Uniform Fantasies: Soldiers, Sex, and Queer Emancipation in Imperial Germany

by Jeffrey Schneider

Overview

Starting in the nineteenth century in Germany, colourful military uniforms became a locus for various queer male fantasies, fostering an underground sexual economy of male prostitution as well as a political project to exploit the army’s prestige for queer emancipation. In the first decade of the twentieth century, however, a series of scandals derailed this emancipatory project. Simultaneously, public debates began to invoke homosexuality, sadism, transvestism, and other sexological concepts to criticize military policies and practices.

In pursuing the threads with which queer authors and activists stitched their fantasies about uniforms, Jeffrey Schneider offers fresh perspectives on key debates over military secrecy, disciplinary abuses in the army, and German militarism. Drawing on a vast trove of materials ranging from sexological case studies, trial transcripts, and parliamentary debates to queer activist tracts, autobiographies, and literary texts, Uniform Fantasies uncovers a particularly modern set of concerns about such topics as outing closeted homosexuals, the presence of gay men in the military, and whether men in uniform are more masculine or more insecure about their sexual identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487549619
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	07/07/2023
Series:	German and European Studies , #51
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jeffrey Schneider is an associate professor of German Studies at Vassar College.

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Outing Officers: Queer Activism, Melodrama, and the Harden-Moltke Trial

2. Disciplinary Abuses: From Military Secrecy to Sadism in the Army

3. The Obscure Object of Desire: Uniform Fetishism, Male Prostitution, and German Soldiers

4. Camping in His Own Private Militarism: Thomas Mann’s Queer Art of Failure and the Fantasies of Military Service

5. Perversions of Fantasy: Parody and the Left-Liberal Critique of German Militarism in Heinrich Mann’s The Loyal Subject

Epilogue: The War on Fantasy

Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

Dagmar Herzog

"In centring questions of fantasy as well as the paradoxes and ambivalences of erotic desire, and exploring the astonishingly myriad ways controversies over German militarism intersected with arguments about gender and sex, Schneider provides a wholly fresh take on the cultural context in which the first queer rights movement in the world was born. Ingenious original readings of novels by the mutually warring Mann brothers are a particular highlight."

Robert M. Beachy

"Schneider's broad analysis of the cultural significance of 'soldier love' — Soldatenliebe — provides an original and important contribution to the queer history of Wilhelmine Germany. It tackles a theme that is often mentioned but never fully explored, namely the homoerotic componentof German and particularly Prussian militarism."

Clayton J. Whisnant

"Uniform Fantasies is an intriguing analysis of German militarism from the unique perspective offered by Slavoj Žižek's blend of Marx and Lacan. Schneider demonstrates the important but extraordinarily complex role that the fascination with military uniforms played in the queer scene, in the literature of Thomas and Heinrich Mann, and in the wider realm of German culture and politics prior to the First World War."

Editorial Reviews

"Schneider’s broad analysis of the cultural significance of ‘soldier love’ – Soldatenliebe – provides an original and important contribution to the queer history of Wilhelmine Germany. It tackles a theme that is often mentioned but never fully explored, namely the homoerotic componentof German and particularly Prussian militarism."

—Robert M. Beachy, Associate Professor of History, Underwood International College at Yonsei University

"In centring questions of fantasy as well as the paradoxes and ambivalences of erotic desire, and exploring the astonishingly myriad ways controversies over German militarism intersected with arguments about gender and sex, Schneider provides a wholly fresh take on the cultural context in which the first queer rights movement in the world was born. Ingenious original readings of novels by the mutually warring Mann brothers are a particular highlight."

—Dagmar Herzog, Distinguished Professor of History, Graduate Center, City University of New York

" Uniform Fantasies is an intriguing analysis of German militarism from the unique perspective offered by Slavoj Žižek’s blend of Marx and Lacan. Schneider demonstrates the important but extraordinarily complex role that the fascination with military uniforms played in the queer scene, in the literature of Thomas and Heinrich Mann, and in the wider realm of German culture and politics prior to the First World War."

—Clayton J. Whisnant, Chapman Professor of the Humanities and European History, Wofford College

From the Publisher