From Uranians To Homosexuals - Philhellenism, Greek Homoeroticism and Gay Emancipation in Germany 1835-1915

Classical Receptions Journal Vol 2. Iss. 1 (2010) pp.
60–91
From Uranians to Homosexuals:

Philhellenism, Greek Homoeroticism and
Gay Emancipation in Germany 1835–1915
Sebastian Matzner*
According to our current views and interpretation, the study of antiquity should be seen as a
dangerous enterprise, and London, Paris, Rome and Munich with their treasures of ancient
art as dangerous places, which threaten our age of pure morality and decency with the plague
of the unnatural Greeks!
(Hössli 1836)1
Downloaded from http://crj.oxfordjournals.org/ at Mittuniversitetet on May 1, 2016

In my room hangs an etching of Feuerbach’s painting that represents Plato’s Symposium.
How different was the relationship between man and man then, how different the forms of
sociability, how untainted by spectres the joie de vivre!
(Friedländer 1904)2
Throughout Europe’s cultural history, the reception of classical antiquity is marked

first and foremost by the intrinsic ambivalence of it being at the same time the
foundation and the Other of contemporary cultural identity. It is, as it were, the
resident alien at the core of Western civilization. This ambivalence of alterity and
identity is also fundamental to the reception of ancient Greek homoeroticism by men
*Correspondence to Sebastian Matzner, Comparative Literature Programme, Department

of Classics, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK. sebastian.matz-
ner@kcl.ac.uk
I am very grateful to Kate Fisher and Rebecca Langlands for giving me the opportunity to
present an earlier version of this study at their truly memorable conference ‘Sexual
Knowledge: Uses of the Past’ (Exeter, 27–29 July 2009). I have particularly benefitted
from the constructive criticism of Alastair Blanshard whose generosity in commenting on
and questioning my arguments in a first draft of this study has pointed me to many avenues of
further inquiry worthwhile pursuing and spared me several infelicities. Any remaining
shortcomings are, of course, entirely my own.
1 ‘Nach unseren Meinungen und Auslegungen müßte das Studium der Antike eigentlich
ein gefährliches Bestreben, und London, Paris, Rom und München mit ihren antiken
Kunstschätzen gefährliche Orte sein, welche unsere Zeit der reinen Moral und
Sittlichkeit mit der Pest der naturabtrünnigen Griechen bedrohen!’ (Hössli 1836: 113).
2 ‘In meinem Zimmer hängt ein Kupferstich nach Feuerbachs Gemälde, das Gastmahl des
Platon darstellend. Wie anders waren doch damals das Verhältniss zwischen Mensch und
Mensch, wie anders die Formen der Geselligkeit, wie ungetrübt durch Gespenster die
Lebensfreude!’ (Friedländer 1904: 81).
ß The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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doi:10.1093/crj/clq002
FROM URANIANS TO HOMOSEXUALS
who were attracted to men in Germany during the time of the first emergence of a
public discourse on the nature of ‘homosexuality’, for the purposes of this study
limited to the time between 1835 and 1915. This period is significant for the history
of gay emancipation in two ways. First, because it sees the development of modern
medical and psychological theories that lay the foundation for the modern concepts
of sexual identity in general and homosexuality in particular. Although valid
arguments have been raised against a too abrupt Foucauldian understanding of
a sudden emergence of ‘the homosexual’ as a distinct type of individual defined
by his sexual behaviour,3 it seems unquestionable that contemporary gay identities
and discourses on homosexuality are directly and significantly shaped by categories
and epistemologies of the self that are first employed here. Secondly, this period
sees, for the first time, men attracted to men openly challenging the legal system of

their country and demanding the decriminalization of homosexual acts, notably
against the background of an extremely lively homosexual culture in Berlin, and
elsewhere in Germany, and in close interaction with arguments from the new
medico-psychological theories.4 The unification of Germany under Prussian
leadership at the end of the nineteenth century entailed the establishment of a
unified penal code. More liberal laws in Bavaria and in those parts of Germany
which had previously been under the legislative influence of the French law code
were thereby put under threat and eventually overridden by the implementation
of paragraph 175 of the Imperial Penal Code which made male homosexuality
3 Particularly by highlighting preceding traditions of ‘homosexual characters’; a critical

review of this debate is provided by Hergemöller (1999: 36f.), see Borris (2004) and
Borris and Rousseau (2008) for medieval and early modern precedents and precursors of
prehomosexual, quasi-essentialist conceptualizations of male same-sex attraction.
4 Terminology is a notoriously difficult issue in studies in the history of sexuality. A too
casual usage of sexual identity terminology easily implies an essentialist, ahistorical
notion of these terms. An awareness for the risk of anachronistically misapplying histori-
cally contingent terms valid only for the conceptualizations of sexuality and sexual
identity in specific cultures and eras inevitably suggests that the author subscribes to
an exclusively constructionist view on human sexuality.The situation is all the more
complicated for the period under discussion here because it sees the emergence of our
current concepts and terms of ‘homosexuality’ and ‘heterosexuality’ which were con-
troversial right from their inception and certainly not all immediately shared by every
contemporary. Since the writings, theories and events discussed here constitute none-
theless the prehistory of our own modern notions of ‘homosexuality’ and of ‘being gay’ as
well as the very beginnings of the gay emanctipation movement, I use these terms as and
where this line of continuity with the current usage is given. Otherwise, a more open
terminology (‘homophile’, ‘homoerotic’, ‘same-sex attraction’, etc.) is used so as to do
justice to positions and persons under discussion whose self-perception and views on
sexuality were or were likely to have been much more fluid and not governed by the just
emerging homo-/heterosexuality paradigm. As for the emerging gay scene in Berlin, see
Bollé (1984).
61
SEBASTIAN MATZNER
a criminal offence throughout Germany in 1871.5 The foundation of the

Wissenschaftlich-humanitäre Komitee (‘Scientific-Humanitarian Committee’) by
Magnus Hirschfeld in 1897, the world’s first organization dedicated to the aim of
fighting legal and social intolerance towards homosexuals by means of scientific
investigation and dissemination of information on same-sex love, as well as the
individual and uncoordinated writings of other gay activists in this period formed
part of a broad campaign to repeal paragraph 175.6
In order to understand the breadth and importance of the reception of ancient
homoeroticism leading up to and shaping this campaign, I shall begin by sketching
the various discursive locations and modes in which the classical tradition is present
in the gay culture of nineteenth and early twentieth century Germany. Based on this,
I will then move on to discuss the works of three pre-eminent voices in the early

history of gay emancipation: the writings of Heinrich Hössli, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs
and Benedikt Friedländer. My main interest will be the analysis of the discursive
configurations and tensions in the triangulation of historical classical antiquity itself,
the contemporary paradigm of philhellenic classicism, and the appropriation of
antiquity and ancient homoeroticism by gay men; particular attention will be
given to the structure, potential and limits of their legitimizing efforts and subver-
sive strategies.
When Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1890 pushed for the reform of the German secondary
school curriculum away from its neohumanist ideals, famously saying that he
wanted his schools to educate young Germans and not Greeks and Romans, the
5 ‘Sodomy’ was decriminalized in France in 1791, a change that was maintained in the
Penal Code of 1810 which also imposed in those parts of Germany annexed by France
under Napoleon.
6 The history of this legal reform that ultimately led to paragraph 175 is closely linked with
the gradual process of Germany’s unification and therefore evolved itself gradually: after
Prussia’s victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 many territories with more liberal
legislation who were formerly allied with Austria were annexed and fell under Prussian
jurisdiction. As a next step, the severe Prussian penal code of 1851, whose paragraph 143
made male same-sex acts punishable with six months to four years imprisonment, was
used as a model for the code of the newly formed North German Confederation, incor-
porating all the German states north of the river Main. Finally, in 1871, the Reichstag
introduced with no debate the Prussian paragraph 143 as Paragraph 175 into the new
imperial penal code of the unified German Empire. The gradual expansion of Prussian
jurisdiction caused some men whose sexual behaviour fell under these laws to relocate
and politicized some of those affected by the legal changes into emancipatory political
activism, for instance Ulrichs, who fled from Hanover to Bavaria and then campaigned
actively to repeal paragraph 175. Further background information on the topic is pro-
vided by Stümke (1989: 21–52), less detailed surveys in English can be found in
Lauritsen and Thorstad (1974) and Steakley (1975).
62
golden age of classicism and classical studies in Germany had passed its zenith.7 Yet,
while the rise of nationalism and later modernism, each in their own way, changed
the face of German culture and put an end to the so-called ‘tyranny of Greece over
Germany’,8 ancient Greece continued to have a firm grip on the imagination and
self-understanding of gay men in Germany. As will become clear in the course of
the discussion of three major writers of the early gay emancipation movement later
on in this study, Plato’s Symposium in particular had a formative influence on the
development of the emerging new concept of ‘homosexuality’. Hence, before
embarking on a systematic analysis of the different discursive locations and modes
of gay classical reception practices in this period, it will be helpful to explore the
extent, form, and institutional framework in which exposure to Hellenic culture
took place.

After Germany had seen a climax of aesthetic, literary and cultural philhellenic
classicism in the so-called Weimar Classicism of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
century, the period under discussion here witnessed an increasing institutionaliza-
tion of classical learning — and its subsequent institutional decline.9 The key figure
for the institutional establishment of Greek and Latin languages and literature as the
core of German culture and education (‘Bildung’) was Wilhelm von Humboldt.
A passionate philhellene himself and acquainted with the leading classicists and
classicizing poets of his time, in his brief term as head of the newly created
Educational and Ecclesiastical Affairs Section of the Prussian Interior Ministry
between February 1809 and July 1810 he centralized the Prussian educational
system and implemented the Abitur, a school-leaving exam that henceforth consti-
tuted the exclusive entrance qualification for university attendance. It was
characterized by strenuous translations from Greek and oral as well as written tests to be
completed in Latin. The Abitur could only be administered by classical schools designated as
Gymnasien; these then became the sole university preparatory institutions (and remained so
down to the end of the century), and, consequently, the required choice for all aspiring state
servants, teachers, and free professionals, including even dentists.10
While it may be an exaggeration to say that ‘the utopia of the sixteenth century, a
world of Latin-speaking dentists, Homer-reading lawyers and Sophocles-quoting
merchants, had become a reality around 1850’,11 there was nonetheless a remarkably
7 See Wilhelm II’s ‘Eröffnungsansprache zur Schulkonferenz 1890’ (‘Opening address to

the school conference 1890’) in Giese (1961: 196f.).
8 Butler (1935).
9 For a broad study of this process, albeit with a stronger emphasis on classical archaeology
than on the study of classical literature and languages, see Marchand (1996); for more
detailed studies on the ideological shift within German ‘Altertumswissenschaft’ in the
generation of the 1890s and its consequences, see Gildenhard and Ruehl (2003).
10 Marchand (1996: 27).
11 Jens (1973: 69).
63
SEBASTIAN MATZNER
widespread familiarity with Greek and Latin texts in the original languages. Since
they had become prerequisites for any kind of higher education ‘there was no one in
any institution of higher learning who was unable to read Plato or Homer’.12
Humboldt himself did not establish a definite set of texts to be studied but only
specified in the first curriculum for the reformed Gymnasium of 1812 the total
numbers of lessons to be spent on each subject across 10-year groups.13 In addition
to a rigorous training in grammar, stylistics, and composition, each school set their
own texts, often based on recommendations from university classicists. Friedrich
August Wolf (1759–1824), for instance, professor of Classics at the university of
Halle and generally seen as the founder of the German Altertumswissenschaft as
a distinct, philosophical-historical discipline, suggested to read with pupils
Herodotus, Xenophon and Plato, interspersed with passages from Arrian,

