Abstract
Ideals of masculinity became increasingly militarized in imperial Germany. Middle-class social organizations coordinated efforts with military, medical, and political elites to carefully construct a hegemonic masculine ideal based on the warrior image. While subsequent chapters will analyze ordinary soldiers’ reactions to this hegemonic ideal and the behaviors and emotions they explored to cope with the stress of warfare, this chapter focuses on the dominant masculine ideal that was disseminated in imperial German culture before and during the war. It investigates three interrelated themes: the popular image of the “good comrade,” idealized emotional and sexual relations between front soldiers and women at home, and military and civilian efforts to control male sexual behavior.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See Robert L. Nelson, “German Comrades-Slavic Whores,” in Karen Hagemann and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, eds., Home/Front: The Military, War and Gender in Twentieth-Century Germany (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 69–86.
Karen Hagemann, “Of ‘Manly Valor’ and ‘German Honor’: Nation, War and Masculinity in the Age of the Prussian Uprising against Napoleon,” Central European History 30:2 (1997), 187–220; Ute Frevert, “Soldaten, Staatsbürger: Überlegungen zur historischen Konstruktion von Männlichkeit,” in Thomas Kühne, ed., Männergeschichte—Geschlechtergeschichte, 82–85.
Andrew Donson, Youth in the Fatherless Land: War Pedagogy, Nationalism, and Authority in Germany, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 49–51.
Paul Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 84, 108–9;
see also Jason Crouthamel, “Male Sexuality and Psychological Trauma: Soldiers and Sexual ‘Disorder’ in World War I and Weimar Germany,” Journal of History of Sexuality, 17:1 (January 2008), 60–84.
Andreas Killen, Berlin Electropolis: Shock, Nerves and German Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 37.
George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York: Howard Fertig, 1997), 33–34.
See also James D. Steakley, “Iconography of a Scandal: Political Cartoons and the Eulenberg Affair in Wilhelmine Germany,” in Martin Bauml Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey Jr., eds., Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay & Lesbian Past (New York: Nal, 1989), 233–63.
The contrast between the aristocratic officer’s image and their separate psychological spaces and behaviors that contradicted the martial image can been seen in Thomas Mann’s Königliche Hoheit (1909); see Jeffrey Schneider, “Militarism, Masculinity and Modernity in Germany, 1890–1914,” PhD diss., Cornell University, 1997, 26.
Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture (New York: Pantheon, 1985); see chapter 7 on “Male Hysteria.”
Bärbel Kuhn, Familienstand: Ledig. Ehelose Frauen und Männer im Bürgertum, 1850–1914 (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2000), 6–9.
Joachim Radkau, Das Zeitalter der Nervosität: Deutschland zwischen Bismarck und Hitler (Munich: Hanser, 1998), 356–57.
On the prewar morality organizations and their goals, see Edward Ross Dickinson, “The Men’s Christian Morality Movement in Germany, 1880–1914: Some Reflections on Politics, Sex and Sexual Politics,” Journal of Modern History, 75:1 (March 2003), 59–110.
David Brandon Dennis, “Seduction on the Waterfront: German Merchant Sailors, Masculinity and the ‘Brücke zu Heimat’ in New York and Buenos Aires, 1884–1914,” German History, 29:2 (2011), 175–76.
Nancy Reagin, Sweeping the German Nation: Domesticity and National Identity in Germany, 1870–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); see especially chapters 2 and 3.
Regina Schulte, “The Sick Warrior’s Sister: Nursing during the First World War,” in Lynn Abrams and Elizabeth Harvey, eds., Gender Relations in German History: Power, Agency, and Experience from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 121–41.
For international comparison, see Susan Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999);
and Angela Woollacott, On Her Their Lives Depend: Munitions Workers in the Great War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
Roger Chickering, The Great War and Urban Life in Germany: Freiburg, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 359–60.
Elisabeth Domansky, “Militarization and Reproduction in World War I Germany,” in Geoff Eley, ed., Society, Culture and the State in Germany, 1870–1930 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 427–64.
Dr. Brennecke, Sexuelle Selbstzucht! (Berlin-Lichterfelde: Verlag von Edwin Runge, 1915), 15, Min.Kr. Bd. V/10103, BHAK.
Bishop Dr. von Faulhaber, “Die Wirkungen des Krieges in religiöser und sittlicher Richtung,” Vortrag, Berlin Philharmonie, 20 March 1915, published in Volkswart—Organ des Verbandes der Männervereine zur Bekämpfung öffentlicher Unsittlichkeit, Nr. 5, 8. Jahrgang, Cöln, May–June 1915, E151/03 Bü 1190, HSAS. Faulhaber, who later became Cardinal, supported the Catholic Church’s 1933 Concordat with Hitler. He would later protest the Nazi program to murder the mentally and physically disabled, though he remained silent on the regime’s murder of Jews. See Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair (New York: Vintage, 2003), 61, 178–79.
Dr. med. J. Spier-Irving, Irrwege und Notstände des Geschlechtslebens im Krieg (Munich: Universal-Verlag, 1917), 17–18.
On British and French responses to the sexual effects of the war, see, for example, Julia Laite, Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens: Commercial Sex in London, 1885–1960 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 118–19;
Angela Woollacott, “‘Khaki Fever’ and Its Control: Gender, Class, Age and Sexual Morality on the British Homefront in the First World War,” Journal of Contemporary History, 29:2 (1994), 325–47;
and Susan Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 122–24.
Lutz Sauerteig, Krankheit, Sexualität, Gesellschaft: Geschlechtskrankheiten und Gesundheitspolitik in Deutschland im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 1999), 393–94.
Copyright information
© 2014 Jason Crouthamel
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Crouthamel, J. (2014). The Ideal Man Goes to War. In: An Intimate History of the Front. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137376923_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137376923_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-47785-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-37692-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)