OCR Version of the Chapter.

Correct Pagination
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements v
Foreword: A. Deniz BOZER vii
Chapter 1: Queer Non-Futurity?: Reproduction and Futurity in Charlotte Perkins
Gilman’s Herland and Morgan Llywelyn’s The Elementals
Kerim Can YAZGÜNOĞLU 1
Chapter 2: Human-Nonhuman Sexual Partnership and Re-definitions of the Body and
Gender Roles in Maggie Gee’s The Ice People
Fatma AYKANAT 17
Chapter 3: “Sense of Rejection” in Angela Carter’s Heroes and Villains
Çelik EKMEKÇİ 35
Chapter 4: A Comparative Study of Representation of Sexuality in Gore Vidal’s
Two Sisters and Joanna Russ’s The Female Man in the Light of Butler’s Queer
Theory
Raziyeh JAVANMARD 47
Chapter 5: Representing Irish History through Sexual Images in Seamus Heaney’s
Poetry
Ahmed Abdulsattar SALİH 61
Chapter 6: Feminist Counter-Discourse against Shakespeare’s King Lear: Elaine
Feinstein and Women’s Theatre Group’s Lear’s Daughters
Özlem ÖZMEN 75
Chapter 7:.The Problematic Masculinity of a Double Spy: Alfred Redl and A Patriot
for Me
Şafak HORZUM 99

Chapter 8: Theoretical Elevation towards Robotic and Virtual Fusion: Nonhuman

Voices on Stage
Zümre Gizem YILMAZ 121
Chapter 9: Misunderstanding Posthumanism: Is Cole Drumb’s PostHuman Really
Posthuman?
Başak AĞIN DÖNMEZ 143
Chapter 10: Cinematic Representations of Unstable Gender Identities in the Context
of “Holy Ireland”: An Analysis of Gill’s Goldfish Memory
Neslihan YILMAZ DEMİRKAYA 161
Chapter 11: Against the Control over Female Sexuality: Feminist Translation
Oriented Approach to The Vagina Monologues
Mehmet ERGUVAN 173
Chapter 12: Tracing Male and Female Voices in the Translations of Wuthering
Heights by Emily Brontë
Fatma Ülkü KAVRUK 187
Notes on Contributors 203
99

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Problematic Masculinity of

a Double Spy: Alfred Redl and A
Patriot for Me1

Şafak HORZUM

As a play concerned with loyalty to one’s country, politics of masculinities, and

identity dilemma between being a patriot and a defector, A Patriot for Me (1965) by
John Osborne provides a critical perspective on the patriarchal gender order,
especially the hierarchy of masculinity in the military. Dealing with the nationalist
ethics of a historical figure, Alfred Redl, Osborne questions the boundaries of
manliness with the protagonist’s inevitable dilemma to preserve his own self. Having
the validity depending on real past events, the play depicts its protagonist in such a
socially and politically trapped situation that Osborne manages to shed light upon the
hypocrisy of the society and the administrators of his time. As for the decade the play
was produced in, the 1960s also suggest a highly important timespan to lay the stage
bare for censor-free performances. Therefore, this paper aims to project the
background of Alfred Redl’s espionage, the repercussions of his “problematic”
masculinity for the military due to his homosexual affairs, and the removal of
censorship in relation to A Patriot for Me.
John Osborne, born in Fulham, London in 1929 as “the son of a commercial
artist and a barmaid” (Page 278), proved himself as a prolific playwright in the
second half of the twentieth century (Stade and Karbiener 372-73). Appalling

1
This chapter is an extended and reevaluated version of the paper “Social Perception of a Master Spy and His
Politicised Sexuality: Alfred Redl and A Patriot for Me” presented at the “8th International IDEA Conference:
Studies in English” organised by Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, Muğla, Turkey, on 16-18 March 2014.
Among a number of graduate papers presented at this conference, this paper was granted the “Best Presentation
Award”.
100

the British stage by introducing the problems of the lower-middle class with his Look
Back in Anger in 1956, Osborne, in his later works, reflected socially concerned
issues such as the conditions the post-war generation dwelled in, how the
governmental, social and economic conditions were, and how they could be restored.
His working-class background did not hinder him from training himself in socio-
political matters of the time since, throughout his early years, he collected a variety of
data about contemporary issues by being employed in different occupations like “a
journalist on trade papers,” “an assistant stage manager,” and an actor for little roles
(Page 278). With the success of Look Back in Anger in London, he became quite
famous and paved the way for other political playwrights such as John Arden and
Arnold Wesker. Although he has been seen as a political writer due to the facts that he
was associated with the Left, that he wrote in the Tribune, a Left-wing weekly, and
that he attacked the monarchy as well as the government by means of what he wrote
in journals, newspapers and autobiographies – not to mention the themes, subjects
and characters in his works – (Page 279), he “always actively refused the label of
political writer” (Langford 241) by explaining that “I really don’t have political
affiliations, although I suppose I once did believe I must be a socialist” (Osborne
1994: 204). For that reason, he can be accepted as a social realist playwright who
initiated the start of political plays concerning his time in the second half of the
twentieth century.

