Central European History Williams

Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association
Ecstasies of the Young: Sexuality, the Youth Movement, and Moral Panic in Germany on the
Eve of the First World War
Author(s): John Alexander Williams
Source: Central European History, Vol. 34, No. 2 (2001), pp. 163-189
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Ecstasies of the Young:
Sexuality, the Youth Movement, and
Moral Panic in Germany on the
Eve of the First World War
John Alexander Williams
1913 the bourgeois youth movement in Germany fell under the

influence of a radical minority who called for complete emancipation from
IN adult control. The two most influential youth movement publications of
that year joined the language of countercultural rebellion with unconventional
discussions of adolescent sexuality. Hans Bluher's book The German Wandervogel
Movement as an Erotic Phenomenon argued that the adolescent boys and young
adult male leaders of Wandervogel groups were bound together by homoerotic
attraction and that these male leagues were of great benefit to the German
nation. Der Anfang, a monthly journal written by adolescents and university
students only tangentially related to the Wandervogel, proclaimed that Ger?
manys young people were perfectly capable of self-education in all matters, in?
cluding sexuality. The countercultural trend of 1913 culminated in the Hoher
Meissner festival in mid-October. There some two thousand representatives of
the youth movement listened to speakers condemn the hypocritical social con?
ventions, materialism, and belligerent nationalism of Wilhelmian society. The
festival climaxed with the founding of a new national umbrella organization, the
Freideutsche Jugend, and with an official "Meissner Proclamation" pledging to
create an autonomous Jugendkultur that would be free of all adult authority.
In response to these provocations, a wave of moral panic swept through
Germany in the first six months of 1914. Catholic politicians in the Bavarian
parliament launched the public offensive in late January, and other Catholics,
conservatives, and moderate liberals followed suit in newspapers and state par-
liaments throughout the country. These critics linked the publications about
For their supportand suggestionsI wish to thankOlaf Griese,Max Williams,SarahWilliams,Brad

Brown,TraugottRoser, LeisaMeyer,Rob Buffmgton,and Robert Dean, as well as the anonymous
readersfor CentralEuropeanHistory.
CentralEuropeanHistory,vol. 34, no. 2, 163-189
163
Wandervogel hiking to the Griefenstein ruins.
Courtesy Archiv deutscher Jugendbewegung,
Burg Ludwigstein.
164 ECSTASIES OF THE YOUNG
adolescent sexuality with the Freideutsche Jugends declaration of autonomy,

raising a specter of youthful licentiousness, immorality, and rebelliousness.
They spoke darkly of a conspiracy of certain deviant adults within the youth
movement to exploit the impulsive, irrational nature of adolescents. Only left-
liberals and Social Democrats sided with the youth movement, defining the
natural energy and idealism of adolescents as a potentially progressive force for
cultural reform.
The controversy of 1913-1914 was the climax of an ongoing cultural and
political struggle over the young generation in the Second Empire. As Jiirgen
Reulecke and others have shown, the generation of twelve to twenty-five year-
olds took on unprecedented significance in Wilhelmian culture. Especially
within the educated middle class, the fear of declining status made Jugend "the
code word for a renaissance, for the forging of a new, more healthy world."1
Indeed, the young generation became interchangeable with the nation in the
rhetoric of the many Wilhelmian organizations that were working toward cul?
tural reform. Competing plans for national development became interwoven
with narratives of generational development from childhood to adulthood. The
fate of the entire nation came to be represented as dependent on the manner
in which Germany's young generation matured into adult citizenship. These
concerns led to vigorous competition among cultural activists along the entire
political spectrum to gain control over the socialization of adolescents.2
On one side were a few adult intellectuals who wished to transform the
youth movement into a force for cultural change. Some of them were politi?
cally progressive, others were conservative, but they all saw in the youth move?
ment a potential savior of the German nation from its alleged internal
weaknesses. The passion and idealism considered natural to adolescents could
infuse new energy into Wilhelmian culture, but only if young people managed
to liberate themselves from the dulling influence of adult supervision.
On the other side of the struggle was a much larger number of adults who
either participated in or were influenced by the organized, state-sponsored pro?
ject of youth cultivation (Jugendpflege). Convinced that adolescents were too
1. Jiirgen Reulecke, "The Battle for the Young:Mobilizing Young People in Wilhelmine
Germany,"in Generations in Conflict:
YouthRevoltandGeneration Formationin Germany1770-1968,
ed. Mark Roseman (Cambridge,1995), 97. See also WalterRiiegg, Kulturkritik undJugendkult
(Frankfurtam Main, 1974);ThomasKoebner,Rolf-PeterJanz,and FrankTrommler,eds., "Mituns
zieht die neue Zeit":Der MythosJugend(Frankfurtam Main, 1985);Jiirgen Reulecke, "Jugend-
protest? ein Kennzeichendes 20.Jahrhunderts?," inJugendprotest
undGenerationenkonflikt
in Europa
im 20.Jahrhundert,ed. Dieter Dowe (Bonn, 1986), 1-11.
2. On similardevelopmentsin EuropeandNorth America,seeJohn Neubauer,TheFin-de-Siecle
CultureofAdolescence (New Haven,1992).On culturalreformmovementsin WilhelmianGermany,
see GeoffEley,ed., Society, andtheStatein Germany,
Culture, 1870-1930 (AnnArbor,1996);Diethart
KerbsandJiirgenReulecke,eds.,Handbuch derdeutschen 1880-1933 (Wuppertal,
Reformbewegungen
1999).
JOHN ALEXANDER WILLIAMS 165
irrational to govern themselves and fearful that the Social Democrats were
conspiring to win over Germanys young generation, the youth cultivators
attempted to guide young people along the path toward self-disciplined, obe-
dient citizenship through leisure activities that were organized and controlled
by adults.
The controversy of 1913-1914 thus represented a conflict between those in
the youth movement who would allow adolescents more freedom to find their
own way to German citizenship and the youth cultivators who would socialize
the young in such a way as to uphold the social and political status quo. This
essay investigates the discussions of sexuality found in youth movement publi-
cations in 1913 as well as the public reaction to them in 1913 and 1914. In the
fmal section I offer an analysis ofthe mobilization rhetoric of 1914 and 1915
found in Wandervogel publications, arguing that the moral panic changed the
ways in which the movement envisioned the war. This rhetoric was more than
just a version of the widespread defensive-aggressive nationalism common
throughout Europe at the beginning ofthe war. It specifically encouraged boys
of military age to volunteer in order to prove that the youth movement had
overcome its times of trouble, was now morally healthy and obedient, and
would henceforth be a self-sacrificing servant of the nation.3
3. My intention is to augment the existing body of historicalliteratureby discussingthe rela?

tionship between the youth movement and organizedyouth cultivationin a moment of crisis in
generationalrelations.Many studies of the Wandervogeland sexualityhave neglected the role of
youth cultivators.Early analysesfrom the 1920s and 1930s argued that Wandervogelgroups,by
embracingthe dominantpuritanicalvalues of the bourgeoisie,arrestedthe sexual developmentof
theirmembers.See ElisabethBusse-Wilson,Die FrauunddieJugendbewegung (Hamburg,1920);Fritz
Jungmann,"Autoritatund Sexualmoralin der freienbiirgerlichenJugendbewegung,"in Studienuber
Autoritatund Familie:Forschungsberichte aus dem Institutfiir Sozialforschung,
ed. Max Horkheimer
(Paris,1936),669-705. The notion that the movementrepressedsexualityreappearsin HarryPross,
Jugend, Eros, Politik: Die Geschichteder deutschenJugendverbande (Bern, 1964); Ulrich Linse,
'"GeschlechtsnotderJugend':UberJugendbewegungund Sexualitat,"in Mit unszieht dieneueZeit,
ed. Koebner, et al., 245-309; and Friedhelm F. Musall, '"Es ist doch auch ein monchisches
Leben . . .': Adoleszenz und Sexualitatin der friihen Jugendbewegung,"Jahrbuchdes Archivsder
deutschen Jugendbewegung (hereinaftercited asJADJB) (1986-1987): 271-94. All of these authors
drawan analogybetween arrestedsexual developmentand stuntedpoliticaldevelopment.The evi?
dent purpose is to buttressa negativejudgment of the youth movement for its supposedunwill?
ingness to confront the problemsof industrialmodernity.Some recent works skillfullytrace the
relationshipsbetween gender,sexuality,medicine,psychology,and nationalidentity.But the role of
politicalstruggleand youth cultivationremainsvague,and the moralpanic of 1913?1914 is under-
analyzed.In addition to Linse,"Geschlechtsnot,"see George L. Mosse, Nationalismand Sexuality:
Middle-ClassMoralityand SexualNormsin ModernEurope(Madison,1985); Marion E. P. de Ras,
Korper, Erosundweibliche Kultur:Madchenim Wandervogel und in derBundischen Jugend,1900?1933
(Pfaffenweiler,1988);Jiirgen Reulecke, "Mannerbund vs. the Family:Middle-ClassYouth Move?
ments and the Familyin Germanyin the Period of the FirstWorldWar,"in The Upheavalof War,
ed. RichardWallandJayWinter (Cambridge,1988), 439-52; Ulfried Geuter,Homosexualitat in der
deutschen Jugendbewegung: Jungenfreundschaftund Sexualitatim DiskursvonJugendbewegung, Psycho-
analyse,undJugendpsychologie am Beginndes20.Jahrhunderts (Frankfurtam Main, 1994).
166 ECSTAS1ES OF THE YOUNG
By 1913 the German youth movement was comprised of some fifty thousand
members between the ages of twelve and twenty-five, most of them from
middle-class Protestant families. Nearly half of these were twelve to twenty
year-olds in the Wandervogel movement, which had been founded in Berlin-
Steglitz in 1901. The others were adults in their early twenties, many of whom
had once belonged to the Wandervogel but were now organized in a wide
range of student and pedagogic reform organizations.4 All members of the
youth movement were committed to the Wandervogel principle of youthful
freedom and sociability in peer groups relatively independent of adult control.5
In their privileged social position as sons and daughters of the educated bour?
geoisie, the Wandervogel were able to fashion a subculture based upon the idea
of generational independence.6 Most importantly they developed a neoroman-
tic conception of hiking into a natural landscape that they considered liberating
and ennobling. Hiking was also seen as a practical method of self-education to
physical toughness, self-discipline, and love ofthe homeland. The motto "work
on yourselves, make your hikes more and more exemplary" became a key tenet
of youth movement ideology.7
4. WinfriedMogge, "Jugendbewegung," in Handbudi,ed. Kerbsand Reulecke, 189. Although

