Christopher Paul Graves

 

As John Sandford points out in The New German Cinema, the political and economic interests of the Western Allies, particularly America, severely hampered the revitalization of German cinema in the West immediately following World War II.[1] In spite of this damaging paternalism on the part of the Allies, several promising films were produced, many of which, Sandford explains, sought to understand and appraise what occurred in Germany under the Third Reich. However, Sandford argues that none were able to clearly explicate the socio-historical mechanisms underlying the genesis of National Socialism. [2] With the economic demise of “Opas Kino” brought about by the introduction of television, a younger generation of filmmakers were provided with a space to recreate German cinema, and in 1966, official international recognition of New German Cinema was secured with, among other films, Volker Schlöndorff’s Young Törless (1966). [3] Set in an Austrian military academy during the fin de siècle, the film focuses on Törless, a withdrawn, reflective cadet, as he struggles over his involvement in the secret, sadistic torturing of another classmate, Basini, by two of his friends, Beineberg and Reiting.

In Young Törless, Schlöndorff provided what was lacking in West German film up to that date: an incisive psychological and historical examination of the genesis of National Socialism. Indeed, there is widespread agreement among scholars that Schlöndorff’s adaptation of Robert Musil’s 1906 novella, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß, fulfilled precisely this historical need.

However, what is lacking among scholarly accounts of Young Törless is a close examination of the dynamics at work in the film that are products of National Socialism. Hildburg Herbst, in “Younger Torless [sic]: Schlöndorff’s Film Adaptation of Musil’s Novella,” notices a similar lack, but she only briefly outlines such dynamics. [4] Indeed, many scholars seem content with simply typologizing characters in Young Törless, mapping such typologies onto non-fictional types in the Third Reich, and arguing that Törless is a parable of National Socialism. For instance, Hans Günther Pflaum in Germany on Film argues that Schlöndorff consciously incorporates his knowledge of Nazi rule in Young Törless, depicting the terror exerted by the young tormentors Beineberg and Reiting, the violence done to the Jews, represented by the torturing of Basini, and the role of “innocent” citizens such as Törless in allowing the genocide of the Jews. [5] While I support such a comparison, I do take issue with any comparison that leaves aside the crucial question addressed by Schlöndorff’s Young Törless: what are the specific historical and psychological constellations at work in the dynamics between Beineberg, Reiting, Törless and Basini that are productive of Nazism?

Using George L. Mosse’s The Image of Man, a historical treatment of the solidification of modern masculinity in western Europe, this essay argues that central to the fascist dynamics at work between Törless, Basini, Beineberg and Reiting is an uncompromising masculinity that codifies through violence a binary between the masculine type and its countertype. After situating this dynamic in its presupposition—the failure of institutions such as the school to understand, incorporate, and work through such aggressiveness—I chart how both Törless and Basini, as countertypes, are compelled to perform masculinity given the threat of bodily violence posed to them by Beineberg and Reiting, both as representative of the newly developing fascist man. After drawing on Mosse’s conceptualization of the Männerbund to explain the subsequent expulsion of Basini from the community of men, I argue through cultural historian Klaus Theweleit’s psychoanalysis of fascism in Male Fantasies that the sexual and bodily violence perpetrated against Basini serves to maintain and consolidate the masculine heterosexuality of Reiting. Although Törless is implicated as an ambivalent spectator to Basini’s torture, I explore how his lived, embodied engagement with Basini apart from Beineberg and Reiting serves as the material presupposition to an ethical maturity that rejects fascist masculinity.

1. The Codification of Masculinity: The Boarding School and Masculinity’s Countertype

1.1 The Boarding School as Enforcer of Masculine Normativity

Although a number of scholars, such as Hans-Bernhard Moeller and George Lellis, have rightly situated Young Törless in the genre of adolescent boarding school narratives,[6] it is equally necessary to interrogate the function of the boarding school in the film: it is an institution whose underlying purpose is the enforcement of masculine normativity. This understanding of the boarding school is supported by Mosse, who argues that in pre-World War I Germany, students’ curriculum, unlike that of their British counterparts, was firmly rooted in a military tradition that inculcated students in masculine virtues such as bravery and nationalistic ideals of serving the fatherland.[7] Although schooling in Germany, like that in England, sought to restrain unbridled aggressiveness with bourgeois sensibilities of fair play and compassion, Mosse underlines that “The German social structures and political traditions differed from those of England, giving a sharper edge to the functioning of German masculinity.”[8]

Nearly all of these elements in Mosse’s analysis are present in the boarding school in Young Törless. Although explicit schooling in military and nationalistic matters is absent in the film, along with any training in chivalry, one still clearly discerns the enforcement of military discipline.

As Hildburg Herbst argues, “image upon image stresses uniformity, dehumanization” in the film, particularly in regard to the totalizing regulation of all aspects of the students’ lives which robs them of their individuality.[9] One scene in particular reflects Herbst’s argument: during the first scene in class, the bell sharply rings; however, the students remain seated despite their noticeable anxiousness to be free. With the camera positioned mid-level at the back of class, mimicking the position and perspective of a student, the professor, who is center, slowly folds his newspaper back up and stands up straight. The students immediately follow his movements and stand up with rigid backs. In line with Herbst’s argument, this scene reveals the molding of students into a uniform, disciplined body. In light of Mosse’s analysis, this scene also crystallizes not only the hierarchical relationship between professor and student, but also the nationalistic ideal of serving the fatherland, represented by the professor. Even more, drawing on the art print that Törless sees before the end of class bell—one of, presumably, Roman soldiers who are meeting two frightened women—one can infer that this school stresses, at least ideally, the need to restrain masculine aggressiveness with chivalry because, far from attacking the women, the bearing of the solider in front, particularly his outstretched hand, communicates friendship toward the stereotypically defenseless.

Despite this pedagogical and political goal, Meghan Goder in “Törless as Extrovert: Schlöndorff’s Variations on Musil’s Novella” rightly highlights the antiquated and ineffective nature of the school. She writes that Schlöndorff “depicts a situation where hollow and decaying discipline can no longer control the perverse ideas it helped to foster: indeed, it never even suspects them, and can not understand them when they are revealed.”[10] For example, in the very same scene above, Törless watches curiously as Reiting, with a sinister smile, catches a fly. In a prolonged, extreme close-up, indicating the importance of what follows, Reiting attempts to keep it within a circle he draws with his ink pen; however, when it does not conform to his demands, he kills it. It is highly significant, first, that the killing of the fly is accomplished with a pen on Reiting’s paper, indicating that he is contemptuous of the tools of enlightenment culture. Second, that he kills the fly in the very same class where classics such as that of Horace are being taught expresses how the school is ineffectual in its goal of Bildung. Even more, Reiting kills the fly in a public space without fear of disapproval by his classmates, highlighting how his actions are socially acceptable, at least implicitly.

In regard to this last dynamic, Elizabeth C. Hamilton, in “Imaginary Bridges: Politics and Film Art in Robert Musil’s Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß and Volker Schlöndorff’s Der junge Törleß,” underscores the pervasiveness of the normalization of violence in the school, analyzing how Schlöndorff, unlike Musil, “sets many of the most aggressive and abusive dialogues from the novel in overtly public places,” a change used to facilitate among viewers condemnation of the social order which allows violence against Basini.[11] Although the scene in question concerns not explicitly aggressive dialogue but Reiting’s killing of a fly, his actions are still performed in the kind of public setting Hamilton analyzes. Importantly, this scene, in part, lays the groundwork for the later entrenchment of fascist masculinity: insofar as the established institutional structure of the school is weak and unable to successfully incorporate and work through destructive ideologies, then the lethal masculinity practiced by Beineberg and Reiting will develop without deterrence.

While one could regard the above analysis as a case of over-interpretation that magnifies the importance of an apparently isolated incident, one must pay attention to the larger filmic context in which this scene unfolds. First, Hans-Bernhard Moeller and George Lellis, in their chapter on Young Törless in Volker Schlöndorff’s Cinema: Adaptation, Politics, and the “Movie Appropriate,” stress that “Animal metaphors abound in Schlöndorff’s Törless and reflect the sadism of Beineberg and Reiting.”[12] Moeller and Lellis clarify that Schlöndorff’s systematic use of animal metaphors in Young Törless signifies both the explicit torturing of animals by Reiting as well as how Beineberg and Reiting animalize Basini through their verbal and bodily abuse of him.[13] Thus, although Reiting tortures a fly and not an animal, one must read the scene in question as symptomatic of the more pervasive sadism that Moeller and Lellis analyze.

Second, to stress how the above scene intimates a fascist mode of masculinity is not out of place either. Indeed, Reiting’s use of a circle drawn by his pen to enclose the fly represents one instance of Schlöndorff’s utilization of the circle as a leitmotif. As Moeller and Lellis reveal, “Schlöndorff has developed confining circles into a subnetwork of film images that are frequently integrated with the animal leitmotifs.”[14] Thus, as will be clarified later, the circle, such as Reiting draws, is a metaphor for how fascist masculinity codifies itself and makes itself whole by the violent exclusion of the other outside their community, i.e. outside their circle. This violence is clearly foreshadowed by Reiting’s killing of the fly when it does not conform to his wish for it to stay within the circle.