Herodian, Plutarch, Lucian and Julian, as well as a selection of Homer, one
comedy and one tragedy of each of the three great tragedians.14 Wolf’s recom-
mended syllabus is representative for the Greek authors studied at secondary
level throughout Prussia and beyond; while the individual schools’ syllabi vary in
the exact choice of poets and prose writers, Homer, Plato, Xenophon and at least one
of the tragedians are always represented.15 Asserting the exposure to and, hence, the
potential influence of certain individual classical texts is complicated not only by the
schools’ freedom to set their own texts but also because of the important role of
private study and reading in translation. Wolf himself had recommended that if a
text could not be read in its entirety in the original, pupils should read it at least in
translation.16 Likewise, the curricula stressed the importance of additional,
extracurricular reading of the pupils. An instruction on the organization of private
reading was circulated in Prussia in 1825 but it only called for every Gymnasium to
implement a set reading list aiming at acquainting the pupils as comprehensibly as
possible with classical literature without centrally prescribing individual texts or
authors.17 In order to achieve this aim, text editions with annotations in German
12 Ibid.
13 ‘Latin 76, Greek 50, German 44, Mathematics 60. In addition twenty lessons were
devoted to Science, thirty to History and Geography combined, twenty to Religion,
ten to Drawing and eight to Calligraphy’ (Wohlleben 1992: 199).
14 See Arnoldt (1861: 179).
15 Compare, for instance, the syllabus developed by Passow for the Gymnasium Conradinum
in Danzig (see Paulsen 1885: 561f.), Herbert’s suggestions for the reform of the Cathedral
School at Bremen 1801 (see Paulsen 1885: 565), the texts chosen by Poppo for the
Gymnasium at Frankfurt/Oder in 1819/20 (Paulsen 1885: 577), Spitzner’s syllabus for
the Gymnasium at Wittenberg from 1814 to 1820 (Paulsen 1885: 579) and, as an example
for the similarity of syllabi in the non-Prussian territories of Germany, Niethammer’s
reorganization of the Greek curriculum for every Bavarian Gymnasium of 1808 (Paulsen
1885: 542).
16 See Paulsen (1885: 542).
17 See Paulsen (1885: 604).
64
were published and translations became increasingly available. Consider, for

instance, the case of Plato’s Symposium, which, as will be shown, played a significant
role in the emerging public discourse on and conceptualization of same-sex love.
Wolf himself had published an annotated edition of this work to be used by young
students of Greek at the beginning of his career in 1782 and Friedrich
Schleiermacher’s project of translating the whole of Plato into German (begun in
1803, last volume published in 1828) made the Symposium available to a broad
readership in 1807 when his translation of the work was published and replaced
the first modern translation of the Symposium into German that had been published
by Schultheß in Zurich in 1782. Wolf explained in the preface of his annotated
edition that he chose this text

partly because it belongs to the most famous [. . .] writings of its author, partly because
I thought it most fit to stimulate and sustain with its dazzling style and its internal pleasant-
ness among young readers the desire to study Plato. For it was first and foremost young men
who I had in mind throughout [this project] and I sought to tailor the plan and execution of it to
their needs.18
Yet already the second edition of his annotated edition qualifies this statement by
pointing out that ‘Plato’s Symposium is not a text for untrained boys’.19 Similarly, in
his monograph on Wolf’s impact on the German educational system of 1861,
Arnoldt doubted that Wolf ‘had thought of secondary school pupils when referring
to youths’.20 Thus, while not being canonical set-reading itself, the Symposium was
widely available, in both Greek and German, to many readers who were equipped
with the cultural and linguistic knowledge to access what was clearly considered to
be a key text of Greek literature.21
18 ‘Für jetzt wählte ich vorzüglich das Gastmahl theils weil es unter die berühmtesten —
oder soll ich sagen berufensten? — Schriften seines Verfassers gehört, theils weil ich es
der blühenden Schreibart und seiner übrigen inneren Annehmlichkeiten wegen am
geschicktesten hielt, in jungen Lesern den Trieb zum Studium des Platon zu wecken
und zu unterhalten. Denn vornämlich der Jüngling war hier durchgehends mein
Hauptaugenmerk, und nach dessen Bedürfnissen suchte ich Plan und Ausführung einzurich-
ten.’ (Wolf 1828: iv) (reprint of the preface of the first edition of 1782; italics in the
original). — It should be mentioned here that Wolf’s introduction does not comment at
all on the homoerotic nature of the dialogue. The summary of the text’s content simply
states it as a matter of fact without any elaboration or words of condemnation.
19 ‘Denn Platon’s Symposium is keine Schrift fur ungeübte Knaben’ (Wolf 1828: xxiii)
(preface to the present edition).
20 ‘Indessen zweifle ich, ob er 1782, wo sein Symposion erschien, unter dieser Jungend die
Schuljugend verstanden hat [. . .]’ (Arnoldt 1861: 183).
21 The Symposium in fact does not appear in any of the secondary school curricula discussed
by Paulsen 1885 (see fn. 15) most of which stress that in reading Plato preference should
be given to the ‘easier dialogues’ (‘leichtere Dialoge’) — among which the Symposium
was, perhaps understandably, not counted.
65
SEBASTIAN MATZNER
By the end of the nineteenth century, however, a growing movement for the
reform of secondary education began to challenge the hegemony of the
classical-language learning which still, in 1890, accounted for 46% of classroom
time at this level of education.22 In the course of this reform process, the Gymnasium
lost its monopoly over university entrance and new school forms (such as the
Realschule) emerged.23 These modern schools ‘still administered a healthy dose of
the classics’,24 but the depth of classical education and training in the ancient
languages was significantly reduced; at Prussian Realschulen, for instance, Greek
was entirely abolished and Latin remained with only a reduced position in the
curriculum.25 This school reform marks a turning point in the history of German
philhellenism and the beginning of classics as a historicist, purely academic
discipline. In 1890, the number of university faculty members engaged in teaching

modern languages exceeded, for the first time, the number devoted to teaching
ancient ones.26 By then, however, ideas about and examples of same-sex love in
ancient Greece had already deeply shaped the German discourse on ‘homosexual-
ity’. It is against this background, then, that I shall analyse in what follows the
consequences and dynamic operations of identity and alterity, of familiarity and
otherness which accompany classical reception practices in general in the special
case of the reception of ancient Greek homoeroticism in the emerging modern gay
emancipation movement.
A systematic analysis of the different discursive locations and modes of gay
classical reception practices in the period under discussion initially leads to a first,
broad distinction between internally directed reception and externally directed recep-
tion. By internally directed reception, I understand practices of reception of ancient
homoeroticism that are relevant to the constitution of gay identity. By externally
directed reception, I understand practices of reception that use classical sources to
engage with the heterosexual majority in public discourse.
In terms of internally directed reception, classical antiquity appears to be particu-
larly relevant in three ways: linguistic emancipation, individual emancipation and
collective emancipation. Linguistic emancipation as a matter of terminology is
inextricably linked with self-perception. The absence of neutral or even positive
terms for same-sex love after antiquity and the prevalence of biblical and theological
22 See Albisetti (1983: 23).

23 ‘The Realschulen catered to the new entrepreneurial and commercial classes, while [. . .]
after 1870, Gymnasium education became increasingly the preserve of the old Mittelstand
(such as lower officials, teachers, and shopkeepers), and of course, of the
Bildungsbürgertum. In the 1860s, the Gymnasien enrolled 69 percent of secondary stu-
dents; in 1890, this total had dropped to a still considerable 60 percent, but the
Realschulen were gaining fast’ (Marchand 1996: 134f.).
24 See Marchand (1996: 134).
25 See Paulsen (1885: 748).
26 See Ringer (1992), figures from table pp. 254–255.
66
terminology such as ‘sodomite’ or ‘sinner against nature’27 linguistically precluded

the very possibility of any affirmative self-expression. By turning to the ancient
world it was possible to find a more positive vocabulary. Expressions such as
‘Greek love’ or ‘Socratic love’ provided a way of articulating and communicating
one’s feelings without subscribing to homophobic language.28
Individual emancipation, or ‘coming out to oneself’, is also often linked to
practices of classical reception. The formation of the homosexual self is often closely
linked with, almost emerges out of a reception practice that recognizes the individ-
ual, personal homoerotic desire in the ancient writings and therefore enables the
development of a gay identity; it is the fabrication of one’s own identity by
identifying with someone else’s desire.29 Evidence for this can be found, for
example, in the extensive case studies recorded in Johann Ludwig Casper’s

Handbuch der gerichtlichen Medizin (‘Handbook of Forensic Medicine’) of 1881
where he reports the case of a 38-year old bookseller: ‘I met this man in prison.
. . . Having been seduced to masturbation at the age of 17, he claims to have come to
pederasty through reading the ancients.’30 Similarly, Rolf Josef Hofmann quotes in
his study Fug und Unfug der Jugendkultur (‘Behaviour and Misbehaviour in Youth
Culture’) of 1914 an 18-year old pupil of a Gymansium with the words: ‘The
‘‘Symposium’’ is circulating at the moment amongst a great number of my inverted
27 A comprehensive history of the theological concept of ‘sodomy’ as the peccatum contra

naturam is provided by Jordan (1997); for the usage of the terms in nineteenth century
Germany, see Hergemöller (1991: 113).
28 Evidence for such usages can be found, for instance, in letters concerned with the Swiss
historian Johannes Müller (1752–1809) and his so-called Batthiany affair in 1802/03
(Tobin 2000: 21–23): Georg Foster wrote to F. H. Jacobi (letter dated 8 August 1781)
that ‘Müller is being accused of Socratic love’ (‘man gebe Müllern die sokratische Liebe
schuld’, Foster (ed.); Steiner 1970: 160) and Friedrich Koelle informed Henry Robinson
(letter dated 22 March 1804) that ‘in Vienna he was accused of Greek love.’ (‘In Wien
wurde er der griechischen Liebe beschuldigt’, Robinson (ed.); Marquardt 1964: 298). An
overview over the history of the terminology of same-sex love in German before the
introduction of ‘homosexual’/‘homosexuality’ (‘homosexuell’, ‘Homosexualität’) is pro-
vided by Derks (1990: 86–102).
29 Troiden (1989) rightly stresses in his model on the formation of homosexual identities
the pre-eminence of the experience of one’s otherness; however, from a historical per-
spective, it becomes clear that any notion of a stage of ‘identity assumption’ presupposes
the availability of visible, contemporary homosexual identities that can be ‘assumed’. It is
the very absence of such models that make the reception of ancient homoerotic texts so
important and pervasive in this period. This mode of a retrospective, cross-cultural
identity formation at the time of the emergence of essentialist homosexual identities in
the modern sense complicates (though not necessarily disproves) psychological social
constructionist arguments such as Cass (1996). On the role of such ‘scripts’ for the
formation of the sexual self and for further bibliography on this topic, see Kimmel (2007).
30 ‘Diesen Mann sah ich im Gefängnis. . . . Mit 17 Jahren zur Onanie verführt, will er durch
Lectüre der Alten zur Päderastie gekommen sein’ (Casper 1881: 195).
67
SEBASTIAN MATZNER
fellows. . .’31 Until the general availability of modern medical and psychological
theories on homosexuality, it was virtually only in the works of the ancients
where a man attracted to his own sex could circumvent the suppressive coalition
of church, state, media and family and encounter homoerotic feelings in their own
right, without prejudice and as a lived reality, albeit only through testimonies of
a past reality.32
Collective emancipation follows from this individual reception practice as a
shared experience, which, hence, collectively shaped the self-conception and
imagination of men attracted to men. Ancient Greece provided models for shared
ethics and aesthetics of the emerging gay community. In terms of ethics, ancient
Greek literature provided concepts of companionship, such as military-patriotic
Spartan comradeship, which gained popularity as models for how male-male
relationships should be pursued.33 In terms of aesthetics, it was the heritage of