there is no room for a surveyof the recenthistoriographyhere,some generalizationsarepossible.
Most ofthe literatureon the Wilhelmianyouth movementhas moved since the 1980sbeyondthe
Sonderweg argumentput forwardmost influentiallyin WalterZ. Laqueur,YoungGermany: A History
ofthe GermanYouthMovement (London,1962, repr.New Brunswick,1984). Recent historieshave
demonstratedthat the movementwas not antimodernin any simpleway,nor was there a straight
pathfromthe Wandervogelto the HitlerYouth.They haverevealedthe changingcharacterof gen-
erationalrelationsand the roles of class,gender,and confessiontherein.They have also placedthe
Wilhelmianyouth movement within its propercontext as only one of a huge varietyof extra-
parliamentaryreformistmovements.Exemplarytexts include Peter Stachura,The GermanYouth
Movement,1900?1945: An Interpretive and Documentary History(New York, 1981); Dowe, ed.,
JugendprotestundGenerationenkonflikt;JoachimH. Knoll andJuliusH. Schoeps,eds., Typisch deutsch:
DieJugendbewegung. Beitragezu einerPhanomengeschichte (Opladen,1988);de Ras, Korper,Irmgard
Klonne,Ichspringin diesemRinge:Madchen undFrauenin derdeutschen
Jugendbewegung (Pfaffenweiler,
1990); Roseman, ed., Generations; Rosemarie Schade, Ein weiblichesUtopia:Organisationen und
IdeologienderMadchenund Frauenin der biirgerlichen Jugendbewegung 1905-1933 (Witzenhausen,
1996); FrankTrommler,"Modernitatund die Kulturder Unproduktiven," JADJB (1993-1998):
159-80; Mogge, "Jugendbewegung," 181-96.
5. Indeed, the ten thousand adult members of the Wandervogels "Friends'and Parents'
Councils"supportedthis idea,usuallyactingonly as liaisonsto the educationalestablishment. On
the sociologicalbackgroundand organizationalhistoryof the earlyWandervogelmovement,see
Ulrich Aufmuth,Die deutscheWandervogelbewegung untersoziologischem
Aspekt(Gottingen,1979);
Otto Neuloh andWilhelmZilius,Die Wandervogel: Eineempirisch-soziologische
Untersuchung derfruhen
deutschenJugendbewegung (Gottingen,1982).
6. Frank Trommleruses the interestingmetaphorof a "youth preservationpark" (Jugend-
schutzpark) to describe the subculturalpracticesand attitudesof the movement in Trommler,
"Modernitat."
7. Hans Wix, "Der Wandervogel am Scheidewege," A2-104/1, Archiv der deutschen
Jugendbewegung(hereinaftercited asAdjb);WalterSauer,"DerMythosdes Naturerlebnisses in der
Jugendbewegung," in Typischdeutsch, ed. Knoll and Schoeps,55?70;JiirgenReulecke, "Wo liegt
Falado?Uberlegungenzum VerhaltnisvonJugendbewegungund Heimatbewegungvor dem Ersten
The degree to which the Wandervogel took a consciously oppositional

stance toward Wilhelmian society varied among the three main organizations
that comprised the movement. It must be remembered that all groups were
dependent on the toleration of not only their parents, but also ofthe secondary
school bureaucracies and the state ministries of education. Indeed it was young
teachers in their twenties and thirties who were the leaders of the movement.
The published rhetoric of the small Alt-Wandervogel organization and of the
much larger Wandervogel, eingetragener Verein (Wandervogel e.V.) was rather
respectful of adult institutions like the family, the school, and the military. But
the third organization, the Jung-Wandervogel, had taken a more defiant stance
since its controversial founding. In 1910 some important figures among the
Alt-Wandervogel had denounced Wilhelm Jansen, a popular leader, for his
alleged homosexuality. A number of Jansen's supporters had seceded, founding
the Jung-Wandervogel in late 1910.8 By 1913 this was the smallest ofthe three
groups, with only ca. 2,300 members. But in their published rhetoric the Jung-
Wandervogel developed a more overt emphasis on a separate and indepen?
dent generational identity than did the other Wandervogel organizations. It was
no coincidence that the first publication to raise controversial issues about
youth movement sexuality was written by a friend of Wilhelm Jansen and the
Jung-Wandervogel.
The young psychologist Hans Bluher (1888-1955) had been one ofthe very
first Wandervogel in Berlin-Steglitz during his adolescence. At his friend
Jansen's suggestion, Bluher wrote a three-volume history of the movement
between 1910 and 1912, the third of which was entitled Die deutsche Wander-
vogelbewegung als ein erotisches Phanomen. Bluher s purpose was twofold: to reha-
bilitate Jansen and to offer a provocative psychoanalytical interpretation of the
youth movement. In the book he represented Jansen as a true "hero of men"
(Mdnnerheld) who was able to attract adolescent boys to the movement by virtue
of his personality and erotic charisma. Upon this defense of Jansen, Bluher con-
structed a broader thesis that the Wandervogel had the potential to become a
? if
culturally reformist, morally heroic league of males (Mannerbund) only
they remained under the tutelage of men such as Jansen.9
The most shocking feature of Bluher s book was his psychoanalytical theory
of strong homoerotic ties between adolescent Wandervogel and their adult male
Weltkrieg,"in Antimodernismus undReform:Zur Geschichte derdeutschen ed. Irmgard

Heimatbewegung,
Klueting (Darmstadt,1991), 1-19.
8. On the Jansencontroversy,see Geuter,Homosexualitat, 38-44, 49-58.
9. Hans Bluher, Die deutscheWandervogelbewegung als ein erotisches
Phanomen:Ein Beitragzur
Erkenntnis (Prien,6th ed., 1922, originallyBerlin-Tempelhof,1912). For more
dersexuellenInversion
detailed analyses,see Gerhard Ziemer, "Hans Bliihers Geschichte des Wandervogels," JADJB
(1977): 186-98; Julius H. Schoeps, "Sexualitat,Erotik und Mannerbund:Hans Bluher und die
deutsche Jugendbewegung,"in Typischdeutsch,ed. Knoll and Schoeps, 137-54; Geuter, Homo?
sexualitat,67-117.
leaders. Popular figures like Wilhelm Jansen were not "the so-called normal
men," men who had "no creative or organizational talent," but hypermasculine
homosexuals whom Bluher termed "inverts."10 Such men comprised the "calm
center of every youth movement, the actual commanders-in-chief of youth.
[They are] often revolutionary figures. Passionately they devote their entire lives
to helping youth. [They are] usually contemptuous of the teaching profession-
als who do it for money. There are no youth groups without them."11 Bluher
also maintained that many adolescents in the movement developed passionate
feelings for their inverted leaders. Such passions were not surprising in light of
the "romantic, wild, and often unrestrained" activities in the movement. Be?
cause the Wandervogel emphasized hiking, physical drills (Sportdrill) were not
practiced. The ability of such exercises to "prevent feelings of love from boiling
over" through a rhythmic dispersal of libidinal energy was therefore not avail?
able to the boys.12
Thus Bluher provocatively quoted one leaders statement that, "Every suc?
cessful hike is a love story."13Yet he assured his readers that such attractions were
not harmful because neither the boys nor their leaders acted upon them in a
sexual way. Inverts were able to sublimate their sexual desires, channeling this
energy into the noble, creative task of guiding the young toward adulthood. The
boys themselves were simply going through a necessary stage of pubescent
development in which homoerotic feelings were common and, for most, tem-
porary. Indeed, the majority of Wandervogel youths would not only conclude
their adolescence as "normal" heterosexual men, but the influence of inverts
would improve their adult relations with women. Homoerotic adolescent
friendships, Bluher asserted, taught boys a "style of love" that was devoid ofthe
combination of sadism and false tenderness that characterized heterosexual
relationships. When a former member of the Wandervogel fell in love with
a woman later in life, he would bring what he had learned about love to the
relationship. He would be capable of elevating the woman morally, thereby
molding male-female love into "a form worthy of human beings."14
Bluher was no progressive. He was vehemently antifeminist and socially con?
servative, and he wrote ofthe racial superiority ofthe Wandervogel. Yet in cast-
ing inverts as heroically masculine and beneficial for the nation and in calling
for an end to their persecution, his book was subversive for its time. His asser-
10. Bluheravoidedusing the term "homosexual"becauseof what he calledits "suspect"con?

notations,using insteadthe Freudianterm "invert."He believedthat therewere threebasicforms
of homosexuality:the virile, invertedMannerheld,
the effeminateWeibling, and the latent neurotic
homosexualwho often persecutedtrue inverts.Bluher,Wandervogelbewegung.
11. Ibid.,85.
12. Ibid.,33.
13. Cited in ibid., 40.
14. Ibid.,81.
tions sharply contradicted dominant conceptions of male homosexuality as

unnatural, effeminate, and destructive ofthe nation.15 The fact that boys far out-
numbered girls in all three Wandervogel organizations made the movement
vulnerable to the suspicions of outside observers who knew of Bluher's thesis.
The Jung-Wandervogel and Alt-Wandervogel kept their hikes strictly segre-
gated by gender; and although the larger Wandervogel e.V. allowed boys and
girls to hike together, single-sex hikes were still common.16 Some leaders in
the Wandervogel movement therefore attempted to assure adult observers that
Bltiher's thesis was thoroughly ridiculous. They sent a letter to parents and
school directors in February 1913 assuring them that they would not hestitate
to purge anyone suspected of homosexual tendencies.17 Edmund Neuendorff,
national leader ofthe W.Ve.V., called the book "offensive to the highest degree"
and guaranteed his audience that homoeroticism was insignificant in the
movement.18 One small but loud anti-Semitic group tried to distance the
Wandervogel from Bluher by condemning his "un-German spirit."19 There was
little immediate reaction to the book outside of the youth movement, for the
leaders' distancing maneuvers apparently succeeded in assuaging concerns
among observers of the Wandervogel. Public concerns about Bluher s interpre?
tation only began later within the context of the moral panic that was more
? the
directly ignited by two other events of 1913 publication of Der Anfang
beginning in May and the festival at the Hoher Meissner in October.
Der Anfang: Zeitschrift derJugend was the monthly journal of a group of some
three thousand secondary school pupils and university students concentrated in
Berlin and Vienna. Since their affiliation to the youth movement was rather
loose ? some belonged to organizations, but others did not ? this group
became known simply as the Anfang circle. One-third of the membership was
Jewish; and some subsequently famous figures included Siegfried Bernfeld (later
15. On Wilhelmian conceptions of homosexuality,see James D. Steakley,"Iconographyof a

Scandal:Political Cartoons and the Eulenberg Affairin Wilhelmine Germany,"in Hiddenfrom
History:Reclaimingthe Gay and LesbianPast,ed. Martin Duberman,MarthaVicinus, and George
Chauncey,Jr. (New York, 1989), 233-63; Hermann Sievert, "Das anomale Bestrafen:Homo-
sexualitat,Strafrechtund Schwulenbewegungim Kaiserreichund in der WeimarerRepublik,"
Ergebnisse(1984):8-156; Mosse, Nationalism andSexuality,and idem, TheImageofMan:The Creation
of ModernMasculinity (New York,1996);John Fout, "SexualPoliticsin Wilhelmine Germany:The
Male GenderCrisis,MoralPurity,and Homophobia,"in Forbidden History:TheState,Society,andthe
Regulationof Sexualityin ModernEurope,ed.John Fout (Chicago,1992), 259-92.
16. WalterFischer,"Dasjahr1911," Wandervogel (1913):18-19. Commentatorsassertedthat seg-
regatedhikes would preserveessentiallydifferentgender characteristics(file entitled Diskussionen
uber das Madchenwandern,A2-10/10, Adjb).Any coed hiking that did occur drew the suspicion
of outside observers.One conservativeLeipzignewspaper,for instance,wrote vaguelythat it led to
"abuses"and shouidbe stopped."Jugendpflege," Zeitung,16 February1913, PP-V 3982,
Allgemeine
StaatsarchivLeipzig (hereinaftercited as STAL).
17. "Die Bundesleitungdes Wandervogelse.V.an samtlicheHerrenSchulleiter,"A2-08/2, Adjb.
18. Cited in Geuter,Homosexualitdt, 94.
19. Wandervogelfuhrerzeitung
(February1913): 147.
a well-known psychologist) and Walter Benjamin, then a student at Freiburg.

The progressive educator and pedagogic theorist Gustav Wyneken (1875-1964)
agreed to take the title of responsible editor of Der Anfang. It was a legal ne-
cessity for a journal written by minors to have an official adult editor, but
Wyneken left the writers to their own devices.20 Nevertheless he wielded con?
siderable influence over the Anfang circle through his controversial notion of
self-governing "Free School Communities" (Freie Schulgemeinden). These were
independent assemblies of self-educating youths under the mentorship of
sympathetic adults. Wyneken held that young people could become "better,
more beautiful, purer, and more honest" through the creation of a "higher style
of youthful community." Individuals were encouraged to make ambitious
"demands on the self" and to teach themselves the self-discipline that was
essential to reach a higher level of cultural and social advancement.21 The ideal
of an autonomous, sdf-disciplining Jugendkultur so central to Wyneken's peda?
gogic theory became the guiding principle behind Der Anfang. The movement
was a conscious effort on the part of some articulate young people to create
a new countercultural field of critical discussion. As Georges Barbizon
announced in one article:
[The idea] of "Everything^ar the young, nothing by the young" has not come
very far, for the young are still waiting for educational reform. Now the
young generation wants to take matters into their own hands. It will attempt
[reform] according to the motto "By the young, for the young!" A sphere of
youthful public opinion must take shape.22
Beginning with the first issue of May 1913, the young writers for Der Anfang
published not only their own unabashedly critical articles, but also essays from
20. For the organizationalhistory of the Anfangcircle,see Philip Lee Utley, "RadicalYouth:
GenerationalConflictin the AnfangMovement,1912-January1914,"Historyof Education Quarterly
(1979):207-28, andidem,"Schism,RomanticismandOrganization: ^4?/an^,January-August 1914,"
Journalof ContemporaryHistory(1999):109-24.
21. GustavWyneken,"Wandervogelund Freie Schulgemeinde," Jung-Wandervogel (1913): 179.
On Wyneken'slife, pedagogic theories, and controversialattemptsto establishFree Schooling
Communities, see Heinrich Kupffer, Gustav Wyneken(Stuttgart,1970); Ulrich Linse, "Die
Jugendkulturbewegung," in Das wilhelminische Zur Sozialgeschichte
Bildungsburgertum: seinerIdee,ed.
KlausVondung(Gottingen,1976), 119-37; Heidi Biebighauser,"GustavWyneken:Wickersdorf?
Die Insel der Jugend,"in Kunstliche Paradiese
derJugend:Zur Geschichteund Gegenwart asthetischer
Subkulturen,ed. Peter Hein (Miinster,1984), 54-63; Ulrich Herrmann, "Die Jugendkultur?
bewegung:Der Kampfum die hohere Schule,"in Mit unszieht die neueZeit,ed. Koebner,et al.,
224-44.
22. GeorgesBarbizon,"Die treibendenKrafte,"DerAnfang(May 1913): 1. As KlausLaermann
has pointed out, DerAnfangwas the firstsecondarypupils'journalin Germanhistoryto reachthe
public directlyand without the approvalof any school authorities.KlausLaermann,"Der Skandal
um den Anfang:Ein VersuchjugendlicherGegenoffentlichkeit im Kaiserreich,"in Mit unsziehtdie
neueZeit,ed. Koebner,et al., 360-81. Laermannarguesthat the Anfangcircle'sattemptsto createa
"counterpublic"was the primary reason for the subsequentcontroversy.He does not focus
specificallyon the groups ruminationson sexuality.
other young people relating their negative everyday experiences in the family
and at school. They also arranged "salons" (Sprechsdle) for adolescents in Vienna,
Munich, Berlin, Heidelberg, Gottingen, and other cities. Within these venues
the Anfang circle criticized such adult-dominated institutions as the school, the
church, and the family for failing to produce individuals who could contribute
fully to society. Against what they considered the dominant adult conception of
adolescence as merely a period of transition to adulthood, these writers repre?
sented adolescence as a unique time of natural freedom. In an article entitled
"The Mission ofthe Young," Herbert Blumenthal wrote that, "Youth lives like
the lilies of the field; never again is the individual so free as in his youth. His
existence is not yet determined by economic objectives, the struggle to survive,
or the 'seriousness of life.'" As the least driven, freest generation, young
people had not yet lost their idealism, and they therefore had the potential to
improve society radically: "[This] is where the world-historical work of young
?
people begins they measure all things against their highest ideals, and all
things become problematic . . . If young people looked at life through the eyes
of maturity, things would not look good for the renewal of the world."23
The most unconventional aspect of Der Anfangh discourse was the emphasis
on sexuality. Teachers and parents were accused of either ignoring or attempt-
ing to suppress the sexual drives of the adolescent. In so doing they inflicted
great damage on the young:
Your moral rules and opinions, your social prejudices, your superficiality and
lack of conscience, and your greedy capitalism are raping the young, [and]
their bodies rebel in wild pain as they are confronted again and again with
some new physical mystery. You think I am exaggerating, but you know
nothing of the sleepless nights when your children have to fight all alone
and abandoned.24
Not satisfied with merely recognizing this emergency and its causes, the Anfang
writers offered an alternative fully in keeping with the ideal of Jugendkultur.
They advocated that young people confront their own sexual drives within
groups of their peers. Instead of trying to suppress sexuality, wrote Herbert
Blumenthal, "We have a duty to mold our own drives."25 In discussions of how
such adolescent groups should educate themselves sexually, the Anfang essayists
suggested that boys and girls should be on equal terms within coed groups.26
And young people should practice nudism as the best way to return to an inno-
cent and pure nature.27 Other writers were more vague but just as provocative.
23. HerbertBlumenthal,"Von der Mission derJugend,"DerAnfang(September1913): 134.

24. M.G. Griinling,"Das LandeurerKinder!,"ibid., Pecember 1913):239.
25. HerbertBlumenthal,"JugendlicheErotik,"ibid., (October 1913): 167.
26. FreistudentFriederichMono, "UnsereGeselligkeit,"ibid., (November 1913):200-10.
27. Ernst,"Nacktheit? Wahrheit!,"ibid., (September1913): 138-40.
Blumenthal announced that, "We celebrate in winters and summers our festi-
vals, which are by us and only for us. We make our dances unmistakably erotic;
we flirt and love wherever we can. We are constantly creating new chances for
youthful erotic sociability."28 And Walter Benjamin wrote dramatically that,
"More and more we are seized by the feeling that youth lasts only one brief
? so fill it with
night ecstasy!"29
Violent reactions against these contemplations of sexuality did not come
until late 1913. Probably because Der Anfang had only about eight hundred sub-
scribers, it was able to maintain a fairly low profile. But the festival in mid-
October at the Hoher Meissner, a mountain in central Germany, brought radical
tendencies in the youth movement to the attention of the German public. The
Meissner festival was one of the most important turning points in the history
of the bourgeois youth movement. Over two thousand representatives of four-
teen different groups met there to found a new nationwide confederation, the
Freideutsche Jugend. In a succession of speeches and a collection of essays pub?
lished for the meeting, prominent adult supporters from the realms of litera?
ture, pedagogy, and philosophy expressed their hopes for Germany's organized
bourgeois youth. Many of them denounced the destructive effects of rapid
industrialization and materialism; and some assailed the "moral stupor, super-
ficiality, thoughtlessness, and hypocrisy" of such "bourgeois" social conventions
as marriage.30
Most strikingly, some of these speakers and essayists attacked the aggressive
nationalism ofthe time. The organizers ofthe Meissner festival had set the date
to coincide with nationwide anniversary celebrations of the 1813 Battle of
Leipzig in the hopes that the meeting would provide an alternative to the bel-
ligerent, francophobic jingoism of such celebrations. The philosopher Paul
Natorp praised the youth movement for commemorating the liberation from
Napoleon not with rhetorical attacks against the French, but with a quiet deter-
mination to lay the groundwork for a new Germany based on "a life of natu-
ralness, truthfulness, genuineness, and straightforwardness." Far from being
unpatriotic, the bourgeois youth movement would stand up for its country
"without blinking." The real threat to Germany now was not foreign, but
internal: "the loss of ourselves" to domination by a mediocre society.31 The
28. Blumenthal,"Erotik,"167.
29. "Ardor,""Erfahrung,"DerAnfang(October 1913):169.
30. LudwigKlages,"Menschund Erde,"in Freideutsche aufdemHohen
Jugend:Zurjahrhundertfeier
Meissner1913 (Jena,1913), 95-105; GertrudPrellwitz,"Die Ehe und die neue Zeit," in ibid.,
153-54. On the organizationand ideologicalcontroversiesofthe Meissnerfestival,see Winfried
Mogge, "Der FreideutscheJugendtag1913:Vorgeschichte,Verlauf,Wirkungen,"in HoherMeissner
1913:DerersteFreideutsche
Jugendtagin Dokumenten,Deutungen undBildern,
ed. WinfriedMogge and
JiirgenReulecke (Cologne,1988),33-69.
31. Paul Natorp, "Aufgabenund GefahrenunsererJugendbewegung,"in Freideutsche Jugend,
121-34.
]OHN ALEXANDER WILLIAMS 173
most outspoken opponent of militarist nationalism at the festival was Gustav

Wyneken. In his keynote address, Wyneken warned youth of the increasing
"mechanization of enthusiasm" for the nation. The only kind of battle that
young Germans could justifiably fight was not the battle against Germany s
neighbors, but "the great, general battle of light against darkness."
Ask if the war you are leading is a holy war . . . [Ask] whether your war is a
war for the spirit, whether it leads all of humanity out of the darkness into
the light. It behooves young people more than anyone else to think beyond
the limits of the state's interests and the impulse of national self-preserva-
tion . . . Youth s special privilege of freedom obligates it to uphold freedom.32
Wyneken thus equated a liberated young generation with the promise of a more
peaceful and more democratic Germany. In general the rhetoric of the festival
represented adolescence and young adulthood as not merely a transitional stage,
but a unique and valuable life period full of potential. Youth represented "the
future within the present," as Wyneken proclaimed in an essay written for the
meeting. Only the young could save the German nation by carrying out "a new
spiritualization and beautification of life." To succeed, young people would have
to trust their own instincts and ideals in the face of adult attempts to transform
them into obedient and rational citizens.33 Building on his ideas of youthful
autonomy, Wyneken proposed that the Freideutsche Jugend should become a
fugendkultur. Supported by the Jung-Wandervogel and a number of student
groups, Wyneken was able to infuse the official "Meissner Proclamation" with
the radical notion of youthful autonomy. Henceforth, according to the pro?
clamation, members of the Freideutsche Jugend would "shape their lives
according to their own rules, responsible only to themselves, and guided by
inner truthfulness."34
Reverberating throughout youth movement discourse in 1913, then, were
the glorification of adolescence as a unique time of freedom and the claim that
the youth movement could provide a better means of helping young people
reach adulthood than adult institutions ever could. In the texts by Bluher and
the Anfang circle, aspirations for a youth counterculture were intertwined with
an emphasis on forms of adolescent sociability that were unabashedly erotic. An
overtly eroticized fugendkultur was the precondition for the infusion of energy,
idealism, and creativity into Wilhelmian culture. The Meissner Proclamation
clearly signified the victory of this countercultural trend, although it con?
tained no mention of sexuality. But this was a fragile victory. Many in the youth
32. "Gustav Wynekens Rede auf dem 'Hohen Meissner' am Morgen des 12. Oktobers,"
Jugendtag,ed. GustavMittelstrass(Hamburg,1919, second edition), 33-41, quote
in Freideutscher
from 40.
33. GustavWyneken,"ReformphilistertumoderJugendkultur?," in Freideutsche
Jugend,166-69.
34. Cited in "FeuerredeKnud Ahlborns,"in Freideutscher
Jugendtag,ed. Mittelstrass,29.
movement ? probably the majority ? knew little about the meaning and aim
of Jugendkultur. Indeed, the rhetoric advocating a youthful counterculture was
very obscure when it came to the question of how it would rejuvenate German
culture. Jugendkultur became the catchword of the Freideutsche Jugend for a
short time, but the vagueness of the notion ultimately enabled critics outside
the youth movement to fill the conceptual vacuum with their own fears.
The exaltation of adolescence as a period of freedom and sexual self-educa-
tion would have been controversial anywhere in the early twentieth century.
But in Wilhelmian Germany, radical representations of youth drew the ire of
adults who were influenced by another organized cultural initiative directed
toward the young generation ? the youth cultivation (Jugendpflege) movement.
Central to this movement was a concept of adolescence that was directly
opposed to that found in the rhetoric of Bluher, Der Anfang, and the Meissner
festival. For the youth cultivators, adolescence was the life period in which nat?
ural impulses and irrational drives had to be overcome if the individual were
to mature into a useful, obedient, and patriotic citizen. Instead of portraying
ecstasy as a unique privilege of the young, the youth cultivators aimed to sup-
press the dangerously volatile nature of adolescence.
The organized movement of youth cultivation emerged around the turn of
the century in association with the project of youth welfare (Jugendfursorge).In
an effort to combat the perceived problem of unsupervised male working-class
adolescents, clergy, teachers, and military men took up the task of providing
these youths with supervised leisure activities. By 1911 the state governments
had begun to subsidize youth cultivation as a specific form of social policy. The
Prussian Youth Cultivation Edict of January 1911 installed a bureaucracy of
municipal, district, and regional committees; and other state governments soon
followed suit. The Prussian government also helped a group of military officers
found the "Young Germany League" (Jungdeutschlandbund), a premilitary
training organization dedicated to the "necessary self-discipline of the entire
By 1913 over one million people between the ages of twelve and
35. "Jung-Deutschland," LeipzigerVolkszeitung, 1 October 1911, PP-V 3982, STAL. On

Wilhelmianyouth cultivation,see Hertha Siemering,ed., Die deutschen Ihre
Jugendpflegeverbande:
Ziele,Geschichteund Organisation
(Berlin,1918);KlausSaul,"Der Kampfum die Jugendzwischen
Volksschuleund Kaserne:Ein Beitragzur 'Jugendpflege'im wilhelminischenReich 1890-1914,"
in Militargeschichtliche
Mitteilungen(1971):97-143; Helmut Lessing,Jugendpflege oderSelbsttatigkeit:
Eine historischeUntersuchungzum Verhaltnis von Reformismus undJugendarbeit (Cologne, 1976);
HermannGiesecke,VomWandervogel biszur Hitlerjugend: zwischenPolitikundPddogogik
Jugendarbeit
(Munich, 1981);Jiirgen Reulecke, "BurgerlicheSozialreformerund Arbeiterjugendim Kaiser?
reich,"Archivfiir Sozialgeschichte
(1982): 299-329; Dedev J. K. Peukert,Grenzender Sozialdiszi-
AufstiegundKrisederdeutschen
plinierung: Jugendfursorge 1878-1932 (Cologne,1986);Derek Linton,
"WhoHas the Youth,Has the Future":The Campaignto Save YoungWorkers in ImperialGermany
(Cambridge,1990);Benno Hafeneger,Jugendarbeit als Beruf:Geschichte
einerProfession
in Deutschland
(Opladen, 1992); Edward Ross Dickinson, "Citizenship,Vocational Training,and Reaction:
twenty-one belonged to Jugendpflege organizations.36 Over twenty-six thousand

adults participated in state-sponsored youth cultivation courses in Prussia alone,
signaling the beginning of a process of professionalization that was to make
youth work one ofthe central concerns ofthe emerging welfare state.37 And in
1913 youth cultivators began to convince state governments to subsidize orga?
nizations for girls, couching their appeals in terms ofthe pronatalist significance
of a stock of chaste, morally healthy, and fertile young women.38
The youth cultivation movement was politically heterogeneous. Methods
and goals differed depending on the ideological emphases of each sector.
Conservatives preferred militaristic methods for the "hardening of the body,
sharpening ofthe senses, and the raising of practical intelligence and masculine
virtue in general."39 Catholics and Protestants wanted to improve the morality
and spirituality of their charges. Liberals tended to concentrate on building "a
strong generation that is capable of holding its own in today's competitive
workplace."40 Despite these differences, they all perceived two powerful threats
to their disciplinary project.
First, conservative, confessional, and liberal youth cultivators feared the
influence of Social Democracy over working-class youth. Since 1908 the Social
Democratic Party had been competing for the loyalty of working adoles?
cents with growing success, building its own network of "youth educational
clubs" (Jugendbildungsvereine) .41 The Prussian Minister of Education betrayed
the state's antisocialist purpose in his speech
in January 1911 asking the par?
liament to finance youth cultivation committees. He called for a battle against
"those false friends of the young who poison every heart with hatred, who
destroy respect for authority, who smother cheerfulness in envy and wrath."
The Social Democrats were "making a travesty of the Savior's command to
'Let the children come to me' by offering youth the leadership of Fraulein
Rosa Luxemburg."42
Continuation Schooling and the Prussian'Youth Cultivation'Decree of 1911," EuropeanHistory