Lastly, the interpretation that the school is unable to recognize and work through the kind of aggressiveness Reiting demonstrates in class becomes more comprehensible once it is placed in context. As Elizabeth C. Hamilton argues, a central theme of Young Törless is alienation between generations: “neither the teachers nor the lessons they teach are capable of stopping the violence” practiced by Beineberg and Reiting.[15] Thus, in the scene above, Hamilton draws attention to the teacher’s amputated leg, “a visual metaphor for the crippled foundations of the educational institution.”[16] In the present analysis, this metaphor not only dramatizes how the school is unable to counteract the beginnings of Reiting’s and Beineberg’s aggressiveness, but also indicates the gulf that separates them from their teachers insofar as Reiting’s and Beineberg’s investment in masculine aggressiveness and virility is opposed by the teacher’s bodily disfigurement, making him unable to be a model for either.

1.2 The Binary of the Masculine and Feminine

Even before Törless and his comrades arrive at school, they are already subjects of masculine normativity. This is strikingly clear in the opening scene when Törless accompanies his father and mother to their train, leaving him to walk with his classmates to the school. Importantly, Törless is physically and spatially attached to his mother: they are both center, flanked on either side by a number of schoolboys, and she has her hands wrapped around his right arm. In this medium level tracking shot, Törless is distanced from his father who proceeds to walk past Törless in the company of Beineberg, leaving Törless and his mother behind. According to the father, because “something solid and decisive about [Beineberg] won [him] over instantly,” the father trusts him to look after his son whom he regards as “insecure and unbalanced.”

Masculine normativity is working in this scene in multiple ways. First, Mosse argues that a core component of masculine normativity was the specular significance of the male body. In particular, masculinity codified itself with reference to Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s Greek-inspired aesthetics: for Winckelmann, “the Greeks exemplified the ideal of human beauty, and such beauty, in turn, symbolized the proper moral posture.”[17] Thus, the moral worth of a man became inextricably linked to whether his body was beautiful or not. Although, of course, Beineberg is clothed in his student’s uniform, one must pay close attention to the father’s words, which imply that Beineberg’s bodily mien communicated strength. This the father recognized instantly without any direct communication, which supports the idea that it was the symbolic significance of Beineberg’s body that captivated the father. In addition, in taking on the role of Törless’s guardian, Beineberg demonstrates his—apparent—chivalry. As Mosse asserts, “The adjustment of . . . aristocratic ideas to middle-class sensibilities, at least from the eighteenth century onward, was an important step in the construction of modern masculinity.”18 Mosse writes that the chivalry of the aristocracy was stripped of its violent trappings by the bourgeoisie and imbued with moral imperatives such as compassion and courage.[19] This is precisely the historical trend Beineberg’s actions are situated in: by accepting—at least in the father’s eyes—the role of protector, Beineberg is appealing to modern dimensions of masculinity.

Of course, one must carefully distinguish between Beineberg’s dissimulated chivalry and his later overt aggressiveness, a distinction that maps onto a disjunction between the different masculinities of Beineberg and Törless’s father. This cross-generational crisis is emphasized by Eric Rentschler in “Specularity and Spectacle: Schlöndorff’s Young Törless (1966)”: “[Musil’s work] in essence depicts the collapse of certain bourgeois foundations and shows the abyss lying beneath the thin veneer of civility and culture.”[20] Hildburg Herbst gives this dynamic a more historically sensitive grounding when she situates Young Törless in the “still rigid, but already crumbling world of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy at the turn of the century.”[21] The coming dissolution of the hitherto secure monarchical foundation in Austria-Hungary was an important factor in the crisis represented between Beineberg and Törless’s father. As Michael Kane points out in Modern Men: Mapping Masculinity in English and German Literature, 1880-1930:

[Q]uestions concerning the type of relations between men that was to be desired and in what political structure these relations might find their expression were being debated in German-speaking lands, the issue having become particularly topical after the revolution and sudden dissolution of the monarchies of the German and Austrian empires.[22]

As Kane elaborates, drawing on an essay written by Paul Federn in 1919, the possibility of creating a non-patriarchal order after the revolution was hindered because patriarchy remained embedded within the larger familial and governmental structures.[23] The prophetic possibility remained for Federn that “those who have usurped one father figure will be inclined to wait around for the appearance of another father figure.”[24] Thus, Young Törless foreshadows a time of crisis between generations: while the father holds onto older bourgeois ideals, Beineberg is antagonistic to such older ideals grounded in moral imperatives, a process facilitated by the ineffective school system outlined above.

More particularly, Beineberg’s antagonism towards the school is pictured later when he mocks the teachers in front of Törless. Beineberg says, “I know these people, stuffed full of formulas they learned by rote just like the priest learns his catechism. Or do you think the world spirit would give these bloodless creatures a peek under her skirts?” This pronouncement vividly dramatizes Beineberg’s understanding that the school is decadent—professors are “bloodless” and, hence, countertypes to masculine virility. Even more, Beineberg, in Hegelian language, intimates that he, having overcome the schools antiquated patriarchy, will reground the social order on the Männerbund, or male society, giving it a world-historical destiny, language which clearly harkens to that voiced by National Socialism in relation to the Sonderweg, or special path, of Germany. That it is, indeed, a Männerbund to be constructed is evidenced in Beineberg suggesting that he, and not the teachers, will be allowed “a peek under [the world spirit’s] skirts,” a suggestion laden with encoded sexual aggression.

In opposition to Beineberg, however, is Törless, who represents what Mosse calls a countertype to masculine normativity. As Mosse explains, “Those who stood outside or were marginalized by society provided a countertype that reflected, as in a convex mirror, the reverse of the social norm.”[25] In particular, Mosse argues that feminine men were regarded as especially pernicious by the masculine social order because of their ambiguity, their blending of what should have been rigidly separated—masculinity and femininity.[26] A true man, according to source material drawn by Mosse from Otto Weiniger’s Geschlecht und Charakter, has steeled his body and mind, having willfully overcome any feminine traits.[27] Törless, however, is immediately feminized. In opposition to Beineberg’s “solidness,” Törless is described as “insecure,” and, in his attachment to his mother, he is thereby excluded from the male camaraderie shared by his father and Beineberg.

Even more in line with Mosse’s analysis, Törless is described as “unbalanced.” This reflects Törless’s femininity because, as Mosse argues, men were judged according to Winckelmann’s aesthetics, which stressed how Greek youths ideally “were meant to control their passions.”[28] In this way, both the body and mind must exemplify moderation and tranquility. Törless, however, is abnormalized as “unbalanced,” as lacking moderation by his father because he fails to conform to the masculine order, and in seeking Beineberg’s assistance, Törless’s father is implicitly hoping to normalize Törless and erase his difference. Even before this exchange, however, the danger of normalization for Törless is foreshadowed in the grouping of boys who surround on either side his mother and him while they are walking, illustrating the increasing threat of masculine normativity. Although Eric Rentschler argues for a similar interpretation—that the framing of Törless and his mother, when they embrace and say goodbye, with Reiting on their left, signals a threat to Törless’s security—he neglects to clarify this threat as one of masculinity on difference[.29]

2. The Normalization of the Countertype: Törless’s and Basini’s Performance of Masculinity

2.1 Törless and the Necessity of Performance

Many accounts of Young Törless stress Törless’s complicity in the torturing of Basini. For example, Eric Rentschler situates Törless in the tradition of German idealism: just as Törless watches the torturing of Basini as if it were merely a psychological projection, the tradition of idealism facilitated the rise of National Socialism because of its obliviousness to concrete socio-political events.[30] While this propensity in Törless is certainly present, I would like to better contextualize this propensity, investigating the specific psychological and historical reason that leads Törless to take on this role. The reason lies precisely in the immediate threat faced by countertypes from masculinity.

In a sequence following the departure of Törless’s parents, there is a tracking shot focused closely on Törless’s face as he and the other students walk to school. As moody, melancholic music is heard in the background, accentuating Törless’s isolation, one sees that Törless’s facial features are marked by anxiety and fear: his brow is wrinkled, his eyes are downcast, his mouth is in a frown. This anxiety is soon justified: as the camera’s focus zooms out to make a long shot, Beineberg is shown to be behind Törless, and he intentionally runs into Törless with his shoulder, telling Törless to “Watch it, idiot!” to which Törless responds, “Leave me alone.” Already the threat Törless faces because of his difference is revealed. Just as Mosse argues that masculine normativity needed a foil against which it could define itself,[31] the masculinity of Beineberg requires a similar foil, in this case Törless. However, this scene reveals more than just defining, in an ideal way, a countertype: it reveals the close association between masculinity and physical aggression. That is, not only is Törless subject to exclusion from the community of men, but also this exclusion will be solidified by violence. Thus, already a masculinity beyond one based on 18th and 19th codes of chivalry is in play.

While one could call into question this interpretation and simply dismiss Beineberg’s aggression as mischievousness, such an understanding legitimizes encoded forms of masculine aggression and fails to see the significance of Beineberg’s actions, following as they do his word to Törless’s father that he will protect Törless. Finally, one must interpret Beineberg’s action here as foreshadowing his later overt physical violence against Basini—and not encapsulating in and by itself the totality of his masculinity.

