The Wandervogel youth movement, originally established by boys and young men, had as early as 1905 to reckon with the formation of the first girl's groups. Certainly, after 1911, their presence could no longer be ignored. That year, two hundred enthusiastic girls, decked out in brightly colored clothing, had shown up for a walking tour of Berlin. At first, opposition to their growing participation came less from parents, leaders, and teachers, than from the boys themselves. They considered the girls' participation as an "invasion," labelled the young women who acted as leaders of the girls' groups as "nuns" or "aunties," and labelled those girls who wished to hike along with them as "unfeminine."
The girls themselves had little or nothing to say in response until about 1918. By then, many of the boys, and with them the most important figures in the leadership, had gone off to the front in the First World War, and the girls had de facto inherited the Wandervogel movement. One consequence was that they underwent an "awakening." It set them thinking about what they themselves, as girls, wanted from the movement. Pronouncements such as this began to appear:
And girls! Do you not already feel that pure feminine domain? We must once again become conscious of that pure and bright spring welling up within. We must seek this feminine realm and her holy oracle. Deep within us, it is she who binds us with our sisters. Only through her can we have love for one another. Here you have the essence of our bond: finding anew that which is female within yourself through love of one another. Do you understand now why we can admit no boys to our feminine realm?1
Roughly between 1918 and 1928, the female branch of the German youth movement was dominated by the ideals of "women's culture," of a return to nature and the physical. These elements fused together into a specific image of Eros; they formed the foundation for an erotic utopian vision of a community of girls and women. This erotic utopia was described in many ways, as a "spiritual experience," a "quest for the source," or a "realm." It was expressed still more strongly as the "island," or sometimes even the "holy island." All these terms had the same referent: a domain that could not really be named nor rationally comprehended, yet which could be "felt and "experienced." It was mystical and eternal, rooted in the primeval, and belonged exclusively to women and girls. It was the secret of womanhood, the seed at the center of the feminine. The driving force in finding and cultivating this seed was pedagogical Eros. Writers credited pedagogical Eros with being the source of creativity. This Eros was also the preeminent bonding force in the community of girls and women.3 Eros between women and girls was seen as the catalyst for the process of becoming a woman.4 A clear distinction was made between Eros and sexuality. Whereas Eros represented order, art, and culture, sexuality was the realm of chaos and uncontrolled passion.
This pedagogical theory, in which Eros would come to take such an important place, was first expounded during the origin and flowering of the great youth movement at the beginning of this century. The theories about adolescence and puberty went hand in hand with the definition of youth as youth, and with the practices and social organizations that followed from this. Medical science with its determinist perspective of the various physical phases in the process of becoming a mature adult, was developing rapidly. However, this clinical perspective was too narrow for the humanistic psychology and pedagogy which were also arising. The concept of pedagogical Eros, as a component of humanistic pedagogy and developmental psychology, dominated enlightened circles. It also influenced the education reform movement with its alternative educational systems in the German Landschulheime. Eduard Spranger, a phenomenological, child-centered pedagogical theorist, and Charlotte Buhler belonged to the circles in contact with the youth movement. These youth psychologists set out to analyze the Infatuation (Schwarm) that girls may experience for someone older, generally an older follow student, a woman teacher, or other female, They did, however, also think that this platonic Eros could flower between an adult male and a girl.
At the beginning of the 1920s, Charlotte Buhler, a well known Viennese youth psychologist, wrote in her book, Das Seelenleben desjugendlichen, in the chapter "Fuhrer und Schwarm":
The infatuations (Schwarmen) which I have discussed here are a developmental factor, and are as important ethically as they are psychologically. Only in the form in which we have described them do they become a fulfilling and rich experience. These infatuations can be found in cases of deep inner development, and they can become the most important factor in self-realization.5
Regarding the nature of this infatuation, for which she used the descriptions "Eros" and "erotic," she remarked that it was free of sexuality. Eros could, if properly directed, function as an enormous force in the acquisition of self-control, self-discovery, and self-sacrifice by young persons. In saying this, she labelled this Eros as the driving force in the adolescent's process of becoming an adult. It became the foundation for her view of love, desire, and sexuality. Second perhaps only to Eduard Spranger, she was one of the most important pedagogues to incorporate the theory of pedagogical Eros in developmental psychology. Moreover, she also developed a new vision of the role of Eros in pedagogy and the psychology of youth.
