German civilization also passed through an epoch in which bisexual activities of feeling were clearly manifest in both sexes, without, however, leading at any time to the physical practice of pseudo-homosexuality. This remarkable period was the time of transition between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The “Sturm und Drang” had quieted down; its fiercely active forces had been controlled; its vigorous will had been pacified, and guided in concrete directions; its kinetic energy had in a sense become potential in two new formative and emotional tendencies of the time, which progressed side by side, and, notwithstanding all the differences between them, influenced one another mutually to a considerable extent—classicism and romanticism. Classicism, under the stimulating influence of Winckelmann, looked back to the “noble simplicity and quiet greatness” of the antique, to the beauty exhibited simply in form, whose wonder Goethe more than any other has made manifest to us. Romanticism, on the other hand, was the term employed to indicate the boundless enlargement and increasing profundity of the emotional life, of which the formless is especially characteristic. This appears most clearly in the work of Novalis, Tieck, and Wackenroder; but both tendencies meet in the sphere of the sexual. I need only mention the name of Winckelmann to indicate how markedly the purely æsthetic contemplation,[581] and the purely æsthetic enjoyment, of the beautiful human form must have favoured the development of homosexual modes of perception. We may in this connexion speak of the “Greek Renascence.” On the other hand, the romantic mood, the deepening of the individual life of feeling, the eternal searching for new, peculiar sensations, was very apt to awaken those activities of feeling slumbering so deeply beneath the threshold of consciousness, which we to-day denote by the term “bisexuality.” In Friedrich Schlegel’s “Lucinde,” for example, we find frequent allusions to this bisexual mode of perception, as in the place in which he speaks of a confusion of the masculine and feminine rôles in the love contest. When, in so much of the published “Correspondence” of this period, kisses, embraces, caresses, and tendernesses between two men or two women appear to fly to and fro, it may be that this is neither to be regarded as purely homosexual perception, nor as a simply conventional contemporary custom, but rather as the very characteristic expression of a tendency to bisexual imaginations and dreams induced by the hypertension, overdriving, and artificial increase, of the emotional life. Thus only, for example, can we explain the passionate profusion of tenderness which appears in many of the letters of Jean Paul, written by him to men; for Jean Paul was unquestionably heterosexual.[582]
The same is true of the women of this time. According to Welcker, the friendships of the women of the romantic period exhibited this character of a Platonic love. Since the dominion of romanticism “influenced emotional young men in very various ways, in more than one morally strict circle, two women friends were so inseparable and so indispensable to one another that those round them used sometimes to laugh at this amativeness, of which, however, a serious suspicion was impossible.”[583]
An interesting proof of the existence of pseudo-homosexuality among the women of that time is afforded by a passage[584] from a romance by Ernst Wagner (1760-1812), one of the scholars of Jean Paul. The book is entitled “Isidora,” and in it the Lesbian love-scene between the Princess Isidora and her friend Olympia is very plainly described, although both of them at the same time are passionately in love with men.
The last and not unimportant phenomenal form of pseudo-homosexuality is hermaphroditism. It is a remarkable fact that only in recent years has science attempted a serious study of hermaphroditic states, which previously, as Blumreich[585] points out, were to a large extent ignored, both as regards their social importance and their frequency. It was the great service of Neugebauer[586] and Magnus Hirschfeld[587] that they drew general attention to these remarkable sexual intermediate stages, and proved their eminent practical importance, which had previously been suspected by no one. How completely the matter had been ignored is proved by the remarkable fact that the new Civil Code for the German Empire completely ignores the juridical determinations of the former Prussian Civil Code regarding hermaphrodites, alleging that there existed no persons whose sex was indeterminate or indeterminable!
The so-called “true hermaphroditism”—the condition in which male and female reproductive glands (testicles and ovaries) are met with in a single individual—is one of the greatest rarities. By the investigations of Salen (1899), Garré-Simon (1903), and Ludwig Pick (1905), the existence of such individuals with mixed reproductive glands (“ovotestes”) has been proved as an actual fact. Walter Simon, in the one hundred and seventy-second volume of Virchow’s Archives, has described the rare case of true hermaphroditism observed by Garré. In a person twenty-one years of age, brought up as a man, and having thoroughly masculine feelings, there suddenly occurred, associated with swelling of the breasts (gynecomasty), monthly recurring hæmorrhages, proceeding from the supposed intertesticular fissure; also from time to time, associated with voluptuous erection of the penis, there was discharged whitish mucus, and the libidinous ideas connected with this discharge referred always to women. The physical structure and facial expression of this individual were feminine; the build of the thorax, the shoulders, and the shape of the arms exhibited male characteristics. In a right-sided swelling, resembling an inguinal hernia, were found a testicle-ovary (Ger. Hodeneierstock), an epididymis, a parovarium, a spermatic cord, and a Fallopian tube.