Given this immediate threat, the need for Törless to perform masculinity becomes a dire necessity. As Mosse underscores, in light of such threats, countertypes’ “options were limited to a denial of their identity or its co-optation by the acceptable norm.”[32] Countertypes, then, were compelled to deny their difference and perform according to the norm set by masculinity. There are several scenes in Young Törless that reveal such performance. In the classroom scene already mentioned, the students proceed to stand up. In a medium close-up, we see Törless and Beineberg side-by-side, the former on Beineberg’s right. While Beineberg’s face exudes boredom, Törless looks over and says “Yet another day to tell our grandchildren about.” Beineberg, in turn, looks toward Törless with an amused expression. This expression turns into a full grin after a shot/reverse shot between the professor and Törless, the former wanting to know what Törless said. When Törless repeats to the professor his quip, Beineberg looks on approvingly.

It is significant, first, that Törless and Beineberg are closely framed together, whereas in the scene mentioned before where Beineberg pushes Törless, they are framed by a long shot that includes a number of other schoolboys. While framing them closely together communicates Törless’ desire for solidarity with Beineberg, the previous long shot communicates Törless’ distance from Beineberg and the other men. Törless’s words are also revealing: in invoking his future as a grandparent, he demonstrates to Beineberg the literal potency of his masculinity. Closely tied to this appeal is Törless’s performance of bravery and courage in relation to a perceived authoritarian professor. Such a performance is closely linked with Törless’s need to gain the respect of Beineberg, as indicated in Törless speaking his words to the latter. Indeed, a key component of masculinity in the school system was “the camaraderie among students in the face of their oppressors.”[33] Such camaraderie and the framing of Törless and Beineberg signal the beginning of an informal Männerbund, or, according to Mosse, an all-male group that, although lacking institutionalization and an overarching pedagogical purpose, served to educated adolescents and men in manliness.[34] Importantly, Törless’s desire for social inclusion reveals a role reversal on his part: whereas before he was the victim of Beineberg, now he must take on the role of aggressor if he is to prove himself to Beineberg and Reiting.

2.2 Basini: With/out Honor

The danger faced by Törless is paralleled with the threat Basini faces. Although there are significant differences between the two, Basini also attempts to perform masculinity. Before the classroom scene above, Beineberg, Reiting, Basini and Törless visit the Gasthaus nearby the school. Once there, in an open question posed by the mistress of the house as to whether the schoolboys would like a drink, Basini, who is then cut to by the camera in a medium close-up, offers, quite casually, to purchase wine not only for his comrades, but also for the rest of the patrons, the camera then panning right to focus upon the gratitude of the older patrons. By offering to pay for everyone’s drinks, Basini is asserting, in a sublimated way, not only his social status in regard to Beineberg and Reiting, but also his superiority insofar as his gift is unreturned. In a way, this situation is reminiscent of the function of duels in the development of masculinity. Mosse writes, “The duel strengthened the feeling of autonomy, or personality, but also that of class and caste.”[35] Although deadly force remained a possibility in the duel, “taking into account middle-class sensibilities, it usually dressed up this force in moral considerations of justice and virtue.”[36] The duel, then, served to affirm the participants’ social status and their commitment to moral imperatives. Of course, this comparison with dueling and Basini’s actions is not literal, but metaphorical: though Basini is not literally dueling, his actions belie a sublimated desire to assert not only that he is, indeed, worthy of being included within the company of men, but also, even more so, that he can be superior over such company through his virtuous gift-giving.

However, the need enforced upon him to perform masculinity leads to his exclusion. The above scene already foreshadows this. Immediately after purchasing drinks for everyone, he, again quite casually, places a bet in a game of dice with the mistress, to whom he loses. However, when this occurs, the camera remains fixed on the mistress, who sits beside Reiting, and, as the camera slowly zooms in on the expressions of both, one only hears Basini say loftily, “My tough luck. C’est la vie.” First, one can read this incident in line with the above analysis: Basini, in losing fairly and expressing no anger, demonstrates his ability to restrain any passions that might lead him to react angrily over his loss. Indeed, as stated, moderation and the taming of passions were critical components of the masculine norm as it became reworked by the rising bourgeoisie.[37] This moderation is further reinforced by the placement of the camera: by focusing not on Basini, but on the mistress and Reiting, Basini’s superiority is affirmed—indeed, no focus on Basini’s features is needed because there would be no anger to represent. Even more, the camera focuses on the mistress in the foreground and on Reiting in the background in order to underline their admiring looks, particularly that of the mistress. Thus, Basini’s status is affirmed.

But a different interpretation is possible, one which stresses how Basini lives without the honor deemed appropriate by masculinity. However, at the outset, it is important to stress a difference between the following interpretation of Basini and that given by Hildburg Herbst. According to Herbst, Basini is presented to viewers negatively: “He is a vain, smug show-off without morals and rather feminine with his pretty face, his wide hips, his waddling gait.”[38] This, however, precisely affirms that which is the object of critique in Young Törless—masculinity. Unfortunately, Herbst’s interpretation of Basini as ultimately complicitous in his torture because of his weaknesses is common among scholars.[39] Of course, Basini is, in a certain sense, without honor. This can be seen in the above scene. As already stated, the ability to sublimate aggression, maintain physical and mental composure, and practice manly virtues such as pride were key to the morality of masculinity. There were those, however, taken to be antithetical to this standard: “Those who were loose-living, without the proper moral standards, cut at the roots of society, threatening to destroy its tender fabric.”[40] This practice of vice is already present in the scene where Basini gambles. Indeed, in gambling recklessly, he demonstrates his inability to practice moderation. Additionally, although he cannot afford to purchase a round of wine for his schoolmates, as we discover later, he does so anyway, revealing, again, his inability to restrain his passions.

Importantly, this event sets into motion a number of later events which demonstrate even further Basini’s inability to practice the right morality: because he has lost his money, he is not able to pay back his numerous debts to Reiting, among others, leading him not only to steal money from Beineberg, but also to “agreeing,” when his theft is discovered by Reiting, to obey Beineberg and Reiting blindly. This dynamic has parallels in Mosse’s analysis: the idea that committing vice leads into a vicious circle of more vice was voiced by the medical establishment in 18th century Europe, an establishment that was instrumental in constructing the countertype.[41] Indeed, one can already see masculinity’s medicalization of the subject in Törless being regarded as “unbalanced” by his father, a conception associated with the perceived dangers of nervousness and the fluidity of the feminine.[42] In any event, Basini’s “immorality” does not reveal any fault in him, as Herbst would have. Rather, Basini is compelled to practice vice—such as gambling—in his attempts to be included within the community of men. Put another way, “vice” is not an objective term, but one that is actively constructed by masculinity.

3. Fascist Masculinity and Violence: The Expulsion of Basini from the Männerbund

3.1 Basini’s “Crime” and the Crisis of Masculine Values

Basini’s “crime” of stealing from Beineberg demands analysis. Indeed, a number of scholars either take the crime as a self-evident event, or pass over the reason why such a crime justifies, at least in Beineberg’s and Reiting’s eyes, Basini’s torture. Of course, Basini did commit a “crime,” but that his stealing can be classified as a particular kind of “crime” presupposes a specific socio-historical worldview that creates and integrates into a metaphysical system notions of “good” and “bad.” At first glance, the reason why Basini’s actions justify his punishment for Beineberg, Reiting and even Törless appear to be grounded in pre-fascist masculinity, specifically the constellation of virtues codified by the bourgeoisie around the activity of dueling. Beside a test of a man’s social status, dueling also demanded such virtues as fairness, decency, and moderation.[43] While the practice of these virtues created the masculine type in part, the perceived inability to do so created the countertype to masculinity. Accordingly, Basini deserves punishment according to Beineberg, Reiting and Törless because, by “willfully” stealing, he has demonstrated his lack of moderation, truthfulness as well as fairness, all of which justify his exclusion from the community of men.

However, this interpretation does not adequately capture the motivations of Beineberg and Reiting. This is strikingly clear when Beineberg, Reiting and Törless are discussing Basini’s punishment in the attic of the boarding school. One already understands the significance of the space of the attic: in contrast to the wide-open plains in the opening of the film, the attic establishes a sense of enclosure, confinement as well as secrecy in relation to the established morality of the school. The bizarre music as all three enter the attic room largely amplifies how they are about to trespass onto forbidden territory. The subsequent mise-en-scène and the positioning of each characters reflects the inter-group dynamics of their Männerbund: Törless occupies the lower-right hand corner of the frame; Reiting occupies the left-hand corner in a position higher than that of Törless; and Beineberg, who is center, commands a chair and is thus higher than the other two. Accordingly, a clear hierarchy is established within their Männerbund. With this arrangement set and with shadows surrounding their circle, a dialogue ensues. Törless argues that insofar as Basini is a thief, he should be expelled from the institution. Reiting, however, criticizes Törless’s idealization of the institution, suggesting instead that much pleasure could be had of him if they did not report Basini immediately. Beineberg reveals his unconcern for the affair, merely indicating the appeal of torturing him for fun.