The discussion of Eros within pedagogy and psychology was not a disembodied idea about caring child-rearing methods which suddenly appeared from nowhere. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Eros and sexuality were the subject of debate, analysis, and praxis that were being played out in the sciences, in parliaments, and in lawmaking; in social movements and among middle-class liberals; and in artistic circles. The Sexual was one of the preoccupations of German science around the turn of the century. Medical science and the natural sciences (and the emerging psychoanalytic movement) emphasized human biology, from which character, actions, and future development could be inferred. People were examining themselves to discover the nature of mankind, as well as searching for the truth about their own nature and being. That which was chaotic and unknown about mankind had to be discovered, classified, set out in orderly fashion, and controlled. It was a time of measuring skulls, genetics, and eugenics. It was also an era of preoccupation with the healthy human body: with physical culture, sanitation, and hygiene. And it was a time of sexology and sexual definitions.
The body of thought regarding the female, pedagogical Eros, the return to nature, the physical, and the creation of a women's culture did not exist solely within the youth movement. These preoccupations had their roots in a number of intellectual and cultural currents which were specific to that time and place, such as the emerging developmental psychology and education reform movements; the medical and social concepts and praxis surrounding sexuality, homosexuality, and health; the influence of the middle-class women's movement, and political and social developments in the party system of the democratic Weimar Republic (though this last was rejected by most of the youth and girls' movement). To an important degree, this thought was characterized by the influential and widespread ideology summed up in the slogan Kultur statt Zivilisation (Culture over Civilization).
Paradoxically enough, it was this slogan that insisted that good (culture) and evil (civilization), the healthy and the unhealthy, the pure and the perverse, continually be set in opposition to each other. Paradoxically, because the slogan was intended to represent a pursuit of unity, including the unity of body, mind and soul; the unity of the individual and the community; the unity of womanhood and the girls' movement; and the oneness of women's Kultur.
Kultur represented the indivisible, the whole, German history, and the German longing for a German empire. It was the traditional, the rural, the natural, and the pure. It was Eros as a classical ideal of contemplation of, empathy with, and love for the whole person. Zivilisation represented industrialization, hectic modem times, the mechanical, and the big city with its downtrodden, perverted, and unnatural individuals. It was scandalous Parisian fashion, the prostitute, the modem short-haired girl, the perverse, and the sexual. It was sexual lust as a selfish, genitally-centered animal passion, a part of the person rather than the whole person. Eros, on the other hand, represented the ideal of pure friendship and high culture; of aesthetics and the contemplation of persons, the innocence of nature, the world, and the cosmos, each as a whole; of the beauty of a body united with soul and mind; of ethical attitudes and conduct in relationships; of pleasure of the senses - providing of course that it was raised to the level of Apollonian order and art.
Countless elements were placed in opposition to each other in the ideology of "Culture over Civilization," including nature and culture, body and mind, Eros and Priapus. While Eros denoted the ideal of pure friendship and edifying culture, Priapus denoted sexuality, bodily lusts, and uncontrolled passion. Thus good was brought into direct opposition to evil.
Psychology and Pedagogical Eros
A clear line of demarcation was drawn between Eros and Priapus, that is, Eros and sexuality. This line was also to be found in those educational and psychological theories which were founded in part upon pedagogical Eros.
Eduard Spranger, who wrote his Psychologie Desjugendalters in the early 1920s, dealt explicitly with pedagogical Eros.6 The book ran to numerous editions and had great influence in The Netherlands. Spranger believed that Eros stands at the point of intersection between aesthetics and ethics. Spranger's concept of Eros was based on Plato's definition of Eros as that love rooted in the contemplation of the whole, inner contemplation, the spiritual, the love of ideal form. For him, erotic Schwarmerei were the Apollonian light side, and Priapus the Dionysian dark side. With the expression of this theory, Spranger rejected modern scientific concepts of sexuality, namely that everything, even human identity itself, could ultimately be reduced to sexuality. According to him, Eros and sexuality had different roots. Eros belonged pre-eminently to youth, beauty, and desire. Therefore the basis of his pedagogy was not the analysis of the youth or the girl, but the Verstehen, the understanding, empathy, and sympathy towards adolescents one needed in order to understand them.
While Charlotte Buhler also worked with the concept of Eros and the practice of Verstehen, she dealt with them in a more clinical and empirical manner than Spranger. However, when it came to what she called the Seelenleben (soul-life) of the adolescent, she imputed great power to Eros. Moreover, she spoke from experience, because, as she said in an interview, she worked by choice with younger female assistants who were a little in love with her.7
Buhler's accomplishment was to expand the discussion of youth by explicitly concerning herself with girls. This was relatively new, considering that until then youth and adolescence had primarily been interpreted as a phase of life belonging to males only. Among other activities, she collected and analyzed girls' diaries.8 In these diaries, Infatuation was expressed in all its heat. In practically all cases these crushes were directed toward an older girl or an adult woman. Buhler saw this as a positive phase during adolescence. The girl's experiences of these crushes aroused powerful and previously unknown emotions. They were literally on fire. Expressions like Himmelhoch jauchzend zum Tode betrabt, Sehnsucht, Schwdrtnen, Melancholik, Erleben (from heavenly bliss to deadly depression, longing, infatuation, melancholy, and experience) were used. These were not experiences from childhood, but the elemental human emotions of passion, love, hate, approach, and rejection. According to Bahler, this experience of existential human processes would, providing it were properly guided, create a strong individual. This eroticism - which also, according to her, had nothing to do with sexuality - would ultimately lead to a healthy, heterosexual adulthood. The essence of the erotic relationship between master and pupil lay precisely in bringing the manhood of the boy and the womanhood of the girl to flower.
According to Buhler there were also detrimental sides to this Eros. It could, for instance, degenerate into Liebelei (love as a game), or more serious yet, into mass hysteria, such as still appears to happen at English boarding schools. Buhler cited Gertrude Baumer's lyrical description of her physical education teacher as an example of just such mass hysteria. Buhler, who maintained a life-long relationship with Helene Lange - both were well-known feminists in the middle-class women's movement - knew firsthand the force of pedagogical Eros:
When I spoke a moment ago about the cool relationships with male and female teachers, I left out of consideration one brilliant and unusual star which shone, not only in my firmament, but in the school heavens of many of my fellow schoolgirls: the physical education teacher. She awakened in many of us the experience of Infatuation, an emotion that I know not if any others than schoolgirls between the ages of thirteen and sixteen can comprehend. For three years she was the center of our being. Not an hour went by - literally - that you did not think of her; you never crossed the street without cherishing the silent hope of meeting her. The two hours of physical education each week, the only hours that you were in her presence, were quite simply the high point of existence. The most terrible expeditions were undertaken in order to find out where you might meet her, the strangest occurrences were invented in order to get something to do with her. If it froze, you went outside in a thin cotton gym suit just so that she would chase you in again; you threw the shuttlecock over the wall into the neighbor's yard, so that you could ask her if you could climb over to get it; you tore your clothing to shreds so as to be able to ask her to mend it. The whole school literally sank into nothingness, into an indifferent twilight, compared to this all-consuming interest.9
Buhler, however, rejected this form of Eros. For her, pedagogical Eros (the psychologically ideal Eros) had nothing to do with hysteria, or with mass epidemics of falling in love, even if she also found these expressions a normal part of the pubertal phase. Her point of departure was leadership, responsibility, and self-discipline in the interplay between an older and a younger partner, preferably of the same sex. The foundation of this interplay, which deserved to be taken seriously, lay in the relationship between two persons, through which selfhood and intimacy (the I and the Thou; Ich and Du) could flourish, and in which the self of the younger could grow in a relationship characterized by a chaste distance and longing. Buhler argued that in this relationship, womanhood and manhood could develop freely. Because she believed that the being of a man and manhood were different from the being of a woman and womanhood, she believed that Eros between boys and men was different from that between girls and women. In the interplay between boys and men, one could already see what were, according to her, the pre-eminently manly qualities such as self-awareness and the will to power, that later could lead to the ability to rule. Eros between women and girls displayed such typical feminine characteristics as devotion (Hingabe) and freely chosen obedience to the adult.
Pedagogical Eros in the Girls' Movement
Womanhood and the fostering of womanhood by Eros was also a topic of discussion within the girls' movement. It usually began with the idea that female nature had been buried in the garbage heap of civilization. Culture was the means of clearing away that rubbish, and the slogan, Kultur statt Zivilisation, was adopted without exception by all the girls' groups.