A Patriot for Me, a historically political three-act play, illustrates the life of
Alfred Redl (1864-1913), a master spy with Jewish origins who came from a
working-class background to the Royal and Imperial Army of the Austo-Hungarian
Empire (Armour 174; “Alfred Redl”; Jones 1100). The play begins in 1890 when he
was sent to the War College in Vienna, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and ends in
1913 when he was driven to commit suicide after the report to the Imperial Army
which revealed the facts of his private life, like his sexual orientation and ten-year
espionage on behalf of the Russian government by selling significant reports and
documents of the Empire’s military defence and attack mechanisms to Russia. It is
generally noted that Redl was a promising child at the military academy, Lemberg
Cadet School. He was especially noticeable for his skills in several languages which
included Ruthenian as his native tongue, German, Polish, French and Russian as the
foreign ones (McFarland 1; Deák 144). From the very beginning
101

of his career, Redl was regarded as diligent, intelligent, and soldierly (“Alfred Redl”;
Jones 1100-101) due to his eye-catching qualities, which are also named in A Patriot
for Me as “[a]rithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry […], engineering,
construction, fortification, geography and international law” (I.ii.87) as well as his
skills in other manly fields such as horse-riding. It is understood that, before writing A
Patriot for Me, Osborne conducted a highly comprehensive research on the case of
Alfred Redl (Sinfield 262-64; Trussler 139-41). Osborne uses the Redl character as an
anti-hero who gets caught in a tight situation and struggles against the historical and
political conditions which will eventually devastate him.
The play opens in the gymnasium of the 7th Galician Infantry Regiment at
Lemburg, Galicia, where Alfred Redl is seen with lieutenant Siczinsky, one of his
alleged lovers. They talk about the possible promotions for the lieutenant officers by
using a specific language based on homoerotic undertones which are observed
throughout the play. The end of the first scene is marked by the murder of Siczinsky
after a duel with Kupfer, another lieutenant. In the following scenes, Redl is sent to
the War College where he is expected to improve his outstanding abilities to a
maximum level with the advice of Lieutenant-Colonel Möhl. The play openly
presents the private lives of soldiers and/or officers in private cubicles in Madame
Anna’s nightclub where they can entertain themselves with food, alcoholic drinks,
music and women. Meanwhile, Alfred Redl, as closely observed by other colleagues,
seems to conform his behaviour to the traditional codes of military manliness by
sleeping with prostitutes, and talking about possible marriage plans as young men do.
In the fifth scene of the first act, Russian spy-recruiters, Colonel Oblensky and
Lieutenant Stanitsin, carry out an investigation about possible candidates for the
Russian Intelligence Service; it is understood that Redl is secretly tracked, and the
information about his homosexual actions is gathered with the help of Countess
Delyanoff. The first act ends with Redl’s coming out of the closet when he is
seen with a young private soldier, Paul, who then robs and beats him with other
soldiers. Act two opens with the drag ball in a ballroom of the house of Baron
von Epp. This first scene in which characters let themselves flow into their own
identities without any restriction constitutes the core of the play, and encompasses one
fourth of it. In addition, as the Baron states, the drag ball emphasises the distinction
between these individuals and the others repressing them within social
102

structures. The second act reveals the experiences of other homosexuals and the anti-
homosexual sermon by Schoepfer, and finishes with the exposition of Redl’s real
identity and mission as a double agent. The last act begins in the luxurious apartment
of Redl, and in the following six scenes he is revealed to have perpetually changing
male lovers as a result of his hysteria after being dumped by Victor. In these six
scenes, it is shown that Redl’s love of luxury in his homosexual, private life has
resulted in some of “his crushing debts” (Deák 144). It is through this luxurious life
that he is understood to be the master spy of the Russian intelligence. Hence, the elite
of the Austro-Hungarian military force him to end his life in an honourable way, by
committing suicide. The third act ends in the Russian spy-recruiter Oblensky’s office
as Oblensky and Stanitsin highlight the fact about Schoepfer’s homosexuality in order
to get rid of him as well. Thus, the play suggests a circular plot structure which starts
with killing off a gay officer, reaches a climactic point with the protagonist’s death,
and comes to a conclusion with the start of another investigation which will probably
lead to the preacher Schoepfer’s death, too.
So as to comprehend the ideas underlined throughout the play and the events of
the period, it is quite important to examine the historical context in which Alfred Redl
struggled to survive, and the notions of homosexuality and espionage in that particular
era. In terms of the military institution Redl spent his whole life in, one needs to take
the politics of gender as a framework in order to pinpoint the problems
of marginalised men in the military. Physical durability and health, mental stability
and intellectual superiority as essential aspects of heterosexual military masculinity
have always been among the high qualifications necessary for one to be appointed
to higher ranks in the army. Such defining aspects of manliness inevitably contributed
to the manliness of Redl as they were expected and prescribed roles for a man
after the 1850s in Europe. For a man to prove himself in the military and
on the battlefield of cross-cultural connections,
soldiers are recruited and trained in gendered ways: effectiveness is
explicitly or implicitly linked to masculinity, while failure is
feminized. The result […] is a mutually reinforcing dynamic, where
particular constructions of masculinity – associated with, but not in
any static, simple or fixed way, ideals of toughness, proving oneself
through adversity, courage, endurance, physical and psychological
103

