like England and France.11 This tendency can be found in
the writings of the famous poet Stefan George and some of his followers12
and, to a lesser extent, of the novelist Thomas Mann,13 to name only some
of the most prominent; their nationalism and idealization of the Manner-
bund was also rooted in homoerotic aestheticism. The question remains
whether the unrealistic and often extravagant theories concerning the al¬
leged feminization of culture were projections of personal conflicts and
fears concerning their own sexuality. This certainly seems to have been
the case with the Viennese philosopher Otto Weininger —popular in intel¬
lectual Mcinnerbund circles —whose well-known best-seller Geschlecht
und Charakter (Sex and Character, 1903) is notorious for its combination
of misogyny and anti-Semitism.
Closely connected to their opinion of the family was the notion held by
some important spokesmen of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen that the pos¬
sibility of intimate relationships between men was restricted to a large
extent by the way heterosexuality was socially defined and organized.
Especially Friedlander and Bab emphasized that homosexuality was pri¬
marily socially and historically determined. Their rejection of Hirsch-
feld’s biological concept of the homosexual personality should be under¬
stood in this context. Hirschfeld’s theory of the third sex was important as
a confirmation of the notion that homosexuality was confined to a special
category; this view was a precondition for organizing homosexual emanci¬
pation. The attitude of the circle around Der Eigene can be characterized
as a refusal to identify with this fairly new type of human being, the
“modern” homosexual, as it was fostered by medical men and emancipa¬
tors. While Hirschfeld vindicated equal rights for a homosexual minority
by ethologically differentiating “urnings” as clearly as possible from the
heterosexual majority, Friedlander and Bab disputed the scientific validity
of this biological partition, just as they also challenged Hirschfeld’s dis¬
tinction between sexual love and friendship, or between bisexuality and
homosexuality.
To the adherents of the Gemeinschaft, same-sex attraction between
males could not be reduced to a biological mixture of manliness and femi¬
ninity, as Hirschfeld suggested by associating homosexual orientation
with female gender-identity. On the contrary, they linked homoeroticism
to masculinity, while championing involvement of “normal” men. Since

in their view a masculine gender-identity was anything but an indication
of a heterosexual orientation, they encroached upon the “natural” role
prescriptions for “real” men. In this sense, their critique of the heterosex¬
ual norm was more radical than that of the Scientific Humanitarian Com¬
mittee, as can be illustrated by the comments of Hirschfeld’s assistant
Numa Praetorius in tht Jahrbuch fiir sexuelle Zwischenstufen. Some au¬
thors of Der Eigene, he wrote, caused damage to Hirschfeld’s campaign
for enlightenment, which aimed to convince people that homosexuality
was confined to a fixed minority and could not be transmitted by “seduc¬
tion” or “contamination.” Their propagation of homoeroticism as an op¬
tion for all males would scare away potential heterosexual allies of the
homosexual movement, Numa Praetorius argued, since “normal” men
justly feared that their friendships would be associated with homosexual¬
ity.14 To refute this association, Hirschfeld also had a heterosexual man
write an article in the Jahrbuch emphasizing that close friendships among
“normal” men and boys had nothing to do with homosexuality.15 (See the
General Introduction.)
The authors of Der Eigene, on the other hand, thought that Hirschfeld’s
preoccupation with proving the biological nature of homosexuality con¬
tributed to the prevention of close relationships between men in general in
modern society, since same-sex love was linked exclusively to deviants
who could invoke mere pity and tolerance. Their ambivalent attitude to¬
wards sexuality and their glorification of eros can be explained in part by
their rejection of medical definitions of homosexuality, which they con¬
sidered too limited. They did not share the dominant assumption in con¬
temporary sexology and increasingly in public opinion that homosexuality
could be explained biologically or psychologically. Most authors of Der
Eigene did not think that their feelings and experiences could be squeezed
into rational categories; for them, art and literature were a better means to
express themselves aesthetically. Other spokesmen of the Gemeinschaft
referred also to history and ethnology to advocate homoeroticism. On the
whole, they tended towards the view that it was a matter not of determinis¬
tic nature but of culture.
In this respect Bab’s and Friedlander’s criticism of Hirschfeld’s confi¬
dence in science, as expressed in the latter’s adage per scientiam ad justi-
tiam (through science to justice), was not without significance. Since
medical and biological research could also be used against homosexuals,
they argued, scientific explanations should never be applied as a standard
for judicial and political goals, much less for the social arrangement of
same-sex relations. The principle of individual self-determination and not

the argument that homosexuality was biologically inevitable should be the
starting point for homosexual emancipation, Bab, Friedlander, and Brand
said.16 To some extent they were put to the right by the fact that Hirschfeld
tended to be infatuated by his scientific ambitions. For example, when
around 1920 the Viennese doctor E. Steinach tried to ‘cure’ homosexual
men by castrating them, Hirschfeld praised Steinach’s research into the
causes of homosexuality because it seemed to confirm his third sex the¬
ory. However, most of the authors of Der Eigene did not extend their
notion of the priority of cultural factors to ideas on masculinity and femi¬
ninity. Edwin Bab was exceptional in realizing that gender-identity was
also socially determined.17 On the whole, the male chauvinism of the
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen was rooted, just like Hirschfeld’s affinity with
Darwinism and eugenics, in biologist and sometimes even racist thinking.
While the contributors to Der Eigene opposed a deterministic homosex¬
ual-heterosexual duality, some of them advocated an even more rigorous
social separation of male and female spheres.
In the final analysis, the attempt of Brand and his supporters to promote
homoeroticism while avoiding identification with the modern homosexual
was not successful. They tried to escape being labelled as “urnings” or
members of the “third sex,” but ironically, they were viewed as radical
homosexuals. Their social footing was even more precarious than that of
Hirschfeld’s Committee, which, although its political results were mini¬
mal, received some support from the scientific establishment and from
socialist and liberal political parties. The Gemeinschaft der Eigenen found
some resonance in certain segments of the youth movement and among —
generally minor —literary men and artists,18 but the nationalist political
movements to which they were related ideologically were, of course, ir¬
revocably opposed to openly propagated homoeroticism. On the contrary,
the ultimate realization of a Mannerbund and the celebration of masculine
beauty in National Socialism was accompanied, as is well known, with
severe persecution of homosexual men.
HOMOSEXUALITY AND MALE BONDING

IN THE THIRD REICH
Homosexuals were among the persecuted in the Third Reich: a large

number found their way into the concentration camps where they could be
recognized by the pink triangle. Their fate was particularly hard because
they were able to count little on solidarity from the other prisoners and
they usually occupied the lowest position in the camp hierarchy. Some
German researchers estimate that between 5,000 and 15,000 primarily

male homosexuals died in the camps. There are but a few known cases of
women who wore the pink triangle.19 Although further research has yet to
be conducted into the fate of lesbians under National Socialism,20 it is
clear that the Nazis considered male homosexuality much more dangerous
than female homosexuality. In contrast to male homosexuality, for exam¬
ple, female homosexuality was never criminalized. This difference is un¬
doubtedly related to the Nazis’ traditional view of sexuality and role divi¬
sion between man and woman: women are permitted only to fill the
passive role.
The Nazis justified their homophobic regulations on the basis of argu¬
ments on population policies. They proved so apprehensive of the appear¬
ance and spread of homosexuality because it would result in large num¬
bers of German men no longer procreating children. In the Third Reich
sexuality served above all propagation, population expansion, and the pu¬
rity of the so-called “Aryan” race.21 Indeed, various researchers explain
the Nazis’ persecution of homosexuals in terms of National Socialist pop¬
ulation policies and racism. However plausible this explanation may
sound, it is, in my opinion, neither entirely convincing nor complete. The
central role male bonding played in the Nazi ideology and state is of major
importance in understanding this persecution.
In contrast to the “holocaust” of the Jews, the persecution of homosex¬
uals was not wholesale or systematic. The way the Nazi leaders regarded
homosexuality was not unanimous. While it is true that they passed nega¬
tive judgments, they did not all consider it uniformly dangerous.22 Talk
among some of the top brass was for a thoroughly pragmatic position. For
example. Hitler employed the charge of homosexuality primarily as a
means to eliminate political opponents, both inside his party and out. One
notorious example is the liquidation in 1934 of Ernst Rohm, the head of
the powerful SA (Sturmabteilung). The propaganda exaggerated Rohm’s
homosexual predilection, but in point of fact it was really about settling a
political power struggle. Earlier Hitler had always protected Rohm, even
though it was a public secret that Rohm was homosexual. The pragmatic
position of certain of the Nazis in power seems evident from the fact that
some well-known homosexuals were able to live undisturbed in Germany
during the Third Reich. Some homosexual artists even enjoyed the protec¬
tion of Nazi functionaries.23
Along with the pragmatists, there were in the Nazi brass some figures,
among them the SS (Schutzstaffel) head Heinrich Himmler, who consid¬
ered homosexuality a grave danger and therefore advocated strict regula-
tions. At their instigation Paragraph 175 was tightened in 1935: “Unnatu¬