Winckelmann’s philhellenism that ‘collections of classical casts were to be found
in every medium-sized German city’34 and, as for Winckelmann, they provided for
many men who were attracted to the same sex a rare opportunity for culturally
acceptable admiration of the nude male body. As a result, classical antiquity became
a shared framework and point of reference for homoerotic desire, as is obvious in the
titles of the first gay magazines, such as Eros or Der Hellasbote (‘The Hellas
Messenger’), as well as in the hellenising ideal of male beauty portrayed by the
photographs they contained.35 On the collective level, this is again a reception
practice of the creation of an identity through identification with others.
In all of these forms of internally directed reception, antiquity functions as
a reservoir of alternative viewpoints. Antiquity is the Other of contemporary society
in which both positive role models and liberation from contemporary restraints are
found. The otherness of marginalized same-sex love and the otherness of the
classical past fuse into an intrinsically philhellenic gay identity — in the words of
the artist Elisar von Kupffer: ‘. . . I am a Hellene, from ancient days, thrown into this
uncomprehending age, with a lively yearning for beauty and a burning passion for
‘‘Hellenic love’’.’36 Kupffer (1872–1942), a German poet and painter of Baltic
aristocratic ancestry who gained popularity in homosexual circles around the turn
31 ‘Das ‘Gastmahl’ kursiert gerade unter der großen Zahl meiner ‘invertierten’
Genossen . . . ’ (Hoffmann 1914: 28).
32 See Aldrich (1993: 222) and Böhm (1991: 99).
33 See, for instance, Blüher (1912).
34 Marchand (1996: 125).
35 See Sternweiler (1984: 74). Samples of hellenising photographs are available in Aldrich
(1993: 100–101); more information on the topic is provided in the chapter
‘Mediterranean Men in Art and Photography’ in Aldrich (1993: 136–161), and in
Burns (2008).
36 ‘... ich bin ein aus der Vorzeit in unsere verständnislose Zeit verschlagener Hellene mit
lebendigem Schönheitsdrang und glühender Leidenschaft für ‘‘Hellenenliebe.’’ ’
Kupffer, as cited in Sternweiler (1984: 86).
68
of the century, expresses here a characteristic and widespread attitude that consists
in responding to the rejection experienced in contemporary society with its
Christian morality and repressive bourgeois sensitivities by rejecting contemporary
society in favour of classical antiquity. The queer identity crisis was thus solved by
an anti-modern counter-classicism, a ‘gay classicism’, as it were, in which ancient
Hellas featured as a gay utopia.
At the interface of internally and externally directed reception, reference to antiq-
uity is used as a means of safely communicating homoerotic desire in a heterosexist
environment. Examples range from high to popular culture. The contemporary
reception of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (1912), for instance, largely overlooked
the scandal of an openly narrated pederastic love story — thanks to its thoroughly
hellenising poetics.37 The Greek colouring of Aschenbach’s homoerotic feelings for

Tadzio allowed sympathetic critics to explain the novella’s homoeroticism away by
reading it as a mere artistic defamiliarization pointing to a symbolic meaning, thus
displaying a reading strategy that rendered the work acceptable for the general
public.38 Brüll, for instance, declared the homoerotic subject itself to be ‘acciden-
tal’39 and Hamann openly acknowledged: ‘In order to save the book for myself [. . .]
I looked for a symbolism of the entire work.’40 As a reading strategy, this move is
consistent with the treatment of ancient Greek homoerotic writings by classical
scholars of the time. In their attempts to reconcile the textual reality of the ancient
sources with the values of a morally purified classicism, they too often resorted to
symbolic readings, for instance, when interpreting the homoerotic aspects of
Platonic philosophy.41 As a writing strategy, on the other hand, Mann himself
implicitly described the conditions of the possibility of pushing the boundaries of
the morally acceptable in this way, that is, by using classicizing poetics; consider his
remark that the hatred against ‘the ‘‘indecent’’ and ‘‘improper’’ in art is [. . .] as far as
the older of the incriminated works are concerned, somewhat repressed by the
historical authority that comes to the aid of these works’.42 And Thomas Mann
was not the only one who made use of the symbolic innocence and historical decency
that classical antiquity provided. The first gay personal ads in Berlin’s daily papers
also make use of innocuous yet unambiguously ambiguous classical references such
as ‘Gentleman, aged 23, looking for friend. Reply to the journal, quoting ‘‘Socrates’’’
37 See Böhm (1991: 331).

38 For a general evaluation of the work’s contemporary reception see Koeppen (1981: 112);
a discussion of all contemporary reviews is provided by Böhm (1991: 17–25).
39 ‘akzessorisch’ Brüll (1913: 376).
40 ‘Ich habe um mir das Buch zu retten [. . .] eine Symbolik für das Ganze gesucht’
(Hamann 1913: 1094).
41 This interpretation practice is attested not least through its vehement refutation by the
emancipation writers discussed later on in this study, in particular by Hössli, see p. 75.
42 ‘Der [. . .] Haß auf das ‘‘Unzüchtige’’ oder ‘‘Unsittliche’’ in der Kunst [...] wird gegen-
über den älteren unter den inkriminierten Werken einigermassen von der historischen
Autorität im Zaum gehalten, die diesen Werken zur Seite steht’ (Mann 1911: 294f.).
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SEBASTIAN MATZNER
or ‘Lady, 36 years old, desires friendly acquaintance, post box 16, quote ‘‘Plato’’’.43
Reference to classical antiquity here works as camouflage, as a subtle marker that
plays with the presence of forbidden and unspeakable homoeroticism at the very
heart of the most decent and respected, and hence unsuspicious, component of
contemporary culture: classicism. The status of antiquity here is therefore that of
being both the familiar and the Other.
Turning to the writings and strategies of gay emancipation activists, and thereby
to externally directed reception, two main discursive strategies can be found. The first
is what might be called perpetuating-affirmative reception. This reception practice
consists in simply reiterating topical classical arguments in favour of same-sex love
as they have come to us in Plato, especially in the Symposium (178a–185c;
189c–193d), and in post-classical collections of such topoi, for instance in

Plutarch’s Erotikos (1–12) or in Achilles Tatius’ novel Leucippe and Cleitophon
(II, 33–38). When Ulrichs argued that
A band of heroes, enthused by love, like the sacred band of Thebes, to create such a miracle is
impossible for Dionianism [scil. ‘heterosexuality’] by its very nature because only in
Uranianism [scil. ‘homosexuality’] lover and beloved enter the battlefield together . . .44
then this classical example for the legitimacy and value of same-sex love, the alleged
bravery of male lovers fighting side-by-side, is simply transposed from the ancient
into the contemporary discourse on homoerotic desire, the major difference being
that in the modern discourse it is automatically equipped with a certain authority
and prestige due to the governing paradigm of classicism. In this discursive strategy,
antiquity is the familiar which argues in favour of the Other.
The perhaps more intriguing externally directed reception practice, however, is
the one which does not concern itself with antiquity’s topical arguments but simply
points out the factum brutum of the existence of ancient homoeroticism. One might
describe this very widespread practice as demonstrative-subversive reception: by point-
ing out ancient voices that have been silenced by the paradigm of classicism but
could not be removed from the canon, homophile writers were able to challenge the
heterosexist ideology that oppressed them from within an established discourse,
namely that of classicism. The existences of testimonies of factual ancient homo-
erotic practices provided emancipation writers with an angle from which societal
conventions could be challenged, subverted and undermined. Antiquity is here the
seemingly familiar whose otherness is revealed and left with the demand to be
43 ‘Herr, 23, sucht Freund. Zuschriften unter ‘‘Sokrates’’ . . . erbeten.’; ‘Dame, 36, wünscht
freundschaftlichen Verkehr. Postamt 16, ‘‘Plato’’.’ Personals as cited in Derks
(1990: 190).
44 ‘Eine Heldenschaar, die durch Liebe begeistert ist, wie der Thebaner heilige Schaar, ein
solches Wunder ist der Dionäismus seiner Natur nach zu erzeugen unfähig, weil nur
beim Uranismus Liebender und Geliebter mit einander in die Schlacht ziehen [. . .]’
(Ulrichs 1865 (Formatrix): 29).
70
integrated. In this process, both, the seeming familiarity and the seeming otherness,
are deconstructed.
The work of Heinrich Hössli (1784–1864) is a prime example of this demonstra-
tive-subversive classical reception practice. Hössli was a Swiss milliner who had
received no formal education but had learned his father’s trade of hat-making in
Berne and then returned to his native town of Glarus.45 His inceptive contribution
to the emerging gay emancipation movement was triggered by the case of Franz
Desgouttes who was executed in 1817 for having murdered his young secretary, the
man he loved, out of jealousy for his relationship with a woman. Although guilty as
charged, the court’s unusual cruelty towards Desgouttes (he was strangled and
broken on the wheel) was based on the homoerotic nature of his motivation and
inspired Hössli, whose second son had told him openly in his letters about his own