strength; rationality; discipline; patriotism; lack of squeamishness;

avoidance of certain emotions such as fear, uncertainty,
guilt, or remorse; and heterosexual competency – depend
on militarism, and militarism depends on these constructions
of masculinity. (Duncanson 19)
A man’s stoic upbringing in the military refers to a system of hierarchies among men
in such a rigidly hierarchical institution. The more a soldier conforms to the
prescribed notions of manliness in his workplace, the more he is apt to exert his
hegemony over his peers and the more opportunity he has to reach higher ranks in this
hierarchical organisation.
Redl, having developed his abilities further, also, as a lieutenant, attracted the
attention of the high-ranking officers, and was transferred to the General Staff as a
captain in 1889 and then to the Counterintelligence Corps just one year later.
McFarland explains his immediate achievements:
As Chief of the Operations Section, Redl became responsible for
recruiting, training, and dispatching agents for spy missions. Redl’s
contributions and achievements in that position did not go
unrecognized: in 1905 and 1906 alone, he was rewarded the Military
Service Cross, the Military Service Medal, and the Royal Spanish
Military Service Order. (1)
His rise to the position of Chief of Intelligence for the Army quickly came in 1907
(Deák 144-45; Sova 203-04). Eventually, he, at the age of forty-eight, became one of
the fifty-four colonels in the Austro-Hungarian Army, which was the proudest in
Europe (V. S. Rubelcu 39). Schindler notes that Redl “was known throughout the
army as one of the brightest stars on the elite General Staff, a hard-charging colonel
headed for greatness” (484). In addition to these prospects, he was accepted as an
“innovator” since he introduced the use of wax cylinders to record conversations, the
secret camera, the foundation of a systematic policy to intercept mail – the Black
Bureau –, to reveal and erase fingerprints, and to follow suspects like their shadows
(McFarland 1; Knightley 49; Arens 551).
In the play, the military is at the core of the state and the nation. In
the ball scene of the first act which takes place on a terrace in Hofburg at
the Emperor’s residence in Vienna, it is clearly stated that, with regard to being
a constantly functioning institution which permits anyone with some
104

capacity to actualise himself, the army is of great importance, even above

nationalities and beliefs:

HÖTZENDORF: […] The army’s like nothing else. It goes beyond

religion. It serves everyone and everyone serves it, even
Hungarians and Jews. It conscripts, but it calls the best men
out, men who’d never otherwise have been called on.
(I.vi.103)
[…]
MÖHL: […] it’s like being a Pole or a Slovak or a Jew, I suppose.
All these things have more meaning than being, say, a civil
servant, or a watchmaker. And all these things are brought
together in the army like nowhere else. It’s the same
experience as friendship or loving a woman that is a proper
bond, it’s human, you can see it and experience it, more than
“all men are brothers” or some such nonsense. (I.vi.105)
[…]
MÖHL: […] even in this modern age of what they call democracy,
the army is still a place of privilege. (I.vi.106)

It is seen that the army is a privileged place for heterosexual discourse which fosters
patriarchal order in politics and society. In the play, Redl’s commander Möhl
describes his colonel’s personality as “upright, discreet, frank and open, painstaking,
marked ability to anticipate, as well as initiate instructions, without being reckless,
keen judgement, cool under pressure, […] friendly but unassertive, dignified and
strikes everyone as the type of a gentleman and distinguished officer of the Royal and
Imperial Army” which compose the “qualities of first-class field officer and an
unmistakable flair for intelligence” (I.ii.87). Redl is observed to conform to the norms
of heterosexuality in order to escape any suspicion for his homosexual orientation.
For that reason, he is always on full alert:

REDL: Who’s there? (Pause.) Who is it? Come on! Hey!

VOICE: Redl?
REDL: Who is it?
VOICE: Yes. I see you now.
REDL: Siczinsky? Is it? Siczinsky? (I.i.79)
105