ral vice” now referred not only to anal intercourse, as it had before, but to
all forms of physical contact which were “lustful in intent” and even to
expressions of feeling. The Nazis employed a very broad definition of
homosexuality which could cover expressions of friendly affection. The
argument for amending the law was, as the Nazi lawyer Rudolf Klare
explained in his dissertation Homosexuality und Strafrecht (Homosexual¬
ity and Penal Law, 1935), that all German men were exposed to seduction
and homosexuality threatened to spread like an epidemic.
Apparently, the Nazis did not regard homosexuality in general as a
biological feature of an inferior minority, as might have been expected of
their racism, but saw it as a contagious social disease. Racism cannot form
an explanation for the persecution of homosexuals, for most of the men
who displayed homosexual behavior were in the Nazis’ eyes “Aryans.”
Thus Hitler asserted in private conversations that homosexuality had de¬
stroyed ancient Greece by its “infectious activity,” which spread “with
the certainty of a natural law among the best and most masculine natures;
... it cut off from propagation precisely those whose offspring a people
[Volk] depended upon.”24 In the SS publication Das schwarze Korps,
Heinrich Himmler’s mouthpiece, criticism was brought against the asser¬
tion that homosexuality was an inborn and immutable trait. Barely two
percent of the men found guilty of homosexual acts were considered “in¬
corrigible.” These “enemies of the state” of course had to be expelled
from society. The remainder, the vast majority, had been seduced. Many
men were thought especially susceptible to seduction as a consequence of
a developmental imbalance in their youth. By means of “re-education”
they could be brought back on the right track again.25
In the Third Reich psychiatrists and psychoanalysts sought out the
causes of homosexual behavior, as they had done before. They usually
distinguished between “actual,” or inborn, and acquired forms of homo¬
sexuality. To whatever extent homosexuality was not biologically rooted,
there could be discussion of the extent to which the acquired homosexual¬
ity could be cured. In this manner the prominent psychiatrist Johannes
Heinrich Schultz, employed at the Deutsche Institut fur psychologische
Forschung und Psychotherapie (German Institute for Psychological Re¬
search and Psychotherapy) under the support of Hermann Goring,26 ad¬
vanced the claim in his popular guidebook Geschlecht, Liebe, Ehe (Sex,
Love, Marriage, 1940) that homosexuality was caused by traumatic child¬
hood experiences or by seduction during adolescence and could conse¬
quently be cured by therapy. It is striking that these psychiatrists took an
explicit stand in opposition to scientists who claimed that homosexuality

was genetically determined. “Many researchers,” wrote Schultz, preach
the still “controversial” opinion that homosexuals belong in the biologi¬
cal category of degenerates. “Even if one were to agree with the adherents
to the theory of a hereditarily determined homosexuality in a certain num¬
ber of cases, the fact remains that this explanation does not apply to at
least four-fifths of the number of people who behave in a homosexual
manner.”27
Schultz’s opinion was shared not only by a large number of his col¬
leagues, but by influential Nazis as well. The latter attached great impor¬
tance to the distinction between inborn and acquired homosexuality, as is
evident for example from the directives which applied to the treatment of
criminal cases of “unnatural lewdness” in the German army. Military
doctors were expected to review similar acts differently, “according to the
personality of the offender.” The severity of punishment and eventual
reinstatement in the army would depend on a number of things, including
the judgment of an expert insofar as it concerned “a homosexual or
pseudo-homosexual, especially someone who had been seduced.” Had
the defendants rendered themselves guilty of “lewdness” due to their
“disposition or obvious incorrigible impulses”? Or were they in fact fit
soldiers who “were in essence sexually healthy,” but were temporarily
derailed as the result of seduction or of “sexual overexcitement?”28
Although such questions could not always be answered with certainty
and a “cure” was often dubious, the distinction between various types of
homosexuality proved valuable for the Nazi leaders. The belief in the
racial delusion that perversions and psychic disorders were not a part of
the pure essence of the German national character was left undisturbed.
Constant vigilance was nevertheless called for, as some Nazis empha¬
sized, due to the danger of contamination by homosexuality. Himmler,
for example, asserted that the “homosexual problem” did not bear
“merely” upon a degenerate minority. In principle, all men could suc¬
cumb to homosexual behavior. Racial laws, concentration camps, penal¬
ties of imprisonment or death would not be able to prevent the homosexual
epidemic, even within their own movement, from repeatedly growing into
a menace of alarming proportions.
According to the Nazis homosexuals were dangerous not only because
they seduced heterosexual men, but also because they created cliques and
thereby undermined the hierarchical relationships and the unity of the
movement. Some of Hitler’s and Himmler’s statements in this context
were characterized by a peculiar mix of aversion, fear, and envy of homo-
sexuals. In Nazi propaganda homosexuals were generally portrayed as

soft, cowardly, cringing, and untrustworthy creatures, who nonetheless
appeared to possess an imperious character and to have at their disposal
special intuitions and aptitudes which were withheld from “normal”
men. They were capable of strongly organizing and thereupon making a
grab for power.29
The danger of the “homosexual conspiracy” was given a great deal of
attention in Nazi propaganda in 1934. During the so-called “night of the
long knives” that year, a large number of the leaders of the SA, the pow¬
erful paramilitary organization of the NSDAP, was liquidated for political
reasons. Some of them, among them the chief of staff Ernst Rohm, were
known homosexuals.30 Immediately following the murder of Rohm and
his adherents, the Nazi high functionary Hermann Goring stated to the
press that certain SA leaders “had completely lost sight of the aim of the
movement and had placed their own interests, their own ambition and,
among a certain portion of them, even their unfortunate disposition in the
foreground.” He had allegedly plotted a conspiracy to “bring down the
state and to create another state, which would have become a state of these
sick individuals.”31 Rohm’s and others’ homosexuality was the focus of
other press statements of the NSDAP. In this way the political quarrels
between SA leaders and other party bosses were obscured. Furthermore,
Hitler could present himself as a resolute opponent of immoral behavior,
which increased his reputation among the German people. In a memo to
Rohm’s successor. Hitler stated that the purged movement must remain
pure henceforth so that every mother could turn her son over to the SA and
the Hitler Youth, free of any fear of moral corruption.
A few years earlier anti-fascists had attempted to fan this fear among
the German people with the intention of bringing the Nazi movement into
discredit. In the period 1931-32 Ernst Rohm and other SA leaders were
attacked for their homosexuality in the left-wing media. Social Democrats
and Communists suggested that nepotism and abuse of power in the SA
and the Hitler Youth had contributed to making homosexuality an essen¬
tial characteristic of the fascist system.32 At that time the accusations were
no reason for Hitler to renounce his trust in Rohm. He went so far as to
explain that he preferred in principle not to interfere with the private life
of SA members. The SA was, in Hitler’s words, “a gathering of men with
a political aim, an association of raucous warriors” and no “moral institu¬
tion for the education of daughters from the better classes.” Privately he
said that the National Socialist phenomenon had nothing to do with mid¬
dle-class virtues. “We are the vanguard of the nation’s power. I would go
so far as to say, the power of its loins. ... I have no use for sneaks or
members of the League of Virtue.”33 Two weeks after the liquidation of
Rohm and company Hitler declared in the Reichstag, on the contrary, that
direction-giving leaders in the Nazi party, the SA, the SS, and the Hitler
Youth, would need to be punished more severely than normal citizens if
they were guilty of homosexuality.34 In precisely these groups, so it
turned out, the “poison” was able to spread rapidly.
Hitler’s statements were undoubtedly prompted by opportunism and
can be explained by the transformation of the Nazi party from a youthful,
anti-bourgeois protest movement into an instrument of power to control
the state and society. According to Mosse this “inherent contradiction
between the need for action and the control of discipline bedeviled all of
fascism and determined its attitude toward sexuality.”35 The result was
that other Nazis, in consequence of both the Rohm affair and accusations
from the left, became virtually obsessed with the danger of homosexual¬
ity. In the “Special Measures for Combating Same-Sex Acts” for the
Hitler Youth, the National Socialist youth movement, one could read, for
example, that “homosexual lapses” were particularly dangerous “due to
their epidemic effect.” “On occasion one individual seduces ten or more
youths or infects an entire group. Many who have been seduced later
become seducers so that often ... an endless chain of infection occurs.”36
It is remarkable that the Nazis should have regarded all German males as
susceptible to homosexual seduction to such a powerful degree. In fact,
the consideration forced itself on them again and again that their own
movement, which was based on male bonding, might evoke homosexual¬
ity.
The Nazis made a reality of the German nationalist ideal of the Manner-
bund, according to which ideal an elite of men, firmly united among
themselves, formed the core of the state. In the twenties and thirties the
ideal of comradeship played an important and effective role in the military
nationalism which rose up in opposition to the democratic system of the
Weimar Republic. The influential organizations of First World War vet¬
erans, especially, propagated an alternative policy which satisfied the
(idealized) memory of life in the trenches, the longing for company, com¬
radeship, and a charismatic leadership. The connection of the war experi¬
ence with the longing for a Mannerbund was expressed, for example, by
the famous writer Ernst Junger, who invoked the memory of what he
described as the “spirit of the male community ... the great, common
battlefront, whose form will also become the form of the new state.”37 As
an anti-bourgeois movement of protest, National Socialism exploited these
sentiments. So Alfred Baumler, an important collaborator of the Nazi ideo¬