More frequent than these cases, in which naturally the determination of sex is practically impossible, are cases of pseudo-hermaphroditism, which also possess the greatest importance in connexion with the problem of pseudo-homosexuality. In these cases of pseudo-hermaphroditism the reproductive glands are, in fact, distinctively male or female, but the characteristics of the excretory organs and of the external genital organs do not enable us to determine the sex, for they are in part male, in part female, and in part completely undifferentiated, which is to be explained as dependent upon an incomplete or entirely wanting differentiation of the primitively identical rudiment of the external genital organs of the two sexes (inhibition of the processes of growth at some stage of development). Thus there arises pseudo-hermaphroditismus masculinus, in cases in which the genital fissure is not completely closed, so that the urethra possesses a fissure below (hypospadias); also the two halves of the scrotum may fail to join, so that a fissure is left between them, simulating a vaginal inlet. Since in these cases the testicles are commonly retained within the abdominal cavity, or else appear in the inguinal region, simulating an inguinal hernia, the penis is believed to be a kind of enlarged clitoris, and the individual is mistaken for a woman (erreur de sexe). If it further happens that, on account of the supposed inguinal hernia, the individual is ordered to wear, and continues to wear, a truss, the testicular tissue disappears completely as a result of pressure atrophy, and the correct diagnosis becomes more difficult than ever. I recently saw a case of this kind in a male hermaphrodite, twenty-two years of age, who had been brought up as a woman. He had, however, always felt attraction towards women, and, having a large membrum, he was able, notwithstanding the existence of hypospadias, to complete regular coitus. In the ejaculated semen the examining physician had not found any spermatozoa; but in this case the testicles had doubtless atrophied in consequence of the wearing of a truss. This pseudo-hermaphrodite has recently published the history of his upbringing as a “woman.” The work is of great interest from the psychological point of view, and is entitled “A Man’s Years as a Girl,” by “Nobody” (Berlin, 1907).
Where the reproductive glands are female there results a pseudo-hermaphroditismus femininus in cases in which the external genital organs of this female pseudo-hermaphrodite exhibit a certain similarity with the genital organs of the male—for example, when the clitoris is exceptionally large, and the labia majora have grown together, so that the vaginal inlet appears to be wanting. In this case also there may be a mistake in diagnosis, and, consequently, the individual having been educated as a man, apparent homosexuality may result when the natural sexual inclination towards the male manifests itself in due course.
In both varieties of pseudo-hermaphroditism there exist very various anatomical and physiological possibilities in respect of the relationship of the secondary sexual characters to the anatomical character of the reproductive glands, in respect of the menstrual equivalents in male pseudo-hermaphrodites, in respect of the relationship of the sexual impulse to the reproductive glands, in respect of the greater or less strength of the impulse, in respect of periodic genital hæmorrhages in male pseudo-hermaphrodites, in respect of possible sexual aberrations, etc. For more exact details I must refer the reader to the works of Neugebauer and Hirschfeld. Here I will only refer to a case described by the last-named author, of a male pseudo-hermaphrodite, forty years of age, Friderike S., who had been brought up as a “woman,” who at a very early age had exhibited an inclination towards women only, and an antipathy to sexual intercourse with men. In this individual a reproductive gland resembling a testicle could be detected, out of which there issued a structure resembling the spermatic cord. In the left inguinal canal was an atrophied reproductive gland of indeterminate character. The membrum was something between penis and clitoris. The labia majora and minora bounded a short cæcal vagina. Internal female reproductive organs could not be detected. On the other hand, there appeared to be a prostate gland. In the sexual secretion, which was discharged by a different opening from the urine, H. Friedenthal was able to detect very numerous completely normal spermatozoa, whereby the male character of this pseudo-woman was completely proved, and whereby also the alleged “homosexual” tendencies were now shown to be heterosexual.