Quarterly (1999): 109-47.
36. Dickinson, "Citizenship,"113.
37. Geuter,Homosexualitat, 322.
38. Statutesof DeutscherPfadfinder-Bundfiirjunge Madchen,e.V.(1912),Helene LangArchiv,
LandesarchivBerlin (hereinaftercited as LAB);Bericht iiber die Tatigkeitdes Ortsausschussesfiir
weibliche Jugendpflege Miinchens vom 3. Juli 1913 bis 31. Dezember 1914, Polizeidirektion
Miinchen 3555, Staatsarchiv Munchen;Linton, WhoHas the Youth,165-85.
Bericht iiber die Vertrauensmanner-
39. Dr. Freiherrvon der Goltz, cited in 'Jungdeutschland."
versammlungdes Bundes "Jungdeutschland" am 11. und 12. Dezember 1911 (Berlin,1912), 3.
40. Dr. Schmidt,speech of 5 March 1911, in Zweckund Einrichtung desstadtischen
Jugendheims
Stettin(Stettin,1911), 19, B Rep. 142-01/4988, LAB.
41. See Heinrich Eppe, Selbsthilfe Die sozial- undjugendpolitischen
und Interessenvertretung: Bestre-
bungendersozialdemokratischen 1904?1933 (Bonn, 1983).
Arbeiterjugendorganisationen
42. Cited in "Der Kampfum die Jugend,"LeipzigerNeuesteNachrichten, 28 March 1912, PP-V
3982, STAL.
The second great perceived threat was the irrational, impulsive, and sexual
nature that youth cultivators believed was common to every adolescent. This
concern reflected the influence ofthe new professional discipline of youth stud?
ies (Jugendkunde), which defined puberty as a time when both the personality
and the body were fundamentally unstable. One Munich physician, for instance,
called adolescence "a period of swelling energy," noting that "the vital energy
ofthe turbulently evolving mind and body is under the greatest stress." There
is evidence that parents' associations held similar views.43 Moreover, this con?
cept of out-of-control puberty became intertwined with the rhetoric of sex?
ual threat emanating from the sex reform movement. Organizations like the
League for the Protection of Mothers and the German Society to Battle
Venereal Disease were busily identifying "sexual deviants" like prostitutes and
homosexual men as seducers of curious, inexperienced adolescents.44
By 1913 fear of a "sexual emergency of youth" haunted youth cultivators just
as much as the socialists did. As they extended their concerns beyond the ear?
lier emphasis on working-class youth, youth cultivators became convinced that
the irrational nature of adolescents was itself the primary stumbling block on
the individuals path toward a self-disciplined, useful, and respectable adulthood.
Representations of the two primary enemies to youth cultivation had in
common a fear of seduction by adults. Youth cultivators spoke both of the
"socialist seducers of youth"45 and of the threat of sexually deviant adults to
adolescents. They grew increasingly worried about this double threat between
1911 and 1913. As the Social Democrats gained formal political power in the
state and national parliaments, their network of youth educational clubs spread
throughout Germany. By October 1913 there were 655 such organizations.46
Nonsocialist youth cultivators lamented that despite years of diligent appeals,
only a small minority of Germany's young generation had chosen to join their
clubs.47 Furthermore, given the vigorous resistance from adults, clergy, and the
43. Dr. Rudolf Schneider,PubertatundAuge:Vortrag, gehaltenin derMunchenerElternvereinigung

(Munich, 1911), 1, and ElternvereinigungMunchen to Kgl. Staatsministerium des Innern fiir
Kirchen-und Schulangelegenheiten(31 January1911), MK 14970, BayerischesHauptstaatsarchiv
Munich (hereinaftercited as BHStAM).
44. On Jugendkunde,see Peter Gstettner,Die EroberungdesKindesdurchdie Wissenschaft:
Aus der
GeschichtederDisziplinierung(Reinbek, 1981); Peter Dudek,Jugendals Objektder Wissenschaften:
GeschichtederJugendforschung in Deutschland
und Osterreich1890-1933 (Opladen,1990). On the
Wilhelmian sex reform movement, see Linse, "Geschlechtsnotder Jugend," 245-55; Paul
Weindling,Health,Raceand GermanPoliticsBetweenNationalUnification and Nazism, 1870?1945
(Cambridge,1989); Alfons Labisch,Homo hygienicus:Gesundheitund Medizin in der Neuzeit
(Frankfurtam Main, 1992); Jiirgen Reulecke, "Rassenhygiene,Sozialhygiene,Eugenik," in
Handbuch, ed. Kerbsand Reulecke, 197-210; Ulrich Linse,"Sexualreformund Sexualberatung,"in
ibid.,211-26.
45. "Der Kampfum dieJugend,"see n. 42.
46. RepresentativeWallbaum,speech of 11 May 1914, in the stenographicreportofthe 77th
meeting ofthe PrussianHouse of Representatives, 6624, A2-104/10, Adjb.
47. PastorErnstBuddensieg,cited in "Eine'brennende'Frage,"LeipzigerVolkszeitung,
21 January
1912, PP-V 3982, STAL.
JOHN ALEXANDER W1LLIAMS 177
state to all suggestions that sex education be instituted in public schools and
leisure clubs,48 youth cultivators saw little chance to deal directly with the prob?
lem of adolescent drives and the threat of sexual seduction.
Preoccupied with this dual threat, youth cultivators sought practical methods
for directing the impulsive nature of youth into nonpolitical and nonsexual
channels. By 1913 a consensus had been reached that hiking was perhaps the
best method of cultivating the young. The health benefits of hiking in the
countryside, especially for adolescents suffering from the crowded, dirty condi?
tions of city life, were considered superior. Hiking was thought to create a sense
of well-being and contentment, to make young people more rational in their
thinking, and to teach them to love their homeland. Conservatives could use a
militarized version of hiking as a means of teaching orientation and improving
physical endurance.49 Youth cultivators in general saw the enjoyment of nature
as a way to bring the social classes together.50 Above all, hiking was considered
the best way to protect against the risks to moral health posed by "being left to
ones own devices" and by "bad company and seduction."51 Inspired by these
fears and hopes, youth cultivators founded the National Federation for Youth
Hiking and Youth Hostels in 1911, lobbied the state and the schools to insti?
tute regular youth hikes, and guided thousands of young people on excursions
into the rural countryside.
All this put the youth cultivation movement on a collision course with the
bourgeois youth movement. For the Wandervogel and Freideutsche Jugend
were by 1913 discussing adolescent autonomy in language that was much more
optimistic about the irrational, impulsive, and sexual character of young people.
Moreover, they too went on hikes, but with much less direct control by adults.
In the Wandervogel tradition nature was the rural landscape open to explo-
ration, with humility and reverence, by hiking groups under the gentle guid-
ance of sympathetic young adult leaders. But the youth movements discussions
of sexuality strongly implied that nature could also become the setting for sex?
ual exploration. Youth cultivators on the other hand were still in the process of
developing their own methods of adult-supervised hiking as the best way to
cultivate the young into rational adults. Recognizing the popularity of the
Wandervogel tradition, they appropriated it for their own purposes, imposing
more control and direction on hiking groups. But "nature" for them signified
48. File entitled Sexuelle Aufklarung an den Mittelschulen. Sexualpadogogik, Band I,

1905-1926, MK14847,BHStAM.
49. Dr. Eugen Doernberger,Schulerwanderungen: gehaltenin derMunchener
Vortrag, zur
Vereinigung
FbrderungderLeibesiibungen ein Wegzur Kraftdurch
(Munich, 1911); GustavChrosciel, Wanderlust,
Anleitungzum Wandern,
Freude:Theoretisch-praktische Kriegsspiel im Diensteder
undEntfernungsschatzen
SchuleundderJugendbewegung (Halle,1912).
50. Adele Schreiber,"Der Kampfder Parteienum die Jugend,"LeipzigerNeuesteNachrichten,
31
March 1912, PP-V 3982, STAL.
51. Doernberger,Schulerwanderungen,8.
less the rural environment than what they considered to be the innately unruly,
irrational, and sexually curious human nature of the adolescent. Hiking was
meant to pacify this chaotic nature. When the youth movement began to call
on young people to develop their own "forms of erotic sociability" outside of
adult supervision, the youth cultivators apparently felt the need to distance their
own practices from those of the youth movement. Thus in the course of
1913-1914, youth cultivators came to see the bourgeois youth movement as yet
another competitor alongside the socialists in the effort to guide Germany's
adolescents toward adulthood. The book by Hans Bluher, the journal Der
Anfang, and the Meissner festival unintentionally set the stage for an attempt by
youth cultivators to discredit the entire youth movement as politically radical
and sexually out of control.
The public controversy erupted in mid-October 1913 as a direct response to

the Meissner festival. The reaction of the German press was mixed. All agreed
that the Freideutsche Jugend "stands consciously opposed to youth cultivation
commanded from on high; its principle instead is that a youth movement exists
for youths and their needs alone."52 At issue was whether the Meissner notion
of an autonomous fugendkultur was superior or inferior to the concept of youth
cultivation. The promise of strong, independent youth activism struck a chord
among those on the Left who were suspicious of state-sponsored, militaristic
youth cultivation. Commentators in the Social Democratic and Progressive
press upheld the concept of youth as a valuable and creative period too often
dominated by adults. Franz Pfemfert, editor of the Expressionist weekly Die
Aktion, wrote that, "For the first time youth is speaking of its desire, its need, its
longing, without worrying whether anyone wants to hear. If this is the youth
we hope it is, then it will make itself heard. Youth, the future, is speaking."
Young people should be "neither 'radical' in the sense of day-to-day politics
nor 'nationalist.' Be young! Struggle for the right to be young against a narrow-
minded and ossified world!"53
Commentators in Center, National Liberal, and Conservative Party newspa?
pers, however, saw the Meissner festival as a menace to the endeavor of youth
cultivation. National Liberal affiliated newspapers interpreted the Freideutsche
Jugend as "a conscious challenge to the state youth welfare that has recently
been so successfiilly established." The festival had been "a defiant action
planned and instrumented by democrats who cleverly hide in the shadows,
sending forth holy fools to do their work, most of whom have no idea that they
52. Untided article in the ProgressivePartynewspaperFrankfurter

