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Mosse George L, 1982, Nationalism and Responsability, Normal and Abnormal Sexuality in The Nineteenth Century PDF
Mosse George L, 1982, Nationalism and Responsability, Normal and Abnormal Sexuality in The Nineteenth Century PDF
Mosse
restraint from the start, and as the nineteenth century began the at-
tempt to control sex beyond those controls already attempted by
-
the Church - was part of the larger effort to cope with the ever
more obvious results of industrialization and revolution. Distances
seemed to shrink during the nineteenth century through the new
speed of communications, while the proliferation of factories and
the sudden growth of cities promised increasing mobility. Many
contemporaries saw it as a nervous age which called for greater ef-
forts to keep control over public and private life.
The attempt to cope with a nervous age brought to a climax
changes in manners and morals which had been evolving slowly in
previous centuries. The French Revolution was viewed as divine
retribution for aristocratic frivolity, and modern manners and
morals were to a large extent the products of pietistic and
evangelical revivals. Religious revival and revolution were accom-
panied by the development of middle-class life, with its emphasis
on hard work and the fulfilment of man’s vocation, and its
endeavour to confront the restlessness of the age with respectabili-
ty. Harold Nicolson spoke of ’the onslaught of respectability’
which triumphed during the late eighteenth century, within the life
span of one generation. And in the second decade of the nineteenth
century, Sir Walter Scott’s great aunt felt ashamed to read a book
‘ ... which sixty years ago I have heard read aloud for a large circle,
consisting of the first and most creditable society in London’.’ The
free flow of passion and fantasy was seen as a threat to the order of
things: ’Good society hates scenes, vetoes every eccentricity of
manners and demonstrativeness of demeanor as bad form’.22
For society to establish controls of restraint and moderation, the
techniques of physicians, educators and police were in need of
reinforcement: behind their methods of control there had to be an
ideal which might serve to define normalcy and abnormalcy and to
contain sexual passion. Nationalism came to the rescue. The
history of sexuality became part of the history of nationalism in
two ways: nationalism not only helped to control sexuality, to re-
inforce what society considered normal, but it also provided the
means through which changing sexual attitudes could be absorbed
and tamed into respectability. When, as we shall see, members of
the younger generation at the fin de siecle sought to rediscover their
bodies and to liberate themselves from shamefulness, nationalism
co-opted their attack upon respectability. This ability of nation-
alism to absorb - its flexibility seems to be one reason why
-
the speed of time: steam and electricity, he tells us, have turned
new
everyone’s life upside down, while railway travel has ruined the
nervous system. Normalcy must defeat degeneration; victory will
be won by those with strong nerves, a clear head, and dedication to
hard work. Fantasy and imagination must be strictly controlled. 37
The degenerate was easily recognized because his deformed body
manifested internal decay. At the end of the nineteenth century,
Darwinism and degeneration had sharpened public attitudes
towards the abnormal which had existed for over a century. Nor-
dau himself, as well as many Darwinists, made clear distinctions
between bourgeois virtues which led to progress and degeneration
which led to extinction not only extinction of the individual, but
-
Greece.
Proust, homosexual and part Jew, with his peculiar sensibilities,
wrote in Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927) that homo-
sexuals, like Jews, were invested by their persecutors with all the
moral and physical characteristics of a race. The parallel is all the
stronger since Proust regarded homosexuality as an incurable
diseases Moreover, according to Proust, both the Jew and the
homosexual felt ’one of a brotherhood’, and each intuitively
recognized a member of his group.39 There is throughout Remem-
brance of Things Past the sense that the persecuted collaborate with
the persecutor, as Proust did himself when he characterized the
homosexual as degenerate and feminine in appearance. His hate of
his own ’secret vice’, the outrage at being called feminine, and the
duel he fought with a homosexual who had questioned the purity of
his friendship with Lucien Daudet - all show Proust trying to
escape the ’race maudit’, as he called it.10
Self-hate among Jews was equally familiar the reaction of -
were led by Jews who wanted to undermine Aryan virility and self-
consciousness.42 Friedlander attempted to use racism and anti-
semitism in order to win acceptance by nationalism. Such
arguments had no future, they demonstrated a feeling of despera-
tion in the face of an unbreakable union between nationalism and
respectability. Proust’s characterization of both homosexuals and
Jews as the ’race maudit’ was closer to the nationalist reality.
We have examined the relationship between nationalism and
respectability as it was affected by the need for restraint, modera-
tion and order. Nationalism also made use of institutional controls
to support ideas of respectability. Educational institutions, the
family and the army have not yet been examined in this context,
and we can only mention them briefly. Their function as in-
struments of sexual control was built on the concept of normalcy
and abnormalcy which must remain the focus of this essay.