attraction towards men, to write and publish in 1836 a modern apologia in defence of
same-sex love.46 The immediate impact exerted by the work at the time of
publication was very limited, it was confiscated by the Swiss authorities and not
reprinted in its entirety until 1996.47 Yet there is evidence that copies circulated and
excerpts in other texts further disseminated at least parts of Hössli’s writings.
Ulrichs and Friedländer, for instance, both explicitly refer to Hössli; the former
positively and portraying him as a role model,48 the latter negatively and criticizing
his approach.49 Hössli’s text also appears to have been well-known among scholars,
writers and scientists associated with Magnus Hirschfeld’s Scientific-Humanitarian
Committee. It seems to have been one of the major sources of Albert Moll’s
(1862–1939) influential study Die conträre Sexualempfindung of 189150 and
Ferdinand Karsch-Haak (1853–1936), one of the most prolific contributors to the
committee’s journal Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen (‘Yearbook for Intermediate
45 The German term ‘Putzmacher’ that is often used to describe his profession also includes
the design and production of female accessories and clothing.
46 His initial plan to collaborate with the popular Swiss-German writer Heinrich Zschokke
led to a result that did not satisfy Hössli: Zschokke’s novella Der Eros oder Über die Liebe
(‘Eros, or On Love’) of 1821 which contains some of Hössli’s thoughts. He then spent
years acquiring, autodidactically, the relevant knowledge for his argument so as to be able
to eventually set out to write his own Eros.
47 This facsimile reprint of the original Eros of 1996 (Berlin: Rosa Winkel) has become the
most accessible standard edition. It also contains in a supplementary volume reprints of
short biographies of Hössli and Franz Desgouttes by Ferdinand Karsch (1903) and of
Zschokke’s novella Der Eros (1821).
48 See for instance Ulrichs (1886 (Gladius Furens): 2). Ulrichs had developed his thoughts
on same-sex attraction independent of Hössli up until 1866 when one of his readers sent
him a copy of Hössli’s Eros; see Robb (2004: 181).
49 See for instance Friedländer (1904: 49–50, 73). Friedländer responds to both Hössli and
Ulrichs as representatives, and originators, of the by then mainstream concept of ‘homo-
sexuality’ as developed more fully by the sexologists.
50 See Robb (2004: 179).
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SEBASTIAN MATZNER
Sexual Types’), even published in 1903 a Hössli biography entitled Der Putzmacher
von Glarus (‘The Milliner of Glarus’), which contained lengthy quotations from
his work.51
The full title of Hössli’s book itself, Eros: Die Männerliebe der Griechen, ihre
Beziehung zur Geschichte, Literatur und Gesetzgebung aller Zeiten, Oder
Forschungen über platonische Liebe, ihre Würdigung und Entwürdigung für Sitten-,
Natur- und Völkerkunde, (‘Eros: The Male Love of the Greeks, its Relationship to
History, Literature and Legislation of All Ages, or Research into Platonic Love, its
Appreciation and Vilification in Moral, Natural and Ethnological Studies’)
encapsulates his demonstrative-subversive classical reception practice. As the first
to publish a modern apologia in defence of same-sex love in 1836, Hössli did not
formulate a proper theory of ‘homosexuality’; in fact, he went no further than

pointing out that the modern age has a distorted and limited view on love by
exclusively acknowledging different-sex love as love and seeing any other form of
love as an aberration:
Wherever we talk, think, speak about sexual love, we also add: with the other sex, that is, we
add the reliability of the outer signs of body and soul. This, however, was utterly alien to the
Greeks. They did not look only at the outer signs of sexuality but at sexuality itself — the
outer signs alone were for them not the entire human. They were searching for this at a
deeper level and had a wholly different viewpoint on exploring and treating sexuality than we
do. Among us, we only know in moral, legal and scientific terms the common love between
the two sexes. [. . .] This is our point of view. The Greeks, however, would have seen such
a viewpoint for all treatment and representation of human sexuality as blasphemy against
the general and the special nature of man.52
To summarize: the mistake of the moderns, Hössli argues, lies in their epistemolo-
gical superficiality. Whereas modern culture believes in the reliability of outer signs
51 For short biographical essays on Hössli, see Johansson (1990) and Simes (2001). Meier
(2001) provides a more extensive, almost novelistic exploration of the lives of both Hössli
and Desgouttes.
52 ‘Ueberall, wo wir von Geschlechtsliebe reden, denken, sagen und setzen wir noch hinzu:
zum andern Geschlecht, das heißt, unsere Zuverlässigkeit der äußeren Kennzeichen des
Leibes und der Seele. Das war jedoch den Griechen völlig fremd. Sie sahen nicht nur auf
die äußeren Kennzeichen des Geschlechtslebens, sondern sie sahen vor allem auf das
Geschlechtsleben selbst — die äußeren Kennzeichen allein waren ihnen nicht unbedingt
das Menschliche. Dieses suchten sie tiefer, und standen da auf einem ganz anderen
Punkte der Leitung und Erforschung und Behandlung des Geschlechtslebens als wir.
Bei uns kennt man sittlich, rechtlich und wissenschaftlich nur die allgemeine Liebe der
zwei Geschlechter. [. . .] Das ist unser Standpunkt. Den Griechen aber war ein solcher in
aller auf Geschlechtsliebe bezüglichen Menschenbehandlung und Menschendarstellung
Frevel an der allgemeinen, wie an der besonderen Menschennatur gewesen’ (Hössli 1836:
10f.).
72
regarding the sexuality of body and soul, notably the male-female binarism, the
Greeks had a deeper, more wholesome understanding of sexuality that focussed on
the inner self rather than the outer sex. In other words, using more contemporary
terminology, one’s biological sex does not determine the gendering of one’s sexual
attraction. Given this differentiation it would seem that Hössli’s point here is indeed
arguably one of the earliest documents for a line of thought that will eventually lead
to the development of modern gender theory (in declaring the ‘outer signs’ of
biological sex to be an unreliable basis for assumptions about ‘the entire human’)
and, more specifically, of modern object-choice theories of sexuality.
The major part of his argument, however, works entirely without discussing
ancient views and positions. Instead, he challenges contemporary heterosexism by
subversively exploiting the ideal of classicism, that is to say, he uses the

then-contemporary paradigm of classicism to his own advantage and simultaneously
lays bare its discriminatory mechanics. An overview of the structure of his work
shows how this was achieved: Hössli’s critique of modern epistemological superfi-
ciality in terms of sexuality (1–11) is followed by a lofty eulogy on the power of love
(12–41) which sets the tone for an encomium on Plato (42–52, including quotations
from Schleiermacher, Wieland, Goethe and classical scholars in addition to Hössli’s
own voice) followed by a broader encomium on the superiority of Greek culture in
general (53–68, including quotations from Herder, Lessing, Klopstock,
Winckelmann and others). Without any significant introduction or contextualiza-
tion Hössli then offers a selection of ancient homoerotic poetry (91–105) and
concludes his work by refuting various attempts to deny the factual reality of
Greek homoeroticism (106–125; for instance the reduction of same-sex love to
either spiritual friendship or pure aesthetic delight rather than actual same-sexual
attraction, or the marginalization of the phenomenon altogether). Although the
composition of his book as a work in its own right may seen somewhat arbitrary
and not very cohesive, the discursive strategy behind it is both effective and
characteristic for the demonstrative-subversive mode of reception: while his own
eulogy on the power of love places Hössli implicitly amongst the fictional speakers
on love in Plato’s Symposium, his subsequent encomiastic praise of Plato and Greek
culture — backed up with extensive quotations from all the greats of German
culture — reasserts the paradigm of philhellenic classicism. The following juxta-
position of simply presenting openly homoerotic ancient poetry and refuting various
attempts of explaining away ancient homoeroticism constitutes an emphatic
insistance on the factual reality of same-sex desire in the classical civilizations.
What follows from this foundation is a simple syllogism repeatedly made explicit
throughout the text: if we are right to worship, follow and imitate the Greeks in
every way as the ultimate realization of what mankind at the peak of its intellectual
and cultural power is capable of, and if the Greeks obviously and undeniably prac-
tised homoerotic love as an unquestioned and even celebrated part of their culture,
then as long as we uphold the paradigm of philhellenism and classicism we must also
embrace or at least accept homoerotic desire — quod erat demonstrandum.
73
SEBASTIAN MATZNER
It is, however, noteworthy that already these emancipation writers themselves saw
the need to re-affirm the paradigm of classicism. Hössli thus remarked,
How quickly is one ready to discard the study of the ancients as redundant and as dead
baggage, without considering how already the study of their language in itself has educating
powers and is for training of the intellect what physical exercise is for the body.53
Seventy years later, with classicism already clearly on the retreat both in the
educational curricula and as a general cultural paradigm, Friedländer, who will be
discussed later on in this study, took great pains to reinstate it for his purposes:
If there is any field at all where turning to antiquity is still today almost synonymous with
returning to nature; if there is any relation in which romanticising classicism still has full

legitimation today; if there is any point on which the ancients can still be our teachers and
examples today, then it is this. Here we can even today still learn from the ancients true and
not only just dusty philological-pedantic ‘humaniora’. . . . Of course, we cannot and do not
want to became ancient Greeks and Romans. The gods of Greece are dead once and for all,
wanting to revive them would be a wrong classicist fantasy and a vain chimera. Yet, in the
honesty, i.e. in the absence of hypocrisy, in the acknowledgment of natural drives and in the
unselfconsciousness of a harmless and delightful enjoyment of life, in this we can indeed take
the ancients as our example. This is also eventually the yearning that so many of the best feel
for the beauty-loving, sensual, youthful-fresh, sunny Greece; and the core of such an obscure
feeling of longing is the often not even clearly understood desire for liberation and the
revitalisation of this kind of cult of beauty, of friendship and of love, which in the sad
jargon of our age with its frock and petticoat morality is called ‘homosexuality’; that is, of
course, an ennobled one.54
53 ‘Wie schnell ist man nicht bei der Hand das Studium der Alten für überflüssig und für
todten Ballast zu erklären und bedenkt nicht, wie schon das Studium ihrer Sprache an
sich erziehend wirkt, und für die geistige Schulung dasselbe ist, wie das Turnen für den
Körper’ (Hössli 1836: 55).
54 ‘Wenn auf irgend einem Gebiete auch jetzt noch die Rückkehr zur Antike fast gleichbe-
deutend ist mit der Rückkehr zur Natur; wenn in irgend einer Beziehung auch heute
noch die Classicitätsromantik volle Berechtigung hat; wenn in irgend einem Punkte die
Alten immer unsere Lehrmeister und Vorbilder sein können, so ist es dieser. Hier haben
wir in der That auch jetzt noch von den Alten wirkliche und nicht etwa nur philologisch-
pedantisch verschimmelte ‘‘Humaniora’’ zu lernen. [. . .] Freilich können und wollen wir
nicht wieder alte Griechen und Römer werden. Die Götter Griechenlands sind ein für
alle Mal tot, sie wieder zum Leben erwecken zu wollen ware falsche
Classicitätsschwärmerei und eitel Chimäre. Aber in der Ehrlichkeit, d.h. der
Abwesenheit der Heuchelei, in der Anerkennung der natürlichen Triebe und in der
Unbefangenheit im harmlos heiteren Lebensgenusse können wir uns in der that die
Alten zum Exempel nehmen. Das ist auch im letzten Grunde die von so Vielen der
Besten empfundene Sehnsucht nach dem schönheitsfrohen, sinnenfreudigen, jugen-
dfrischen, sonnigen Griechenland; und gar oft ist der Kernpunkt der dunklen
Sehnsuchtsgefühle der vielleicht nicht einmal immer deutlich erkannte Wunsch, einer
74
Thus, even as the golden age of classicism in Germany has already passed its zenith,
emanicipation writers still need this system to be in place in order to be successful in
their strategies of subverting it to their own intents and purposes. The whole power
of this discursive figure stems from pointing out the gap that opens up where the
heterosexist society that devotedly follows the culturally constructed paradigm of
classicism must, at the same time, find itself incompatible with central aspects of the
very classical culture it so admires. Following this tension inevitably leads to
a reductio ad absurdum; in Hössli’s own words, already quoted at the beginning of
this study:
According to our current views and interpretation, the study of antiquity should be seen as
a dangerous enterprise, and London, Paris, Rome and Munich with their treasures of ancient

