Queering judaism and masculinist inventions: German homonationalism around 1900

Abstract

This chapter argues that current (homo)nationalism must be placed in a historical genealogy. The case study focuses on the Second German Empire, wherein the discourse of political crisis was represented by a "male gender crisis," which revolved round the Kaiser and his alleged "homosexual" circle. Just as with debates within the incipient gay movement, the discourse focused on the dispositive of "normal masculinity" as representative of the nation/state. This chapter addresses a religious contour of, and possible Jewish inflection in, this discursive constitution of homosexualities. The sexualization of Jewish religion played a significant role in marking an internal differentiation between an "effeminate," "degenerate" Jewish inversion and an "ultra-virile," Aryan, and state-supportive homosexuality of the "masculinists" around Hans Blüher. They were the right-wing, antisemitic part of the early gay rights movement in Germany. Their key model of an ideal state became the homoerotic "male band" as a misogynist and antisemitic form of male society.