The Platonic notion that there might be an already existing, true source of womanhood which did not have to be created or shaped, did not influence these discussions. What excited the imagination within the movement was the idea that it was possible to create, or instill, the core of womanhood, another of the underlying notions of pedagogical eros. Who but the older female leaders would be more suited to the task of bringing the germ of womanhood in a young girl to a flowering maturity? Mature young women could teach young girls how to discover the source of their own womanhood.
The belief in this idea of fostering maturity by the older woman had the effect within the girls' circles of lessening the conflicts between old and young that characterized the boys' groups after the First World War. The boys' groups, even before the war, had already become polarized by arguments over the role of the older leaders and the inclusion of girls and Jewish boys. After the war these debates created schisms in the boys' movement, though this did not happen in the girls' groups. Whereas the boys wanted to be rid of their older leaders, the girls cherished them. Young women above 25 were much esteemed as leaders. They had a special place in this ideal feminine culture, this holy island on which womanhood could flower so wonderfully through mutual love and affection. It was they who could guide their younger friends to their proper identity as women.
The body of ideas surrounding the holy island (the germ of womanhood and pedagogical Eros) was sometimes problematic. The sometimes nasty discussion about the relationship between pedagogical Eros and homosexuality that rent the boys' movement was never as great within the girls'. At most, in the girls' movement there was some tension between the ideal of Eros and its practice, which surfaced in the discussions of how to realize this holy island. Marie Buchhold, who became the leader of a women's dance and gymnastics school in the agricultural settlement of Schwarzerden, reported that when she was 27, the girls' group in which she was then involved experienced a clear schism between the maternal and the "unfeminine." Maternal individuals were those who saw their leadership role as a spiritual motherhood, and later through marriage as actual motherhood. Unfeminine leaders were those who made mind, intellect, and physical culture the goal of their leadership, and not marriage, wedded bliss, and motherhood. Buchhold was one of the unfeminine. With her later life-partner Elisabeth Vogler, she established a true holy island where Eros could be given free rein. The elder pair of friends could cultivate in the girls and young women their new female identity. Schwarzerden was such a great success that it still exists today.
Another tension in the girls' movement was that between the erotic and the sexual. Although this was never publicly discussed by any of the girls' groups, it is clear in the descriptions of camping trips, especially in descriptions of being and sleeping together. Eros provided a reservoir for sexual desires and sexual acts. The veneration of the body, culture, and Eros created many opportunities for contemplating the body of a girlfriend in nude dancing or nude swimming, for touching her body in the countless gymnastic exercises that were conducted in the open air, or for snuggling up to her at the rituals by the campfire, on the hikes, and at the innumerable celebrations that took place in the encampments. As was written in one journal:
What did we care about the rocks we tripped over in the darkness, or the many ravines and crevices we might have fallen into? . . . Klara and I held tight to each other's hands, one in the other...Can you understand how deeply we experienced the events of that night? That it appeared to us as a symbol of a time in which we really encountered one another and we alone? I believe that every girl has hidden deep within her a secret something she carries with her - not expressed, indeed hardly known - that allows her to find her way. Like a heavenly song or some half-forgotten, primeval melody, it beckons us onward. Only if we have complete inward calm, if we find peace within ourselves to listen to our soul, shall we hear it, at first softly and trembling. But wonderfully beautiful in purity and simplicity.10
Eros was the god of order, and control, an invitation to accompany someone on a life's journey. The girl's love, her being in love, must be transformed by the leader, the older or more mature friend, into creativity, culture - women's culture. What this women's culture was precisely, no one knew. Each group had its own ideas on the subject. What Eros was, no one knew either, and everyone had her own ideas about this as well. Whether it was sexuality, or lesbian sexuality, as we are now inclined to think, was not a question that overly occupied these girls. They certainly did not call it lesbianism, which was associated with the city, perversity, and Priapus.
There was one person who clearly understood his own interpretation of Eros (including pedagogical Eros) and sexuality. For the "erotomanic" (as he was labelled) Hans Buhler, the "infamous" chronicler of the Wandervogel movement, it was all crystal clear. His view is best seen in a description he gives of an event that took place shortly after the first World War. It is in the revised edition of his book Werke und Tage. 11
He had hiked up a rugged mountain where a group of girls clad in hooded capes awaited him. They silently escorted him to a place where he would speak to the leaders of a colony of women and girls. According to him, these women and their followers had made their nest, in the wilds of nature, like "queen bees in a swarm." They had created an agricultural community and their own special dances. The outside world thought that the community was based on a love of nature, vegetarianism, dance, and the ideals of the Wandervogel movement, but as an insider he knew that the driving force was mutual love between females, that is, the holy island and pedagogical Eros. Interpreting this pedagogical Eros presented no problem at all for him.