Herein, one can understand how nervous Redl is and why he is on the alert
for any sudden action against him. While talking to his superiors, he
“speaks coolly and carefully. He is anxious to be courteous and respectful
without seeming unctuous, or sound a false, fawning note” (I.ii.86). While
Colonel Möhl is telling his ideas about what a good soldier is and how to
keep him close to the Army, he directly refers to the importance of Redl
because of the latter’s professional qualities: “You can’t afford to ignore a
good man. He’s too valuable. A good soldier always knows another one.
That’s what comradeship is […]. It’s knowing the value of other men” (I.ii.86).
Möhl even introduces Redl to the Chief of the General Staff, General
Conrad von Hötzendorf, as “just about the finest young officer” in the army (I.vi.101).
Redl’s private life occupies an important place while analysing his
eventual fall as a chief traitor as well as his realistic representation in A
Patriot for Me by John Osborne. Jackson states that one’s sexual
self-discovery requires “a period of self-deception” and a period of
acceptance of “desires regardless of the culture’s hostility” (150). Redl did
not have a different experience: he struggled to keep his private life related
to his homosexual orientation as a secret throughout his life, especially in
the army. Insofar as the military conditions of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries are taken into consideration, it must not have been
that easy making up convincing stories about his “gold cigarette case,
[…] gold crucifix” (I.x.113), long black Italian cigars, extravagant watches
and an expensive automobile, all of which, he says, he has taken from his
rich uncle, in addition to hiding his sybaritic life style full of expensive gifts
to his male lovers (Deák 145; V. S. Rubelcu 39). He was not an ordinary officer;
on the contrary, he was at the head of the Intelligence and Counterintelligence
Office of the Empire. After an extensive survey of homosexual charges
conducted against intelligence agents under suspicion during the wars
from the nineteenth century onwards, Jackson claims that “the influx of a million
men into their [higher] ranks was a welcome development” from the perspective
of “sexual possibilities” (150). At this point, the secretive aspect of a man’s
queer sexual orientation in the military poses a burble point for his loyalty
to his country due to his survival anxiety: espionage. Hastedt expresses a fact
on the nature of espionage with the following words:
[T]wo people play the game of espionage. One is the spy;
the other is the spy catcher […]. Spies are motivated by
106

a number of factors that are not unique to any country or

historical period. One motivation to spy is blackmail. It is
often associated with Soviet recruitment practice, but others
practice it as well. Sexual preference [sic] or illicit affairs
are common fodder for blackmail. (45-46)
In relation to this above-quoted nature of espionage, it is claimed that when Redl was
sent to the Military Attaché in St. Petersburg, the Soviet Intelligence obtained quite a
lot of information about him (Neiberg and Jordan 19) as it is depicted in the play
(I.v.98-100). The tactic used by the Soviet Russians to recruit spies on their behalf
was to photograph people “in the wrong bed,” to threaten them to circulate these
pictures, and to convince them; for the Soviet Bloc, “[a] good spy for a Western
service […] must have his own reasons for betraying his organization. The task of the
Western recruiter is to help him find those reasons” (W. R. Johnson 140). Henceforth,
it is proven that he began a homosexual relationship with a Russian officer (Wawro
208; West 236-37) so that the Russian Intelligence used that situation as a leverage to
leak crucial information about the Austro-Hungarian strategies.
When the military was regarded as a place where women were “either
absent, unapproachable,” or “possibly infected” with syphilis and gonorrhoea
in the early twentieth century, homosexual affairs were quite widespread
among soldiers and officers (Deák 143). This sexual objectification of the male
body through homosexual practices is, in a way, regarded as a subversion of
power and hegemony which were left in the hands of the heteropatriarchy
for hundreds of years. Hegemonic masculinity, then, “is both a personal
and a collective project, and is the common sense about breadwinning
and manhood. It is exclusive, anxiety-provoking, internally and hierarchically
differentiated, brutal, and violent. It is pseudo-natural, tough, contradictory,
crisis-prone, rich, and socially sustained” (Donaldson 645). In this sense,
homophobia becomes the most relevant and prevalent form of political attitude
encouraged by hegemonic masculinity. Heterosexual, or straight, men’s
hostile attitudes towards homosexual, or gay, men stem from this irrational
fear of losing masculinity in case of any contact with a non-heterosexual
individual. Not reacting against homosexuality in a disapproving way is
thought to diminish the unshakeable public hetero-masculinity for a straight
man since homosexual masculinity is seen at the bottom of the gender hierarchy
among men. Therefore, this heterosexual enmity “involves real social practice,
107

ranging from job discrimination through media vilification to imprisonment

and sometimes murder” (Connell 2005: 40). In relation to the concomitant
outcomes of this hegemonic relation in homophobic ideology, Deák states
that “[h]omosexuality was [made] a crime in the eyes of the law, both
civilian and military” (143). Redl’s case instigated a “spy mania” in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire: “the number of suspects had risen from 60 in 1908
to 150 in 1909. […] 300 espionage investigations for 1905 and 6,000 for 1913.
The records for arrests and court sentences present a similar picture: 32 arrests
and four convictions in 1905, 530 arrests and 560 convictions in 1913”
(Leidinger 35-36). Thus, it is understood that any attempt to corrupt the
military will be eliminated. At the court-martial proceedings between 1896 and
1915 in Vienna, one witnessed sentences given for the inappropriate behaviours
and acts of military personnel charged with homosexuality; these sentences
ranged from three-month imprisonment to a three-year imprisonment with
“severe regimes” along with “periodical fasting and solitary confinement,”
ruthless physical violence and obligatory resignations (Deák 143-44).