This exchange is reinforced by the bodily expressiveness of each. Törless is hugging his legs in a quasi-fetal position while he appeals to notions of justice. While his words reveal his vulnerability in regard to Reiting and Beineberg because of their contempt for justice, his huddled positioning as well as his low-position in the hierarchy further reinforces his vulnerability. Reiting, while criticizing the sacredness of the institution, sits leisurely back on his seat, which suggests his unconcern for what the proper morality would dictate Basini’s punishment to be. This sentiment is made concrete in his position in the group hierarchy, which is slightly higher than that of Törless. Beineberg’s body language largely mirrors that of Reiting; however, Beineberg’s mien suggests a more radical departure from normative bourgeois values: he remains distant and aloof throughout the entire conversation, even though it was his money which was stolen. While this laxity puts him on similar footing with Reiting’s contempt for bourgeois morality, he is elevated because he largely orchestrates Basini’s torture.

Beineberg’s laxity is reflected in his playful attitude towards sexual violence. When agreeing with Reiting regarding the pleasure to be had from Basini, Beineberg turns toward a picture of a woman in lingerie hanging on the wall behind him, and, with an unloaded gun, he places the barrel in a hole in-between the woman’s legs and shoots. Importantly, before he shoots, the camera has pivoted away from the group arrangement explicated above, focusing only on Beineberg, who is center, and Reiting, who fills in the lower-left hand corner of the frame. As Beineberg shoots, Reiting reveals a devilish grin. The movement of the camera away from Törless here reinforces Törless’s distance from Beineberg and Reiting, a distance that will become central later on.

Before explicating this scene, it is important to stress its careful composition by Volker Schlöndorff. After setting the mood of secrecy and the taboo with music, shadows, and the confined space of the attic, Schlöndorff relies upon the spatial arrangement and the verbal and non-verbal communication of the characters to reveal explicit power relations which underline both the crisis of normative masculine values and the codification of fascist masculinity. Given such composition, one cannot protest too much against Bruce E. Fleming’s charge in “Thoughts and their Discontents: Törless—Book to Film” that Young Törless is technically unexceptionable [44] and fails to successfully articulate the subjective states of, in particular, Törless.[45]

3.2 Proto-Fascist Masculinity

Within this mise-en-scène, several important themes are established. The analysis that follows runs largely counter to Hildburg Herbst’s claim, which will be taken into account, that that the torture of Basini by Beineberg and Reiting does not adequately mirror the dynamics in the Third Reich: “despite a number of parallels with totalitarian systems in general and despite some obvious visual quotes from the Third Reich in particular, Young Törless should not be read exclusively as a discussion of this dark period of German history.”[46] First, Törless’s sentiments reveal his internationalization of a masculine normativity based on honor and justice; however, this is in radical conflict with the views of Beineberg and Reiting, both of whom reveal their contempt for traditional institutions and values grounded on justice. Instead, they represent the newly forming fascist men in Germany as opposed to the normative man of the 18th and 19th centuries. As Mosse explains in contrasting the two types, “Most of [the new fascist man’s] basic traits were shared with normative masculinity, but he extended them, giving them an aggressive and uncompromising cast as an essential tool in the struggle for domination.”[47]

The kind of aggressiveness sanctioned by National Socialism was inherently masculine: it valorized dynamic masculine activity while denigrating traditional bourgeois values that inhibited such activity.[4] Of course, as Mosse explains, the Nazis did emphasize the importance of the family, for instance, but this importance was subordinate to patriarchal rule.[49] Thus, in their disregard for traditional bourgeois symbols, such as the institution of the school, Beineberg’s and Reiting’s masculine aggressiveness is allowed free play. While Herbst regards this rebellion by Beineberg and Reiting as anarchical and antithetical to the kind of discipline demanded by the Nazis,[50] she fails to see that the dynamic masculinity championed by Nazism presupposed a rebellion against values that restricted masculine activity. For example, Elizabeth Heineman writes in “Sexuality and Nazism: The Doubly Unspeakable?” that the Männerbund created by the SA, or Sturmabteilung, was contemptuous of the “‘feminized bourgeois morals’” they saw as characteristic of the Weimar Republic.[51] Thus, just as the SA saw decadence as hindering its masculinity, so, too, Beineberg’s and Reiting’s masculinity necessarily puts them into opposition with the school.

Importantly, this aggressiveness of Reiting’s and Beineberg’s is channeled in a particular direction: against National Socialism’s countertype. Mosse argues that, for the Nazis, given that life is a struggle, naked aggression is needed in order to assert one’s dominance over those antithetical to the social order.[52] Thus, fascism idealizes a masculine activity grounded in a manufactured community created around racial identity that is solidified by violence against countertypes.[53] These elements of fascism are communicated, first, when Reiting justifies his intimated punishment of Basini to Törless: “You act like we’re sworn to brotherhood for life. Nothing ties us to Basini. . . . ” Thus, although this statement is not grounded in a specific appeal to, for instance, the aesthetics of the male body, which is central to a fully formed National Socialism,[54] it does still justify violence on the grounds that Basini, insofar as he is a thief, is not part of the Männerbund and, hence, deserves no respect. Also communicating the close association between fascism and violence is Beineberg shooting at the poster, indicating that the ensuing violence will be not only physical, but also sexual: it will seek to feminize Basini. Against my claim is the position taken by Hildburg Herbst, who argues that unlike the Nazi’s gaze outward, Beineberg’s and Reiting’s gaze is internally focused.[55] However, one cannot dissociate the two: their inner narcissistic gaze is in the service of an objective social arrangement. Indeed, physical aggression outward against Basini not only affirms Beineberg’s and Reiting’s social status, but also solidifies the ties of their Männerbund.

However, the centerpiece of National Socialism remains to be discussed: the will, which was a prerequisite to a sound mind and body. Mosse argues that the fascist conception of the will drew on past conceptualizations:[56] “strength of will was one of the distinguishing marks of the proper male ideal as opposed to so-called weak and womanly men.”[57] This aspect largely reinforces the racist dimensions of fascism: for fascists, insofar as one’s will is strong, one sets oneself apart from that which is racially decadent.[58] Although this conception is not explicitly mentioned in the above scene, Beineberg voices it later to Törless in the attic when the latter is discussing his ascetic goals in wanting to torture Basini. Regarding pity toward Basini as inappropriate given his crimes, Beineberg desires to torture him in order to steel his will and kill off any superfluous sentimental feelings, such as pity. As Beineberg says, pity in such a case would be “A waste of life force. . . . ” The parallels between the “will” and “life force” are unmistakable: just as fascism demanded a strong will which was to be used in the service of battling degeneration,[59] Beineberg desires to eliminate any femininity in his being and strengthen his will by torturing, in his eyes, a criminal. Herbst, however, reads such ascetic motivations as contrary to the strictly political motivations of the Nazis,60 but, again, she fails to understand that Beineberg’s ascetics are political insofar as such conceptions as the will, the need for strength and the necessity of battling perceived degeneration are inherently political.

3.3 The Continuity between Fascist Masculinity and Sexual Violence

An important point needs to be stressed: the sexual aggression toward Basini that Reiting alludes to is heterosexual—not homosexual. Hildburg Herbst argues otherwise, stating that Schlöndorff presents homosexuality on a latent level in the film.[61] Christopher Dietrich, who regards Reiting as secretly homosexual, reinforces this sentiment.[62] This not only misunderstands the masculinity of Reiting, but also conflates homosexuality with fascism. Unfortunately, as Elizabeth Heineman concludes, drawing on the work of Andrew Hewitt, “The homophobia inherent in a conflation of homosexual desire and fascism . . . is all too clear.”[63] Undoubtedly, as Mosse highlights, all-male associations in Nazi Germany carried with them the perceived danger of homosexuality.[64] However, although it has been argued that there is a continuum between homosociality and homosexuality,65 there is clearly a stark difference between both in reference to Reiting’s sexual aggression. A more careful analysis of Young Törless reveals this.

Beineberg shooting the picture of the woman foreshadows the sexual violence against Basini. Significantly, he uses a pistol, which symbolizes not only the phallus, but also how the phallus in their worldview necessarily unifies physical and sexual aggression. This latter point is demonstrated when Beineberg inserts the pistol in the hole in-between the woman’s legs and shoots. This scene not only foreshadows Reiting’s actions, but also explains them, undermining in the process any supposition that he is homosexual. In taking Basini into the attic so that he can rape him, Reiting is affirming his masculinity insofar as masculinity necessarily requires for its very existence aggression toward a feminized countertype. Generally speaking, such an ontological necessity is true of masculinity as a whole. Indeed, Mosse argues that normative masculinity was reactively codified by the bourgeoisie in response to anxiety regarding rapid and debilitating socio-historical changes during the modern age.[66] This reactive anxiety, it could be argued, necessitated masculinity to invent its own double in order to affirm itself, allaying its own anxiety. A similar kind of anxiety determined, in part, the Nazi’s idolatry of the male body insofar as it unified both masculine activity and social stability.[67] However, just as with the ontology of masculinity as a whole, the Aryan’s identity was thoroughly dependent on the need to negate its racialized opposite. Mosse writes, “The Jew could not be completely divorced from the Aryan, for Aryan and Jew were tied to each other by the struggle that the Aryan had to wage in order to justify his own existence.”[68] Thus, insofar as fascist masculinity is grounded on an anxiety structured around absence which requires, reactively, a racialized object to affirm itself against, Reiting needs to degrade Basini in order to maintain his sense of self. It is only based on this argument that the scene of Basini’s rape is explicable because, immediately after Basini’s rape, both Reiting and Basini are sitting together sharing heterosexual pornography. Thus, Reiting’s violent rape of Basini and his use of aggressively encoded heterosexual pornography are continuous.