art as dangerous places, which threaten our age of pure morality and decency with the plague
of the unnatural Greeks!55
In making his case by simply pointing out what every contemporary who had read
his classics already knew anyway, Hössli’s text reveals not only the observable selec-
tivity of classicism but ultimately its nature as a cultural construct as such, including
the powers, agents and heterosexist interests at play in the classicist paradigm.
Hössli refutes attempts to tame the reality of ancient Greece’s sexual culture by
reducing it to an aesthetic phenomenon:
Our common graeculi [‘little Greeks’], however, who now, according to the current fashion,
talk of nothing with so much pleasure than of the art and sense of beauty of the Greeks, do
not have any thoughts on this [scil. Greek homoeroticism] for they believe that they have
already understood everything if they babble about nothing but a certain fine and beautiful
sensibility of the Greeks for art and beauty.56
Befreiung und Wiederbelebung jener Art des Schönheitscultus, der Freundschaft und
der Liebe, die im traurigen Jargon der Gegenwart mit ihrer Kutten- und
Unterrocksmoral, ‘Homosexualität’ heisst; versteht sich, einer veredelten’ (Friedländer
1904: 59).
55 ‘Nach unseren Meinungen und Auslegungen müßte das Studium der Antike eigentlich
ein gefährliches Bestreben, und London, Paris, Rom und München mit ihren antiken
Kunstschätzen gefährliche Orte sein, welche unsere Zeit der reinen Moral und
Sittlichkeit mit der Pest der naturabtrünnigen Griechen bedrohen!’ (Hössli 1836: 113).
56 ‘Unsern gewöhnlichen Graeculis also, die jetzt nach dem Modegeschmack von nichts
sogern, als von Kunst, von Schönheitssinn der Griechen sprechen, ist ein Gedanke
hieran so wenig eingefallen, daß sie glauben alles erklärt zu haben wenn sie von
nichts, als seiner gewissen feinen, schönen Empfindung der Griechen für die Kunst
und für die Schönheit schwatzen’ (Hössli 1836: 107).
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SEBASTIAN MATZNER
He criticizes tendentious scholarship in principle as well as the use of scholarly

methods and instruments to cover up and distort historical evidence:
It is a wrong apology for Plato if that, which is in him and of him, is being washed
away, covered up or distorted, and if it is said: he does not talk about a sexual love,
or he talks about different-sex love, when he clearly says the opposite. He talks about the
eros of the Greeks, which is a horror or enigma for us but for him and the Greeks it was
neither.57
The spirit of eros comes with a certain ethical side, with religion, laws, customs, art and
science, which is rooted in life and negated by us. This is why we read so often in our
explanations, annotations, interpretations of the ancients: Beck amended, Stephan translates
thus, Schleiermacher thus, Wolf wrote like this, Böttiger deemed these words to be super-
fluous, Ast has shown a contradiction here, Drelli assumes that these words are not authentic,

Meiners has omitted them, Heinsdorf thinks the manuscript is poor, Boekh thinks one
should read this instead, Schütz suggests this, Wickenaer helped himself by that . . . —
Yet as soon as we finally judge the classics according to their own nature which they contain,
all of these commentaries will be redundant.58
And he points out institutionalized censorship of the classics:
If we are lucky, we at least rush through it, such as the teacher does with the pupils when
reading the [homoerotic passages in the] classics; he must not ponder on them; he is
57 ‘Es ist eine falsche Apologie des Plato, wenn man das, was in und an ihm ist, wegspült,
wegkünstelt und entstellt, und sagt: er rede von einem nicht im Geschlechtssinne wur-
zelnden, oder von der zweigeschlechtlichen Liebe, während er von beidem aufs bes-
timmteste nein sagt. Er redet vom Eros der Griechen, der uns ein Gräuel oder Räthsel ist,
ihm und den Griechen aber keins von beiden’ (Hössli 1836: 73).
58 ‘Zum Geiste des Eros gehört eine besondere, von uns negirte Menschennatur, eine
ethische Seite mit Religion, Recht, Sitten, Kunst und Naturwissenschaft, welche im
Leben wurzelt. Daher heißt es so oft in unseren Erklärungen, Anmerkungen,
Auslegungen der Alten: Beck hat so verbessert, Stephan so übersetzt, Schleiermacher
so, Ast hat da einen Widerspruch gezeigt, Drelli hält diese Worte für unächt, Wolf hat so
geschrieben, Böttiger diese Worte überflüssig befunden, Meiners sie übergangen,
Heinsdorf glaubt hier die Handschrift mangelnd, Boekh vermuthet, daß man so lessen
sollte, Schütz schlägt vor, Wickenaer hat sich so zu helfen gewußt, mit Recht hat Herr A.
verworfen, was B und C beibehalten haben, wenn die Wiener Handschrift neben der
Pariser. . . wir vermuthen, daß die Baseler etc. etc. — Sobald wir aber einmal die zu den
Klassikern gehörende Natur wieder als Maßstab und Element an sie legen, fallen auch
all’ diese Commentare von selbst weg’ (Hössli 1836: 118f). Hössli’s sarcastic and exten-
sive name-dropping in this wide-ranging list of the finest past and contemporary
German-speaking classicists serves to emphasize his impression of academe’s concerted,
systemic efforts to distort and obfuscate rather than comprehend and elucidate the
ancient sources on same-sex attraction.
76
embarrassed and fearful or he turns it all together into something which it was only partly for
the Greeks, or not at all.59
It is the main achievement of Hössli and his text, in addition to the courage of being
the first to publically speak up for the emancipation of men who love men, to have
rendered these silent (and silencing), institutionalized cultural practices explicit.60
In bringing out the homoerotic aspects of classical antiquity which were suppressed
in contemporary mainstream classicism, Hössli’s text is engaged in actively
‘queering’ classicism. Yet in doing so, his text is also inevitably, if only implicitly,
‘querying’ classicism in so far as it questions the validity of the paradigm of classi-
cism by revealing it as a construct that claims historicity but is in fact governed by
contemporary morals and interests.

How far the censorship which contemporary morals exercised over classical
literature could go shows the case of the confiscation of a collection of homoerotic
poetry edited by Kupffer in 1900. In addition to a critical cultural historical
introduction written by Kupffer, it consisted mostly of a selection of homoerotic
poetry, largely from Greek and Latin authors but also from modern literatures.61 It
was confiscated by the Prussian authorities immediately after publication for being
‘indecent’ (‘unzüchtig’) according to § 184 of the Imperial Penal Code. The vested
interests in the culturally valorized paradigm of classicism thus became truly
palpable in the Prussian authorities’ attempt to confiscate — together with the
‘indecent’ part of classical literature — the very possibility of a ‘gay classicism’,
while simultaneously restoring and reinforcing the spotless and impeccable
antiquity of the ruling paradigm of classicism.
It is, however, not only mainstream classicism that turns out to be an
interest-laden cultural construction; the same is true for the gay counter-classicism
discussed here. The studies of Dover (1978), Foucault (1978–86), and Halperin
(1990), although corrected in individual aspects and criticized for reductive tenden-
cies,62 have raised awareness for the regulative and restrictive parameters that
governed male same-sex relationship in ancient Greece, leaving us with an
59 ‘Wenn es noch gut geht, so huschen wir darüber hinweg, wie der Lehrer mit den
Schülern bei den Classikern; er darf nicht bei ihnen weilen; er ängstigt sich verlegen,
oder er macht im Ganzen aus ihm Alles, was es den Griechen nur theilweise, oder gar
nicht war’ (Hössli 1836: 1).
60 Another striking example for such silencing and obscuring practices is Grimm and
Wilhelm’s (1854) Deutsches Wörterbuch (‘German Dictionary’) which gives in volume
15 of 1899, s.v. ‘schwuler’ (the emerging new term for ‘gay’) nothing but the Greek
paiderasty — sapienti sat.
61 The selection includes Ibycus, Anacreon, Pindar, Plato, Theocritus, Solon, Aeschlyus,
Sophocles, Euripides, Catullus, Vergil, Horace, Tibullus, Ovid, Martial, Plutarch, Hafis,
Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Winckelmann, Goethe, Platen, Byron and others. See
Kupffer (1900).
62 See Detel (2004) and, magno cum grano salis (Davidson 2007).
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SEBASTIAN MATZNER
understanding of ancient homoeroticism that is far from the vision of totally free,
socially acceptable and celebrated love between men in ancient Greece that shaped
the imagination and writings of nineteenth and early twentieth century gay men.63
The works of Aldrich (1993) and Fernandez (1989) have widely explored and
exposed this persistent myth of ancient Greece as a gay utopia. What remains
fascinating and largely under-studied, however, is going beyond pointing out
where these German writers who are arguing for the emancipation of same-sex
love misrepresent ancient reality according to our understanding of the past
today, and instead exploring the underlying paradigms which shape their construc-
tions of both same-sex love and classical antiquity, and assessing how they differ
from ancient thought and practice on this more paradigmatic level. This is a topic so
rich and unexplored that the following discussion of the use of classical sources in

the works of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and Benedict Friedländer cannot aim at com-
prehensiveness but must limit itself to giving an idea of their main lines of argument.
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–95) was born in Aurich in the kingdom of Hanover
and lost his father, an architect in the civil service of Hanover, when he was 10 years
old. He grew up in the household of his maternal grandfather, a Lutheran
superintendent, and was educated at a Gymnasium which he left with the Abitur
and thus with a solid knowledge both Greek and Latin, excelling in particular in
Latin composition.64 He enrolled to read law at the University of Göttingen, trans-
ferring later to the University of Berlin, and attended at both universities not only
the prescribed legal courses but also lectures and seminars in the humanities. He
went on to work in various legal posts, among them that of an administrator and
assistant judge (‘Amtsassessor’) in the civil service of Hanover. When rumours
about his sexual activities reached his superiors he pre-empted disciplinary action
by giving up this post and relocated. For a few years he worked as a journalist for the
Allgemeine Zeitung in Augsburg and as a secretary to the German Confederation in
63 This includes the three writers discussed here, for instance, ‘The Greeks believed in,
taught, and honoured manmanly love’ (‘Die Griechen glaubten, lehrten und ehrten die
Männerliebe’) (Hössli 1836: 68); ‘The noble Uranian drive has, wherever it could
develop freely such as e.g. in ancient Greece and Rome, brought forth all sorts of
fruits.’ (‘Der edle urnische Trieb hat, wo er zu freier Entfaltung gelangte, wie z. B. im
alten Griechenland und Rom, auch sonstige Blüthen getragen.’) (Ulrichs 1865
(Formatrix): 29); ‘In ancient Greece and Rome same-sex love was taken for granted as
just as much as the other.’ (‘Im alten Hellas und Rom wurde die gleichgeschlechtliche
Liebe für etwas eben so Selbstverständliches angesehen, wie die anderen.’) (Friedländer
1904: 5). Even where the three texts show some awareness for the asymmetry of age and
the strict limitations of male same-sexual intercourse, the real contempt and ridicule for
adult same-sex love displayed by Greek sources, for instance in Aristophanes’ comedies,
is never acknowledged.
64 A comprehensive biography is provided by Kennedy (1988) (an updated version of which
is available as an online resource: Kennedy 2002). For further material on the life and
work of Ulrichs, see Setz (2000, 2004).
78
Frankfurt but since his anti-Prussian stance repeatedly brought him into conflict
with the authorities, he eventually left Germany after Prussia had gained complete
hegemony over Germany following the Franco–Prussian War and spent the last
fifteen years of his life Italy.65 Ulrichs is often described as ‘the first gay man’ to have
‘come out’: in letters circulated to members of his family he laid open his feelings of
same-sex attraction and sought to understand his sexual identity in dialogue with his
family. He then went on to publish his thoughts on the matter in a series of
pamphlets, written between 1862 and 1879.66 These were initially published
under the pseudonym ‘Numa Numantius’ but he dropped his nom de plume in
1868 in a pamphlet entitled Memnon, the booklet in which his constantly revised
theory of homosexuality reached its final shape. In a key moment of the early gay
emancipation movement, Ulrichs addressed on the 29th August 1867 the Congress

