Warm Brothers: Queer Theory and the Age of Goethe (New Cultural Studies Series)

"Well argued, clearly written, with interesting emphases and ambitious breadth, this excellent book maintains a uniformly high level of scholarship."--Choice

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2001

In eighteenth-century Germany, the aesthetician Friedrich Wilhelm Basileus Ramdohr could write of the phenomenon of men who evoke sexual desire in other men; Johann Joachim Winckelmann could place admiration of male beauty at the center of his art criticism; and admirers and detractors alike of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, felt constrained to comment upon the ruler's obvious preference for men over women. In German cities of the period, men identified as "warm brothers" wore broad pigtails powdered in the back, and developed a particular discourse of friendship, classicism, Orientalism, and fashion.

There is much evidence, Robert D. Tobin contends, that something was happening in the semantic field around male-male desire in late eighteenth-century Germany, and that certain signs were coalescing around "a queer proto-identity." Today, we might consider a canonical author of the period such as Jean Paul a homosexual; we would probably not so identify Goethe or Schiller. But for Tobin, queer subtexts are found in the writings of all three and many others.

Warm Brothers analyzes classical German writers through the lens of queer theory. Beginning with sodomitical subcultures in eighteenth-century Germany, it examines the traces of an emergent homosexuality and shows the importance of the eighteenth century for the nineteenth-century sexologists who were to provide the framework for modern conceptualizations of sexuality. One of the first books to document male-male desire in eighteenth-century German literature and culture, Warm Brothers offers a much-needed reappraisal of the classical canon and the history of sexuality.

In eighteenth-century Germany, the aesthetician Friedrich Wilhelm Basileus Ramdohr could write of the phenomenon of men who produce sexual desire in other men; Johann Joachim Winckelmann could place admiration of male beauty at the center of his art criticism; and admirers and detractors alike of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, felt constrained to comment upon the ruler's obvious preference for men over women. In German cities of the period, men identified as "warm brothers" wore broad pigtails powdered in the back, and developed a particular discourse of friendship, classicism, Orientalism, and fashion. There is much evidence, Robert Tobin contends, that something was happening in the semantic field around male-male desire in late eighteenth-century Germany, and that certain signs were coalescing around "a queer proto-identity". Today, we might consider a canonical author of the period such as Jean Paul a homosexual; we would probably not so identify Goethe or Schiller. But for Tobin, queer subtexts are found in the writings of all three and many others.Warm Brothers analyzes classical German writers through the lens of queer theory. Beginning with sodomitical subcultures in eighteenth-century Germany, it examines the traces of an emergent homosexuality and shows the importance of the eighteenth century for the nineteenth-century sexologists who were to provide the framework for modern conceptualizations of sexuality. One of the first books to document male-male desire in eighteenth-century German literature and culture, Warm Brothers offers a much-needed reappraisal of the classical canon and the history of sexuality. CONTENTS......Page 7 PREFACE: PANIC IN WEIMAR......Page 9 1. QUEERING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY......Page 13 2. WARM SIGNIFIERS: Eighteenth-Century Codes of Male-Male Desire......Page 37 3. JEAN PAUL'S ORIENTAL HOMOSEXUALITIES......Page 57 4. LITERARY CURES IN WIELAND AND MORITZ......Page 78 5. PEDERASTY AND PHARMAKA IN GOETHE'S WORKS......Page 107 6. PERFORMING GENDER IN ln WILHELM MEISTER......Page 130 7. MALE MEMBERS: Ganymede, Prometheus, Faust......Page 145 8. THOMAS MANN'S QUEER SCHILLER......Page 160 9. LICHTENBERG'S QUEER FRAGMENTS: Sexuality and the Aphorism......Page 187 Conclusion - MADE IN GERMANY: Modern Sexuality......Page 207 BIBLIOGRAPHY......Page 224 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS......Page 240 INDEX......Page 242 "Warm Brothers analyzes classical German writers through the lens of queer theory. Beginning with sodomitical subcultures in eighteenth-century Germany, it examines the traces of an emergent homosexuality and shows the importance of the eighteenth century for the nineteenth-century sexologists who were to provide the framework for modern conceptualizations of sexuality. One of the first books to document male-male desire in eighteenth-century German literature and culture. Warm Brothers offers a much-needed reappraisal of the classical canon and the history of sexuality."--BOOK JACKET.