However, a more psychologically astute analysis is needed in order to fully explicate how the rape of Basini functions in Reiting’s psychic economy. Cultural historian Klaus Theweleit provides the necessary direction for such an analysis in Male Fantasies, a post-Freudian explication of fascist psychology which draws on the literature produced by the post-World War I mercenary bands known as the Freikorps. Calling into question the understanding that fascist men’s sexual violence against other men is homosexual, Theweleit argues that fascists “use the degradation of others as a means of maintaining their own services, in the face of all the threats and anxieties that typically beset the not-yet-fully-born.”[69] Earlier, Theweleit clarified the appellation “not-yet-fully-born” for fascists: drawing on Margaret Mahler’s therapeutic work with psychotic children, Theweleit theorizes that fascists, like psychotics, have failed to properly individuate, lacking a clearly defined “body-ego” that is a necessity in libidinally binding external and internal stimuli.[70] Because of their inability to either integrate or discharge the chaos of affectivity they are subject to, Theweleit argues that the body-egos of fascists are chronically susceptible to fragmentation.[71] In order to combat such fragmentation, fascists rely upon violent maintenance mechanisms such as deanimating external, living objects in order to suppress any and all excitations.[72]

Importantly, Theweleit understands military institutions as having been instrumental in the process of constituting the fascist type. Referring to its goal of violently disciplining men into a collective body, Theweleit argues that “What we have seen of the German version of the not-yet-fully-born can be perceived as having been rendered fully operational through pain, thrashed into life.”[73] After reviewing the brutal regime military men underwent, Theweleit argues that the drill transformed the locus of their being away from pleasure towards pain: “The body is estranged from the pleasure principle, drilled and reorganized into a body ruled by the ‘pain principle’: what is nice is what hurts.”[74] Rather than an individual ego being the developmental goal of this process, the drill sought to create an artificial collective ego that was seared onto them as purely external armor through physical pain.75 Because they lacked individual egos that would have mediated the chaos of excitation threatening them, the psychic life of fascists resembles that of psychotics for Theweleit, making it necessary for fascists to embed themselves in a larger institutional totality in order to maintain themselves.[76]

Given this context, Reiting’s sexual violence against Basini is clarified. Theweleit writes, “Anal intercourse in its aggressive (‘murderous’) forms may produce some form of wholeness in the persecutor; it may be in this sense that it corresponds to acts of devivification perpetrated by the white terror—acts that turn their victims into ‘bloody miasma.’”[77] Because of the threat of dedifferentiation, turning into a “bloody miasma” of bodily mass, fascists differentiate themselves and confirm their body-ego boundaries by violating another, making him into a “bloody miasma”: “He escapes by mashing others to the pulp he himself threatens to become.”[78] Applied to Reiting, one arrives at a similar conclusion as that arrived at by relying on Mosse: Reiting, having been subject to the mechanized, painful life of drilling, is prevented from individuating, creating in him anxiety and the compulsion to provide order to his chaotic inner life by violating Basini, turning Basini into an undifferentiated mass by feminizing him. Although this analysis appears speculative—Reiting appears not to be chronically anxious in any way during the film—one must attend to the frantic music accompanying the scene of Basini’s rape as well as the use of a hand-held camera. The music, although structured and with a discernible rhythm, communicates tension and a threatening sense of chaos, a sense which dissipates after Basini’s rape as a seemingly playful, lighter music is heard while Basini and Reiting are sharing pornography. Complementing the anxiety-ridden music are the shaky movements of the hand-held camera used during the scene, a radical change from the camera movement used up to this point. Both technical aspects work together to encode Reiting’s compulsion to resolve his anxiety.

While one could argue that such technical elements encode Basini’s anxiety rather than Reiting’s, one must attend to that which bridges the chaotic music and the deceptively softer music: the technical use of a dissolve. With the camera focused on Reiting forcefully holding Basini down in the attic, the camera pans to the skylight above. Following a dissolve, indicating a time-lapse, the camera pans down from a different spot on the ceiling, focusing on both as it moves behind the bare architecture of the attic after the rape. Bruce E. Fleming criticizes Schlöndorff for failing to explicitly dramatize Basini’s rape during this scene, questioning “If Schlöndorff wanted to avoid touchy subjects so completely, one wonders, why did he choose to make a film of this particular novel?”[79] However, Fleming fails to understand the function of the dissolve with reference to Reiting. Given the fascist psychology delineated above, Klaus Theweleit argues that fascists are compulsively directed toward specific perceptual states that bind their anxiety. One in particular is the “blackout,” which has as its object transcendence of psychic fragmentation: “What it involves, in essence, is the quasi-ecstatic unification of a body hitherto divided into mutually antagonistic organ- and muscle-physiques—a process I propose to call ‘self-coupling.’”[80] Thus, whereas the tension-filled music and camera movements mark Reiting as being infused with anxiety, the dissolve encodes Reiting’s orgiastic blackout, allowing him to temporarily couple and synthesize the disparate aspects of his body-ego. Following Reiting’s blackout, the deceptively lighter music is accordingly heard in view of Reiting’s “self-coupling.” This interpretation also explains the film’s inexplicable jump cut from Basini’s rape to Reiting and Basini together looking at pornography. As Theweleit relates, it was a common occurrence that once soldiers had been allowed to ecstatically shed another’s blood, they resumed their “normalcy,” oblivious to their having murdered the men that surrounded them.[81] Likewise, Reiting’s anxiety now allayed, he can appear to be on seemingly good terms with Basini.

As a final note, Reiting’s actions must be read in the context established earlier—his and Beineberg’s fascist contempt for the decadent bourgeois order. As Theweleit argues, “homosexuality” was attractive to the fascist because “As a homosexual, the fascist can prove, both to himself and others, that he is ‘nonbourgeois,’ and boldly defiant of normality.”[82] Of course, Theweleit strictly separates homosexuality from fascist appropriations of homosexuality because that form of “homosexuality” which fascists practice is not grounded in an authentic love relationship, but “in the terms of the fascist system.”[83] Interestingly, the camera movement behind the bare architecture of the attic during the scene in question corroborates Beineberg’s and Reiting’s contempt for the bourgeois order: indeed, this ineffectual order, stripped bare like the architecture, like the Austro-Hungarian monarchy during its dissolution, reveals Beineberg’s and Reiting’s festering desire for violence. Thus, Reiting’s actions must be read as another instance of the dynamics of the Männerbund.

4. Countertypes and Rebellion: The Question of Basini’s and Törless’s Agency

4.1 Basini: The Impossible Choice

The question regarding Basini’s and Törless’s agency is a complex one. However, Penelope Gilliatt in “The Sadist Hatchery,” a 1968 article in the New Yorker, gives voice to a shared view among scholars: she concludes that “The most interesting thing about [Young Törless] . . . is the account it gives of the choices of opinion that stylize the architecture of an intellect.”[84] Thus, Gilliatt reads Young Törless as an existentialist film that underscores the way in which one’s choices ultimately constitute oneself. In this light, Gilliatt untangles the way not only how Basini is complicitous in his own torture, but also how Törless, although an “innocent” bystander, is ultimately an accomplice to Beineberg and Reiting.[85] This emphasis on responsibility is also shared by Hans-Bernhard Moeller and George Lellis: in an analysis of why Schlöndorff went beyond Musil’s novella in the cake-shop scene, having Beineberg read at length to Törless an article where a woman kills her abusive boyfriend, Moeller and Lellis argue that the actions of the woman provide a counterexample to Basini and Törless: whereas the woman actively ends her oppression, Basini and Törless do not, making them ultimately responsibility for their situations, Basini for his torture and Törless for allowing Basini’s torture to continue.[86]

This paper has no intention of questioning the lack of ethical responsibility on Törless’s part, nor for that matter what such a lack refers to in its historical context—the responsibility of the German people, but also, one must add, of many countries in the West—for the atrocities of the Holocaust. However, I would like to problematize whether Basini and Törless are in fact free, in an ontological sense, to rebel. First, in reference to Basini: Törless, after he orders Basini into the attic to interrogate him, questions also why Basini does not rebel against Beineberg and Reiting. Indeed, so disgusted is he with Basini that Törless slaps him, calling him a coward, but Basini remains frozen, stunned at Törless. Pressing Basini again, asking “And you let them do all that to you?” Basini answers, “What else can I do?” explaining “I want to be a decent person again and be left in peace.”

lthough a seemingly pathetic remark, it grows in significance when read in the context of the above analysis. As the cited work above from Mosse makes clear, masculinity provided the all-embracing norm governing modernity,[87] and the perceived violation of such a norm, particularly in the context of fascism, proved deadly.[88] Given this socio-historical context, it is mistaken to think that individuals are free in an ontological sense, for they are rooted in a pre-existing world of values that govern their being. To appeal to notions of honor, as Törless does as well as scholars who stress Basini’s responsibility for his own torture, is to mistakenly presuppose the autonomous individual. However, in light of an understanding of how masculinity has a monopoly over normality, specifically the concepts of health and sickness,[89] one can understand that Basini’s words—he wants to be “decent” again—signify that he has internalized an ideology that has convinced him not only of his immorality and lack of decency, but also of his need to submit to physical torment in order to be reformed as well as reintegrated into the community of men. Thus, Basini’s autonomy is circumscribed by his subjection to masculinity. Indeed, there is a clear symbol of Basini’s subjection during the dialogue between Törless and him: in the direct center of the frame is the lingerie poster Beineberg earlier shot at, a poster that symbolizes Basini’s entanglement in a system of values that determines his being an object of physical and sexual aggression.

Importantly, there is no genuine alternative to such a power structure: “Because [the masculine] ideal was set, its countertype had no room for maneuver; it could not change either its looks or character.”[90] Thus, countertypes were condemned to misery. Basini, accordingly, is willing to endure humiliating pain in order to be “normal” again. Rebellion, then, is not an option for Basini because his conviction that he is sick reveals more than an abstract “false consciousness”—it reveals how ideology has an affective, bodily base evidenced in Basini’s intimated disgust with himself. It is largely this affective dimension to Basini’s subjection that prevents the thought of rebellion from coming to his consciousness. In short, it is a question of the socio-psychological economics of power. Compounding this phenomenon is the larger context in the film discussed above of the professors and school as a whole having abdicated their responsibility toward the students. Thus, not only is Basini’s psychology obstructing any thought of rebellion, but also concrete social conditions in the school are failing to create the material context necessary for Basini to take action against Beineberg and Reiting.

Most importantly, if scholars take seriously Young Törless as a parable of National Socialism and Basini as representative of the fate of the Jews, then one must see the monstrosity of arguing that the Jews, i.e., Basini, were ultimately responsible for their own genocide. Indeed, heroic rebellion is not applicable in the context of fascism’s valorization of the homogenous group[91] and the bodily danger of being an outsider to this group.[92] However, as will be argued with Törless, resistance against fascism is possible and an ethical stance a necessity, but it must now be clarified how the condition of the possibility of such resistance is actualized.

4.2 Törless: Embodiedness, Ambivalence, and Ethical Maturity

Understanding Törless apart from his performance of masculinity is challenging, but necessary to address his agency. For example, in the first attic scene detailed above where Beineberg, Reiting and Törless are discussing Basini’s punishment, one must suspect Törless’s every word because of his location as well as company. However, in a crucial sequence overlooked by scholars, Beineberg, Reiting, as well as the majority of his classmates go on vacation, allowing one to better understand Törless—if not as free from masculinity, then at least as relatively independent from the direct influence of Beineberg and Reiting. In light of this opportunity, Törless seeks to question Basini in the attic. In this respect, the function of the attic changes: whereas before it was a site of persecution for Basini, now it becomes a site for critical questioning. The importance of this scene is given further weight several scenes later when Törless, in response to Basini’s plea for help, dismisses their discussion in the attic, saying he was not himself. In other words, Törless was not who he normally was: a direct accomplice to Basini’s torturing. This gives one all the more reason to take his words in the attic as expressive of his, relatively speaking, authentic sentiments.

As Törless’s actions reveal, he is grounded in pre-fascist masculine normativity. Törless, after Basini’s embarrassed refusal to disclose the details of his actions in the attic with Reiting and Beineberg, slaps Basini, calling him a coward because he submits to humiliating torture. Although such violence is reminiscent of that effected by Beineberg and Reiting, the motivation of each sets them apart. Whereas Beineberg, and in particular Reiting, are not punishing Basini in order to affirm a sacrosanct ideal, Törless, however inexcusably, is appealing to ideas of honor and uprightness. Thus, just as in a duel,[93] Törless implies that Basini should demonstrate strength in facing his opponents. However, Törless soon realizes that his noble, idealized masculinity, the kind furthered by his father and the boarding school, is unable to explain the violence perpetrated against Basini. Indeed, projecting his own conception of self onto Basini, Törless urges Basini to disclose how the latter’s sense of self was shattered after his treatment, but Basini is at a loss, imploring Törless that he does not understand what Törless is asking. In effect, the case of Basini challenges the idea of honor in violence. While violence in a duel had a particular “noble” end—the affirmation of manly virtues[94]—Basini’s pain has no redeeming quality: it will not lead him to virtue because, insofar as Reiting and Beineberg need to victimize Basini, his pain will be chronic, never resulting in any catharsis. Thus, a crisis is triggered within Törless around a conflict between value systems, one of which, fascist masculinity, he cannot fathom.

Törless’s confusion regarding imaginary numbers after his mathematics class is largely symptomatic of his inability to understand the masculinity of Beineberg and Reiting. Elizabeth C. Hamilton rightly points out that while imaginary numbers in Robert Musil’s novella provide Törless with a conceptual means to mediate his subjective existence with the objective world, providing him with an ethical impetus to intervene in Basini’s torture, imaginary numbers serve a different purpose in the film.[95] Drawing, in part, on the scene where the mathematics teacher fails to clarify Törless’s intellectual turmoil over imaginary numbers and provide him with guidance, Hamilton concludes that such numbers “simply introduce one more example of the failure of adults with respect to youth.”[96] However, Hamilton has failed to properly contextualize the scene she draws on: inserted in-between Törless’s discussion with his teacher and his leaving the teacher’s office is Reiting’s forcible rape of Basini. Such editing clearly points to how Törless’s confusion over imaginary numbers is directly related to his confusions over Reiting’s and Beineberg’s masculinity. Of course, this confusion is exacerbated when his teacher advises him thus in regard to the paradox of imaginary numbers: “My dear, friend, you must simply believe.”

Once this statement is demystified, it means precisely that Törless should simply accept that masculinity is natural and immutable. Insofar, then, as Törless is unconsciously projecting his concrete confusions onto abstract numbers, Törless misunderstands his suffering, a misunderstanding not resolved until later material conditions provide the possibility of his critiquing masculinity.

Törless’s confusions are largely symptomatic not of a psychological crisis, but, as with Basini, a bodily crisis. As opposed to Eric Rentschler, who argues that Törless’s relation to the external world, particularly in regard to Basini’s torture, “is one of fascinated, but disembodied participation,”[97] there is evidence to the contrary. First, in a scene immediately previous to Beineberg’s and Reiting’s departure for vacation, Törless is writing in a journal. In an extreme close-up on his paper, Törless writes, “I must be sick, insane. Why else would things that others find normal disgust me?” Importantly, this shot parallels the scene discussed above of Reiting torturing a fly in his school notebook; however, whereas Reiting perverts the purpose of the pen, turning an instrument of culture into one of violence, Törless uses his pen to engage in self-reflexive critique.

A similar contrast is evident in the different functions of mirrors for Törless as opposed to Beineberg and Reiting. According to Meghan Goder, while mirrors serve as contemplative tools for Törless, for Beineberg and Reiting, they serve no such critical purpose, merely serving to superficially reflect their appearance.[98] Despite Törless’s desire to understand himself, his writings reveal that just as his father abnormalized him in regarding him as “unbalanced,” the normative has become inextricably linked with violence, and Törless, in his inability to affirm this connection, regards himself as sick. The dichotomy of health and sickness mapped across the binary of the masculine type and decadent countertype was already present in masculinity during the fin de siècle,[99] but fascism’s extension of the aggressiveness latent in normative masculinity helped to concretize this connection, making it immutable.[100] Contrary to Rentschler, however, the presupposition of Törless’s self-disgust is his embodiedness: only insofar as Törless is an embodied being who is affected—even more, disciplined—by watching scenes of Basini’s torture would he feel self-disgust. The same is the case with Basini regarding himself as sick. That Törless appears otherwise to Rentschler, as disembodied, signifies not Törless as he is, but Törless insofar as he has become alienated from himself because of masculinity.

A second scene crystallizes Törless’s embodiedness even more. After they learn of Basini’s crime, the students surround Basini while he is in the gymnasium, making a circle around him—a symbol that has been discussed earlier as a leitmotif signifying confinement. Törless, who stands with his classmates, shoves Basini away when he is pushed in his direction, despite the fact that Basini gave him a desperate glance, hoping for his assistance.

