Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
31
result(s) for
"Crouthamel, Jason"
Sort by:
Homosexuality and Comradeship: Destabilizing the Hegemonic Masculine Ideal in Nazi Germany
This article looks at the experiences and perspectives of homosexual men in Nazi Germany—in particular, at homosexual veterans of World War I. How did homosexual men perceive “hegemonic masculinity” and ideals of comradeship during the Third Reich? The central argument is that the Nazi regime's emphasis on heterosexuality as an essential masculine trait was contested by homosexual veterans, who attempted to exert agency by actively defining notions of “masculinity,” the nature of their homosexuality, as well as their status in the Volksgemeinschaft (people's community). The ways in which homosexual men perceived homosexuality in relation to hegemonic masculine norms were diverse: whereas some tried to argue for the compatibility of homosexuality and martial masculinity, those who were arrested often distanced themselves from their homosexual identity. The testimonies of veterans, available in Gestapo police interrogation records, suggest how subjective constructions of sexual identity both undermined and reinforced hegemonic masculine ideals. Der vorliegende Aufsatz handelt von den Erfahrungen und Perspektiven homosexueller Männer im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, insbesondere denen von homosexuellen Veteranen des Ersten Weltkrieges. Wie haben homosexuelle Männer während des Dritten Reiches “hegemoniale Männlichkeit” sowie das Ideal des Kameradschaftlichen wahrgenommen? In der Tat stellten homosexuelle Veteranen die unter dem NS-Regime übliche Hervorhebung der Heterosexualität als wesentliches Merkmal von Männlichkeit in Frage. Sie versuchten aktiv ihren Handlungsspielraum zu bewahren, indem sie Vorstellungen über “Männlichkeit”, das Wesen ihrer Homosexualität sowie ihren Status innerhalb der Volksgemeinschaft selbst definierten. Wie homosexuelle Männer dabei Homosexualität in Bezug auf hegemoniale Männlichkeitsnormen wahrnahmen, war ganz unterschiedlich: einige machten sich für die Kompatibilität von Homosexualität und martialischer Männlichkeit stark, wohingegen diejenigen, die inhaftiert wurden, sich oft von ihrer Homosexualität distanzierten. Die in den Akten der Gestapo verfügbaren Verhöre zeigen somit, dass solche subjektiven Konstruktionen von sexueller Identität hegemoniale Männlichkeitsideale sowohl unterhöhlen als auch bekräftigen konnten.
Journal Article
War Neurosis versus Savings Psychosis: Working-Class Politics and Psychological Trauma in Weimar Germany
This article is a social and political history of psychological trauma 'from below', which explores the response of German working-class war victims and their representatives to the diagnosis of 'war neurosis'. It argues that working-class victims of psychological trauma in the first world war used the war neurosis debate, and a popularized medical discourse on mental trauma, to define the psychological impact of the war on different social classes in Weimar Germany. Both Social Democratic and communist representatives of war victims adopted psychologically-disabled war victims as unique examples of the brutality of modern industrialized war. Using the voices of mentally-disabled men and women victimized by war, Social Democrats argued that 'war neurosis' was a legitimate wound, unrecognized by psychiatrists, that affected wide ranges of social groups, who deserved compensation from the state. Pension cuts and the state's persistent accusations that 'pension neurosis' rather than war wounds prevented war victims from returning to work caused the Social Democrats to take a more radical view of the war neurosis problem. Like the communist representatives of war victims, Social Democrats suggested that postwar Germany's deepest, most unresolved 'psychosis' existed not in war victims, but in the middle classes devastated by socio-economic upheaval, and their repression of the terrifying memory of the war.
Journal Article
Male Sexuality and Psychological Trauma: Soldiers and Sexual Disorder in World War I and Weimar Germany
Through remilitarization and war Nazi ideologues hoped to counter allegedly degenerative behaviors like homosexuality and restore the health of the male body and psyche.3 Total war brought an unprecedented invasion of the state and military into sexual and reproductive life.4 In Germany during the First World War the military enlisted doctors to investigate and contain a wide range of psychological problems, including the sexual disorders that were felt to have undermined military efficiency. In her analysis of sexual violence in the interwar period, Tatar links the brutalized postwar imagination reflected in Weimar art to the traumatic experience of the front, which gave rise to a fascination with sexual murder that seemed to proliferate in interwar German art and culture. In order to survive the traumatic stress of modern industrial warfare, men across social class lines had broken sexual taboos and boundaries.
Journal Article
Memory as a battlefield
Shell shock has gained considerable attention from historians dealing with the history of memory. As historian Jay Winter observed, shell shock was a form of 'embodied memory', as tics, tremors, nightmares and other symptoms of traumatic violence made an indelible mark on the bodies and minds of men shattered by modern war.
1
This wound, newly diagnosed during the First World War, symbolized the deeply traumatic effects of industrialized combat on not only individuals, but also European culture and society. War neurosis, as it was called by German doctors, became a central site for post-war debates over the memory of the war in a fragmented and deeply divided Germany. Historians explore a number of interrelated questions on the significance of shell shock and memory: what did the proliferation of 'hysterical men' responding to the horrors of war signify about masculinity and the effects of modern combat on male bodies and minds? How did mentally ill veterans fit into debates over the memory of the war as a brutalizing or regenerative experience for individuals and societies? The focus of this chapter is on Germany's experience with mental trauma and debates over memory. In particular, it concentrates on how mentally traumatized men constructed the memory of the war experience through the prism of psychological illness.
Book Chapter