A newspaper, now defunct, which formerly appeared in Munich, characterized by homosexual “psychologico-erosophical” tendencies, entitled Der Seelenforscher (edited by August Fleischmann), appears to have laid itself open to such advertisements. In No. 11 of the second year of issue, November, 1903, I find the following distinctive advertisements:
A young vigorous (!) man, a Swiss, twenty-four years of age, well recommended, desires a situation with a gentleman living alone.
A young man, twenty years of age, of agreeable appearance, with an honourable and ideal mind, desires a position as correspondent or companion in the house of a well-to-do, even if elderly, gentleman.
A wealthy, talented uranian young man desires the patronage of a noble well-to-do urning.
A good, affectionate, and bright young man, who at the present time is in an official position, desires to find a well-to-do, kind-hearted, and lonely gentleman, to whom he could be a true life-companion, and to whom, until the end of his life, he would give true affection. He would faithfully fulfil all his duties.[774]
The numerous advertisements, also, in which young girls and women, or widows, desire “positions” as housekeepers, companions, etc., in the houses of “well-to-do” gentlemen “living alone” have, as a rule, an immoral basis.
3. Advertisements regarding Correspondence.—These also form a permanent constituent of the advertisements of the daily papers, and serve in part the aims of prostitution or of assignations for sexual intercourse, but in part really aim at an exchange of more or less erotic letters, as is obviously the case in respect of the following advertisements:
Young cultured man desires a stimulating (!) correspondence with a young lady.
Young lady desires to enter into correspondence with a lady of good position, with similar ideas.
4. Advertisements of Rooms.—Among these advertisements, we find that of the “convenient room” or the room “with a separate entrance”—the “storm-free diggings” of the student. Such rooms are usually offered to men; women must seek them for themselves, as in the following advertisement: