Interest in female variance was, however, already alive when Hirschfeld’s efforts in 1896 began to encourage its literary expression, as evidenced by the sudden outburst of fiction as well as poetry during the following decade. In 1897, Gabriele Reuter, a writer of ability, published a novel of autobiographical pattern, _Aus guter Familie_,[2] which included among its heroine’s early experiences a variant, possibly lesbian, attachment—the _Jahrbuch’s_ note does not specify. In 1900 Elisabeth Dauthendey produced _Vom neuen Weib und seiner Sittlichkeit_,[3] semi-narrative sketches like Colette’s in _Ces Plaisirs_. The “New Woman’s” ideal is a life of quiet intimacy with other women, free of the “brutal” relations with men which dull appreciation of more delicate emotional nuances. An interlude with a tribade, a ‘confident, wise, almost manly’ individual, at first promises fulfillment of all the writer’s hopes. But a few amorous nights force her to recognize that, like a man, this woman cannot distinguish between crude sex and love. In the same year von Seydlitz used a case history from the 1840s—possibly from the same source as Kaspar’s _Klinische Novellen_—as the basis for _Pierre’s Ehe: Psychologische Probleme_.[4] Its hero is unfortunate enough to love an odd, hard, masculine girl who finally succumbs to his persistence, but is unable to cooperate sexually, and presently the partners find themselves in love with the same woman. In the course of a jealous brawl Pierre believes he has killed his wife; he makes a successful escape into the merchant marine and dies in Saigon without learning that he is innocent of manslaughter. The wife, now a confirmed transvestist, lives out her life as a valet without further emotional complication. In 1900 also, Alfred Meebold included a tragic variant novelette, “Dr. Erna Redens Thorheit und Erkenntnis,”[5] in the volume _Allerhand Volk_. The larger portion of the tale presents Dr. Erna’s unhappy heterosexual affair with a fellow medical student. To recover from her consequent depression she travels in Italy with an artist, Lucie, who has been her particularly warm and eager confidante. The latter is a homosexual, but she manages to conceal the nature of her feelings until the two meet another woman, an artist long acquainted with Lucie. In the course of a quarrel this woman reveals Lucie’s secret. Although Dr. Erna has now recovered from her heterosexual disappointment and exhibits a sympathetic understanding of Lucie’s emotion, she is unable to return it in kind, and in despondency Lucie kills herself. Dr. Erna then returns to Germany full of crusading zeal against those who persecute homosexuals. This bears slight but sufficient resemblance to Borys’s later _Carlotta Noll_ in French to suggest that both may have been based on a single known episode, or that the one influenced the other. The German version, be it noted, is by far the more sympathetic.