of German Jurists (‘Deutscher Juristentag’) in Munich and openly argued the case
for the decriminalization of homosexuality; needless to say, he was shouted down on
that occasion and not allowed to finish his speech. All in all, his social-political and
legal efforts did not come to fruition: paragraph 175 not only remained part of the
Prussian Penal Code but was extended over the entire newly founded German
Empire. Yet, despite the regular confiscation of his pamphlets by the Prussian
police, the influence of his writings on the conceptualization of same-sex attraction
as ‘homosexuality’ was enormous. The impact of his work on the German sexolo-
gists associated with the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee is proven not least by
the fact that his terminology, which we will soon turn to, was so completely and
uncritically absorbed into the technical vocabulary of the Scientific-Humanitarian
Committee that Hirschfeld himself initially rejected Kertbeny’s neologisms
‘homosexuality, homosexual’ as ‘hybrid monstrosities’.67
Ulrichs summarized his theory of homosexuality in the formula anima muliebris in
corpore virili inclusa (‘a feminine soul contained in a masculine body’).68 Developing
65 It may serve as an indicator for his classical learnedness that he spent his years in Italy
editing the journal Alaudae which aimed at restoring Latin as an international language
and was published in 33 issues from May 1889 until February 1895.
66 The texts have been made available, in facsimile reproduction, by Kennedy (1994).
Lombardi-Nash (1994) provides an English translation.
67 See Derks (1990: 102). This fact is already critically commented on by Friedländer; see
the discussion of Friedländer (1904: 73), below on p. 84.
68 Ulrichs’ theory shares the idea of a pseudo-hermaphrodism as the source of male same-
sex attraction with earlier conceptualizations of male same-sexual affinities, notably those
of Cocles or Theodor Zwinger (I am grateful to Kenneth Borris for having drawn my
attention to these), see Borris (2008). The latter are, however, based on notions of
Aristotelian natural philosophy which see men developing their nascent masculinity
out of a transitory prepubescent state of hermaphroditic ambiguity in their physique
and general nature. Same-sex attraction there results from a misdevelopment from this
original pseudo-hermaphrodism onwards, that is, in the failure to develop into full,
heteroerotic masculinity. Ulrichs’ theory, on the other hand, understands the alleged
79
SEBASTIAN MATZNER
Hössli’s notion of a difference between one’s biological sex and the gendering of
one’s sexual attraction and identity further by combining it with embryology, he
postulated the existence of two hermaphrodite seeds (‘Keime’) in the embryo, one
for the biological sexual organ, one for the psychological sexual desire/drive, both of
which are supposed to develop into either a female or a male form, but since they do
so independently a combination of male sexual organs with ‘female’ sexual desire
(i.e. sexual desire directed at men) is possible. Ulrichs conceded that it was a natural
law that both of these seeds should develop into the same direction but argued that
there was a possibility for exceptions from the rule, resulting in persons with
unaligned biological sex and psychological sexual desire who were neither totally
man nor totally woman, and hence constituted ‘the third sex’.
As if the idea of original hermaphrodism and subsequent dissociation into several

possible male-female combinations were not enough to make this sound like a
renarration of Aristophanes’ speech in the Symposium (189c–193e) in a modern
biological garb, Ulrichs went on to name this third sex ‘Urninge’ (‘Uranians’) to
counterdistinguish his theory against the narrowed-down notion of Greek love as
paedophilia or anal intercourse which had increasingly become the denotative
meaning of the term ‘paederasty’ in the nineteenth century:69
It is a matter of fact that among mankind there are individuals whose bodies have a male
physique but who nevertheless feel sexual attraction towards men, sexual horror for women,
i.e. a horror of sexual contact with women. These individuals I shall call in what follows
‘Uranians’ whilst I shall call those individuals, who are commonly simply called ‘men’,
‘Dionians’, i.e. those whose bodies have a male physique and who feel sexual attraction
towards women, sexual horror for men. The love of the Uranians I shall call uranian or
man-manly love, the love of the Dionians dionian. I felt it was necessary to create new terms
since the word commonly used until now, ‘pederasty’, lends itself to misinterpretation as if
the Uranian really loved boys, whereas in fact he loves young men (puberes). Even in ancient
Greece Uranians did not love boys. paı̃y means just as much ‘young man’ as it means ‘boy’.
My terms are based on the names of the gods Uranus and Dione; for a poetic fiction of Plato
relates the origin of manmanly love to the god Uranus, and that of love towards women to
Dione (Plato’s Symposium, Cap. 8 and 9)70
pseudo-hermaphrodism as an inherent, natural combinatory possibility. There is no

evidence for a direct influence of these earlier theories on Ulrichs through citation or
allusion in his own writings.
69 See Detering (1994: 18); this notion of ‘Greek love’ as code for anal intercourse goes back
to the Enlightenment and is part of a counter-reaction to the ‘Greek love’ of Ficino.
70 ‘Thatsache ist es, daß es unter den Menschen Individuen gibt, deren Körper männlich
gebaut ist, welche gleichwohl aber geschlechtliche Liebe zu Männern, geschlechtlichen
Horror vor Weibern empfinden, d.i. Horror vor geschlechtlicher Berührung mit
Weibern. Diese Individuen nenne ich nachstehend ‘Urninge’ während ich ‘Dioninge’
diejenigen Individuen nenne, welche man schlechtweg ‘Männer’ zu nennen pflegt, d.i.
diejenigen, deren Körper männlich gebaut ist, und welche geschlechtliche Liebe zu
Weibern, geschlechtlichen Horror vor Männern empfinden. Die Liebe der Urninge
80
Ulrichs here explicitly linked his own thoughts with Aristophanes’ myth of original
man in Plato’s Symposium, where the originally two-headed, four-legged and
four-armed mankind, some male-female combinations, others male-male and
female-female combinations, were cut into halves into what we today know as
male or female individuals, each half left yearning to be reunited, emotionally and
physically, with its lost other half. Yet this initial impression of direct continuation
of ancient thought is misleading. Ulrichs’ whole theory is based on the unquestioned
paradigm of his day and age that sexual attraction can only exist between the male
and the female. It is the female psyche of the only superficially male Uranians that is
attracted to the altogether male Dionians. This brings up the question whether there
can be same-sex attraction between two Uranians, between two gay men. As a logical
consequence of his adherence to the contemporary male-female paradigm, Ulrichs

initially categorically denied it:
‘Does one Uranian exercise sexual attraction on another Uranian?’ Hardly any or not at all; at
least as soon as the female element discloses itself. Why? This is clear from the above.
He lacks real masculinity.71
Yet, as Ulrichs’ writings developed from the first letters written in complete isola-
tion and entirely based on self-reflection to public pamphlets that were increasingly
based on and informed by correspondence with other men attracted to their own sex,
empirical evidence forced him to amend his theory. Uranians can be attracted to one
another — because there are two types of Uranians: ‘Weiblinge’ or ‘muliebriores’
whose physique and habitus appear somewhat feminine and whose sexual desire has
passive tendencies, and ‘Mannlinge’ or ‘viriliores’, whose physique and habitus are
more masculine and whose sexual desire has active tendencies. In Ulrichs’ words:
Attraction between Uranian and Uranian (e.g. Socrates and Critobolus in § 2 above) is only
seemingly an exception from the rule that only dissimilar poles can attract one another
sexually. There appear to be two distinct classes among the Uranians between which
thousand degrees of variation can be observed.
nenne ich urnische oder mannmännliche Liebe, die der Dioninge dionische. Zur
Schaffung neuer Ausdrücke glaubte ich schreiten zu müssen, weil das bisher wohl
gebräuchliche Wort ﬄKnabenliebe’ zu der Mißdeutung Anlaß giebt, als liebe der
Urning wirklich Knaben, während er doch junge Männer (puberes) liebt. Auch im
alten Griechenland liebte der Urning nicht Knaben. paı̃y heißt so gut ‘junger Mann’,
als ‘Knabe’. Meine Ausdrücke sind entstanden durch Umwandlung der Götternamen
Uranus und Dione. Eine poetische Fiction Plato’s leitet nämlich den Ursprung der
mannmännlichen Liebe ab von dem Gotte Uranus, den der Weiberliebe von der
Dione. (Plato’s Gastmahl, Cap. 8 u. 9)’ (Ulrichs 1864 (Vindex): 1f.)
71 ‘ ‘‘Uebt auch ein Urning auf einen Urning geschlechtliche Anziehung aus?’’ Wenig oder
gar nicht; wenigstens sobald das weibliche Element sich zu erkennen giebt. Weßhalb?
Ist klar aus dem vorstehenden. Ihm fehlt die echte Männlichkeit’ (Ulrichs 1864
(Inclusa): 29).
81
SEBASTIAN MATZNER
a) Uranians in whom the male element, which corresponds to their male physique, is
dominant in every way, in particular in giving their female sexual desire a certain masculine
colouring: hence, Uranians with a predominantly masculine habitus, physically and psycho-
logically, whose sexual desire is mostly active. These seem to love predominantly ‘youths’,
not ‘lads’. I shall call them ‘viriliores’ or ‘manlings’, the more masculine Uranians.
b) Uranians in whom the female element, which corresponds to their female sexual desire, is
dominant in every way, in particular in giving their physique a certain feminine colouring:
hence, Uranians with a predominantly feminine habitus, physically and psychologically,
whose sexual desire is mostly passive. These seem to love predominantly lads and not
youths. I shall call them ‘muliebriores’ or ‘womanling’, the more feminine ones.72
Thus, even in extending his theory to allow for the possibility of love and sexual
attraction between two persons of the same biological sex, Ulrichs accommodated