As the schoolboys pursue Basini, the camera remains fixed on Törless in a medium close-up. With the hollering sounds of the classmates in the background, Törless’s face vividly displays not only his embodied ambivalence, but also his recognition regarding the immorality of Basini’s treatment. At first, he displays a downward looking smirk, but he quickly, almost involuntarily, jerks his head away to the left, as if having an immediate physiological reaction to his actions. Continuing to look away, his neck muscles contract, and he gives a slight nod before a look of recognition spreads on his face. Thereafter, despite the hyper-manic atmosphere of the gymnasium, Törless runs to Basini’s aid, even though he is then subjected to verbal abuse by his classmates and faces the very real danger of bodily harm. That Törless’s ambivalence is bodily is demonstrated quite clearly, especially in regard to the conflict raging across his face. Even more importantly, his moral recognition is rooted also in the body: far from reflecting on a moral principle, his recognition is put into motion by the jerk of his head, indicating that he is experiencing an immediate and negative bodily reaction to his taking part in Basini’s mass torture. This strongly contrasts with Robert Musil’s original novella in which Törless justifies assisting Basini purely through a process of abstract cognition.[101] Related to this immediate bodily reaction is Törless crying “This is crazy!” while his classmates assault Basini. In this way, Törless has gained a new definition of health and sickness, no longer seeing himself as sick, but the particular masculine social order as sick.

As for the origin of this reaction, it is rooted in his conversation with Basini in the attic. Basini, assaulted by Törless’s examination regarding his psychological state when tortured, shouts “You’d do exactly the same in my place.” From a medium close-up of Basini, who is sitting on a seat below Törless, there is an eye-line match cut to a medium close-up of Törless. Slowly lowering his eyes, Törless sits down, positioning himself lower than Basini. As this movement occurs, the camera has pulled slowly back, and, for a space of nearly ten silent seconds, remains fixed on both Törless and Basini as both look downward in sorrowful contemplation. Törless’s (enforced) attachment to masculinity is thus undermined: the performance of masculinity, Törless realizes, is no guarantee of security, for the masculinity practiced by Beineberg and Reiting is predatory. Thus, whereas Törless originally feels superior to Basini because he, Törless, has self-respect and honor towards himself, his superiority is deflated when Basini’s words reveal that such ideals are hollow, for they have no credit in Beineberg’s and Reiting’s world. Accordingly, Törless slowly sits down on a plane lower than Basini. The prolonged still focus on both, a still focus which does not occur anywhere else in the movie for such a length of time, underscores Törless’s mature realization that there are no spectators in such a situation as Basini’s, for his allowing violence against Basini is to allow violence against himself; to encourage, albeit indirectly, fascism is to condemn oneself. While this argument parallels that of Eric Rentschler and his position that Schlöndorff uses Young Törless in order to provide a metafilmic critique regarding spectatorship,[102] my argument differs insofar as I argue that Törless realizes in himself this critique of being a mere spectator to torture. This realization not only undermines his attachment to Beineberg and Reiting, but also calls into question masculinity as a whole for him. However, it must be stressed that Torless’s recognition that he could fall victim to Basini’s fate does not play itself purely out on a cognitive plane, as Rentschler argues.[103] On the contrary, as the above interpretation has shown, Törless has recognized the objective consequences of allowing Basini’s torture to go on in terms of the immediate, bodily threat of violence he faces from Beineberg and Reiting. This point is made concrete when, earlier in his conversation with Törless, Basini revealed that both Beineberg and Reiting were going to “take care” of Törless in order to ensure that Törless forgives Basini after the latter’s “penance.”

While the above interpretation allows for Törless’s agency, it stresses that presupposing such agency was a concrete working through of normative masculinity in the context of an embodied engagement with Basini that shed light on Törless’s susceptibly to violence if he remained a spectator.

5. Questions Left Unanswered: The Verwirrungen of Törless

Despite the maturity evidenced by Törless above, the conclusion of Young Törless is neither clear nor conclusive. When asked by the board of his school to give an account of his role in Basini’s torture, Törless’s subsequent speech fails to indicate the kind of maturity I have argued for: his analysis of the conditions productive of evil—and, hence, Basini’s torture—is lacking. Recognizing that individuals are not created essentially either good or bad, only becoming one or the other in virtue of their actions, Törless sees that insofar as normal, good people have the capacity to become evil, one must be continually on guard against such transgressions, for they happen quite naturally. What is problematic is precisely that Törless fails to understand the material dynamics productive of such transgressions: far from happening naturally, they presuppose a concrete socio-political order that creates them. And in failing to understand this, he fails to understand Basini’s torture, which had as its condition not only the weak, ineffectual framework of the school, but also the aggressiveness sanctioned against countertypes by fascist masculinity. In essence, insofar as masculinity, i.e. imaginary numbers, remains confusing for him, Törless continues to be a subject of masculine normativity. But one should not push this train of thought too much, for the immediate, bodily experience undergone by Törless with Basini already signals a process of working through masculinity, albeit an unconscious one.

To carry weight, however, this interpretation must be consistent with the closing image of the movie: the pair of train tracks that the film opened with before Törless is seen walking with his mother and father. Although Hans-Bernhard Moeller and George Lellis emphasize that Törless, as an historical metaphor, has not broken free from his association with Nazism, they argue, in addition to Törless’s changed relationship to this mother, that Schlöndorff’s focus on the train station and its synonymity with leave-taking, indicates Törless’s development beyond the brutality exhibited by Beineberg and Reiting.[104] However, Eric Rentschler can be read to offer a critique of this position. Törless, according to Rentschler, leaves the academy a victim, regressing symbolically into his mother’s womb as he leaves the boarding school with his mother.[105] In a sign of Schlöndorff establishing a connection between film and audience, Rentschler underscores how the closing image of the train tracks indicates how the history which created the events around Törless remains intact, a history whose effects reverberate beyond the events of a military academy.[106]

Although I disagree with Rentschler’s argument that Törless’s movement from school to mother is regressive—it is surely significant that Törless refuses to remain part of the institution that facilitated, albeit indirectly, Basini’s torture—his argument regarding the continuing presence of historical structures that secure fascism is well taken. Indeed, in line with Mosse, masculine normativity is embedded in concrete socio-historical structures, such as the boarding school of Young Törless. Thus, while Törless’s refusal is surely significant, it fails to address the larger issue of restructuring such arrangements: not only does the boarding school remain, for example, but also all the structures which were productive of fascism within its walls are intact. In this vein, one could call Törless’s actions regressive, and this position would be reinforced by Törless’s a-historical conception, detailed above, regarding the existence of evil.

6. Masculinity and Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit

What remains of value in Young Törless, however, is the psychological and historical examination of the genesis of fascism. Nevertheless, such an examination appears to be irrelevant today. As Mosse writes in the concluding chapter of The Image of Man, “even if the new fascist man had been an ideal to aim at, and had attracted attention in all of Europe, he did not truly survive into the postwar world.”[107] Although Mosse stresses how masculinity will never be fully erased,[108] he highlights how masculinity has been increasingly subject to a process of internal erosion as more man have championed what had hitherto been deemed an unmanly lifestyle.[109] This leads Mosse to pose the question as to how flexible masculinity will become in the future, but he again inevitably returns to the question of the seeming impossibility of overcoming masculinity given how it cements virtually all aspect of modernity.[110] As Mosse remarks, “History cannot so easily be undone.”[111]

It is in regard to precisely this dilemma of working through masculinity that Young Törless remains a relevant film. Of course, the above analysis has focused on its engagement with Germany’s past. Thus, this paper argued that Young Törless detailed the groundwork necessary for the possibility of fascism by highlighting both ineffectual social structures and the alienation of the youths from their professors. A focus was then given to explicating the group dynamics of fascism: fascism enforces through violence a binary between the masculine type and feminine countertype while instilling in countertypes the need to perform masculinity. However, such a materialist focus, if abstracted from the film, is a valuable heuristic for interrogating other masculinities: it directs one, first, to situate masculinity in concrete social life as it is practiced in institutions and, second, to understand masculinity in its interdependent relationship to its countertype. Above all, this historical and psychological situation of masculinity is a prerequisite to critiquing masculinity.

In regard to the process of Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit, roughly translated as working through the past—in the present context, however, with specific reference to working through masculinity’s embeddedness in subjectivity—Schlöndorff’s example of Törless’s embodiedness is invaluable. Such a conception does justice to the material, bodily dimension of the internalization of the norms and values of masculinity and the method of critiquing such values through an embodied engagement with a countertype that illuminates one’s larger social responsibilities. Instead of misunderstanding masculinity as a phenomenon of consciousness subject to one’s free will, the case of Törless vividly demonstrates that masculinity is only worked through by a process set into motion through contradiction in the context of an embodied, intersubjective relationship—in Törless’s case, the contradiction offered is when Basini responds to Törless’s idealized masculinity, pointing out that “You’d do exactly the same in my place!”

It is absolutely vital to stress a material conception of working through masculinity in light of contemporary analyses that ultimately fail to understand the task of critiquing masculinity. Michael Kane, for example, concludes his discussion of masculinity with the following insight:

Thus, one might argue that the world would be a much better place and much carnage might be avoided if men only learnt to come to terms with the complexity of their natures and desires and ceased to project embarrassing elements of them onto others or to “sublimate” them in political (or religious) structures which oppress themselves as well as women.[112]

While Kane is perceptive regarding the socio-psychological dynamics of masculinity, one must question his understanding of the means to address them, particularly in regard to his call for men to simply learn about themselves and cease their projections and sublimations. Given the case of Törless, it was demonstrated that masculinity has an affective structure that hinders a subject engaging in a self-reflexive critique of masculinity, revealing the error of Kane thinking that men can gain immediate access to themselves. Even more, it was concluded that masculinity is not worked through by the individual in isolation, as Kane implies, but always intersubjectively, always with reference to the contradiction offered to a subject’s masculinity by a countertype.