Zeitung,4 October 1913,
reprintedin HoherMeissner,ed. Mogge and Reulecke,315.
53. FranzPfemfert,"Die Jugend spricht!,"Die Aktion,11 October 1913, reprintedin ibid.,
330-31.
are being manipulated."54 The conservative press likewise insinuated that the
movement had fallen under the thrall of sinister forces. One commentator in
Berlin wrote that, "Youth has no right to 'free individuality' that can only
degenerate into willfulness and license. Youth needs . . . to become used to
firm, strict moral order, without which no true freedom can exist." He went
on to attack the Freideutsche Jugend as both Social Democratic and "liberal-
Jewish" in character.55
Conservatives and Catholics soon found the opportunity they needed to
attack Jugendkultur more effectively: Der Anfang. Ironically, this may have been
due to attempts within the youth movement itself to distance the Freideutsche
Jugend from the controversial journal. In a speech in early December 1913, Paul
Natorp said of Der Anfang, "The school is being disavowed by many of its pupils
in such a way that the Social Democrats' criticisms of the state pale in compar?
ison . . . The attitudes of some pupils are taking on features of anarchism."56 A
few weeks later in mid January 1914, an anonymous "Bavarian school man"
published a sensational pamphlet in Munich that cobbled together quotations
from Anfang articles and accused the journal of subversion.57 Immediately the
Bavarian government banned the distribution of Der Anfang. The ensuing series
of speeches in the Bavarian parliament in late January finally brought Der
Anfang and the Jugendkultur idea broad public attention throughout Germany.
The publisher of the pamphlet was apparently the man who also launched
the moralistic offensive against the youth movement in the Bavarian parliament.
Dr. Sebastian Schlittenbauer was a secondary schoolteacher and member of the
Catholic Center Party. During a debate on the cultural budget on January 29,
Schlittenbauer gave a speech deploring the invasion of "irresponsible elements"
onto the terrain of education. A wide range of youth organizations was chal-
lenging the harmonious educational partnership between the family and the
school. Schlittenbauer singled out Gustav Wyneken for opprobrium, noting that
the latter's attempts to establish Free Schooling Communities had run aground
on the authorities' suspicions. Wyneken had now descended upon Munich,
joining the many other subversive elements that were dedicated to the destruc?
tion of the "moral foundations of our national life." Such elements included
"Simplicissimus culture" (in reference to the satirical journal), nudism, and
"monistic" projects that encouraged people to follow their "natural impulses."
Gustav Wyneken's specific brand of "pedagogic futurism" inculcated in adoles?
cents a critical spirit that was "precocious, arrogant, and cynical." Schlittenbauer
54. "ZweiJugendtagungen,"Hamburger 14 October 1913, reprintedin ibid., 337.

Nachrichten,
15 October 1913, reprintedin ibid., 339.
55. "FreideutscheJugend,"Reichsbote,
56. Paul Natorp,Hofnungenund Gefahren unserer (Jena,1914), 33.
Jugendbewegung
Dokumentezur Beurteilung
57. "fugendkultur." der "modernsten"
Form"freier" Jugenderziehung,von
Schulmann
einembayerischen (Munich, 1914).
extended his attack to the Freideutsche Jugend, misrepresenting Der Anfang as

the official journal ofthe entire youth movement. The F. D. J. and Der Anfang
were encouraging Germanys youth to seek "the freedom to live according to
their own nature."
What are the goals of this Free German fugendkultur? Battle against the par-
ents, battle against the school, battle against all positive religion, battle against
Christian morality, battle against healthy patriotism . . . In other words, the
goal is the anarchic dissolution of indispensable, irreplaceable values. . .58
Schlittenbauer then turned to the subject of eroticism, quoting approvingly a

previous attack on Wyneken by one Richard Nordhausen:
With pitiless tenacity we must exterminate or banish to a dark cave the eroti?
cism that is emerging fiirtively among our pupils. It reflects nothing but
disgusting, poisonous, precocious depravity. Counselors of the young who
remain silent about youthful aberrations are sinners against the marrow ofthe
young generation and ofthe entire nation. Just as sinful are those who glee-
fully fill youths' heads with their own fantasies, who make them and their
thoughts more precocious than they should naturally be . . . The nation has
only one young generation to lose: when this one is ruined, so will the entire
nation be ruined!59
At the peak of his anger, Schlittenbauer called on the Minister of Religious

and Educational Affairs to repress the youth movement. Neither weak compro?
mises nor fainthearted commentaries were required, but rather a policy of hard-
ness ("immer nur fest druff!").60
Since the government had already banned Der Anfang the week before in
response to the pamphlet, one must assume that Schlittenbauer desired both the
expulsion of Wyneken from Munich and a ban on the Freideutsche Jugend in
Bavaria. Over the next few weeks, the Catholic press developed his offensive,
attributing the radicalism of the Anfang circle to all Wandervogel groups and
warning that "this movement is infiltrating silently and secretly, like creeping
poison."61 One immediate result was an official warning about the youth
movement sent out to parents by the headmasters of several Munich sec?
ondary schools.62
How did moderates and progressives in Munich respond to this tirade?
Parliamentarians from the Bavarian Liberal Union attempted both to salvage
58. Verhandlungender Kammerder Abgeordnetendes bayerischenLandtags,XXXVI.Land-

tagsversammlung, II. Sessionim Jahre1913/1914 (Munich,1914), 133.
59. Ibid., 136.
60. Ibid.,134.
61. NeuesMiinchener 30 January1914, and Bayerischer
Tagesblatt, Kurier,7 February1914, MK
15003,BHStAM.
62. Bayerischer Kurier,1-2 February1914,MK 15003,BHStAM.
JOHN ALEXANDER MLLIAMS 181
their ongoing critique ofthe school system and to distance themselves from the
youth movement. In his response to Schlittenbauer, the Liberal representative
Buttmann called Der Anfang an "open wound" inflicted by authoritarianism in
the schools. Suffering under heavy pressure, young people were resorting to an
"exorbitant and offensive" form of self-expression. Indeed it was natural for
adolescents to "go beyond the appropriate limits, boil over emotionally, and
throw out the good with the bad."63 Other liberals distanced themselves more
unequivocally from Der Anfang in the parliarhent and press over the next few
days. Dr. Sigmund Giinther, for instance, announced that, "Liberalism is not
libertinism. This Jugendkultur does not produce men with character, but puffed
up frogs."64
The only defenders of the youth movement against these salvos were Social
Democrats and a few relatively progressive intellectuals. Writers for the social?
ist Miinchener Post in early February called for all "friends of liberal progress" to
support the Freideutsche Jugend because it stood for "independence and frank-
ness of expression, a spirit of toleration, and a love for the fatherland that is free
of reactionary political hatefulness." Although Der Anfang often went too far, it
was merely one way for youths to satisfy their natural adolescent "impulse to
communicate "65 On February 9 the Central Committee of the Freideutsche
Jugend convened a public forum to discuss the controversy; over one thousand
people attended. Several speakers defended the youth movement. The promi?
nent Heidelberg national economist Alfred Weber assured the audience that the
F. D. J. refrained from attacking any adult institutions that were "well-founded."
But educators must realize that their goal shouid be "to influence the young so
that they may of their own free will avail themselves of the worthwhile things
in life."66 Gustav Wyneken defended himself and his connection to the Anfang
circle. He explained the purpose ofthe journal ? to allow young people a legal
means of expressing their ideas freely and publicly ? and noted that members
of the Anfang circle were "educating themselves in self-criticism and a higher
sense of responsibility." By no means were they sexually licentious; rather they
abhorred the precocious sexual behavior common among urban youths, long?
ing instead for "a higher, purer, and more natural relationship between the
sexes." Wyneken concluded his speech by denying that he had deprived any
youths of their love of country.67
Yet the attacks on Wyneken and Der Anfang continued in Bavaria in February
and March. At the same February 9 meeting, the head of the Munich Parents'
63. Verhandlungender Kammer,137.

64. Ibid., 172.
65. "Zu dem Kampf gegen die freideutscheJugendbewegungund gegen die neue Jugend-
kultur,"Munchener Post,8?10 February1914.
66. Cited in "Der Protestder freideutschenJugend,"Munchener
Post,11 February1914.
67. Cited in ibid.
Association, Dr. Albert Rehm, accused Wyneken of "arrogance and loveless-

ness. . . Wherever he goes he brings disaster." Rehm said that according to
one parent he knew, Wyneken "had stolen the soul of his child."68 Sebastian
Schlittenbauer also continued his tirades. Addressing a meeting of the People's
Alliance for Catholic Germany on March 11, Schlittenbauer criticized the
Meissner Proclamation, the author of which he assumed to be Wyneken: "Just
what does 'self-determination' mean? Wyneken overlooks the dual nature of
the soul ? its striving for transcendence, but also its attraction to lower, ani-
malistic things." Without the good examples of adults, young people would
become immoral. Resorting to the doctrine of a "Jewish conspiracy," Schlitten?
bauer informed his audience that "most of Wyneken s followers belonged to the
Israelite tribe" and declared that the German nation had "absolutely no need
for reform by the Semitic nation."69
The moral panic in Bavaria had immediate consequences for Gustav
Wyneken, the Anfang circle, and the youth movement as a whole. Wyneken
came under the surveillance of the Munich police in February.70 The police in
Vienna clamped down on the Anfang circle, forbidding their planned "archive
for fugendkultur" and intimidating them into dissolving their Viennese "salon."71
But the most important consequence for the entire youth movement was the
Freideutsche Jugend's decision to distance itself officially from the radicals.
During a congress at Marburg on March 7-8 speakers called on the F. D. J. to
relinquish all pretensions to an autonomous Jugendkultur on the grounds that
this utopian idea was completely unsuited for the young. The leadership pres-
sured Gustav Wyneken into withdrawing his organization, the League for Free
Schooling Communities. The reason given was that the F. D. J. had to free itself
from those adults who were trying to impose their own agendas on the move?
ment. But it was telling that the leadership also refused a request from a group
of Berlin adolescents associated with the Anfang circle to join the F. D.J.
The immaturity of adolescents became the primary justification for the
youth movement leadership to reject the concept of fugendkultur. As Edmund
Neuendorff declared at the meeting, "The Freideutsche Jugend should gather
strength. Strength for what? That question they will have to answer when they
have reached maturity, and not while they are still in the process of matura-
tion."72 Although F. D.J. leaders claimed that they were releasing the movement
from the control of adults, in truth they were jettisoning the radical goal of
inaugurating a more independent and critical countercultural project. The
68. Cited in Miinchen-Augsburger 10 February1914, MK15003,BHStAM.