and preserved the heterosexist male-female binarism by gendering physical appear-
ance and sexual desire separately into distinct categories which could then conform
again with the paradigm of different-sex attraction. Ulrichs therefore followed his
contemporary sexual paradigm (the male cannot and must not desire another male)
just as much as the sources for ancient homoeroticism followed their contemporary
sexual paradigm (the free male adult citizen must not be a passive object of desire
and penetration). The otherness of antiquity on a paradigmatic level, here the irrel-
evance of sex and gender for sexual attraction (albeit not for actual sexual practice) in
antiquity, is not exploited. Instead, where such a radically different concept as that
of genuine man-manly love in Aristophanes’ myth in the Symposium is touched on,
it is familiarized, that is, re-shaped according to contemporary paradigms.
Friedländer (1866–1908), on the other hand, was appalled by Ulrichs’ attempts to
introduce any kind of femininity into male same-sex attraction and insisted on
precisely this otherness of ancient thought. Friedländer had studied mathematics,
72 ‘Anziehung zwischen U[rning] und U[rning] (z.B. oben § 2 Socrates und Critobulus) ist
nur scheinbar Ausnahme von der Regel daß nur ungleiche Pole geschlechtlich anziehen.
Nun scheinen unter den U[rning]en folgende zwei Classen unterschieden werden zu
können, zwischen welchen indeß tausend Abstufungen zu constatieren sind.
a) U[rning]e, in denen das männliche Element, welches ihrem männlichen Körperbau
entspricht, überhaupt in allen Stücken vorherrscht, indem es insonderheit ihrem wei-
blichen Liebestriebe eine gewisse männliche Färbung giebt: also U[rning]e mit vorwie-
gend männlichem Habitus, körperlich wie geistig, und zugleich mit vorwiegend activem
Begehren. Diese scheinen vorwiegend ‘‘Jünglinge’’ zu lieben, nicht ‘‘Burschen’’. Ich
möchte sie nennen die ‘‘Viriliores’’ oder ‘‘Mannlinge’’, die männlicheren U[rning]e.
b) U[rning]e, in denen das weibliche Element, welches ihrem weiblichen Liebestriebe
entspricht, überhaupt in allen Stücken vorherrscht, indem es insonderheit ihrem män-
nlichen Körperbau eine gewisse weibliche Färbung giebt: also U[rning]e mit vorwiegend
weiblichem Habitus, körperlich wie geistig, und zugleich mit vorwiegend passiven
Begehren. Diese scheinen überwiegend Burschen, nicht Jünglinge, zu lieben. Ich
möchte sie die ‘‘Muliebriores’’ nennen oder ‘‘Weiblinge’’, die weiblicheren’ (Ulrichs
1865 (Formatrix): 59f.).
82
physics, botany and physiology at the University of Berlin and went on to earn a
doctorate in zoology.73 Having had to attend a Gymnasium to gain the university
entrance qualification of the Abitur, it can be safely assumed that he had received a
thorough training in both of the ancient languages at school and his writings doc-
ument his familiarity with classical literature. Having initially joined and supported
Hirschfeld’s Scientific-Humanitarian Committee he eventually split from this
mainstream organization due to fundamental differences in the conceptualization,
especially the gendering, of same-sex attraction. In 1903 he co-founded, together
with Adolf Brand, Die Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (‘Community of the Special’), which
became Germany’s second largest association of men attracted to men and culti-
vated, in marked opposition to Hirschfeld’s mainstream organization, a strongly
antifeminist, antimodernist and largely aesthetic and elitist ideal of homosocial

relationships.74 In 1906 it officially split with Hirschfeld resulting in the establish-
ment of a break-away group, the Sezession des Wissenschaftlich-humanitären
Kommittees (‘Secession of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee’) that opposed
the concept of homosexuality as an effeminate ‘third sex’ or ‘intersex’ which was
prevalent in the writings of those associated with the Committee and instead
considered bisexuality the norm and encouraged extramarital relationships between
men. These ideas were developed largely by Friedländer, in particular in his main
work on the topic, Die Renassaince des Eros Uranios (‘The Renaissance of the Uranian
Eros’) of 1904 and, with a more biological take on the issue, in his later book
Die Liebe Platons im Lichte der modernen Biologie (‘Platonic Love in the Light of
Modern Biology’) of 1909. Friedländer’s activism and writings were crucial for the
development of what might be called the right wing of the early German gay
emancipation movement, in particular in his influence on Hans Blüher and the
Wandervogelbewegung (an emerging movement focussed on youth, masculinity,
male-bonding and nature).75
73 There is neither need nor space to expound on Friedländer’s own ‘physiological’ expla-
nations for homoerotic desire here in greater detail; suffice it to say that they are based on
an approach which Friedländer describes as ‘a collaboration of social science with biol-
ogy, in particular with general physiology’ (‘ein Zusammenwirken der Socialwissenschaft
mit der Biologie, besonders der allgemeinen Physiologie’ (Friedländer 1904, IX)) and
which is materialistic in the sense that it presupposes that cohesion between individuals
(in friendship) and societal cohesion (in nations) both have a physiological base as
suggested by modern stimulus theories such as that of Jacques Loeb (Friedländer
1904: 109) and in the theory of chemotaxis (attraction via pheromones) of Gustav
Jäger (Friedländer 1904: 117). In Friedländer’s view, erotic relationships between men
therefore constitute nothing more than one aspect within his ‘unified theory’ of social
cohesion.
74 For further information, see Tamagne (2006: 70–73).
75 The key text is Blüher (1912). An extensive introduction to the field and direct access to
further important sources in English translation are provided by Kennedy and
Oosterhuis (1991).
83
SEBASTIAN MATZNER
Friedländer opened his argument in The Renaissance of Eros Uranios by explicitly

stressing one important aspect of historical studies of gender and sexuality, namely
that through observing the historical changes in thinking about sexuality the differ-
ence between the biologically given and the culturally constructed becomes obvious:
Love itself, including same-sex love, is, of course, a part of human nature, something eternal
and immutable, which as such requires analytical and causal but not historical examination;
the knowledge, however, the judgment, the social and legal treatment, the order and disorder
of the matter created by customs, lifestyles and moral restrictions is subject to change. The
contemporary views on same-sex love can be surveyed and judged only by someone who sees
the bigger picture, who knows and bears in mind the history of the relevant and irrelevant
opinions on Aphrodite Urania at least in its main features.76

From this transhistorical point of view he then reclaimed the general ancient
indifference towards gender for sexual attraction. Key in this argument is, once
more, the conceptualization of gendered sexual attraction as put forward in
Aristophanes’ speech in the Symposium. Friedländer singled out Plato as the insti-
gator of the assumption of an innate exclusive attraction to either gender and
strongly rejected both him and his modern followers:
In general it was seen to be a trivial truism that man is capable of sexual attraction to either
gender. Only Plato seems to have assumed that due to a natural predisposition some are
exclusively attracted to one or the other; this will need further discussion since especially this
view of Plato has currently gained particular relevance.77
In particular Ulrichs and the medical-psychological theories that had taken the myth
of Aristophanes as a starting point for their own theorizing on homo- and hetero-
sexuality are being criticized for perpetuating what is in Friedländer’s eyes a
Platonic misconception of sexual identity:
76 ‘Die Liebe selbst, auch die gleichgeschlechtliche Liebe, ist freilich etwas in der mens-
chlichen Natur Begründetes, Ewiges, und Unveränderliches, das als solches eine analy-
tische und causale, aber keine historische Behandlung erfordert; die Kenntniss hingegen,
die Beurtheilung, die sociale und legale Behandlung, die durch Sitten,
Lebensgewohnheiten und Sittenbeschränkungen erzeugte Ordnung und Unordnung
der Sache ist nach Zeit und Ort veränderlich. Die gegenwärtig herrschenden
Ansichten über die gleichgeschlechtliche Liebe kann daher nur derjenige von einer
höheren Warte betrachten und zureichend beurtheilen, der die Geschichte der maassge-
blichen und unmaassgeblichen Meinungen über die Aphrodite Urania wenigstens in den
Grundzügen kennt und bedenkt’ (Friedländer 1904: 5f.).
77 ‘Im allgemeinen sah man es als eine triviale Wahrheit an, dass der Mann beider
Richtungen des Liebestriebes fähig sei. Nur Platon scheint angenommen zu haben,
dass Manche nur für die eine und Andere nur für die andere Richtung von Natur
veranlagt seien; worüber später ausführlich zu reden ist, da gerade diese Ansicht
Platons gegenwärtig eine ganz besondere Bedeutung erlangt hat’ (Friedländer 1904: 6).
84
The modern classification of mankind into ‘heterosexuals’ and ‘homosexuals’ or in

‘Dionians’ and ‘Uranians’ takes its starting point, as is generally known, at the famous
passage in Plato’s Symposium. With all due respect for the ancients and Plato in particular,
one must not ignore that already in this original conception there is a mistake or at least an
exaggeration.78
The Uranian-theory believes to have found an explanation for same-sex love in the assump-
tion that men who love men, the ‘Uranians’, display certain female characteristics and are
therefore partly hermaphrodites. This conception has been indicated already by Hössli, as
we have seen, was then developed by Ulrichs and has been disseminated by modern doctors
with little changes and additions. This theory assumes that love towards men is in itself a
characteristic trait of the female sex. Already this presupposition is not unobjectionable;
because the assumption that love towards a man or a boy is an exclusively female trait is not
an empirical fact of nature but rather to a much higher extent a conventional assumption

and an expectation or result of a geographically and historically limited custom.79
Basing himself on the general, non-Platonic, ancient approach, Friedländer

argued that sexual identity is to be understood as a spectrum of bisexuality
with few homo- and heterosexual identities as the extreme points on that
scale.80 Even more interesting, however, is how, in his understanding, this
change from the wholesome ancient to the dichotomous modern concept was
brought about. The culprits are women and priests. Friedländer took a reaction-
ary stance against the contemporary women’s rights movement and insisted on a
biologically determined difference between men and women which precluded
gender equality, not least because this difference included, in his view, that
‘the average intellectual inferiority of women compared to men is after all, in
78 ‘Die moderne Eintheilung der Menschen in ‘‘Heterosexuelle’’ und ‘‘Homosexuelle’’

oder in ‘‘Dioninge’’ und Urninge’’ knüpft bekanntlich an die berühmte Stelle im
Platonischen Symposion an. Bei aller Würdigung der Alten und besonders Platons
darf man nicht verkennen, dass schon in dieser originalen Conception ein Fehler oder
doch eine Uebertreibung vorliegt’ (Friedländer 1904: 71).
79 ‘Die Urningstheorie glaubt eine Erklärung der gleichgeschlechtlichen Liebe in der
Annahme gefunden zu haben, dass die gleichgeschlechtlich empfindenden Männer,
die ‘‘Urninge’’, eine Beimischung weiblicher Eigenschaften aufweisen und somit theil-
weise Zwitter seien. Diese Vorstellung war, wie wir gesehen haben, schon von Hössli
angedeutet, ist dann von Ulrichs begründet und von den modernen Medicinern mit
wenig Aenderungen und Zuthaten in Umlauf gesetzt worden. Die Theorie geht davon
aus, dass die Liebe zu Männern im Allgemeinen eine Eigenschaft des weibliche
Geschlechts sei. Schon dieser Ausgangspunkt ist nicht einwandfrei. Dass nämlich die
Liebe zum Manne oder zum Jüngling eine ausschliesslich weibliche Eigenschaft sei, ist
eben keine empirische Thatsache der Natur, sondern in weit höherem Grad eine
Annahme der Convention und eine Forderung oder eine Folge der geographisch und
historisch beschränkten Sitte’ (Friedländer 1904: 73).
80 See Friedländer (1904: 82–85).
85
SEBASTIAN MATZNER
the terminology of biology, a secondary sexual characteristic’.81 What was needed

was, in his eyes, not so much women’s emancipation but rather men’s emanci-
pation from women:
The least dubitable of all inequalities is the sexual one, namely the sexual one also insofar as it
extends to the intellect. It is bigger than any racial difference and at least as prominent as the
physical inequality. Nowhere is the equality fanatism such undoubtable nonsense, and yet,
the radical side cultivates it nowhere with such passion as here, regarding the so-called
question of women’s rights. To pre-empt any misinterpretations, may it be stressed that
we approve of a great part of the so-called women’s emancipation and in particular that we do
not wish to deny the female part of mankind access to higher education institutions and to the
corresponding professions. All we say is that the women’s emancipation must be accompa-
nied by society’s emancipation from women.82

