1888–1955
○ Natural causes
Monarchist writer, the “first historian” of the Wandervogel, who argued that male homoerotic bonds underpin society and the state
His 1912 history of the Wandervogel as an “erotic phenomenon” and The Role of Eroticism in Male Society made him a central figure in Weimar debates on male bonding and homosexuality.
Born in Freiburg, the son of a pharmacist, he joined the Wandervogel youth movement in 1902 while at the Steglitz Gymnasium in Berlin. His 1912 history of the movement caused a scandal with its third volume, The German Wandervogel Movement as Erotic Phenomenon, which affirmed the boys’ homoerotic bonds, and in 1917–1919 his The Role of Eroticism in Male Society argued that male bonding was the basis of the state. A radical conservative and monarchist opposed to the Weimar Republic, he met the exiled Wilhelm II in 1928, and his ideas found favour in parts of the Hitler Youth. He supported the Nazis but turned on them after Röhm was murdered in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, withdrew from public life and worked as a psychologist in Berlin on his philosophical writings. He died in Berlin in 1955.
Activities and affiliations
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1912–1955
Scholarship and theory