Thus, Törless is not an historical artifact, but a relevant film that provides the means to both understand masculinity as well as conceptualize the embodied dynamics involved in working through masculinity.

Notes

1. John Sandford, The New German Cinema (New York: Da Capo Press, 1980), 9-10.
2. Ibid., 10-11.
3. Ibid., 12-13.
4. Hildburg Herbst, “Younger Torless [sic]: Schlöndorff’s Film Adaptation of Musil’s Novella,” Literature Film Quarterly 13.4 (1985): 219, accessed August 27, 2010, http://exproxy.lib.utexas.edu/log-in?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a2h&AN-6897887&site=ehost-live.
5. Hans Günther Pflaum, Germany on Film: Theme and Content in the Cinema of the Federal Republic of Germany, ed. Robert Picht, trans. Richard C. Helt and Roland Richter (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), 20.
6. Hans-Bernhard Moeller and George Lellis, Volker Schlöndorff’s Cinema: Adaptation, Politics, and the “Movie Appropriate” (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), 27.
7. George L. Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 139.
8. Ibid.
9. Hebst, “Younger Torless [sic],” 217.
10 Meghan Goder, “Törless as Extrovert: Schlöndorff’s Variations on Musil’s Novella,” Kodikas/Code/Ars Semeiotica 14 (January—June 1991): 58.
11. Elizabeth C. Hamilton, “Imaginary Bridges: Politics and Film Art in Robert Musil’s Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleβ and Volker Schlöndorff’s Die junge Törleβ,” Colloquia Germanica: Internationale Zeitschrift für Germanistik 36.1 (2003): 81.
12. Moeller and Lellis, Volker Schlöndorff’s Cinema, 35.
13. Ibid., 35.
14. Ibid., 38.
15. Hamilton, “Imaginary Bridges,” 82.
16. Ibid., 81.
17. Mosse, Image of Man, 25.
18. Ibid., 19.
19. Ibid.
20. Eric Rentschler, “Specularity and Spectacle in Schlöndorff’s Young Törless (1966),” in German Literature and Film: Adaptations and Transformations, ed. Eric Rentschler (New York and London: Methuen, 1986), 181.
21. Herbst, “Younger Torless [sic],” 215.
22. Michael Kane, Modern Men: Mapping Masculinity in English and German Literature, 1880-1930 (London: Continuum, 1999), 219.
23. Ibid., 219-20.
24. Ibid., 220
25. Mosse, Image of Man, 56.
26. Ibid., 66.
27. Ibid., 70.
28. Ibid., 33.
29. Rentschler, “Specularity and Spectacle,” 185.
30. Ibid., 188-189.
31. Mosse, Image of Man, 56.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., 140.
34. Ibid., 142.
35. Ibid., 19.
36. Ibid., 20.
37. Ibid., 33.
38. Herbst, “Younger Torless [sic],” 217.
39. Moeller and Lellis, Volker Schlöndorff’s Cinema, 37.
40. Mosse, Image of Man, 80.
41. Ibid., 60.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., 21.
44. Bruce E. Fleming, “Thoughts and their Discontents: Törless—Book to Film,” Literature Film Quarterly 20.2 (1992): 110, accessed August 27, 2010, http://ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/login?url=http://search.ebsco-host.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a2h&AN=9608122441&site=ehost-live.
45. Ibid., 111
46. Herbst, Younger Torless [sic],” 219.
47. Mosse, Image of Man, 180.
48. Ibid., 166.
49. Ibid., 167.
50. Herbst, “Younger Torless [sic],” 219.
51. Elizabeth D. Heineman, “Sexuality and Nazism: The Doubly Unspeakable?” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11.1/2 (2002): 39, accessed March 3, 2011, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3704551.
52. Mosse, Image of Man, 177-180.
53. Ibid., 178.
54. Ibid., 161.
55. Herbst, “Younger Torless [sic],” 219.
56. Mosse, Image of Man, 162.
57. Ibid., 100.
58. Ibid., 169.
59. Ibid., 160.
60. Herbst, “Younger Torless [sic],” 219.
61. Ibid., 218.
62. Christopher Dietrich, “A Closet Full of Brutality: Volker Schlöndorff’s Der Junge Törless (Young Torless, 1966),” Kinoeye 2.10 (May 27, 2002): para. 9, accessed October 7, 2010, http://ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/log-in?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2003651921&site=ehost-live.
63. Heineman, “Sexuality and Nazism,” 27.
64. Mosse, Image of Man, 175.
65. Heineman, “Sexuality and Nazism,” 39.
66. Mosse, Image of Man, 3.
67. Ibid., 171.
68. Ibid., 178.
69. Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, trans. Erica Carter and Chris Turner, vol. 2 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 318.
70. Ibid., 212-216.
71. Ibid., 220.
72. Ibid., 221.
73. Ibid., 222.
74. Ibid., 150.
75. Ibid., 222.
76. Ibid.
77. Ibid., 319.
78. Ibid., 274.
79. Fleming, “Thoughts and their Discontents,” 112.
80. Theweleit, Male Fantasies, 276.
81. Ibid., 209.
82. Ibid., 323.
83. Ibid., 325.
84. Penelope Gilliatt, “The Sadist Hatchery,” New Yorker, July 27, 1968, 80.
85. Ibid.
86. Moeller and Lellis, Volker Schlöndorff’s Cinema, 37.
87. Mosse, Image of Man, 3.
88. Ibid., 178.
89. Ibid., 60.
90. Ibid., 13.
91. Ibid., 164.
92. Ibid., 180.
93. Ibid., 21.
94. Ibid.
95. Hamilton, “Imaginary Bridges,” 76-77.
96. Ibid., 81.
97. Rentschler, “Specularity and Spectacle,” 188.
98. Goder, “Törles as Extrovert,” 55-56.
99. Mosse, Image of Man, 79.
100. Ibid., 169.
101. Hamilton, “Imaginary Bridges, 76.
102. Rentschler, “Specularity and Spectacle,” 188.
103. Ibid., 183.
104. Moeller and Lellis, Volker Schlöndorff’s Cinema, 38.
105. Rentschler, “Specularity and Spectacle,” 189.
106. Ibid., 190.
107. Mosse, Image of Man, 181.
108. Ibid.
109. Ibid., 183.
110. Ibid., 193.
111. Ibid.
112. Kane, Modern Men, 223

References

Dietrich, Christopher. “A Closet Full of Brutality: Volker Schlöndorff’s Der Junge Törless (Young Torless, 1966).” Kinoeye 2.10 (May 27, 2002): n. pag. Accessed October 7, 2010.http://ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.asp x?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2003651921&site=ehost-live.

Fleming, Bruce E. “Thoughts and their Discontents: Törless—Book to Film.” Literature Film Quarterly 20.2 (1992): 109-114. Accessed August 27, 2010. http://ezproxy.lib.ut exas.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a2h&AN=9608122441&site=ehost-live.

Gilliatt, Penelope. “The Sadist Hatchery.” New Yorker, July 27, 1968: 80-82.

Goder, Meghan. “Törless as Extrovert: Schlöndorff’s Variations on Musil’s Novella.” Kodikas/Code/Ars Semeiotica 14 (January—June 1991): 49-63.

Hamilton, Elizabeth C. “Imaginary Bridges: Politics and Film Art in Robert Musil’s Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß and Volker Schlöndorff’s Der junge Törleß.” Colloquia Germanica: Internationale Zeitschrift für Germanistik 36.1 (2003): 69-85.

Herbst, Hildburg. “Younger Torless [sic]: Schlöndorff’s Film Adaptation of Musil’s Novella.” Literature Film Quarterly 13.4 (1985): 215-221. Accessed August 27, 2010. http://ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a2h&AN=6897887&site=ehost-live.

Heineman, Elizabeth D. “Sexuality and Nazism: The Doubly Unspeakable?” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11.1/2 (2002): 22-66. Accessed March 3, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3704551.

Kane, Michael. Modern Men: Mapping Masculinity in English and German Literature, 1880-1930. London: Continuum, 1999.

Moeller, Hans-Bernhard and George Lellis. Volker Schlöndorff’s Cinema: Adaptation, Politics, and the “Movie Appropriate.” Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002.

Mosse, George L. The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Pflaum, Hans Günther. Germany on Film: Theme and Content in the Cinema of the Federal Republic of Germany. Edited by Robert Picht. Translated by Richard C. Helt and Roland Richter. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990.

Rentschler, Eric. “Specularity and Spectacle in Schlöndorff’s Young Törless (1966).” In German Literature and Film: Adaptations and Transformations, edited by Eric Rentschler, 176-192. New York and London: Methuen, 1986.

Sandford, John. The New German Cinema. New York: Da Capo Press, 1980.

Theweleit, Klaus. Male Fantasies. Translated by Erica Carter and Chris Turner. Vol. 2. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

Young Törless. Directed by Volker Schlöndorff. Performances by Mathieu Carrière, Marian Seidowsky, Bernd Tischer, Fred Dietz. 1966. The Criterion Collection, 2005. DVD.