Abendzeitung,
69. Cited in Bayerischer
Kurier,12 March1914,MK15003,BHStAM.
70. Konigliche PolizeidirektionMiinchen to Konigliches Staatsministerium
des Innern fiir
Kirchenund Schulangelegenheiten (16 February1914),MK15003,BHStAM.
71. Laermann,"Skandal," 373.
72. Cited in Die MarburgerTagung Jugend(Hamburg,1914),7.
derFreideutschen
meeting ended with the replacement of the Meissner Proclamation, with its
call for youths to "shape their lives according to their own rules," by a new
"Marburg Proclamation":
The Freideutsche Jugend wants to impart the values that the older genera?
tions have acquired and handed down, but we will also develop our own
powers guided by inner truthfulness and a sense of our own responsibility. We
reject economic, religious, and political affiliations as premature restraints on
our self-instruction.73
This mission statement must be seen as an attempt to strike a balance between

youthful autonomy and respect for adult institutions. Most importantly, the
emphasis on traditional values signified a compromise with the youth cultiva?
tion project of guiding the young along the path toward an acquiescent and
uncritical adulthood. As some of the excluded parties in the Anfang circle sur-
mised, the Marburg Proclamation meant that young people in the move?
ment had "again submitted to the schoolmaster, willingly taking up the yoke
of authoritative education and claiming for themselves only a little 'supple-
mental' freedom."74
The decision to cut connections to Wyneken and the Anfang circle won the
accolades of leaders who had come to believe that such drastic steps were
necessary to save the youth movement. Yet the largest Wandervogel group,
the Wandervogel e.V, persisted in its refusal to join the Freideutsche Jugend
officially75 Hans Wix wrote that the organization had narrowly escaped the
attempts by unscrupulous adults to turn it to their own political purposes.
The F. D. J., he wrote, was "endangering the traditional relationship between the
Wandervogel, the parents, and the public in such a way as to conflict with [the
movement's] interests."
A friend of mine always says to me that, "The Wandervogel must com-

pletely avoid the struggles and party divisions of the public realm. The
movement must maintain its reputation so that all parents, regardless of
their political affiliation, will have no doubt that it is a mental and physical
blessing for their children." But this reputation was in danger. It already had
been before the Meissner festival. Before, one could point to the influence of
specific circles, but now the course of the E D. J. was to become the official
course of the entire youth movement.76
73. Cited in ibid., 28.

74. AkademischesComite fiir Schulreform,"Die Zukunft der F.D. J. Zur Verstandigung," Der
Anfang(July 1914):96.
75. The leadersof the W.V.e.V.had planned to participatein the Meissnerfestivaland in the
F.D. J. but had withdrawnon the eve of the festival,fearing that this would alienateparentsand
teachers.Still,severalmembershad takenpartunotficially.
76. Wix, "wandervogelam Scheidewege."
Wix's explanation for the W.Ve.V policy revealed the toll that the controversy
had taken on the F. D. J.'s respectability within the larger youth movement. His
warning to the Wandervogel to "work on yourselves and make your hikes
ever more exemplary" also showed that the influence of youth cultivation s
self-disciplinary project was becoming more powerful in the wake of the
moral panic.77
Despite the youth movement s repudiation offugendkultur, the public offen?
sive against it continued after the Marburg meeting. Indeed, the controversy
began to spread to other parts of Germany. In April the subject of Der Anfang
came up in the Badenese parliament, where the Minister of Education, Dr.
Bohm, called the journal "one of the most distressing phenomena of our
times."78 The Prussian Minister of Education attacked adults like Wyneken who
took advantage of adolescents' natural volatility "by calling on them to resist
authority, by inveighing against human and religious powers, and by leading
youths into a battle against the school, the mother, and the father."79 Other
Prussian parliamentarians, particularly of the Center Party, accused the fugend?
kultur advocates of promoting "confusion of character," a "descent into wild-
ness," and a growing number of "crimes against morality."80 The Bavarian
?
patterns repeated themselves in Prussia again the Freideutsche Jugend and
Der Anfang were rhetorically conflated. And again it was the left-liberals and
Social Democrats who defended the movement.81
The moral panic of 1914 led to a decreased tolerance for the entire youth
movement throughout Germany. Ministers of Education in Bavaria and Saxony
requested school authorities to undertake the surveillance of local youth groups,
to punish students found reading "dangerous" texts, and to develop their own
hiking organizations as an alternative to the Wandervogel.82 Commentators
began to east aspersions on Wandervogel hiking practices. Writing in the
Kolnische Volkszeitung in early June 1914, the Catholic youth cultivator Hans
Bormann described the public's growing antipathy to the Wandervogel and
their allegedly disruptive, violent hiking groups. He cited newspaper reports
that "hyenas of nature" were stomping down entire sections of meadowland,
that "scantily clad men and women" were bathing together in a creek and
"singing the commonest kind of songs," and that the hikers were threatening
77. Ibid.
78. Cited in Laermann,"Skandal," 365.
79. Ministerof Educationvon Trottzu Solz in stenographicreportofthe 77th meeting ofthe
PrussianHouse of Representatives,11 May 1914,6624, A2-104/10, Adjb.
80. CatholicCenterPartyrepresentative Dr. Neumannin ibid., 6556, 6560.
KonradHaenischin ibid., 6583-84.
81. For instance,S.P.D.representative
82. Evidence from Bavariaand Saxony is found in the file entided Hohere Lehranstalten.
JungdeutscheJugendkultur,1913-1924, MK15003,BHStAM.
JOHN ALEXANDER MLLIAMS 185
defiant landowners with a beating.83 The bourgeois youth movement, wrote

Bormann, had degenerated to the point where its members "carried on like
gypsies" and pursued a "Jewish" agenda. The Catholic youth cultivation move?
ment shouid promote the more rational tradition of chaperoned hiking in order
to protect itself from the influence ofthe Wandervogel, "whose time is past and
whose path is coming to an end."84
Commentators also began to take more notice of Bluher's study of the
Wandervogel as an "erotic phenomenon." Youth cultivators began to debate
the extent to which homosexuals had taken over the Wandervogel. Some were
not convinced that Bluher had exaggerated homosexuality in the movement.85
But others attacked the Wandervogel's supposed tolerance of homosexuals as
indicative of their "degraded" character.86 Hans Bormann suspected that even
those exclusively male groups that did the right thing and segregated their hikes
by gender might succumb to "very serious lapses."87 Ignorance of Bluher's work
outside the movement kept the issue of homosexuality from playing a very
prominent role in the discourse of moral panic in 1914. However, the myth that
homosexual men were pedophiles by nature was to become a prominent fea-
ture of youth cultivation rhetoric during the Weimar Republic. Bluher's prewar
thesis about homoeroticism in the movement attracted more attention after the
war in part because the controversy of 1914 increased general public concerns
about adolescent sexuality.88
By July 1914 the public assault on the youth movement had run its course.
Youth cultivators and their supporters had ridiculed the notion that adolescence
was a time of unique freedom. They had defined Jugendkultur as a threat to the
moral safety of the young. Indeed, they had discredited not only the radical
83. RheinischeVolkszeitung, 30 May 1914 and Frankfurter 2 June 1914, cited in Hans
Volkszeitung,
H. Bormann, "Zur Wandervogel-Bewegung,"KolnischeVolkszeitung, 5 June 1914, MK15003,
BHStAM.
84. Bormann,"Zur Wandervogel-Bewegung," 2.
85. E. Griinholtz, "Das Grundproblem der modernen Erziehungsreformbestrebungen,"
Literarische
BeilagederkolnischenVolkszeitung, 23 July 1914, MK15003,BHStAM.
86. Dr. Hoffmann, "FalscheBahnen," AllgemeineRundschau,21 February 1914, MK15003,
BHStAM.
87. Bormann,"Zur Wandervogel-Bewegung," 2.
88. The subject of Bluhers reception during and after the war goes beyond the bounds of
this paper.Suffice it to say that Bluher became one of the primarydemons in ongoing Weimar
discussions of threatened adolescent sexuality. Moreover, many leaders in the reorganized
youth movement took pains to distancethemselvesfrom Bluher.Examplesinclude "Denkschrift
der Schulkommissiondes arzdichen Vereins Munchen. Uber die ausserordentlichenGefahren
welche die Jugendbewegungin den letzten Jahren gezeitigt hat" (February1920), MK14847,
BHStAM; WernerKindt, "Die Neubildung des Wandervogelse.V." Der Zwiespruch, 29 October
1920;A. Scholte, "Uber die derzeitigenAnschauungenvon der gleichgeschlechtlichenLiebe und
ihren Ursachen,"Volksgesundheit (1924): 85-87. On the reception of Bluher during and after the
war,see Geuter,Homosexualitdt, 156?216.
minority of the Anfang circle, but the youth movement as a whole. Even the
Freideutsche Jugend's attempt to escape these attacks by compromising with
youth cultivation in the Marburg Proclamation failed to rehabilitate the move?
ment. Thus the bourgeois youth movement began to seek redemption by urg-
ing its members to prove themselves to the nation.
During the First World War, ninety percent, or roughly fifteen thousand, of the
young German men of military age who belonged to Wandervogel organiza?
tions volunteered or were inducted into the army.89 They died in dispropor-
tionately high numbers. In the army as a whole one out of every eight soldiers
was killed. But one out of every four soldiers from the Wandervogel e.V. met
this fate.90 This was in part due to the willingness of many in the youth move?
ment not only to volunteer for the infantry early in the war, but also to the
desire of younger boys to participate. Many of them joined the war effort as
errand boys or medical aids at the age of sixteen or seventeen.91
Why did the bourgeois youth movement prove willing to devote itself so
enthusiastically to the war effort? Some historians see this as the logical out-
growth of militaristic tendencies present in prewar Wandervogel organizations.
But this monocausal explanation is not convincing. Although the movement
did contain strains of militarism, these clearly did not dominate everyday ide?
ology and practice, and there were countervailing antimilitaristic tendencies
as well.92 Nor is the argument persuasive that the movement attempted to
escape the complexities of modernity by rushing into war.93 While they strongly
criticized certain elements of industrial society then present in Wilhelmian
Germany, the Wandervogel and Freideutsche Jugend were not simplistically
antimodern in a general sense. I contend that the reason for the movements
particularly ardent support of the war can be found in its rhetorical attempts to
89. Rudolf Kneip,"DerFeldwandervogel 1914/1918" (unpublishedtypescript,1963),A2-11/7,