In the play, as an example for the merciless and homophobic practices

against the homosexuals in the military, Osborne illustrates an uncensored
instance from Redl’s life after he slept with a young private soldier, Paul:

REDL: Paul. What is it? What have I done? What are

you opening the door for? (PAUL has opened the
door. Four young SOLDIERS come in. they
look at REDL, who knows instantly what will
happen. He struggles violently at first, and for a
while it looks as if they might have taken on too
much. The young SOLDIERS in turn become
amazed by REDL’s vicious defence of himself,
which is like an attack. All the while PAUL dresses,
pockets REDL’s gold cigarette case, cigar case, watch
and chain, gold crucifix, notes and change. REDL
becomes a kicked, bloody heap on the floor. The
SOLDIERS leave. PAUL, having dressed fully by now,
helps REDL sit up against the bed, looks down at his
bloody face.)
PAUL: Don’t be too upset, love. You’ll get used to it.
(Exit.) (I.x.118)
108

The homophobic action taken against Redl fosters this destructive

discourse of manliness adopted by the military. The homophobic violence
directly stems from violent patriarchal ideology, i.e. “manliness,” which is the
forced character of socio-political power. “It is no accident,” Connell states, “that
the means of organized violence – weapons and knowledge of military
technique – are almost entirely in the hands of men” (1987: 107). Herbert affirms
this discourse of homophobic and heterosexual manliness used by the
military personnel by stating that “the policy against gays and lesbians has proved
to be somewhat ‘functional’ for the military, if only in hindsight. By subscribing
to stereotypical views of gay men, the military has been able to use homophobia
to demand that male recruits show only their strength and their aggression
and to insure that those who do not ‘fit’ were totally ostracized by their peers” (61).
Then, the military was able to make use of the homophobia it fostered both
formally and institutionally in order to preserve a “constructed” manliness
as a prerequisite for ‘manly’ military service.
Correspondingly, attitudes assumed against homosexuality, or
homosexual people, in the army and the administrative departments
of the government in the second half of the twentieth century were as the same
as in the late nineteenth century in Europe, or just like the witch hunts
of the eighteenth century (D. K. Johnson 102; Samuel 34). Helms and Hood, in their
book, quote from many twentieth-century local and state government figures like
Kenneth Wherry to underline the image of homosexuals in some state
officials’ minds: “‘homosexuals and other sex perverts’ were ‘not proper persons’ for
government jobs” because they “were more subject to blackmail than their straight
colleagues” (77). As D. K. Johnson mentions the situation in the 1950s and
1960s, “views on homosexuality were not atypical for a man born in the
nineteenth century. To him it represented a sinful, immoral behavior that he
was not terribly familiar with nor comfortable debating” (102). The “homosexuals-in-
government inquiry” was carried out so quietly that it did not turn into
a “circus” so that many homosexuals harboured in the administration were
forced to abandon their occupations without any uprising
(D. K. Johnson 102-04). Osborne also reflects these worries instigated
by a ring of spies called “the Cambridge Five,” “the London Five,” or “the
Magnificent Five” whose members, Anthony Frederick Blunt (1907-1983), Guy
Francis de Moncey Burgess (1911-1963), Harold Adrian Russell “Kim” Philby (1912-
1988), Donald Duard Maclean (1913-1983), and John Cairncross (1913-1995), were
109

recruited during their education years in Cambridge by the Committee for State
Security (KGB) of the Soviet Union (Trahair 181). They were ideologically socialist
spies who always backed one another and worked against Britain in favour of the
Soviet Union during World War II and the Cold War. Concern for state security
increased after the 1950s, thus leading to the understanding that homosexuals were
the weak link especially as tattlers as could be observed in Blunt’s, Burgess’s,
Philby’s and Maclean’s homosexual desires and life styles which they did not bother
to conceal (Mowla 419; Pierce and Adams; McSmith; Seale and McConville 72-73).
Moreover, Higgins asserts that A Patriot for Me offers “an ambitious analogue of the
contemporary British situation” because the declining years of the Macmillan and
Douglas-Home Conservative governments (1957-1964) were marked by “sex-and-spy
scandals” involving the blackmailing of homosexuals like Robert Boothby, Ronald
“Ronnie” Kray and John Vassall (308-14).
In 1960, the case of Alfred Redl was revived in the popular magazine, Whisper,
with the title “The Homosexual Who Wrecked an Empire”; this article by V. S.
Rubelcu revealed the possible transvestism of Redl which was hinted in the drag ball
scene in Act II and Redl could not refute it in Oblensky’s interrogatory scene
(II.iii.135-39). This article interestingly reflected the homophobic consensus in the
hetero-patriarchal society as observed in the following extract taken from the
introductory part:

[Redl’s] apartment [in Vienna] was a decorator’s dream,

luxuriously tricked out with all kinds of feminine frills
and heavy with the sickening sweet [odours] perfume and
incense […]. [In] a capacious closet […] silken kimonos fought
for space with mounds of frilly lingerie. Other shelves
held the sheerest of silk stockings, and there was a large rack of
hand-crafted high heeled shoes occupying the left side of
the secret compartment from floor to ceiling […]. It was the
boudoir of a man […] whose mission in life was to corrupt
[young Army officers and orderlies] in order to satisfy
his homosexual passions. (39)

This extravagancy of “one of the most infamous double agents in the history of
international espionage” narrated above (D. K. Johnson 108) was enough to convince
societies in favour of the antagonism towards homosexuals in the high-ranking posts.
Similarly, since the beginning of the twentieth century,
110

especially intelligence services in the world have been accordingly sterilised from
homosexuals after the Redl case which was thought to be a great lesson which caused
great discomfort to countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and the ones
in the Balkan region (Armour 172) as it brought the collapse of the once great Austro-
Hungarian Empire because “homosexuals posed a threat to national security” (D. K.
Johnson 108).

The drag ball of the Act II in the play demonstrates the homosexual characters’
sincere desire for personal and sexual liberation. This carnivalesque scene brings
‘respectable’ men from the highest levels of society together with the lowly paid boys
from the working class, who are all in drags as Marie Antoinette, Queen Alexandra,
Lady Godiva, Tsarina and some other important historical figures (Sova 204). All of
them share the same sense of entrapment within and detachment from the society they
live in. The men in drags liberate themselves from the expectations and gaze of the
heteropatriarchal society outside, and celebrate their queer camaraderie both by
excluding women from their world and by dressing like them in their world (Wandor
78-79). The Baron expresses that this drag ball “is the celebration of the individual
against the rest, the us’s and the them’s, the free and the constricted, the gay and the
dreary, the lonely and the mob” (II.i.124). He further asks “Don’t you think we should
all form an Empire of our own?” (II.i.128). This all-male society asserts its
homosexual masculinity as “self-contained and self-perpetuating” (Wandor 79).
Osborne attempts to show the audience this exclusionist hypocritical attitude of state
institutions like the military. These men place themselves in safer and more
comfortable positions by making their own choices at the expense of their lives
“because their respective countries cannot accommodate who they are […]. Thus, one
betrays his country […] out of fear” (Langford 247). Kunz, the Baron, Albrecht and
Tsarina illustrate the paradoxical experiences and inferences about themselves that
they have encountered in institutions related to health and security services and the
military:

KUNZ: You see, this [ballroom where the drag ball takes place]
is a place for people to come together. People who are
very often in their everyday lives, rather lonely and even
miserable and feel hunted. As if they had a spy catcher
[…]. (II.i.130)
111

BARON: […] I’m quite happy as I am, I’m no criminal […]

and I don’t corrupt anything that isn’t already quite
clearly corrupt, like this ghastly city […]. Oh, I went to
a doctor like a silly thing when I was a student. He just
looked very agitated and told me there was nothing he
could do and to go away. A few years later I heard he’d
cut his throat... (II.i.133)

ALBRECHT: I went to a doctor once, and he just said

“pull your socks up”. Do you know what he told me
to do? Go into the Army! […] Get married […]. I
went into the Army. Artillery. In the second week
I’d been seduced by the Corporal of Horse and a
sub-lieutenant. (II.i.133)

TSARINA: […] I remember the first time a man tickled

the palm of my hand with his middle finger, when
we shook hands, and then later he told me what he
was. I was very religious then, and I thought he was
wicked. I really did at the time. (II.i.133-34)

The narratives above show that these individuals also feel ambushed in tragi-comic
and dilemmatic situations in their own society. It is understood that Redl also detests
that same situation he is forced into in such a socio-political system which entraps
him and enables him to be himself only “in morally and physically destructive ways”
(Langford 247).

Among all the homosexual characters in the play, Alfred Redl appears to be the
only man who has difficulties to accept the above-mentioned dilemmatic and
hypocritical situation in the military. Despite continuing his homosexual relations in
the army and leaking out the Empire’s strategies for which he was paid by Russia,
Redl fits into neither heterosexual military manliness nor the atmosphere of liberated
homosexual identities in the drag ball. To give an example, he is a heavy smoker like
other military officials; however, unlike others, he is a constant peppermint user
trying to eliminate the unfavourable odour of cigars. Hilde, the prostitute in Madame
Anna’s nightclub, draws attention to this difference of Redl:
112

HILDE: […]
(REDL leans over the bed and kisses her lingeringly.
She returns the embrace abstractedly. He looks down
at her.)
Peppermints!
REDL: Damn it! I apologized, didn’t I?
(She puts her finger to his mouth to calm him.)
HILDE: And cigars. That’s what you smell of, and horses
and saddles. What could be nicer, and more manly?
(I.iv.95)
Hilde’s understanding of manliness does not differ from the general consensus in
society and the military. She prefers the “more manly” smell of cigars, horses and
saddles to the so-called feminine odour of peppermints. Redl is unable to stand behind
his own actions because of his problematic sexual identity. Similarly, he cannot attune
his appearance and behaviours to the carnivalesque atmosphere in the drag ball. He is
in his formal apparel and does not give up his enforced heterosexual manners: “REDL
is quite cool, looking extremely dashing in Colonel’s uniform and decorations and
close-cropped hair, staring very carefully around at all the guests, his eyes missing no
one” (II.i.120). According to Sinfield, Redl’s refusal of effeminacy in the drag ball
scene “indicates self-hatred” of a homosexual man who could not come to terms with
his own identity in such a conflictual military space (262). Also, his hunger for money
and young boys conduces toward “betrayal against the [hypocritical] homosocial
order” (Gross 148). His self-hatred eventually leads to his unconformity within the
both public and private areas: Redl is the “one who fails even among his own kind”
(Trussler 146).

