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Where Personal Fate Turns to Public Affair: Homosexual Scandal and Social Order in Vienna, 1900–1910
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2010
Extract
Beginning in September, 1902, Karl Kraus turned his critical vision and poison pen toward what he saw as a misguided encroachment on private matters by the public organs of the state and the press. He saw it as more of an attack than an encroachment—he decried a campaign, conducted with “sword and fi re,” to battle “immorality,” a charge he saw hailing from diverse if linked quarters from legislature to judiciary to the daily newspaper of record. Th e whole off ensive, Kraus maintained, originated in a “grandiose misunderstanding,” a slip, a logical or even linguistic fallacy: instead of protecting society from the off ense of public indecency, the crusaders inverted their task when they sought to provoke public indignation in response to private morality.
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- Forum: Writing the History of Sexuality in Fin-de-Siècle Cisleithania
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- Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2007
References
1 Kraus, Karl, Sittlichkeit und Kriminalität (Vienna, 1923)Google Scholar, reprinted in Kraus, Karl, Schriften, vol. 1, ed. Wagenknecht, Christian (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 14.Google Scholar
2 Ibid., 15.
3 Kraus collected and published such announcements, especially those appearing in the bourgeois liberal press. See “Die Presse als Kupplerin,” ibid., 33–34.
4 Ibid., 28.
5 In a short note intended for the Spiegel in August, 1964, Theodor Adorno offers the most incisive available remark on the collection: “Der Titel ‘Sittlichkeit und Kriminalität’ wollte ursprünglich nichts, als zwei Zonen auseinanderhalten, von denen Kraus wußte, daß sie nicht bruchlos ineinander aufgehen; die der privaten Ethik, in der kein Mensch über einen anderen richten dürfe, und die der Legalität, welche Eigentum, Freiheit, Unmündigkeit zu schützen habe.” See Adorno, Theodor W., Noten zur Literatur, in Gesammelte Schrift en, vol. II, ed. Tiedemann, Rolf (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), 368.Google Scholar
6 Kraus, Sittlichkeit, 14.
7 The affair was so important that it has been recounted and analyzed many times, but the clearest interpretation of its political operations has come from Isabel V. Hull. See Hull, , The Entourage of Wilhelm II, 1888–1918 (Cambridge, 1982), chapter 5Google Scholar; see also Hull, , “Kaiser Wilhelm II and the ‘Liebenberg Circle’,” in Kaiser Wilhelm II: New Interpretations. The Corfu Papers, ed. Röhl, John C. G. (Cambridge, 1982), 193–220.Google Scholar
8 Cited in “Ein Homosexuellenprozess in Wien?” Oesterreichische Kriminal-Zeitung. Wochenblatt für öffentliches Leben, Kriminal- und Polizeiwesen (hereaft er Kriminal-Zeitung), 25 November 1907, 4.
9 Ibid., 5.
10 The reference here is to the well known—if much abused—thesis of Michel Foucault marking an epistemic shift from homosexual acts to identity. For the famous citation, see Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Hurley, Robert (New York, 1978), 43.Google Scholar
11 Laura Doan and Chris Waters, in a reader of translated documents on sexual science, concisely represent this dichotomy in relation to the legacy of sexology. See Doan, Laura and Waters, Chris, “Homosexualities: Introduction,” in Sexology Uncensored: The Documents of Sexual Science, ed. Bland, Lucy and Doan, Laura (Chicago, 1998), 41.Google Scholar
12 In a broad sense, the period can be seen to have begun already in the eighteenth century with the well known alterations in print media distribution, with actual sex scandals involving public figures taking off in the latter half of the nineteenth century. See, for example, Cohen, William A., Sex Scandal: The Private Parts of Victorian Fiction (Durham, 1996).Google Scholar
13 Vorwärts, 15 November 1902, 1.
14 Ibid.
15 See, for example, Document of 25 April 1905 by Regierungsrat Heirich Steger, Landesgericht für Strafsachen 1905 Fasz. 4586, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv (hereaft er cited as WSL), Vienna, Austria. Steger was the principle accuser, his son Gustav being one of the boys who claimed abuse.
