Consuming Masculinity: Toys and Boys in Wilhelmine Germany

Summary

In 1895, the Wegweiser für die Spielwarenindustrie, the largest trade journal for toy producers, published a peculiar article about middleclass masculine values. The author compares the figure of the traditionalist social climber with that of the honorable entrepreneur: the former, he suggests, uses his money to find Junker husbands for his daughters and to get his son a reserve officer posting; but the entrepreneur is a virile man, a master of technology, dedicated to the betterment of his society. This article for toy producers shows that by 1890 (far earlier than is generally accepted), consumer culture was allowing Germans to participate in debates about what George Mosse referred to as “stereotypical masculinity.”

Debates about masculinity in Germany around 1900 were more than academic exercises. The German territories changed radically between 1850 and 1900, and developments such as railroads, industrialization, urbanization, and the rise of mass movements are easy to document. Equally important transformations were taking place in cultural spheres. Doubtless this upheaval left many Germans bewildered, but not to the point of abandoning any attempt to influence society: Modris Eksteins refers to Germany as the “modernist nation par-excellence,” whose citizens believed that they could engage with one another and create an ideal society. One way in which Germans shaped their society was via consumption, not least of toy miniatures. By 1900, most factory-made toys suggested that the “stereotypical” male in Germany was from the middle classes, physically fit, at ease with technology, a citizen-soldier, and the head of a household.

The picture is more complicated than it seems, however. Alternative visions of masculinity competed in a marketplace of ideas. Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935), for example, argued that gay men could be masculine even though they would never conceive children or head a household. The association representing homosexuals, the Wissenschaftlich- humanitäre Komitee, reasoned that they could defend the nation, and came out strongly in favor of the war. Early Social Democrats did not necessarily idealize what they saw as the traits of the working-class man such as physical labor, drinking or mastery of the household; they redefined the ideal man as a public speaker who defended principles; some members also supported women campaigning to reform traditional middle-class visions of marriage. A number of artists and intellectuals embraced a notion of masculinity that envisioned a humanistic thinker developing nurturing solutions to Germany's many social problems.