Frame and Preparation
Alf
Conceptual Frames and Background
- Weimar Republic
- World War I
- Adolescence
- Gymnasium/education
- Homosexual emancipation movement
- Coming out & identity
Introduction
This lesson engages with Bruno Vogel’s most well-known novel, Alf (1929), a pacifist novel that centers around a romance between two teenage boys, one of whom dies in World War I, and which politicizes this death as a call for the civil rights of homosexual men, reading the excerpt below can help us “queer” World War I. Students can encounter a different story about the war, one in which gay male affect and identity is centered. A class discussion can revolve around numerous topics: the formation of gay identity, the role of the individual to change society, the effects of war on gay men, etc. A more complex image of the war can arise, a war that is both productive for the formation of gay identity and political consciousness, yet still resulting in death and personal pain.
Learning Goals
Since the attached excerpt has been glossed and annotated to ease students’ reading, more attention can be paid to the content of the text. Thus, culturally, the goals are to view World War I and warfare more generally from a queer perspective, identifying both opportunities and pitfalls for queer male soldiers. Linguistically, students will be challenged to read novelistic prose and more complex German than what they would have encountered in a textbook or a “artificial” text made for language learners; they will thus come away with a better understanding of advanced grammar, vocabulary, and syntax. Moreover, this activity can be paired with a lesson on prepositions, as there are many in the excerpt.
Preparation
Although written in 1929, the novel takes place during World War I, so students should have a basic understanding of the causes, course, and effects of the war, especially on the home front.
The author was a dedicated homosexual activist in the late 1920s, and the message of the novel is accordingly explicitly political and civically didactic. A basic overview of the Weimar homosexual rights movement, its different personalities, organizations, and strains of thought will help the students contextualize the novel in its wider history.
Much of the novel takes place in a Wilhelmine-era gymnasium, with its specific vocabulary, which is entirely foreign to non-German readers. An overview of these words concerning the hierarchy, structure, and personnel is necessary.
Materials
Below you will find scans for 8 pages from the novel.
The word document below, features a shorter excerpt that is more suited for a less advanced class. It has been glossed and annotated to ease students’ reading, so that more attention can be paid to the content of the text.
Discussion
Broad Discussion
Here are some questions to begin a discussion of this text:
- How do the two lovers, Alf and Felix, describe their feelings for each other and their identities? What words do they use? What cultural traditions do they rely on to inform themselves about their sexuality?
- What are the various reactions of the minor characters to the boys’ relationship? What can this tell us about the acceptance of homosexuality during the early twentieth century?
- What is the importance of medical and ancient Greek discourses in the novel?
- How do you interpret the political proclamations at the end of the novel, after Felix has learned of Alf’s death?
- We can assume that Felix grows up to be a homosexual activist during the Weimar Republic—with which organizations do you think he would work? Knowing what we do about the movement during this period, what would be his politics?
- Since the novel addresses its readers through the figure of Felix, what do you think the message is? How does the author try to effect his readers beliefs and actions?
Focused Discussion:
Below is an additional discussion with a focus on the role of reading and literature in the development of gay identity and sexual identity more generally. This discussion requires the full PDF scan, not the glossed excerpt.
The first pages (pg. 80-84 in the text) depict the main character, Felix, discovering in a bookstore the German legal code, in which he finds Paragraph 175, the law that criminalizes sodomy. Although before this moment he has had an innocently positive view of his homosexual relationship with his classmate Alf, his entire worldview is changed due to the power of the printed word. Convinced that he is sick and what he’s been doing with his lover is a crime, he breaks off their relationship, which sends Alf to enroll as a solider in World War I.
The second half (pg. 170-172 in the text) depict Felix’s reawakening after reading Freud and Magnus Hirschfeld (the leader of the homosexual movement in Germany), realizing that what is sick is not he but the law. He becomes emancipated and develops a strident self-image as a proud homosexual. Again, we see how literature can drastically change someone’s identity and relation to one’s sexuality.
The activity around these two passages can be a mixture of small-group or partner discussion and large group discussions. After framing the story, have students read the scans for homework. Then, ask students to think about a time when a text or another cultural object (film, song, artwork, etc.) played a determinative role in their own identities as young adults. Thus connecting the book to their own lives, the instructor can lead a discussion about the book itself, asking how homosexuality is articulated in the novel by both Felix and its intertexts:
- What sorts of words, concepts, and values are employed in both passages, and to what effects?
- How does reading play a role in identity formation?
- What are the relations between “real life” and literature?
Developed by Domenic Desocio.