Certainly the family exercised control over sexuality. Physicians
advised marriage as the best cure for masturbators,43 and even
those sexologists who came to legitimize homosexuality praised
marriage as the finest expression of the human spirit. The well-
being of the nation was often linked to that of the family. During
the eighteenth century it was said that the state had a right to de-
mand that its subjects marry, and at the beginning of the nineteenth
Friedrich Ludwig Jahn wrote, ’im Familienglfck lebt die
Vaterlandsliebe’44 (patriotism flourishes in a happy family).
Richard von Krafft-Ebing asserted towards the end of the century
that destruction of family life is accompanied by material and
political ruin.45 The Swedish sexologist Seved Ribbing wrote that by
encouraging normal sexual development the family fulfils this task
of the state well, simply and cheaply.46 Yet throughout the nine-
teenth century the family withdrew into ever greater privacy, mak-
ing essential questions difficult to answer .41 Did the father appeal
to national sentiment within the family circle in order to safeguard
his own domination? We do not know, and can only suggest that
there were links between nationalism, respectability and the family.
The institutionalization of nationalism and respectability
through education would require a full-length study, though it is
clear that teachers and schools used national appeals to inculcate
manners and morals. Certainly such an appeal was subsumed in the
English motto ’Godliness and good learning’, and it was com-
monplace in German schools.
Institutionalization through the army reveals a more direct and
The rediscovery of the human body was part of the fin de siecle
revolt of youth against their elders, the society in which they lived,
and the accepted respectabilities. These bourgeois youths did not
address themselves to the social and economic conditions which
had helped form society, but to the manners and morals which
touched them directly. They attacked their elders for being
hypocrites whose public respectabilities were accompanied by
secret fornication. And their revolt went beyond books and journals
to inspire youth movements, sport, plays, poetry, and eventually a
new national consciousness.
Children of prosperity, these youths longed to escape from their
the great healer and by the turn of the century, exposure to the sun
had become part of the cure for tuberculosis. To hide the body
from the sun in shame was taken as a sign of moral and mental
sickness, of being part of the conspiracy by which the ruling classes
suppressed the natural instincts of man. 51
The connection between exposure and immorality which had
been common coin was now reversed. Yet, significantly, this did
not generally lead to license, for the majority of youth was in-
fluenced by nudism but not by the Expressionists’ call for sexual
liberation. The ’culture of sun and light’, as nudism was first called
in Germany, was founded in the middle of the century but did not
make its mark until the 1890s. It was part of the broad ’Lebens-
reform’ movement, which attempted to return to the so-called
genuine forces of life, and to reform man and society through
vegetarianism, anti-alcoholism, nature-healing, land-reform and
the advocacy of garden cities. Cities were condemned as breeding
grounds of immorality and moral sickness, and were said to induce
bodily ills, all arguments we have met before.52 The enthusiasm for
nude swimming, athletics and sunbathing, even while condemning
false shame, harnessed the rediscovery of the body to respect-
ability.
While much of the movement toward life reform tended to sym-
pathize with the political left and with pacifism, its nationalist wing
was to have a disproportionately large influence. Nudity, so it was
said, furthered the regeneration of the race, reconciled social dif-
ferences, and ranked the Volk according to character and well-built
bodies. And nudism, one of its strongest advocates wrote, is not to
be blamed for lustful thoughts; the blame rests on those degenerate
men and women without souls who have such thoughts.53 Further-
more, veiling the human body was said to whet the sexual appetite,
and bourgeois dress to invite immorality.54 As a journal close to the
German Youth Movement had it, modern clothing hid the faults of
the body, making it difficult to select the proper partner in mar-
riage.55 Choosing healthy partners was thought to be vital for the
future of the race and nation. The distinction between the sexes
continued to be emphasized: girls wore ’reform dress’ which gave
them room to breathe but hid their bodies the image of the
-
Notes
I would like to thank Sterling Fishman, James D. Steakley, Anson Rabinbach, Paul
Breines and F.B. Smith for their helpful suggestions.
41. Hans Peter Bleuel, Sex and Society in Nazi Germany (Philadelphia 1973), 217.
42. Benedict Friedländer cited in Karl Franz von Leexow, Armee und Homo-
sexualität (Leipzig 1908), 5, 61-63; see aso Friedländer’s Die Liebe Platons im Lichte
der modernen Biologie (Treptow 1909), 30, 203, 204; there ignoring the usefulness
of homosexuality is said to weaken the white race while leading to the triumph of the
yellow races, 278.
43. Robert H. McDonald, ’The Frightful Consequences of Onanism’, Journal of
the History of Ideas (1967), Vol. 28, 425.
44. Carl Euler, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (Berlin 1881), 118.
45. Richard von Krafft-Ebing, op. cit., 6.
46. Albert Moll, Handbuch der Sexual-Wissenschaften, 939.
47. Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (New York 1975), 121.
48. Ernst von Salomon, Die Kadetten (Hamburg 1957), 42-43; Klaus Theleweit,
Mdnnerphantasien (Frankfurt a. Main 1978), Vol. 2, 87, 199-201.
49. Gert Mattenklott, Bilderdienst, Asthetische Opposition bei Beardsley und
George (Munich 1970), 198.
50. George L. Mosse, Nationalization of the Masses, 133.
51. Heinrich Pudor, Naktkultur (Berlin-Steglitz 1906), Vol. 1, 49.
52. Wolfgang R. Krabbe, Geselischaftsveränderung durch Lebensreform (Got-
tingen 1974), 13, 91, 94, 98.
53. Richard Ungewitter, Naktheit und Moral, Wege zur Rettung des deutschen
Volkes (Stuttgart 1925), 10, 11.
54. Heinrich Pudor, Nackende Menschen (n.p. 1917?), 15.
55. Vortrupp (1 May 1913), 279-280.
56. Timothy d’Arch Smith, Love in Earnest, Some Notes on the Lives and
Writings of the English ’Uranian’ Poets from 1889 to 1930 (London 1970), passim.
57. The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, with a Memoir (London 1918), xxvii,
clix.
58. Edward Howard Marsh, A Number of People (New York and London 1939),
274; Michael Hastings, The Handsomest Young Man in England, Rupert Brooke
(London 1967), passim.
59. Stanley Casson, Rupert Brooke and Skyros (London 1921), n.p. As usual,
reality was more complex than the myth. For example, Virginia Woolf wrote that
Brooke was jealous, moody and imbalanced. Like many of those who knew Brooke
personally, she disliked the Memorial by Edward Marsh which accompanied
Brooke’s collected poems (1915) and which had transformed him into all that
English youth should be. The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 1, ed. Anne Olivier Bell
(New York and London 1977), 172. By then, Brooke had broken with the
Bloomsbury group. Yet his growing anti-semitism and anti-feminism does not quite
fit Marsh’s and Churchill’s myth. John Lehmann, Rupert Brooke His Life and His
Legend (London 1980), 73.
60. Stephen Spender, World within World (London 1951), 107.
61. Ronald Hyam, Britain’s Imperial Century, 1815-1914 (London 1976), 141,
137.
62. Der Anfang (September 1913), 138.
63. Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen (1903), Vol. 2, 921.
64. Ibid. (1905), Vol. 1, 377.
65. Gert Mattenklott, op. cit., 57ff.
66. Eugen Duhren (Iwan Bloch), Englische Sittengeschichte (Berlin 1912), 14, 24,
46; (first published in 1903).
67. Iwan Bloch, Das Sexualleben unserer Zeit, 541, 543, 591, 595.
68. Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen (1901), Vol. 2, 7-71; ibid. (1903),.
Vol. 1, 93.
69. Vincent Brome, Havelock Ellis, Philosopher of Sex (London 1979), passim.
70. Phyllis Grosskurth, John Addington Symonds (London 1964), 291.
71. Frank J. Sulloway, Freud Biologist of the Mind (New York 1979), Chapter 8.
72. Frank J. Sulloway, op. cit., 283; for example, 320 works on homosexuality
were published in Germany in 1905 alone, James D. Steackley, op. cit., 24.
73. Jost Hermand, Der Schein des schönen Lebens (Frankfurt a. Main 1972),
55-128.
74. Janos Frecot, Johann Friedrich Geist, Diethart Krebs, Fidus, 1869-1948
(Munich 1972), 176.
75. Gert Mattenklott, op. cit., 299.
76. Ibid., 113.
77. Janos Frecot et al., op. cit., 145, 151.
78. The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, cii, 5.
79. Otto Braun, Aus nachgelassenen Schriften eines Frühvollendeten, ed. Julie
Vogelstein (Berlin 1921), 120.
80. The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, lxxv.
81. Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (London 1975), 90ff.
82. Franz Schauwecker, Aufbruch der Nation (Berlin 1930), 41.
83. John R. Gillis, Youth and History, Tradition and Change in European Age
Relations 1770 to the Present (New York 1974), 157.
George L. Mosse
is Bascom Professor of History, University
of Wisconsin, Madison and Koebner
Professor of History at the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem. He is the co-editor
of the Journal of Contemporary History
and his latest book is Man and Masses,
Nationalist and Fascist Perceptions of
Reality (1980).