logue Alfred Rosenberg, wrote in 1930 that each culture must establish the
relationship between man and woman for itself and in its own way. Ger¬
many was ready for the masculine age that had been predicted by
Nietzsche.38 Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels named National So¬
cialism a masculine movement by nature and Rosenberg characterized the
Third Reich as the result of a purposeful Mannerbund. During the Nazi
era several books were published in which the trenches of the First World
War were glorified as a school for devotion to duty and sacrifice.39
The Mannerbund, the community of men united in emotional attach¬
ment, fulfilled an important function in Nazism. The Mannerbund was the
model for the National Socialist ideal of manliness, of male solidarity and
superiority over foreigners, and of a strict hierarchy for men among them¬
selves. The way one Nazi functionary for education expressed the central
role of the Mannerbund in National Socialism was very significant: “The
Mannerbund of the army and of the SA, the SS, and the Labor Service are
all prolongations of the HJ [Hitler-Jugend, the Nazi youth movement] into
the years of manhood. Their central educational task is one and the same.
In their ordering and through them is the political German man to be
formed, and indeed above all along the path of practice and habit, with the
help of methodical efforts which promote the frequently repeated active
use of strengths of body and character, and with emphasis on training for
the ability to bear arms. Common to them all is also the predominance of
training of body and will. Intellectual schooling and culture in particular
take second place.”40 The Nazi movement was a militant men’s commu¬
nity that excluded women from the most important organizations and, to
whatever extent possible, from public life. Shortly after his 1933 seizure
of power. Hitler issued a decree which stated that all women who held
positions in public office were to be dismissed.
The family was both supported and disrupted in the Third Reich by the
strict differentiation between male and female spheres. The family was the
cornerstone of society to the extent that it served population policy. The
National Socialist evaluation of the family expressed itself primarily in the
glorification of woman as mother. While the Nazis extolled the family as a
nursery for a great many children, they undermined it as a private sphere
and fostered infringements on the ties of affection between man and
woman and between parents and children. From the men a great deal of
time and loyalty was demanded for the benefit of the movement. Although
the authority of the father and the role of the mother were propagandized,
the upbringing of the youth was largely withdrawn from the parents. In
the virtually sexually separated youth movement the boys primarily owed
their leaders obedience and trust. The same due was expected from men in
the army and other military organizations such as the SS and the SA.
Close emotional ties with the family were not conducive to the role which
the man in close alliance with other men was obliged to fulfill in Nazism.
Firm ties between men were considered desirable and various Nazi spokes¬
men drew attention to the political importance of male friendship and com¬
radeship.
Baumler, the professor of “political pedagogy” who promoted
Nietzsche to the role of philosopher of Nazidom, stated, for instance, that
the German male was born for friendship: “There is no friendship without
a fatherland, but no fatherland either without friendship,” he cried in a
speech.41 As a “lifestyle” friendship could exist only in the Mannerbund;
outside the Mannerbund it was merely a “liberal matter.” Baumler de¬
fined the Mannerbund as an organic system of living in which “man stood
beside man, . . . men came together, the younger with the younger, or the
younger with the older.” In the Weimar Republic, characterized by
Baumler as effeminate and decadent, men were being taken up too much
by women. “Everywhere ... the relationship between man and man, . . .
friendship, withers!” he lamented. The formation of German youths
should take place under the guidance of an older friend in the Manner-
bund, for only among males could they realize a “heroic attitude toward
life.” “Since the German man has a highly warlike disposition, because
he is a man, because he is born for friendship, for that reason democracy,
which leads to women governing over men, can never flourish in Ger¬
many.”42
Other supporters of the Third Reich regarded male friendship as the
germ cell of the German nation, referring to the experience at the front
during the First World War and to traditions which went back to the 18th
century or even to the Germans of former ages and the ancient Greeks.43
Thus the Nazi lawyer R. Klare stated that the severe penalties he proposed
for homosexuality should not become a hindrance to spiritual love for
members of one’s own sex on the basis of the ancient Greek love of
youths.44 In the pseudo-scientific volkische Germanenkunde which the
Nazis promoted, the Mannerbund was a central theme. The myth of pri¬
mordial Germanic male bonding served the purpose of establishing a con¬
tinuity in German history, of which the Nazis were supposedly the heirs.45
Like Baumler, Rosenberg assumed that the Mannerbund and not the
family was the organizing principle of the state. In his Mythus des 20.
Jahrhunderts Rosenberg argued that historically the state had arisen out of
a comradeship-in-arms, the military Mcinnerbund', only afterwards was the

institution of the family supposedly established.46 Rosenberg and Baumler
viewed the Mcinnerbund and male friendship from a political point of view
as superior to marriage and family, but they did not touch the Nazi doc¬
trine of family. Baumler invoked Schurtz’ Altersklassen und Manner-
bunde, as Friedlander and others had done before. Just as man and woman
complemented each other in the family, so too family and Mcinnerbund
complemented each other at the level of society. Self-sacrifice was ex¬
pected of the woman for the benefit of the family, so that the man could
dedicate himself to “higher” tasks exclusively among men.
Although the National Socialist women’s organizations subscribed to a
similarly rigorous division of roles, a (female) representative nonetheless
pointed out the questionable tendencies in the thinking of men like
Baumler. In her book Mcinnerbund und Frauenfrage the leader of the
Bund deutscher Mddel and of the women’s section of the Nazi party,
Lydia Gottschewsky, claimed that the Mcinnerbund and the family were
growing too far apart from each other, to the effect that marriage was
becoming something inferior.47 In consequence of the idealization of the
Mcinnerbund, sensual love for the woman and spiritual love for the male
youth were being conceived of as opposites and the latter as superior.
Gottschewsky did not say it in so many words but it was clear that she
perceived homoerotic tendencies in the misogynistic ideology of the Mcin¬
nerbund.
Of all people it was the militaristic Heinrich Himmler, the Reich’s chief
of the super-manly SS, who stated forthrightly that the National Socialist
men’s state threatened to destroy itself because organizations like the SS
and the Hitler Youth could become hothouses for homosexuality. In a
speech before high-ranking SS officers in 1937 he pointed to the “too
powerful masculinization and militarization” of the Nazi movement, in
which the male youth had too little opportunity to associate with the other
sex in a relaxed atmosphere. Therefore it was not surprising, according to
Himmler, “that we have trod the path to homosexuality,”48 since under
these circumstances masturbation circles and sexually laden friendships
could quickly spring up among youths. Himmler criticized fellow party
members who held women in contempt and who ridiculed other men be¬
cause they conducted themselves in a polite manner toward women. They
had allegedly adopted this misogynistic attitude from Christianity. The
Catholic Church had always been an “erotic Mannerbund”', many priests
and almost all monks were homosexual, according to Himmler.49 When
youths in the Hitler Youth and SS members had been made into “knightly
gentlemen” and obtained sufficient opportunity to be in the company of

