Male Images and Female Desire

Abstract

Male Images and Female Desire Gudrun Brockhaus (bio) Translated by Hillary Hope Herzog and Todd Herzog The social-psychological attempts to uncover an “explanation” for the susceptibility to fascism often revolve around certain relatively abstract psychological mechanisms: underdeveloped ego, sadomasochism, sexual anxiety, authoritarianism, and crises of identity have all been suggested. 1 I don’t want to take up this tradition of psychological investigations of fascism here; rather, I want to back up a step and move toward a much more specific description of the content of the wishes, anxieties, and conceptions of men and women during the National Socialist era. What occupied their thoughts, and what aspects of National Socialism addressed their wishes and anxieties? These questions emerge from the tradition of Ernst Bloch’s objections to his communist friends of the 1920s right up to the 1962 edition of Erbschaft dieser Zeit (Heritage of our time), in which he spoke of a “helplessness” against the “deceitful intoxication” of the Nazis, of the “uncontrollable attractions,” and of the “desire for an unclear something else” that found their expression in the pro-Nazi movement in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. 2 Bloch complained at the time—and it remains a pressing issue today—that “leftist” analysts of fascism, such as those by Géorg Lukács and Karl Kautsky, derided the contradictions of Nazi ideology with a “tender arrogance” ( “weichem Hochmut” [ EZ, 146]), diagnosing the low intellectual level and barren rhetoric of the Nazis from a stance of crystal-clear Enlightenment. Many texts concerned with the theme of women and fascism adopt a similarly superior attitude in describing the reactionary, misogynistic program [End Page 71] of the Nazis. Such blood-and-soil stereotypes of women as Gebärkuh, 3 the blond Gretchen, the selfless and self-sacrificing mother, and the hero’s widow are constantly disproved. Often, “impossible” quotations are piled up one after another—Alfred Rosenberg, for example, is always a good source. Though it is not the intention of the critics, this way of presenting the antifeminist program of the Nazis makes the success of National Socialism even less understandable; unless one wants to ascribe that success to female stupidity, this mode of presentation doesn’t explain why those against whom the program was so clearly directed went along with it. Klaus Theweleit, in his analysis of the “male fantasies” (“Männerphantasien”) that he found in the protofascist writings of Freikorps soldiers, also warned of the danger of antifascist criticism placing itself in a position of radiant enlightenment, hovering far above the object of study. 4 If I didn’t allow these objects to speak, if I didn’t attempt to place myself among the pro-Nazi women, if—I am willing to assert—I didn’t attempt to feel as they felt, I would understand nothing of the fascination of fascism. This call for understanding the feelings of the objects of study is especially applicable to fascism in all its forms, since the psychologizing of politics was central to fascism’s success. The Nazis did not attempt to win over potential voters with a concrete political program or proposals to reorganize society. Their widely interpretable slogans appealed to an emotional accord. Over the years only two central elements of the program remained constant: anti-Semitism and a militantly expansionistic nationalism—and even these were not clearly formulated. Many other elements were diffuse, did not lend themselves to concretion, were not translated into institutional pragmatics, and so allowed for contradictory interpretations. In terms of the political program concerning women, Rosenberg’s notion of the woman as the servant of the man coexisted for years with views such as those of Sophie Rogge-Börne, who saw the woman as equal to the man in a communal fight. The vagueness and multiple meanings of Nazi ideology arose on the one hand from the inability to achieve a politics that matched reality, and on the other hand from the conscious goal of addressing and uniting the most diverse factions. They point above all, however, to the aestheticization and depoliticization of the public-political discourse, in which the event replaced the argument or at least notably reduced its importance. A...