16 Karl Kraus, “Erpressung” (April 1904), Sittlichkeit, 53.
17 Kraus, “Ethik und Strafgesetz,” Sittlichkeit, 67.
18 Kraus, “Erpressung,” Sittlichkeit, 54.
19 Kraus, “Die Kinderfreunde,” Sittlichkeit, 168.
20 See Neue Freie Presse, 27 October 1905, 10–11.
21 The Christian Social organ, the Reichspost, took a special interest in exposing lurid details of the case, sometimes referring to the accused as “der Jude Theodor Beer.” See Reichspost, 26 October 1905, 9; 27 October 1905, 9–10; 28 October 1905, 9; and 29 October 1905, 10. See also Das Vaterland, 26 October 1905, 6; and 27 October 1905, 5. Daniel Vyleta has broadly surveyed and analyzed other anti-Semitic press coverage of the Beer case, see Vyleta, D., “Jewish Crimes and Misdemeanours: In Search of Jewish Criminality (Germany and Austria, 1890–1914),” European History Quarterly 35, no. 2 (2005), 299–325, esp. 311–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22 The importance of this testimony was certainly stressed more in the newspaper reports than in the court file, and it was raised to the level of overarching theme in the melodramatic recapitulation of the affair in the broadside Das interessante Blatt. This was due no doubt in part to the sensational end to the story offered by Laura Beer's suicide after the guilty verdict. See “Das Ende der Affäre Beer,” Das interessante Blatt, 12 April 1906, 11.
23 Details of testimony that had been shielded from the public are drawn from the extensive penal records, found in two large files at the Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv, Landesgericht für Strafsachen 1905 Fasz. 4586 “Beeri [sic] Theodor Dr., par. 128, 129.” Vyleta did not have access to the files for his work; see “Jewish Crimes,” 323n88.
24 See, for example, Document of 29 March 1904, Strafsachen 1905 Fasz. 4586, WSL.
25 See, for example, Reichspost, 28 October 1905, 9.
26 In fact, the focus on Beer's hidden, “true” sexual identity was necessarily more important than establishing the fact of molestation, since the state prosecutor had chosen to prosecute on the basis of Paragraph 129(b)—that is, the prohibition of homosexuality—as opposed to 128, which dealt with child abuse. This was not lost on Kraus. See Kraus, Sittlichkeit, 182. This move displays nothing more clearly than the shift from harmful acts to perverse identities.
27 See, for example, “Kinderspital und Nachtcafé,” and “Prostitution und Polizei,” Kriminal-Zeitung, 18 July 1907, 1–4; “Die Prostitution in Wien,” Kriminal-Zeitung, 26 August 1907, 4–5; but such reports would appear in every issue around this time.
28 See, for example, the issues of the Kriminal-Zeitung beginning in August 1907, which have pederasty, the reform of Paragraph 129b, or male prostitution as major themes. The newspaper's attention to the homosexual underworld of Vienna was among its most important editorial decisions, which contributed not only to the massive increase in its circulation, but also to the regular censorship of the weekly and finally to the prosecution of its editors and the forced cessation of publication.
29 Kriminal-Zeitung, 19 August 1907, 6–7.
30 Ibid.
31 I deal extensively with these letters to the editor in another article, “The Wrath of the ‘Countess Merviola’: Tabloid Exposé and the Emergence of Homosexual Subjects in Vienna 1907,” in Sexuality in Austria, ed. Bischof, Günter, Pelinka, Anton, and Herzog, Dagmar, Contemporary Austrian Studies, 15 (New Brunswick, 2006).Google Scholar
32 Kriminal-Zeitung, 26 August 1907, 6.
33 ”Eine Nacht unter liebenden Männern,” Kriminal-Zeitung, 26 August 1907, 5–6.