women in a “natural” manner, they would presumably no longer fall
victim to homosexual behavior, as Himmler’s conclusion would have it.
For utter clarity he felt it necessary to add that he desired no “Anglo-
Saxon” situation. Women in England and America were overly privi¬
leged, he claimed, they had misused men’s courtesy and had made them
into slaves. In this manner Himmler made clear that he desired no equality
between men and women in the social domain. The principle of the men’s
state was therefore not touched in his speech. In spite of the grave dangers
he was calling attention to, Himmler, who had been raised as a Catholic
and in his youth had been a member of the Wandervogel, was a firm
protagonist of male bonding. His elitist SS was the Mannerbund par ex¬
cellence and therefore he emphasized: “The men’s state is the best ar¬
rangement.” Moreover, Himmler showed much interest in research into
the supposedly Germanic and Aryan origins of the Mannerbund, which
was to furnish him with a historical justification of his extreme racism.50
The Mannerbund was problematic for the Nazis, however, because
since the end of the 19th century it had acquired in certain circles, both
inside the homosexual movement and out, a distinctly homoerotic tenor.
“The homoeroticism always latent in nationalist symbols and the ideal of
masculinity now faced the danger of coming into conflict with respectabil¬
ity.”51 This ambivalence manifested itself even more clearly in the visual
arts promoted by Nazism. While Nazi Minister of the Interior Frick
warned against the dangers of nudism —this practice, according to him,
could be the first step towards a violation of Paragraph 175 —sculptors
like Arno Breker and Josef Thorak, and photographers like Hans Suren,
Leni Riefenstahl, and others glorified the beauty of muscular male
bodies.52
Some of the Nazi functionaries were painfully aware of the association
of the Mannerbund and homosexuality: repeated reference was made to
Hans Bliiher’s work to warn that homosexuality could undermine the Na¬
tional Socialist movement from inside out. From the directives for the
Hitler Youth and the army it is apparent that the Nazis paid great attention
to the factors which were significant in the origin and spread of homosex¬
uality in men’s groups. Youth leaders and army doctors received exten¬
sive instructions in possible preventive regulations.53 Illustrative of the
preoccupation with homosexuality of some Nazis is a dissertation by K.
W. Gauhl, a Nazi official charged with youth matters.54 Making extensive
references to Bliiher, Gauhl analyzed the way in which homosexual
groups were formed among boys. Close friendships among youths should
be regarded with great distrust, according to him, as they often served as a

disguise for homosexual debauchery. He held that a distinction must be
made between friendship and comradeship. He associated friendship with
individualism, personal pleasure, and the forming of cliques, whereas
comradeship, which counted as the norm within the Hitler Youth, was
rooted in collective action to advance the higher aim. Such comradeship,
in combination with the deterrent effect of severe punishment, would
guard against the danger of “clammy friendships” and the homosexual
cliques which resulted from them.
Himmler declared his position explicitly in favor of introducing severe
penalties for homosexual contacts between men. As chief of police he
stipulated in 1940 that all convicted homosexuals who had “seduced”
more than one partner, would be deported to a concentration camp where
they would sit out their sentence. In the speech in which Himmler, refer¬
ring to Bliiher, warned against the homosexual tendencies of the Manner-
bund, he also imparted that members of the SS who were found guilty of
unnatural lewdness, after completing their sentence of confinement in a
concentration camp, “would be shot dead while attempting to escape.”55
In 1941 Hitler issued a decree to keep the SS and the police force free of
homosexuality. Members of the SS and police officers who committed
lewdness with another man or permitted themselves to be misused were
given the death sentence.
It is noteworthy that the army was expressly excluded from the stipula¬
tions of Hitler’s decree, even though it was a male community which
according to the Nazis stood in grave risk of danger. One made distinc¬
tions between various “types” of homosexuality. The death penalty was
appropriate only in “especially serious cases” for “incorrigible wrongdo¬
ers.” In the course of the war the regulations grew undoubtedly stricter.
Prior to 1942 those considered seduced could reasonably expect to be
returned to the army after a penalty of confinement. After 1942 they too,
like the “incorrigible” homosexuals, could wind up in a concentration
camp.
The severe penalties were supposed to have a deterrent effect: they
served primarily to guarantee the purity of the National Socialist Manner-
bund. The fear that the male comradeship necessary for the cohesion of
homosocial organizations would degenerate into homosexuality contrib¬
uted powerfully to the persecution of homosexuals in the Third Reich.
This persecution can, in my view, be explained by seeing it against the
background of the history of male friendship in Germany.
As we have seen, the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen was part of this his-
tory. In retrospect the tragedy of Brand and his supporters is apparent.

Instead of rights and equality for a distinct homosexual minority they em¬
phasized the ideal of a “male culture” and friendships among men in
general as a model for the emancipation of homosexuality. However,
when the Nazis realized a Mannerbund on the political level and it became
an instrument to control the state, homosexual men were among the first
victims. Of course the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen cannot be made respon¬
sible for their fate, although the political views of some members, deter¬
mined to a large extent by the brewing intellectual climate in Germany at
the beginning of this century —for us, looking back —have become highly
charged. But this might explain why their ideals have fallen into disrepute
and oblivion. After the Second World War the gay liberation movement in
Western Europe and the United States adopted a very different course,
which shows more resemblance to Hirschfeld’s policies. As a result, the
Gemeinschaft’s criticism and defiance of the medical conceptualization of
homosexuality were forgotten; the modern gay movement, in Europe and
well as in the United States, has often fixed itself on individual disposition
and identity, and in general has shut its eyes to the complicated and am¬
bivalent relations between homosexuality and masculinity. If this anthol¬
ogy has made it clear that not all of the issues which were raised by the
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen are politically polluted and that some are still
worth considering, then it will have served its purpose.
NOTES
1. English translations of Corydon appeared in 1983 (Farrar, Strauss & Gi¬

roux, New York) and in 1985 (Gay Men’s Press, London).
2. See J. A. Symonds, Male Love: A Problem in Greek Ethics and Other
Writings, ed. J. Lauritsen (New York, 1983); idem. The Memoirs of John Ad¬
dington Symonds, ed. P. Grosskurth (New York, 1984).
3. E. Carpenter, ed., lolaus: An Anthology of Friendship (New York, 1982).
4. See T. d’Arch Smith, Love in Earnest: Some Notes on the Lives and Writ¬
ings of English ‘Uranian ’ Poets from 1889 to 1939 (London, 1970). See also [E.
M. Slocum], Men and Boys: An Anthology (New York, 1924), which has a sec¬
tion of American poets; reprint, with a scholarly introduction by D. Mader (New
York, 1978). v
5. A. L. Raile, A Defense of Uranian Love (London, 1928-30).
6. For the Lebensreform movement see W. R. Krabbe, Gesellschaftsverdn-
derung durch Lebensreform (Gottingen, 1974).
7. G. L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal
Sexuality in Modem Europe (New York, 1985).
8. G. L. Mosse, “Two World Wars and the Myth of the War Experience,”
Journal of Contemporary History 21 (1986): 491-513; idem. Fallen Soldiers: Re¬

shaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York and Oxford, 1990); U.-K.
Ketelsen, ‘“Die Jugend von Langemarck’: Ein poetisch-politisches Motiv der
Zwischenkriegszeit,” in “Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit”: Der Mythos Jugend, ed.
T. Koebner, R.-P. Janz, and F. Trommler (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), pp. 68-96;
R. Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, MA, 1979), pp. 42-84.
9. See K. Theweleit, Mannerphantasien, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1977-
78); N. Sombart, Jugend in Berlin 1933-1943 (Munich, 1984), pp. 21-5, 108-11,
178-91.
10. On the connection of male bonding and the German youth movement in
the first three decades of this century, see J. Reulecke, “Mannerbund versus
Familie: Biirgerliche Jugendbewegung und Familie in Deutschland im ersten Drit-
tel des 20. Jahrhunderts,” in “Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit”: Der Mythos Jugend,
ed. T. Koebner, R.-P. Janz, and F. Trommler (Frankfurt am Main, 1985),
pp. 199-223; W. Mogge, “Von Jugendreich zum Jungendstaat — Mannerbiindis-
che Vorstellungen und Organisationen in der biirgerlichen Jugendbewegung,” in
Mannerbande, Mannerbimde: Zur Rolle des Mannes im Kulturvergleich, ed. G.
Volger and K. von Welck (Cologne, 1990), vol. 2, pp. 103-10.
11. See N. Sombart, “The Kaiser in his epoch: Some reflexions on
Wilhelmine society, sexuality and culture,” in Kaiser Wilhelm II: New Interpre¬
tations, ed. J. C. G. Rohl and N. Sombart (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 287-311.
12. F. Gundolf and F. Wolters, eds., Jahrbuch fur die geistige Bewegung 3
(1912): i-viii. See also J. Aarts, “Alfred Schuler, Stefan George and their differ¬
ent grounds in the debate on homosexuality at the turn of the century in Ger¬
many,” in Among Men, Among Women. Sociological and Historical Recognition
of Homosocial Arrangements, ed. M. Duyves et al. (Amsterdam, 1983), pp. 291 -
304.
13. T. Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (Frankfurt am Main, 1956;
first edition, 1918); idem, “Von deutscher Republik,” Gesamelte Werke, vol. 11
(Oldenburg, 1960), pp. 809-52. Thomas Mann’s protest against Paragraph 175
was published in Brand’s journal Eros: “Protest der Prominenten gegen die ge-
plante Beibehaltung und Verscharfung des §175,” Eros, 1930, no. 7, pp. 97-8.
14. Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen 9 (1908): 503.
15. Ibid., pp. 742-5.
16. A. Brand in Die Gemeinschaft der Eigenen. Korrespondenzblatt, 1905,
no. 3, pp. 1-3; E. Bab, “Der unwiderstehliche Zwang und der §175,” Das Ges-
chlecht. Aufklarung iiber alle Fragen des Geschlechtslebens, 1904, no. 2; B.
Friedlander, “Paragraph 175,” Die Zukunft, 1905, no. 13, pp. 405-13.
17. Bab was also one of the few in the Gemeinschaft who criticized Friedlan-
der’s reactionary misogyny. According to Bab, a male culture should guarantee
male and female independence. The realization of a “female culture” in Germany
has been studied by M. E. P. de Ras, Korper, Eros und weibliche Kultur. Mad-
chen im Wandervogel und in der Biindischen Jugend 1902-1933 (Pfaffenweiler,
1988).
18. Especially in the twenties, various homoerotic novels appeared which re-
fleeted the elitist and anti-modernist attitudes of the Gemeinschaft. R. Bohn, “Ex-
otistisch Exklusiv Elitar,” in Schwule und Faschismus, ed. H.-D. Schilling
([West] Berlin, 1983), pp. 87-121.
19. For the Nazi persecution of homosexual men and women see R. Lautmann
and E. Schmidt, “Der rosa Winkel in den nationalsozialistischen Konzentra-
tionslagern,” in Seminar: Gesellschaft und Homosexualitdt, ed. R. Lautmann
(Frankfurt am Main, 1977), pp. 325-65; H. G. Stiimke and R. Finkler, Rosa
Winkel, Rosa Listen. Homosexuelle und “Gesundes Volksempfinden” von Ausch¬
witz bis heute (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1981); V. Erhard, “Perversion und Ver-
folgung unter dem deutschen Faschismus,” in Lautmann, Seminar: Gesellschaft
und Homosexualitdt, pp. 308-25; H.-D. Schilling, ed., Schwule und Faschismus
([West] Berlin, 1983); H. Heger, Die Manner mit dem rosa Winkel (Hamburg,
1972); R. Lautmann, “The Pink Triangle. The Persecution of Homosexual Males
in Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany,” in The Gay Past: A Collection of
Historical Essays, ed. S. J. Licata and R. P. Petersen (Binghamton, NY, 1985),
pp. 141-60; R. Plant, The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals
(New York, 1986); G. Hauer, “Homosexuelle im Faschismus,” Lambda Nach-
richten. Zeitschrift der Homosexuellen Initiative Wien, 1984, no. 2, pp. 17-26;
W. Harthauser, “Der Massenmord an Homosexuellen im Dritten Reich,” in Das
grosse Tabu. Zeugnisse und Dokumente zum Problem der Homosexualitdt, ed.
W. Schlegel (Munich, 1967); H. Schulze-Wilde, Das Schicksal der Verfemten.
Die Verfolgung der Homosexuellen im Dritten Reich und ihre Stellung in der
heutigen Gesellschaft (Tubingen, 1969); F. Rector, The Nazi Extermination of
Homosexuals (New York, 1981). I would not recommend this last title: the book
is inaccurate, sensational, and full of assertions which are not documented.
20. See “Lesben und Faschismus,” in Schwule und Faschismus, ed. H.-D.
Schilling ([West] Berlin, 1983), pp. 151-173.
21. See H. P. Bleuel, Das saubere Reich, die verheimlichte Wahrheit. Eros
und Sexualitat im Dritten Reich (Bern, 1972).
22. See M. Herzer, “Nazis, Psychiatrists, and Gays: Homophobia in the Sex¬
ual Science of the National Socialist Period,” The Cabirion and Gay Books Bulle¬
tin, no. 12 (1985), pp. 1-5; B. Jellonek, “The persecution of homosexuals in the
‘Third Reich’,” Homosexuality, which homosexuality? History, vol. 1 (Amster¬
dam, 1987), pp. 157-168.
23. M. Herzer, “Hinweise auf das schwule Berlin in der Nazizeit,” in Eldo¬
rado. Homosexuelle Frauen und Manner in Berlin 1800-1950. Geschichte, Alltag
und Kultur, ed. M. Bolle (Berlin, 1984), pp. 44-7.
24. R. Diels, Lucifer ante Portas (Stuttgart, 1950), p. 381.
25. “Das sind Staatsfeinde!” in Das Schwarze Korps, March 1937.
26. The Nazis did not reject psychoanalysis. The Berlin Psychoanalytic Insti¬
tute was supported by the Nazi regime, especially at the instigation of Hermann
Goring, once all Jewish co-workers had been removed and management had certi¬
fied that psychoanalysis contributed to the control of sexuality. See Herzer, “Na¬
zis, Psychiatrists, and Gays.”
27. J. H. Schultz, Geschlecht, Liebe, Ehe (Munich, 1942), p. 97.
28. F. Seidler, Prostitution, Homosexuality, Selbstverstiimmelung. Probleme

der deutschen Sanitatsfiihrung 1939-1945 (Neckargemiind, 1977), p. 220.
29. Diels, Lucifer ante Portas, p. 381; Seidler, Prostitution, Homosexuality,
Selbstverstiimmelung, p. 220; Witboek over de Duitse Bartholomeusnacht (Am¬
sterdam, 1935), p. 11.
30. In Rohm’s autobiography published in 1928, one could read that the
course of his life “would cause honest and respectable, narrow-minded citizens to
blush.” In 1932 through the press service of the German Social Democratic Party
some of Rohm’s letters were published, ones in which he wrote that he was not at
all unhappy with his disposition, that he was a member of the Bund fur Men-
schenrechte, the largest homosexual organization in the Weimar Republic, and
that he was in favor of the abolition of Paragraph 175. In National Socialist circles
one presumably grew accustomed to his “criminal tendencies,” according to
Rohm. See his Die Memoiren des Stabschefs Rohm (Saarbriicken, 1934), pp. 163,
196, 200.
31. Witboek over de Duitse Bartholomeusnacht, p. 9.
32. W. U. Eissler, Arbeiterparteien und Homosexuellenfrage. Zur Sexualpo-
litik von SPD und KPD in der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 1980), pp. 106-14. For
the attitudes of leftists and antifascists towards homosexuality, see also J. Meve,
“Homosexuelle Nazis. ” Ein Stereotyp in Politik und Literatur des Exits (Ham¬
burg, 1990); H. Oosterhuis, “The Guilty Conscience of the Left,” The European
Gay Review 4 (1989): 72-80.
33. Bleuel, Das saubere Reich, pp. 8, 111.
34. Seidler, Prostitution, Homosexuality, Selbstverstiimmelung, p. 204.
35. G. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality (New York, 1985), pp. 155-6.
36. Seidler, pp. 226.
37. E. Jiinger, Feuer und Blut. Ein kleiner Ausschnitt aus einer grossen
Schlacht (Berlin, 1929), p. 10.
38. Baumler wrote this in an introduction to the collected works of Friedrich
Nietzsche, which was later included in his Studien zur deutschen Geistesge-
schichte (Berlin, 1943).
39. See, for example, T. Kalkschmidt, “Kameradschaft und Fiihrertum an der
Front,” Dichtung und Volkstum, 1938, no. 2.
40. K. F. Sturm, Deutsche Erziehung im Werden. Von der padagogischen
Reformbewegung zur volkischen und politischen Erziehung (Osterwieck, 1933),
p. 141.
41. This quotation has been adopted from a 1930 speech by Baumler that was
included in his anthology Mannerbund und Wissenschaft (Berlin, 1940), p. 38.
42. Ibid., pp. 38-9. It is curious that some years earlier Baumler had been an
advocate of theories about the matriarchate as the original foundation of society,
as had been elaborated by the Swiss Johann Jakob Bachofen in his Das Mutter-
recht. Eine Untersuchung iiber die Gynaikokratie der alten Welt nach ihrer reli-
gidsen und rechtlichen Natur (Basel, 1861). After he had shifted his attention to
Nietzsche and the Nazis applauded his interpretation of this philosopher, he fo¬
cussed on the Mannerbund as the main social unit. See J. Hermand, “All Power
to the Women: Nazi Concepts of Matriarchy,” Journal of Contemporary History,

1984, no. 4, pp. 649-67.
43. See W. Rasch, Freundschaftskultus und Freundschaftsdichtung im deut-
schen Schrifttum des 18. Jahrhunderts vom Ausgang des Barock bis zu Klopstock
(Halle, 1936), pp. 106-9.
44. R. Klare, Homosexualitat und Strafrecht (Hamburg, 1935).
45. See K. von See, ‘‘Politische Mannerbund-Ideologie von der Wilhelmini-
schen Zeit bis zum Nationalsozialismus,” in Mannerbande, Mannerbiinde. Zur
Rolle des Mannes im Kulturvergleich, ed. G. Volger and K. von Welck (Cologne,
1990), vol. 1, pp. 93-102; S. von Schnurbein, “Geheime kultische Mannerbiinde
bei den Germanen: Eine Theorie im Spannungsfeld zwischen Wissenschaft und
Ideologie,” in Mannerbande, Mannerbiinde, ed. Volger and Welck, vol. 2,
pp. 97-110.
46. A. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1934),
pp. 485-93.
47. L. Gottschewsky, Mannerbund und Frauenfrage (Munich, 1934).
48. H. Himmler, “Bevolkerungspolitische Rede vor SS-Gruppenfiihren liber
die ‘Frage der Homosexualitat’ und ein ‘natiirliches Verhaltnis der Geschlechter
zueinander’” (1937), in Heinrich Himmler, Geheimreden 1933-1945 und andere
Ansprachen, ed. B. F. Smith (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), pp. 93-104.
49. In 1937 a number of “morality trials” against members of the Catholic
Church were conducted. It was suggested in the National Socialist press that
priests sexually abused children on a large scale and that “conditions of moral
insanity” prevailed in monasteries. By doing this the Nazis sought to bring the
Catholic Church into scandal in order to reduce its influence in education and the
youth movement.
50. See R. Greve, “Die SS als Mannerbund,” in Mannerbande, Manner-
biinde, ed. Volger and Welck, vol. 1, pp. 107-12.
51. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality (New York, 1985), p. 163.
52. On Nazi sculpture, see K. Wolbert, Die Nackten und Toten des ‘Dritten
Reiches’ (Giessen, 1982); M. Bushart et al., Skulptur und Macht. Figurative
Plastik im Deutschland der 30er und 40er Jahre (Berlin, 1983); W. F. Haug,
“Der Korper und die Macht im Fascismus. Zur Analyse einer Faszination am
Beispiel Brekers,” Sammlung, Jahrbuch fur antifaschistische Kunst und Literatur
4 (1981): 201-6; R. Bohn, H.-J. Simmel, and E. Seidel, “Faschismus, Kunst,
Homosexualitat,” Sammlung 5 (1982): 146-7.
On painting and photography, see B. Hinz, Die Malerei im deutschen Fa¬
schismus. Kunst und Konterrevolution (Munich, 1974), also in English as Art in
the Third Reich (New York, 1979); H. Fischer, Menschenschonheit. Gestalt und
Anlitz des Menschen in Leben und Kunst (Berlin, 1935); E. Lendrai-Dircksen,
Flandem. Das germanische Volksgericht (Bayreuth, 1942); L. Riefenstahl’
Schonheit im Olympischen Kampf (Berlin, 1937); H. Suren, Mensch und Sonne
(Berlin, 1924; reprint, 1936). On Riefenstahl and the aesthetics of Nazism, see S.
Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism,” in her Under the Sign of Saturn (New York
1981), pp. 71-105.
53. Seidler, Prostitution, Homosexuality, Selbstverstummelung, p. 217-21.

54. K. W. Gauhl, Statistische Untersuchungen iiber Gruppenbildung bei Ju-
gendlichen mit gleichgeschlechtlicher Neigung unter besonderer Berucksichti-
^940 Strul<tur dieser CruPPen und der Ursache ihrer Entstehung (Marburg,
55. Stiimke and Finkler, Rosa Winkel, pp. 435-6.

Index
Adelswiird Fersen, Jacques d’ Bang, Hermann (1857-1912), 95,

(1879-1928), 241 97-98
adolescents, see boys Baumler, Alfred, 253-255,261
Aeschylus (Greek dramatist) Beauregard, Pierre Toutant de
(525-456 B.C.), 39 (1818-1893), 228,230
Alcibiades (Athenian general) (ca. Bebel, August (1840-1913), 184,
450-404 B.C.), 112,222 196,198,202
Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.), Berlin, 1,7,14-15,47,69,77,128,133,
37,151,222 144,166
American Civil War, 227-230 Bethge, Hans (1876-1946), 89
Anacharsis (Scythian philosopher) bisexuality, 18,74-75,131-132,
(fl. 600 B.C.), 42 156-157
Anacreon (Greek poet) (572?-?488 Bismarck, Otto von (1815-1898),
B.C.), 131,151 46,228,233
anal intercourse (often called blackmail, 51,58-59,143
“paederasty”), 12,58,61,68, Bloch, Iwan (1872-1922), 14,18-19
144,249 Bliiher, Hans (1888-1955), 122-123,
anarchism, 2-3,183,185,201,243 199-202,205,221,233,
Archimedes (Greek mathematician) 256-257
(2877-212 B.C.), 209 Bock, 180
Aristophanes (Athenian playwright) Bondy, Curt, 202
(4487-7380 B.C.), 39 Borcke, Heros von, 228-229
Aristotle (Greek philosopher) boy-love, see paederasty
(384-322 B.C.), 214 boys, homosexual, 62-63,179-181
art, 51,85,112-113,115-117,175 Brand, Adolf (1874-1945), 2-8,19,
Arthur (king of the Britons) (6th 22-23,29,34,53,67-68,89-90,
cent.), 224 121-122,144,154,166,
Aspasia (consort of Pericles) 183-186,188-192,198,239,
(4707-410 B.C.), 222 242,247,258
Augustine (Christian church father) Brandt, Paul (1875-1929), 4
(354-430), 100 Breker, Arno (1900- ), 256
Aurelius (pseud, of Carl Robert Biilow, Bernhard von (1849-1929),
Egells) 5-6
Byington, Steven T. (1868-1957),
22
Bab, Edwin (1882-1912), 31-32,34,
87,122,144,186,245-247,259
Bachofen, Johann Jakob Caesar, Julius (Roman general)
(1815-1887), 187,190 (100-44 B.C.), 151,222
Bagoas (Persian eunuch), 222 Caesareon (pseud.), 85
265
Carpenter, Edward (1844-1929), (1847-1921), 5-6,17-18,27,

241-242 184,193
Casper, Johann Ludwig Euripides (Greek playwright) (5th
(1796-1864), 12 cent. B.C.), 39
Charlemagne (king of the Franks) Ewers, Hanns Heinz (1871-1943),
(742-814), 224 189,192
Christ, see Jesus
Christianity, 40,43,61,99-108,127,
223 female culture, 207-217
Clitus (commander in Alexander’s Fidus (pseud, of Hugo Hoppener)
army) (d. 328 B.C.), 222 Fiedler, 200
clothing, 89,109-113 Flaubert, Gustave (1821-1880), 43
Community of Self-Owners, see Fleminger, Julius, 68
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen Fliep, Wilhelm (1858-1928), 225,
Conde, Louis II (1621-1686), 222 233
criminal prosecution of sodomy, see Fontheim, Kurt, 67
Paragraph 175 Foucault, Michel (1926-1984),
19-20
France, 40-41,46,60
Darwin, Charles (1809-1882), 2 Francois, Joannes Henri
Dasbach, Georg Friedrich (1884-1948), 98
(1846-1907), 6 Frecot, Janos, 22
David (king of Judah and Israel) Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939), 16,
(10137-7973 B.C.), 151 123
Davis, Jefferson (1808-1889), 228 Frey, Ludwig, 50
Der Eigene, 2-8,19-24,29-30,33, Frick, Wilhelm (1877-1946), 256
85-87,119,141,143,183-184, Friedlander, Benedict (1866-1908),
205-206 4,31-33,87-96,120,123,
Der Kreis, 7 185-187,191,201,217,220,
Dtihring, Eugen (1833-1921), 79,84, 243-247,255,259
191,216-227 Friedrich II (Friedrich the Great)
Durer, Albrecht (1471-1528), 113 (1712-1786), 38,151,173,
effeminacy, 13-14,29,31,128 222,226
Egells, Carl Robert (1843-1904), friend-love, 49,145-154,158-159,
181 161-165
emancipation, homosexual, 1,71,81, friendship vs. homosexuality, 8-11
141,247 Fuchs, Hanns (1881- ), 86
embryology, 2,53
Engels, Friedrich (1820-1895), 84,
217 Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), 209
Enlightenment, 8,10,127,242 Gauhl, K. W., 256
Epaminondas (Theban general) Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, 2,4-5,
(4187-362 B.C.), 43,173,222 7-8,16-17,19-21,24,29,
Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736), 222, 31-32,85,88,91,119,121,
225-226 124,141,155-166,183-185,
Eulenburg-Hertefeld, Philipp zu 235,242-247,258
Index 267
George, Henry (1839-1897), 80, Hephaestion (Macedonian general)

191,217 (d. 324 B.C.), 222
George, Stefan (1868-1933), 91,97, Herder, Johann Gottfried von
123,200,205,245 (1744-1803), 10,30,167
Germany, 8,15,20,38,41 hermaphrodites, 2,73; psychological,
Gide, Andre (1869-1951), 241 12-13,76,131
Giorgione da Castelfranco (ca. Hesse, Hermann (1877-1962), 205
1478-1511), 113 Heusinger (Union officer in
Gleichen-Russwurm, Alexander von American Civil War), 230
(1865-1947), 120,185 Hille, Peter (1854-1904), 4
Gloeden, Wilhelm von (1856-1931), Hiller, Kurt (1885-1972), 7,184,188
3,90 Himmler, Heinrich (1900-1945),
Goebbels, Joseph (1897-1945), 253 248-250,255-257
Goring, Hermann (1893-1946), 249, Hirschfeld, Magnus (1868-1935),
251,260 1-2,6-8,14-18,20-21,24,
Gorz, Georg Heinrich von 29-33,49,53,60-67,71-72,77,
(1668-1719), 225 84,86-88,120,130-131,144,
Gotamo (pseud.), 86,119,121-122, 184,188-189,192,205,242,
142 245-247
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945), 7,190,
(1749-1832), 10,16,18,30, 192,248-249,251-253,257
45,47,151,174 Hoflingen, 196
Gottschewsky, Lydia, 255 Holderlin, Friedrich (1770-1843),
Grant, Ulysses Simpson 10,91,93,176,200,203,205
(1822-1885), 229 Homer (traditional ancient Greek
Greece, ancient, 10,40,109-113, poet), 171
138-139,151,216 homosexuality, congenital, 14;
Greek love, 16,51,74,88,97, medical model, 11-12,14,75,
131-132,242 108; theories of, 2,8,12-13,
15,36,53-55,79-80,249-250
homosexuals, characteristics of,
Haberlin, 168 63-64
Hafiz (Persian poet) (14th cent.), 46, Hoppener, Hugo (1868-1948), 3,23,
151 89-90,115-117,189
Horace (Roman poet) (65-8 B.C.),
Hamann, Johann Georg
131,151,168
(1730-1788), 10
Hossli, Heinrich (1784-1864), 120
Hamecher, Peter (1879-1938), 30,
Humboldt, Wilhelm von
85-87
(1767-1835), 9
Harden, Maximilian (1861-1927),
5-6,17,27
Hardenburg, Friedrich von Institute for Sexology (Institut fur
(1772-1801), 200 Sexualwissenschaft), 2,6
Heimsoth, Karl Gunther intercouse, homosexual, 56,69,132,
(1899-1934), 188-189,191 215
Heine, Heinrich (1797-1856), 50 Italy, 40,60
Jackson, Thomas Jonathan Krupp, Friedrich Alfred

“Stonewall” (1824-1863), (1854-1902), 5,184,193
228-230 Kupffer, Elisar (Elisarion) von
Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich (1872-1942), 30,33-34,55,
(1743-1819), 9 86-90,119-120,127-130,132,
Jager, Gustav (1832-1916), 87,221, 142,168,170-171,185-186,
233 206,243
Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Kurella, 200
Zwischenstufen (Yearbook
for Sexual Intermediates), 1,
19,30,49-51,60-61 Lee, Robert E. (1807-1870),
Jansen, Wilhelm (1866-1943), 4,89, 228-230
122,125 lesbians, 140,248
Japan, 187,216,220,224 Licht, Hans (pseud, of Paul Brandt)
Jesus (4-8? B.C.-A.D. 29?), 43-44, Lieblingminne, 30,37-45,56-57,60,
151,168,203 88,129,131,142-143
Jews, 99,140,188,191,248 Liszt, Franz (1811-1886), 11
John (apostle), 151,203 literature, 30,86,176
Lombroso, Cesare (1836-1909), 39,
Jonathan (in Bible, son of King
Saul), 151 130,133
Joux, Otto de (pseud, of Otto Rudolf Longstreet, James (1821-1904), 228
Podjukl) Lorenzo dei Medici (1449-1492),
Julius II (pope) (1443-1513), 175 113
Louis XIV (king of France)
Jiinger, Ernst (1895- ), 252
(1638-1715), 41
Louis XV (king of France)
Kaan, Hermann, 12 (1710-1774), 41
Kahl, Wilhelm (1849-1932), 236, Lucifer (pseud.), 124,181
239 Ludwig Wilhelm I (margrave of
Baden-Baden) (1655-1707),
Karl XII (king of Sweden)
226
(1682-1718), 222,224-225
Katte, Max, 68
Keller, Gottfried (1819-1890), 11
Mackay, John Henry (1864-1933),
Kertbeny, Karoly Maria (Karl Maria
22-23,33,85,87,95-98,119,
Benkert) (1824-1882), 13
121,133
Kiefer, Otto, 85,123 Mahler, Gustav (1860-1911), 89
Klare, Rudolf, 249,254 male culture, 35-45,141-144,
Klatt, 205 207-217
Kleist, Heinrich von (1777-1811), male hero, 87,221-233
10,203 man/boy love, see paederasty
Klopstock Friedrich Gottlieb Mann, Thomas (1875-1955), 98,245
(1724-1803), 9 Mannerbund, 87,91,119,121,123,
Krafft-Ebing, Richard von 187-189,233,243-245,247,
(1840-1902), 13-15,30-32, 252-258
36,130 marriage, 159-160,186
Index 269
Marxism, 191,201-202,211-212,217 Novalis (pseud, of Friedrich von

masturbation, 56,89,122,132,138, Hardenberg)
158 nudism, 4,89,160,242,256
May, Karl (1842-1912), 90 nudity, 22,90,109-113
Mayer, Eduard von (1872-1960),
90,142,186-187,243
Mayer, Julius Robert (1814-1878), Orbilius Pupillus (Roman
216 schoolmaster) (1st cent.
Meier, Karl (1897-1974), 7 B.C.), 168
Menczikoff (Russian minister), 225
Meyer, Karl, 67
Michelangelo Buonarroti paederasty, 16,46,78-79,84,85-89,
(1475-1564), 113,151,173, 122,167-177
175 Paragraph 175, 1,3,6-7,13-14,21,32,
Middle Ages, 78,82-83,99-108,175, 47,56-60,67-68,74-76,82-84,
212 103,119,141,164,193-198,
249
Moebius, Paul Julius (1853-1907),
54 Passeyer, von, 61
Paul (of Tarsus), 44
Moll, Albert (1862-1939), 14-15,18,
Paul, Jean (pseud, of Jean Paul
31,88,130
Friedrich Richter)
Moltke, Kuno von, 5-6,17-18,27
pedagogy, 78,122-124,168-171
Mosse, George (b. 1918), 243,252
Pericles (Athenian statesman) (d.
Muller, Johann von (1752-1809),
429 B.C.), 175,222
168
perversion vs. perversity, 34,66
Peter I (Peter the Great)
(1672-1725), 225
Napoleon I (Napoleon Bonaparte)
Petition to repeal Paragraph 175, 14,
(1769-1821), 222,226,231
21,51,196
Napoleon III (Louis Napoleon)
Pfeiffer, Georg Philipp, 188,206
(1808-1873), 228
Phidias (Greek sculptor) (5th cent.
Nazis (National Socialist Party), 7, B.C.), 209
20,183-184,188-190,192, Pindar (Greek poet) (5227-443
235-239,247-258 B.C.), 37,39,151
Neuhof, Theodor von (16867-1756), Placzek, Siegfried (1866- ), 18-19
225 Platen, August von (1796-1835), 30,
Nicolai, Christoph Friedrich 50,120,176
(1733-1811), 58 Plato (Greek philosopher) (4277-347
Nieberding (German Minister of B.C.), 9,16,151,173,175,203
Justice), 59,193 Plutarch (Greek biographer)
Niemeyer, August Hermann (467-7120), 43,222
(1754-1828), 179 Praetorius, Numa (pseud, of Eugen
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900), Wilhelm)
11,36,86,120,128,144,151, Praxiteles (Athenian sculptor) (4th
155,183,200,203,205,223, cent. B.C.), 175-176
244,253-254,261 prostitution, female, 69,122,132,
136,157; male, 59,129,133, Schiller, Friedrich von (1759-1805),

143,157 3,10,16,30,120,151,171
Proudhon, Pierre Joseph Schlegel, August Wilhelm von
(1809-1865), 211 (1767-1845), 9
pseudo-homosexuality, 75,80 Schleiermacher, Friedrich
Pudjukl, Otto Rudolf, 179-181 (1768-1834), 9
Pudor, Heinrich (1865-1941), 89, Schmidt, Johann Caspar
189,192 (1806-1856), 3,22-23,183
Schneider, Sascha (1870-1927), 90
Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860),
Radszuweit, Friedrich (1876-1932), 36,67,173,175,191,209-210,
7,189,192 216-217
Raffalovich, Marc-Andre Schrenck-Notzing, Albert von
(1864-1934), 241 (1862-1929), 14-15
Raile, Arthur Lyon (pseud, of Schultz, Johannes Heinrich (1884-),
Edward Perry Warren) 249-250
Raphael (Raffaello Santi) Schurtz, Heinrich (1863-1903),
(1483-1520), 113 78-79,84,121,124,201
Reifegg (pseud, of Otto Kiefer) Scientific Humanitarian Committee
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), (Wissenschaftlich
113 Humanitares Komitee), 1,
Renaissance, 175 6-8,29,51,60,72,119,141,
Reuter, Gabrielle (1859-1941), 22 246
Richter, Jean Paul Friedrich Secession of the Scientific
(1763-1825), 9-10,199,205 Humanitarian Committee,
Riefenstahl, Leni (1902- ), 256 32,71-84
Rodin, Auguste (1840-1917), 112 sexual intermediates, 66,73
Rogowski, Arno, 68 Shakespeare, William (1564-1616),
Rohm, Ernst (1887-1934), 184, 38,151,173,204,209
188-191,235-239,248, Simmel, Georg (1858-1918), 11
251-252,261 Sinding, Stephen (1846-1922), 112
Romanticism, 9,11,120 Social Democrats, 7,184,196-198,
Romer, Lucien von (1873-1965), 4 211,251
Rosenberg, Alfred (1893-1946), Socrates (Greek philosopher)
239,253-255 (4707-399 B.C.), 16,151,
Ruedebush, Emil F., 23 168,173,216,222
sodomy (see also anal intercourse),
12,15,56
Sacred Band of Thebes, 43,151,222, Solon (Athenian lawgiver)
224,226 (6387-7559 B.C.), 42,209
Sagitta (pseud, of John Henry Sophocles (Greek playwright)
Mackay) (4967-406 B.C.), 175
Scham, Heinrich (pseud, of Heinrich Spee, Friedrich von, S.J.
Pudor) (1591-1635), 44
Scheibert, J., 228 Spengler, Oswald (1880-1936), 205
Index 271
Spohr, Max (1850-1905), 49 Vois, Paul (pseud, of Peter

Steinach, Eugen (1861-1944), 247 Hamecher)
Stirner, Max (pseud, of Johann
Caspar Schmidt)
Stowe, Harriet Beecher Wagner, Richard (1813-1883), 11,
(1811-1896), 228 86,120
Stuart, J.E.B. (1833-1864), 228-229 Waldecke, St. Ch. (anagram pseud.
Sturm und Drang, 8-9,120 of Ewald Tscheck)
subculture, homosexual, 7,14-15 Wandervogel, 4,122-124,185,189,
Suren, Hans, 256 202,242,256
Symonds, John Addington Warren, Edward Perry (1860-1928),
(1840-1893), 241-242 242
Washington, George (1732-1799),
230
Tepp, Max, 205
Weimar Republic, 4,6-7,185,187,
Theognis (Greek poet) (6th cent.
252,254
B.C.), 37
Weininger, Otto (1880-1903), 225,
Thiele, Adolf, 196
233,245
third sex theory, see homosexuality,
Werckshagen, Carl, 204
theories of
Wessel, Horst (1907-1930), 189
Thorak, Josef (1889-1952), 256
Westphal, Carl von (1833-1890),
Tilly, Johann Tzerclaes
13,15
(1559-1632), 222
Whitman, Walt (1819-1892), 77,242
Titian Vecelli (1477-1576), 113
Tscheck, Ewald (1895- ), 6,185, Wilde, Oscar (1854-1900), 97
206,226 Wilhelm II (German emperor)
(1859-1941), 5
Wilhelm, Eugen Daniel
Uhde, 205 (1866-1951), 246
Ulrichs, Karl Heinrich (1825-1895), Wilson, Woodrow (1856-1924), 227
12-13,31,36,51,72-73,102, Winckelmann, Johann Joachim
120,188 (1717-1768), 10,30,45,47,
United States, 77,187,216,227-230, 120,173-175
258 women’s movement, 135-138,141,
uranians, see Urnings 186
Urnings, 2,36 Wyneken, Gustav (1875-1964), 123,
Urquhart, David (1805-1877), 47 203,205
Vanselow, Karl, 89 youth movement, 125,199-206

venereal diseases, 69,108,122,136
Verlaine, Paul (1844-1896), 45
Villebois (adjutant of Peter 1), 225 Zeidler, Kurt, 205
Virgil (Roman poet) (70-19 B.C.), Zschokke, Heinrich (1771-1848),
151 120
V
1 •
ISBN: 1*56024-164-0

Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre Nazi Germany

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Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre Nazi Germany

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Homosexuality

original transcripts from Per Eigene,

Harry Oosterhuis, PhD

cJUN 1 I9W DEC a 1007

the youth movement, the gay movement,

original transcripts from Per Eigene,

Homosexuality & Psychotherapy: A Practitioner’s Handbook of Affirmative Models, edited

Literary Visions of Homosexuality, edited by Stuart Kellogg

Homosexuality and Social Sex Roles, edited by Michael W. Ross, PhD

Homophobia: An Overview, edited by John P. De Cecco, PhD

Anthropology and Homosexual Behavior, edited by Evelyn Blackwood, PhD (cund.)

Interdisciplinary> Research on Homosexuality in the Netherlands, edited by A. X. van Nacrsscn

Psychopathology and Psychotherapy in Homosexuality, edited by Michael Ross, PhD

Lesbians Over 60 Speak for Themselves, edited by Monika Kchoc

Gay and Lesbian Youth, edited by Gilbert Hcrdt

Homosexuality and the Family, edited by Frederick W. Bozett

Homosexuality and Religion, edited by Richard Hasbany, PhD

S°KimmerPhDWe” ° ^ N°bleman and the Famous Mr- mi*on, edited by Michael

Gay Midlife and Maturity, edited by John Alan Lee, PhD

The Haworth Press, Inc. 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580 USA

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

the youth movement, the gay movement,

original transcripts from Per Eigene,

Edited and Introduced

The Haworth Press, Inc.

All photographs from Der Eigene, except those showing covers

Homosexuality and male

3 1223 03327 3583

NR. 6 XI. JAHRGANG NR. 6

HERAUSGEBER ADOLF BRAND

The Nameless Love xvii

II. OPPOSING THE DOCTORS

The Ethical-Political Significance of Lieblingminne (1899) 35

Same-Sex Love, or Lieblingminne: A Word on Its Essence

III. THE AESTHETICS OF THE MALE BODY

A Word in Advance to the Better Ones (1903) 93

The Tragedy of Being Different (1914) 95

The Decline of Eros in the Middle Ages and Its Causes

Nudity in Art and Life (1906) 109

Fidus (1903) 115

IV. EROS AND MALE BONDING IN SOCIETY

Into the Future! (1903) 127

The Women’s Movement and Male Culture (1903) 135

Friend-Love as a Cultural Factor: A Word to Germany’s

The Significance of Youth-Love for Our Time (1902) 167

On the Rearing of the Homosexually Inclined Boy (1903) 179

V. POLITICAL ISSUES AND THE RISE OF NAZISM

Homosexuality and Reaction (1911) 193

Eros in the German Youth Movement (1925) 199

Male and Female Culture: A Causal-Historical View (1906) 207

Seven Propositions (1909) 219

Male Heroes and Comrade-Love in War: A Study

Political Criminals: A Word About the Rohm Case (1931) 235

Illustrations following page 117

Harry Oosterhuis, PhD, studied history at the University of

Hubert Kennedy, PhD, whose research has mostly been divided

the youth movement, the gay movement,

original transcripts from Der Eigene,

Because still on the youthful wing

Yet since you think it a dirty thing

To love’s persecuted my song I bring

John Henry Mackay, Der Eigene

The project of publishing English translations of selections from the

Oosterhuis mostly wrote directly in English, but some passages were