Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2: Sexual InversionEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2: Sexual Inversion
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
Inversion has always been easy to trace in Germany. Ammianus Marcellinus
bears witness to its prevalence among some German tribes in later Roman
days.[75] In mediæval times, as Schultz points out, references to sodomy
in Germany were far from uncommon. Various princes of the German Imperial
house, and of other princely families in the Middle Ages, were noted for
their intimate friendships. At a later date, attention has frequently been
called to the extreme emotional warmth which has often marked German
friendship, even when there has been no suspicion of any true homosexual
relationship.[76] The eighteenth century, in the full enjoyment of that
abandonment to sentiment initiated by Rousseau, proved peculiarly
favorable to the expansion of the tendency to sentimental friendship. On
this basis a really inverted tendency, when it existed, could easily come
to the surface and find expression. We find this well illustrated in the
poet Heinrich von Kleist who seems to have been of bisexual temperament,
and his feelings for the girl he wished to marry were, indeed, much cooler
than those for his friend. To this friend, Ernst von Pfuël (afterward
Prussian war minister), Kleist wrote in 1805 at the age of 28: "You bring
the days of the Greeks back to me; I could sleep with you, dear youth, my
whole soul so embraces you. When you used to bathe in the Lake of Thun I
would gaze with the real feelings of a girl at your beautiful body. It
would serve an artist to study from." There follows an enthusiastic
account of his friend's beauty and of the Greek "idea of the love of
youths," and Kleist concludes: "Go with me to Anspach, and let us enjoy
the sweets of friendship.... I shall never marry; you must be wife and
children to me."[77]
In all social classes and in all fields of activity, Germany during the
nineteenth century produced a long series of famous or notorious
homosexual persons. At the one end we find people of the highest
intellectual distinction, such as Alexander von Humboldt, whom Näcke, a
cautious investigator, stated that he had good ground for regarding as an
invert.[78] At the other end we find prosperous commercial and
manufacturing people who leave Germany to find solace in the free and
congenial homosexual atmosphere of Capri; of these F.A. Krupp, the head of
the famous Essen factory, may be regarded as the type.[79]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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