Unable to make a compromise between his private world entangled

in homosexual relations and the outer world shaped by military meritocracy,
Redl is stuck between being loyal to his country, which means his orientation
will be exposed, and betraying his country, which means he will continue
his homosexual life with all the luxuries. The Russian spy catchers, Oblensky
and Stanitsin, having collected every detail of Redl’s private and professional
lives, blackmail him and want exclusive intelligence data from the Austro-
Hungarian Army in return for a huge amount of money. During Redl’s
forced persuasion, Oblensky tells Redl that “[Stanitsin] will contact you when
you’ve had a few days to rest and recover generally. The package contains seven
113

thousand kronen in notes” (II.iii.139). After he was blackmailed by the Soviets, Redl
was understood to have provided a great deal of “considerable information about
Austrian fortresses in Galicia and deployment plans of Habsburg forces” (Maurer 27).
The exposition of his double agency similarly resulted from a monetary exchange.
Knightley gives a detailed account:

On 2 March the [Black B]ureau opened two letters addressed to

“Opera Ball 13, Poste Restante, Central Post Office, Vienna”.
The letters contained money: one the sum of 6,000 Austrian
Kronen, and the other 8,000 Austrian Kronen (then about £240
and £320 respectively). Neither envelope contained anything
else. It was this, and the fact that the letters came from
Eydtkuhnen on the German frontier with Russia, that made the
Austrian counter-intelligence agents suspicious and they kept
watch to see who would collect the letters. (49)

The owner of these letters was no one else than Alfred Redl who was later discovered
to take “£2,400 a year from the Russians – ten times his pay as a colonel –,” and to
have “a house in Prague and another in Vienna, an estate in the country, four
expensive cars, and a cellar that included 160 dozen of the finest champagnes”
(Knightley 50). This Soviet infiltration into the Austro-Hungarian Empire by means
of its primary double spy led to the extension of the Great War more than a year due
to the necessity of preparing new strategic attack and defence arrangements.

When homosexuality is explicitly included as a theme in any literary work,

the work or the author often becomes a major target for censorship. One can
claim that homosexuality brings its companion “homophobia” with it wherever
it goes, and this duo brings forth concerns about “traditional notions of
virility, and fears of emasculation” (Heins 259). Among one of those literary pieces, A
Patriot for Me also finds a place for itself as it was written and performed in
1965 and distinctly played an important role in the process of the
abolishment of censorship in 1968. The play “inspired criticism that
shows how deeply the study of drama is enmired in homophobia,” just like
in the society (Clum 171). As Smith explains, “the control of theatre [has]
always been the protection of private men and public morals” since 960 AD
which is the first recorded censor on a play; therefore, “censorship results
from political self-interest and puritanical ignorance” (192). Nicholas
114

de Jongh is known to be the first journalist to enter the archive of censorship in 1990
and his book Not in Front of the Audience: Homosexuality on Stage (1992) reveals all
the censored plays with detailed reasons and the absurdities in that process. The rules
incorporated into the Stage Licensing Act in 1737 that gave unlimited rights to the
Lord Chamberlain to censor as he pleased were still valid in the year John Osborne
put A Patriot for Me down on paper. The process of the abolishment of censorship
was slow, yet steady, and eventually “[t]he row over the Royal Court’s productions of
Saved and John Osborne’s A Patriot for Me (1965) triggered the passing of the 1968
Theatres Act. This ended official censorship, putting dramatic performance on a par
with books, magazines and periodicals” (Smith 197).

Depending on the accounts of the time, the Lord Chamberlain provided a “list
of the cuts and alterations” including omitting scenes related to homosexuality like
Act I – Scene 10, Act II – Scene 1 and Act III – Scene 5, and altering the words and
sentences laying homoerotic undertones such as clap, crabs and spine in order for the
play to be performed before the public (Sova 205). The justification of these
prohibitions were based on the “British Medical Association Report on
Homosexuality” (1955) warning one “could ‘acquire’ homosexuality through
‘seduction’ or because of ‘aspirations’: ‘Some people adopt homosexual practices
because they think such activity denotes superiority of mind’” (De Jongh 102). The
chief problem in relation to censorship was also the drag ball scene in Act II where
men were dressed up in erotic female clothes like Lady Godiva’s “gold lamé
jockstrap” (II.i.120). However, without these scenes, the central concern of the play
would have been expunged: it was in these scenes that “the most direct set of
challenges to conflations of militarism with manhood are posed” (Wandor 78). In
consideration that homosexuality was always “an open secret” in the military and
Alfred Redl’s life, a double standard was applied to A Patriot for Me because
concepts like militarism and manhood were rooted in “a macho heterosexuality”
(Wandor 78). For such reasons, Osborne immediately refused any cut or alteration.
The play was, then, allowed to be performed at a club “‘for members only’ at the
Royal Court Theatre” so that it would not infect many people and would discontinue
to be performed (Sova 205-06). Judi Dench, the cast co-director of the play, got quite
enthusiastic and said: “When I got to the scene with the two men in bed I thought I’d
never read anything more daring in my life. I’d been brought up on censorship”
115