On the slopes of a low German mountain range in the region of the great Hanseatic cities, the women had established themselves, as figures of express beauty and grace, or if not that, then certainly of impressive energy. They are surrounded and waited upon by girls who would spill their heart's blood for them, creating works and institutions which those around them who pluck the fruit of their labors little suspect are secretly ruled over by the goddess of lesbian love.12
Summary
One can say that Eros within the girls' circles was viewed as salvational. It played a role in the process of an individual becoming an adult. It fused women and girls into a community. It was expressly not the binding element between girls and boys - at least not in this phase of puberty and adolescence. It was the creative force by which the lost germ of womanhood could be discovered and nurtured into life.
Eros also contained two aspects which could be seen as mutual opposites. The ideal of Eros created a freer group space for those whose public and private lives were severely restricted. In the first half of the twentieth century, girls still had to clear away some of the obstacles which stood in the way of their being able to lead relatively free lives. The creation of a holy island - at least under certain circumstances and conditions - meant a revolution in the very middle class circles from which the girls were fleeing.
While the discussion of Eros was often liberating, the construction of a dichotomy between Eros and sexuality, (seen as two distinct, conflicting areas of the person) could be said to constrain Eros. This dichotomy, coupled with the emphasis on morality in the discussion of Eros, set them in opposition to one another. Eros had to be the controlling passion, a part of culture and our common heritage. In contrast, sexuality was seen as animal, as genital lust, as demonic and destructive, as chaotic and hedonistic.
The ideals of the girls' movement changed after 1928, The call for social and political involvement became steadily stronger. The right wing, nationalistic boys' groups recruited girls for their own girl sections, strictly segregated from the boys, but nonetheless under male supervision. The girls' groups which advocated the ideal of a community of girls and women slowly but surely crumbled away. There were no new disciples (Nachwuchs), and interest evaporated. Social interchange lost some of its aura, became more businesslike, and the politics ever more polarized. The somewhat naive idealism of the early days of the girls' movement was now criticized, and in place of separation on holy islands, people wanted to take part in social and political life. Somewhere in the midst of this, the ideal of Eros was buried. But the call for a unified realm, the call that is for a Reich, persisted. After 1933 it would take on a much more sinister tone than the playful ideal shared by the girls in the Weimar era.
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Editors' Note:
Marion E.P. de Ras (1953) is a social scientist presently investigating the construction of "girlhood" in The Netherlands since 1600. She works under the auspices of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences.
Translated from Dutch by Words and Pictures.
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Notes:
1. DerLandfahrer, Heft 10, GiMard, 1919, p. 9.
2. M.E.P. de Ras, "Die Heilige Insel," in: Jahrbuch des Archivs der deutschen jugendbewegung (Wizenhausen: StiftungJugendburg Ludwigstein, 1986), Bd 15/19841985, pp.87-108.
3. M.E.P. de Ras, Korper, Eros und weibliche Kultur. Mddchen im Wandervogel und in der Bundischen jugend 1900-1933 (Centaurus: Pfaffenweiler, 1988).
4. De Ras, 1984-5, op cit, p. 89.
5. C. Buhler, Das Seeleleben des Jugendlichen Uena: 1929) (1 st ed., 1921), p, 167.
6. E. Spranger, Psychologie des Jugendalters (Leipzig: 1929).
7. Jo van Ammers-Kuller, Twaalf interessante vrouwen (Arnsterdam: 1933).
8. C. Biffiler, "Jugendtagebuch und Lebenslauf, Zwei Miidehentagebiicher nut einer Einle-itung," in: Quellen und Studien zurjugendkunde (Jena: 1932).
9. Buhler 1929, op cit, p. 167.
10. Alt-Wandervogel Monatsschrift, Heft 8/9,1919.
11, H. Buhler, Werke und Tage, Geschichte eines Denkers (Munchen: 1953) (1st edition, 1918).
12. Ibid.