In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

392 CODES COLLAPSED
young teacher named Franzi Mittringer. Although Kisch describes Stefan
and Franzi as surprisingly sympathetic to Redl's feelings, the "legitimate"
couple quite naturally-and quite cruelly-suggest that Redl pay the
legal fees for their wedding. The plot subsequently confirms the generally
accepted image of homosexual love, even if Kisch ends up presenting
Redl as a tragic hero. Promising Stefan lavish gifts and unheard-of
military promotions, Redl manages to buy back his lover's affection for
a brief time. [see Automobiles] Meanwhile, however, it has become
apparent that the Russian secret service, aware of Redl's homosexuality,
has forced him to assume the role of double agent. When the Austrian
police confront him with evidence of his treason, Redl commits suicide,
leaving the way clear for Franzi and Stefan's marriage.
No treatment of male homosexuality ever questions the assumption
that it is an "anomaly" which, in one way or another, must be repressed
for the good of society. Having hit bottom in the social hierarchy of
Buenos Aires, Silvio Astier, the sixteen-year-old protagonist of Roberto
Arlt's novel El juguete rabioso (The Furious Toy), shares a room in an
asylum with a filthy man of uncertain age who confesses he is tormented
by the desire to become a woman. By way of self-apology, he explains
that he comes from a rich family but was "perverted" to homosexual
practice by a private teacher. The novelist's double message is unambiguous:
homosexuals are effeminate, and nobody is born homosexual.
Once Silvio Astier has established a hierarchical relation with his new
acquaintance by proving his superior physical force, he can afford to
take a less aggressive tone in their conversation: "Why don't you go to
some doctor, ... some specialist in nervous disorders?" (Arlt, 93). Such
condescending recommendations for medical or psychological treatment
are the most "tolerant" reactions that homosexuals can expect from the
more enlightened strata of society. In its Almanach for the year 1926along
with essays by Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse,
Stefan Zweig, and others-the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag
publishes an article by Dr. Oskar Fischer, a pastor from Zurich, who
offers detailed instructions for sexual education from a perspective that
is surprisingly similar to that of Silvio Astier in Arlt's novel: "Many
parents have no clear picture of how much unhappiness sexual deviance
produces. If they only knew about the sufferings of so many homosexuals,
sadists, masochists, fetishists, and other sexual perverts, and if they
understood how closely pathological sexual desire and the inability to