Männerphantasien

Drawing on Freikorps literature from the 1920s, he perceptively traced the destructive self-image and view of women held by the “soldierly man” and, by intertwining sexuality, gender, and violence, shed new light on the rise of National Socialism.

Some 45 years after its initial publication, director Theresa Thomasberger adapts Theweleit’s work as a spoken text for the stage:

For her and her team, this epoch-making study serves as the foundation for an examination of contemporary manifestations of fascist masculinity—ranging from the devaluation of women* in media-shaped reality to current, abysmal forms of collectivity. For while the ideal of the “strong man” seems outdated on the one hand, wars give rise to new warrior figures; self-empowered hordes storm political institutions and fuel the authoritarian backlash.

Even online, equality is perceived as oppression: For instance, the incel community—men living without sex against their will—believes it has a right to women and sexuality based on its gender; angry alpha males and misogynistic “pick-up masters” invoke unattainable ideals of masculinity while simultaneously despairing over them. Instead of declaring these ideals to be the problem, fear of feminist resistance—which is simultaneously gaining great momentum—is being stoked.

• How do Theweleit’s writings resonate today?
• What points of connection do they offer?

To explore this, the playwrights Svenja Viola Bungarten, Ivana Sokola, and Gerhild Steinbuch have expanded upon these male fantasies in their texts and reimagined them from contemporary, female perspectives. Gerhild Steinbuch’s text portrays, in poetic language, the mother of a perpetrator: a woman whose son commits sexual violence against women, who becomes a perpetrator himself, and thereby shatters both his mother’s self-image and how others perceive her.

In Ivana Sokola’s piece, an exhausted male chorus questions its own place in society and searches for its identity among the choir, the volunteer fire department, and fishing trips.

Svenja Viola Bungarten explores the far-right fringes of internet culture: in her text, an influencer tells her followers about her personal transformation—from “raging feminist” to “trad wife.”