Ambivalente Männlichkeit. Geschlechterbilder und -praktiken in der kaiserlichen Marine am Beispiel von Martin Niemöller

Abstract

On 1 April 1910,Martin Niemo¨ller, the son of a Protestant pastor, joined the Imperial German navy together with 206 other sea cadets. After twelve months of training, he was promoted to ensign, and to the rank of lieutenant-at-sea in April 1913. Based on a dense record of letters and diary entries, this article analyses how Niemöller engaged the practices of male camaraderie in the navy, and how his perception of his own masculinity evolved. A key factor in this context were the rules of marital consent, which required a navy officer to provide sufficient funds for a suitable livelihood before the navy command granted permission to marry. Faced with these constraints, Niemöller decided to terminate his relationship with a woman and sought refuge in the more intimate aspects of male camaraderie in encounters with few select friends. As the First World War began in August 1914, military masculinity appeared to be an empty shell for Niemo¨ller as the German High Sea Fleet had to stay idle at the North Sea ports. Overall, the article argues that the discrepancy between normative role expectations and subjective experiences of masculinity among officers was much greater than suspected in historiography. Military masculinity in the Imperial German Navy remained highly ambivalent.