Adjb;GudrunFiedler,Jugendim Krieg:Burgerliche Jugendbewegung, ErsterWeltkrieg
undsozialerWandel
1914-1923 (Cologne,1989),238.
90. AlfredOdin, "Die Soldaten,"Wandervogel (1919):111-12.
91. Fiedler,Jugendim Krieg,38, 43; Kneip,"Feldwandervogel," 1.
92. Studies arguingthat adultssuccessfullyused war and scouting games to indoctrinatethe
Wandervogelin militant nationalisminclude Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn,"Kriegsspielund
Naturgenuss:Zur Funktionalisierung der biirgerlichenJugendbewegungfiir militarischeZiele,"
JADJB(1986-1987):251-69; ChristophSchubert-Weller, "'Die Sendungderjungen Generation':
Von der Militarisierungzur Verstaatlichung: Thesen zur Jugendgeschichtevon 1890 bis 1936,"
JADJB (1988-1992):37-76. GudrunFiedlerarguesagainsttakingthe prewargamestoo seriously
in Jugendim Krieg,40. The latter position is better supportedby contemporaryWandervogel
sources,i.e. HannaDiehl, "Kriegsspielin der Davert,"Wandervogel (1914):233-35. See alsoMichael
Fritz,Benno Hafeneger,Peter Krahulec,and Ralf Thaetner,. . . "undfahr'nwirohneWiederkehr":
Ein Lesebuch zur Kriegsbegeisterung
jungerManner, vol 1, Der Wandervogel
(Frankfurtam Main, 1990).
93. Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge,MA, 1979), 47; Mosse,Nationalism and
Sexuality,116.
JOHN ALEXANDER W1LLIAMS 187
give meaning to the carnage. I will look at evidence from the publications of
the Wandervogel e. V. during the first year of the war.94
The rhetoric of the Wandervogel e. V. had much in common with the many
other calls to arms throughout Europe during the phase of mobilization. Youth
movement spokesmen described the war as a glorious defense ofthe nation and
as a way to unify society. But one other apparently commonplace idea, the
strong emphasis on the idea that war would help young males become heroic
men, was directly influenced by the recent moral panic. Fresh memories of the
attacks on the movement's morality and patriotism led writers to reiterate the
notion of 5e/?-improvement over and over again. As the author of an early
wartime flyer announced, the youth movement must begin the process of
"conquering ourselves! Our superficial, common, wrong (verkehrte) . . . and
un-German characteristics!"95 The insistence on triumph over internal flaws
was the unique feature in an otherwise archetypical discourse of becoming a
man through battle.
The concept of self-transcendence through war shaped discussions of both
the youth movement and the individual adolescent. Essay writers played
down the emotional, individualistic, and antiauthoritarian elements in the pre?
war Wandervogel. They redefmed hiking as a nationalist and self-disciplinary
method of preparing the young for warfare. Edmund Neuendorff, for instance,
wrote in September 1914 that, "The days of cheerful hiking, of dreaming and
singing are past. But they have not been for naught. Wherever the good old
Wandervogel spirit has reigned, we have made our will hard and strong through
physical work and sacrifice. This shall guide us to victory"96 In another article
Willi Maschke defended the movement against a critic who thought it to be
"addicted to enjoyment" (vergnugungssuchtig), "swimming against the current,"
and inferior to military pretraining organizations. Maschke reassured his readers
that the Wandervogel had long been preparing themselves to bear "the wind
and weather and the simple food" of the battlefield. Since their beginnings
they had avoided alcohol, had taught young people to love the German home?
land, and had striven to purify the language of such foreign words as "adieu."
Truly, the movement had proven itself "German to the core."97 Such rhetoric
94. At leastduringthe earlyphaseofthe war,therewere few significantdifferencesbetween the

rhetoricofthe WVe.V. and that of other organizations.The exception was the Anfangcircle,many
of whom took up an antiwarposition.For more comprehensiveanalysesof the youth movements
changing reactionsto the war,see Fiedler,Jugendim Krieg;and Thomas Fenske,"Der Verlustdes
Jugendreiches:Die burgerlicheJugendbewegungund die Herausforderung des ErstenWeltkrieges,"
JADJB (1986-1987): 197-228.
(1914), A 2-11/6, Adjb.
95. Kriegsflugblatt
96. EdmundNeuendorff,"Briiderund Schwestern!"Wandervogel (1914):258.
97. Willi Maschke, "Die Wandervogel in der Kriegszeit," and "Amtliches," Wandervogel,
Schlesien(December 1914):4-7,14.
Kriegsheftfiir
attempted to rehabilitate the youth movement, implying that it had always been
engaged in the effort to cultivate adolescents into obedient young adults.
This was the rhetoric of damage control, a clear continuation of the move?
ment's efforts to distance itself from the radicals just a few months earlier. The
essayists also focused their attention on the individual adolescent. Journal
articles continually represented adolescence as merely a set of "peculiarities"
that hindered the individual from becoming a "member ofthe totality."98 Young
people, according to one writer, had to rise above their natural irrationality
in order to move "from the stifling prison of impulse to conscious action."
The individual had to engage in a "struggle to maintain internal order," for
Germany's enemies were "hammering the truth into us: the individual exists
only within the whole."99 According to another, "alongside the battle against
our foreign enemies, there is another battle that each individual must fight with
himself. It is the battle to east aside all that is humane. All memories and hopes
must be sacrificed to the one, great thing that we must all serve unto death."100
Yet another writer entreated youths on the home front to resist "the powers of
temptation within yourselves."101
This was a constant refrain in youth movement rhetoric early in the war.
In defming the war as the way for every individual Wandervogel to achieve
adulthood in Wilhelm II's Germany, the youth movement was calling on
male youths to sacrifice their minds and bodies to the nation. Although sexu?
ality was never mentioned directly, the constant devaluation of individual
impulses, dreams, hopes, and temptations must be seen as a legacy of the moral
panic. This development marked the utter rejection of the radical possibilities
that had been contemplated in the youth movement just one year earlier.
Bluher's book, Der Anfang, and the Meissner festival had all ennobled the
ecstasies of the young as the foundation upon which to build new forms of
youthful freedom. For the radicals, the young generation was capable of guid-
ing itself using both its reasoning and its feeling capacity. This brief and
inchoate challenge to the status quo in Wilhelmian Germany found expression
in the ideal of an independent, free-thinking, and critical fugendkultur.
But because the theme of sexuality came into play in attempts to define the
goals and practices of this new fugendkultur, the radicals exposed themselves to
attacks on their morality by youth cultivators who were determined to gain
control over Germanys adolescents. Some assailants demagogically identified
the entire youth movement with the radicals' ideas. Despite support from the
98. L.W.Roose, "wandervogelund Krieg,"Wandervogel (1914):261.

99. Hans Freimark,"Sonnenwende,"Wandervogel, fiir Schlesien(June-July 1915):
Kriegsheft
53-54.
100. Rudolf Zwetz, "Vordem Auszug,"Wandervogel (1914):273.
101. Mutter Anna-Karoline,"LiebeSohne und Tochter,die Ihr Wandervogelseid!" Wander?
fiir Schlesien
vogel,Kriegsheft 1915):15.
(January?February
political Left, the Wandervogel and Freideutsche Jugend faced public condem-
nation as dangerous enemies to the nation s young generation, leaving a lasting
scar on their public image. When the war came, leaders of the movement were
still trying to clear the name of the Wandervogel tradition. Partly because they
hoped to redeem themselves in the eyes of the German nation, former advo?
cates of youthful freedom joined the military, the state, the churches, and the
schools in demanding that Germany's young men make the ultimate sacrifice.
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Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association

Sexuality, the Youth Movement, and

Moral Panic in Germany on the

Eve of the First World War

John Alexander Williams

1913 the bourgeois youth movement in Germany fell under the

For their supportand suggestionsI wish to thankOlaf Griese,Max Williams,SarahWilliams,Brad

CentralEuropeanHistory,vol. 34, no. 2, 163-189

adolescent sexuality with the Freideutsche Jugends declaration of autonomy,

3. My intention is to augment the existing body of historicalliteratureby discussingthe rela?

4. WinfriedMogge, "Jugendbewegung," in Handbudi,ed. Kerbsand Reulecke, 189. Although

The degree to which the Wandervogel took a consciously oppositional

Weltkrieg,"in Antimodernismus undReform:Zur Geschichte derdeutschen ed. Irmgard

10. Bluheravoidedusing the term "homosexual"becauseof what he calledits "suspect"con?

tions sharply contradicted dominant conceptions of male homosexuality as

15. On Wilhelmian conceptions of homosexuality,see James D. Steakley,"Iconographyof a

a well-known psychologist) and Walter Benjamin, then a student at Freiburg.

23. HerbertBlumenthal,"Von der Mission derJugend,"DerAnfang(September1913): 134.

most outspoken opponent of militarist nationalism at the festival was Gustav

35. "Jung-Deutschland," LeipzigerVolkszeitung, 1 October 1911, PP-V 3982, STAL. On

twenty-one belonged to Jugendpflege organizations.36 Over twenty-six thousand

Continuation Schooling and the Prussian'Youth Cultivation'Decree of 1911," EuropeanHistory

43. Dr. Rudolf Schneider,PubertatundAuge:Vortrag, gehaltenin derMunchenerElternvereinigung

48. File entitled Sexuelle Aufklarung an den Mittelschulen. Sexualpadogogik, Band I,

The public controversy erupted in mid-October 1913 as a direct response to

52. Untided article in the ProgressivePartynewspaperFrankfurter

54. "ZweiJugendtagungen,"Hamburger 14 October 1913, reprintedin ibid., 337.

extended his attack to the Freideutsche Jugend, misrepresenting Der Anfang as

Schlittenbauer then turned to the subject of eroticism, quoting approvingly a

At the peak of his anger, Schlittenbauer called on the Minister of Religious

58. Verhandlungender Kammerder Abgeordnetendes bayerischenLandtags,XXXVI.Land-

63. Verhandlungender Kammer,137.

Association, Dr. Albert Rehm, accused Wyneken of "arrogance and loveless-

68. Cited in Miinchen-Augsburger 10 February1914, MK15003,BHStAM.

This mission statement must be seen as an attempt to strike a balance between

A friend of mine always says to me that, "The Wandervogel must com-

73. Cited in ibid., 28.

defiant landowners with a beating.83 The bourgeois youth movement, wrote

89. Rudolf Kneip,"DerFeldwandervogel 1914/1918" (unpublishedtypescript,1963),A2-11/7,

94. At leastduringthe earlyphaseofthe war,therewere few significantdifferencesbetween the

98. L.W.Roose, "wandervogelund Krieg,"Wandervogel (1914):261.

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