Friedländer argued that it was a conspiracy of women and priests which in the first
place overturned at the end of antiquity the wholesome and allegedly natural ancient
Greek view of gender-indifferent sexual attraction when these two groups jointly
created and implemented the ideology of exclusive heterosexuality and enforced the
ideal of ascetism in order to establish and maintain their rule over ideologically
subordinated males:83
We encounter here immediately two classes of humans who always and everywhere belong
together, who mutually strengthen their influence, one of which has totally seized power in
the Middle Ages, although the other had also, compared to antiquity, made an immense
social ascent: priests and women.84
81 ‘Die durchschnittliche geistige Inferiorität des Weibes im Vergleich zum Manne ist eben,
in der Ausdrucksweise der Biologie, ein secundärer Sexualcharacter’ (Friedländer 1904:
146).
82 ‘Von allen Ungleichheiten ist die am wenigsten zweifelhafte die sexuelle, und zwar die
sexuelle auch auf geistigem Gebiete. Sie ist grösser als alle Rassenunterschiede und
mindestens so ausgeprägt wie die körperliche. Sie ist nicht nur eine qualitative, sondern
auch eine quantitative. Nirgends ist der Gleichheitsfanatismus so unzweifelhafter
Unsinn, und dabei wird er gerade auf radicaler Seite auf keinem anderen Gebiete mit
solcher Inbrunst cultivirt, wie auf dem der sogenannten Frauenfrage. Um hier jedoch
von vorn herein Missdeutungen vorzubeugen, sei erklärt, dass wir einen grossen Theil
der sogenannten Frauenemancipation gutheissen und insbesondere die höheren
Bildungsanstalten und die entsprechenden Berufsstellungen dem weibliche Theile der
Menschheit keineswegs vorenthalten wollen. Nur meinen wir, dass der Emancipation
der Frauen eine sociale, besonders gesellige Emancipation von den Frauen zur Seite
gehen müsse’ (Friedländer 1904: 46).
83 See Friedländer (1904: 13–37).
84 ‘Wir stossen hier nun sofort auf zwei Classen von Menschen, die immer und überall
zusammengehören, die ihren Einfluss wechselseitig stärken und von denen die eine im
Mittelalter die Macht völlig an sich gerissen, aber auch die andere, im Vergleich zum
86
With remarkable disregard for and brazen denial of widely-known facts of nature the fiction
was fabricated that love as such was only possible between persons of different sex.85
Consequently, in order to rectify this undesirable historical development, homoero-

tic bonds between men needed to be strengthened to put an end to this rule of priests
and women. Friedländer escaped any preoccupation with the politics of penetration,
ancient or modern, by making clear that he was concerned with homo-eroticism,
male-male desire and attraction, but not homo-sexuality (‘. . . the notion of sensual
love is broader than that of sexual love!’86) in particular not with anal penetration:
Two other manipulations used to defame Venus Urania consisted in deliberately misusing
the various possibilities to translate the Greek ‘‘pais’’, and talking of ‘‘boylove’’, and imply-
ing that the ultimate goal of that boylove had to be understood as anal penetration.87

Instead, he surprisingly took a rather Platonic stance on the purity that principled
male love ought to retain.88 The political aim of his writings was the re-creation of a
male-dominated society without female influences. Antiquity is seen as a paradigm
and guiding model for this society, and homoeroticism is key in achieving this aim.
In Friedländer’s own words: ‘Already the ancients knew this, by the way, e.g. when
Aristotle calls the acceptance of homoerotic love a remedy against gynaecocracy’89
and
Whichever shape in particular the renaissance of eros will take, it is, as I said, clear that the
precondition for it or rather the main aspect of this renaissance is a closer association of men
with each other, i.e. the creation, extension and maintenance of female-free sociality.90
Alterthum, social gar sehr emporgekommen war und ist: die Priester und die Weiber’
(Friedländer 1904: 19).
85 ‘Unter erstaunlicher Missachtung und dreister Läugnung weitverbreiteter Naturthatsa-
chen hat sich geradezu die Fiction herausgebildet, das seine eigentliche Liebe nur
ziwschen Menschen verschiedenen Geschlechts bestehen könne’ (Friedländer 1904: 13).
86 ‘. . .der Begriff der sinnlichen Liebe ist weiter als der der sexuellen!’ (Friedländer
1904: 36).
87 ‘Zwei andere Kunstgriffe zur Verläumdung der Venus Urania bestanden darin, dass
man, unter Missbrauch der verschiedenen Uebersetzungsmöglichkeiten des grie-
chischen ‘‘pais’’, von ‘‘Knabenliebe’’ redete, und zu verstehen gab, dass das Ziel
dieser Knabenliebe im Pygismus zu bestehen pflegt’ (Friedländer 1904: 13).
88 See, for instance, Friedländer (1904: 200, 303f.).
89 ‘Uebrigens wussten auch Das schon die Alten, indem Aristoteles die Anerkennung der
homoerotischen Liebe als ein Schutzmittel gegen die Gynaekokratie bezeichnet’
(Friedländer 1904: 18).
90 ‘Welche Form im Speciellen die Renaissance des Eros auch annehmen mag, so ist es, wie
gesagt, klar, dass eine Vorbedingung dazu oder vielmehr der Hauptinhalt dieser
Renaissance ein engerer Anschluss der Männer aneinander, d.h. die Herstellung,
Ausdehnung und Pflege einer weiberfreien Geselligkeit ist’ (Friedländer 1904: 263).
87
SEBASTIAN MATZNER
His argument is, hence, neither in favour of full, emotional and physical same-sex
love nor is it without victims: Friedländer’s writings challenge a homophobic society
by reinforcing the misogyny that is prevalent in patriarchally organized societies.
Antiquity features here again as the Other — the homoerotic, anti-Christian,
anti-feminist paradise lost.
From a contemporary point of view which has grown used to the alliance of
feminism and the gay emancipation movement one cannot help but wonder: just
how subversive are these emancipatory writings really? How male-dominated, how
misogynist are all three elements at play here: the mainstream classicist construction
of antiquity, the re-appropriated gay classicism, and antiquity itself? It seems that
identity and alterity, familiarity and otherness as the key dynamics in the relation-
ship between classical reception practices and classical antiquity itself are mirrored

in the irresolvable interplay of conformity to and subversion of contemporary sexual
morality in these early German-language gay emancipation writings. The range of
positions in this early phase of the modern discourse on male same-sexual attraction,
from Hössli’s classical arguments for a liberal, de-gendered view on sexual attraction
to Ulrichs’ theory of a pseudo-hermaphroditic ‘third sex’ which paved the way to the
advent of ‘homosexuality’ and Friedländer’s misogynist critique of both of these
concepts as threats to his ideals of a renaissance of ‘classical’ homoerotic male
bonding, show that even at the alleged turning of the Western history of sexuality
there was great diversity in conceptualizing male same-sexual attraction — and
significant resistance to the new concept of ‘homosexuality’. Despite the differences
in their arguments and agenda, the works of the three writers and activists studied
here are exemplary and representative for the enormous influence exercised by
classical texts, above all the by speech of Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium, in
the history of thinking about same-sex desire in the Western world. Yet, the
theory of homosexuality articulated in the Aristophanic myth itself remained —
despite the manifold instance of its reception, revision and reappraisal — up until
the very recent past the most radical conceptualization of same-sex desire. It took
almost 2500 years until modern gay men made the bold and radical claim of this
myth their own: that two ‘real’ men can be each other’s halves, that they can love
each other, emotionally and physically, as men, simply because this is their very
nature.91 Aristophanes’ myth stands out and at odds with the paradigms governing
91 Aristophanes’ myth and his speech, i.e. his own intrafictional interpretation of this myth,
need to be clearly distinguished. Boswell emphasized in his reading that the first male
same-sex lovers must have been of the same age since they originally were halves of the
same being and read this as a sign for an ancient notion of same-sex love equivalent to
modern homosexuality (Boswell 1982–3), yet Halperin has highlighted that in
Aristophanes’ own discussion of the consequences of his myth, i.e. of male-male
desire in contemporary Athens (Pl. Symp. 191e–192b), ‘no age-matched couples figure
among their latter-day offspring [. . .]: in the real world of classical Athens — at least, as
Aristophanes portrays it — reciprocal erotic desire among males is unknown.’ (Halperin
1990: 21).
88
sexual relationships in its own time just as much as with those of the different times
of its reception. Should there be more than just a fine irony to the fact that it took a
philosopher telling a myth through the mouth of a comedian to be the first, and for
the longest time the only one, to express such a view of same-sex love?
Translations
All translations from German into English are the author’s.
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91

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Classical Receptions Journal Vol 2. Iss. 1 (2010) pp.

From Uranians to Homosexuals:

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Throughout Europe’s cultural history, the reception of classical antiquity is marked

*Correspondence to Sebastian Matzner, Comparative Literature Programme, Department

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3 Particularly by highlighting preceding traditions of ‘homosexual characters’; a critical

a criminal offence throughout Germany in 1871.5 The foundation of the

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7 See Wilhelm II’s ‘Eröffnungsansprache zur Schulkonferenz 1890’ (‘Opening address to

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were published and translations became increasingly available. Consider, for

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22 See Albisetti (1983: 23).

terminology such as ‘sodomite’ or ‘sinner against nature’27 linguistically precluded

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27 A comprehensive history of the theological concept of ‘sodomy’ as the peccatum contra

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37 See Böhm (1991: 331).

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He criticizes tendentious scholarship in principle as well as the use of scholarly

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And he points out institutionalized censorship of the classics:

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pseudo-hermaphrodism as an inherent, natural combinatory possibility. There is no

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Friedländer opened his argument in The Renaissance of Eros Uranios by explicitly

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The modern classification of mankind into ‘heterosexuals’ and ‘homosexuals’ or in

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Basing himself on the general, non-Platonic, ancient approach, Friedländer

78 ‘Die moderne Eintheilung der Menschen in ‘‘Heterosexuelle’’ und ‘‘Homosexuelle’’

the terminology of biology, a secondary sexual characteristic’.81 What was needed

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Consequently, in order to rectify this undesirable historical development, homoero-

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