In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

308 CODES
Breuer makes fun of this situation in which the ideal-or the threat-of
a new female identity begins to transform traditional gender stereotypes
into an object of intense nostalgic desire. Breuer's parody describes, in
strangely broken German, the outsize dimensions of a woman [see Sobriety
vs. Exuberance] who offers the kind of protection to her male
partner which a relationship between two independent persons must
exclude. Breuer's nightmarish ideal of the female partner (which, he
suggests teasingly, the new demand for gender equality seems to imply)
is meant to converge with the archaic dream of an earth mother: "And
now I'm looking for a woman. Must be heavy and big, no less than six
foot. Trace of a mustache, good at cooking and sewing. No bobbed hair.
Preferably in red polka-dot dress, face to match, and above all healthy.
Hair black with gray streaks, breasts large. Hands especially must be fat
and greasy ... Name can only be Maria. Above all must have fine soul,
feeling for what is tender, understanding for everything, such that I can
weep out my pain on her bosom ... Must enjoy backpacking and always
bring a backpack on walks" (Wechselwirkungen, 331). Breuer's
intuition is correct: none of the mother figures whose images are associated
with the new institution of Mother's Day (von Soden and Schmidt,
97) has bobbed hair. If ideal mothers ever did, Adolf Hitler would not
recall the days between the death of his "respected" father and that of
his "beloved" mother with such intense longing: "Those were the happiest
days of my life; they seemed like a dream to me, and so they were.
Two years later, my mother's death put a sudden end to all those delightful
plans. It came at the end of a long and painful illness that had seemed
fatal from the very beginning. Nevertheless, it was a terrible shock to me.
I respected my father, but I loved my mother" (Hitler, 16).
Hitler is certainly not the only male writer who worships his mother
and thus grants women only one other role-that of prostitute. Prostitutes,
for him, are "girls" who are unable to become mothers because
they have had contact with Jews. "In no other city of western Europe
could the relationship between Jewry and prostitution, and even now the
white slave traffic, be studied better than in Vienna, with the possible
exception of the seaports of southern France. When walking at night
through the streets and alleys of Leopoldsstadt, one could witness at
every step things that were unknown to the greater part of the German
nation" (Hitler, 63). The plot of Fritz Lang's film Metropolis depends on