just like the actors and actresses in the first night of the first performance (qtd. in De
Jongh 106). Despite the fact that many famous actors had declined the role of Baron
von Epp, though a meretricious one, as it could ruin their acting careers, George
Devine who accepted it even requested the press not to argue against the play: “I just
want it to be seen. Anything you lot do to make the Lord Chamberlain look absurd
will be detrimental to us. If he is challenged by this action it could be very, very
harmful to the job of getting this important play on” (qtd. in De Jongh 107). The press
granted that wish. In spite of all the worries of performers, directors, and the
playwright, “the first-night audience responded with an outburst of applause. The
commercial omens were also promising” (De Jongh 102). Osborne’s insistence on
composing such a ground-breaking play and not omitting scenes censored by the Lord
Chamberlain’s Office gave a fresh impetus to the abolishment of the censorship on
the British stage. “By the beginning of June, just four weeks before the opening,” De
Jongh states, “membership of The English Stage Company, which was required to
attend a performance of A Patriot for Me, had leapt from 1,600 to almost 4,000”
(107). The play evoked many discussions questioning the reality of the narrative and
the life of Alfred Redl rather than the explicitly represented connection between
“homosexual traitor” and contemporary “anti-homosexual” perception of the society,
in general (Kasser 74-76).

To conclude, A Patriot for Me presents an account based on historical

and political facts in a historically fictionalised manner to convey the reality that the
notion attached to Alfred Redl as an “arch-traitor” grounded on his “homosexuality”
as “a product of the middle European military code” (Austen 356). He became
such an alarming example of emasculation that homosexuality has been
attached to treachery, perfidiousness and profligacy for a long time, and such
associations have been accepted as universal truths as a fact that could end a
career when the documents of Redl’s later years are taken into consideration.
This destabilisation of patriarchal gender hierarchies questions the taken-for-granted
privilege of heterosexual men and their homophobic violence against
othered individuals. At this point, the ethics of espionage originated by a gendered
society and politics need to be revised since it puts restrictions on and interlopes with
an individual’s private life. Although the title asks for a patriot, the country actually
asks for a man who can both do the dirty work of the state and the military and be
116

damned due to his private affairs. Redl, being a homosexual himself, could have been
loyal to his country if the military politics had not followed a homophobic and
exclusionist path. With such questions in mind, Osborne proved his play to be the ice-
breaker of censorship by attracting theatre-goers’ attention at exactly the right time.

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Abstract: John Osborne writes his historically political play, A Patriot for Me in
1965 – in the critical decade which saw the end of stage censorship –, focusing
on a significant double agent during the First World War, Alfred Redl. The play
sheds light upon the intriguing correlation between the nature of espionage
and attributions to and connotations of male homosexuality in the early
twentieth century. Conforming his behaviours to the traditional roles of
masculinities under the gaze of military officers of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, the protagonist Redl reflects the illustration of marginalised male
gender roles within the order of hegemonic masculinities. In addition to
emphasising the play’s significant role in the process of the abolishment of
censorship in 1968, the aim of this paper is to scrutinise the relationship
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between homosexuality and treachery within the institute of espionage by relating

these issues to Alfred Redl’s life.
Key Words: John Osborne, A Patriot for Me, Alfred Redl, Masculinity,
Homosexuality, Espionage.

Bir İkili Casusun Sorunlu Erkekliği: Alfred Redl ve

A Patriot for Me
Özet: John Osborne, 1965 yılında A Patriot for Me (Bana Bir Vatansever Lazım) adlı
tarihsel siyasi oyununu kaleme almış olup, bu oyunda Birinci Dünya Savaşı’nın
mühim bir ikili casusu olan Alfred Redl’e odaklanmıştır. Oyun, casusluğun doğası ile
yirminci yüzyılın başlarında erkek eşcinselliğine atfedilen anlamlar ve çağrışımlar
arasındaki merak uyandırıcı münasebete ışık tutmaktadır. Avusturya-Macaristan
İmparatorluğu’nun subayları önünde erkeklik kavramının getirdiği geleneksel
normlara davranışlarını uyduran ana karakter Redl, aslında hegemonik erkeklik
düzeni içerisinde ötekileştirilmiş eril toplumsal cinsiyet rollerinin bir temsilini sunar.
Bu çalışma, oyunun 1968’de sansürün kaldırılması sürecinde oynadığı önemli rolü
vurgulamanın yanı sıra eşcinselliğin casusluk kurumunda ihanetle olan ilişkisini
Alfred Redl’in hayatına göndermeler yaparak inceleyecektir.
Anahtar Sözcükler: John Osborne, A Patriot for Me, Alfred Redl, Erkeklik,
Eşcinsellik, Casusluk.