Homophobia and Antisemitism in Otto Julius Bierbaum's Prinz Kuckuck (1907/08)

Abstract:Starting from existing scholarship on the relationship among masculinity, sexuality, and Jewishness in the German-language cultural sphere, this article analyzes the connection between antisemitism and homophobia in Otto Julius Bierbaum's findesiècle novel Prinz Kuckuck. By tracing the respective paths of the Jewish protagonist and his male homosexual counterpart, the article elaborates on the specific versions of Jewishness and male homosexuality that Bierbaum's novel creates. It can be shown that the novel exposes both the Jewish and the homosexual character as deficient and harmful. The novel, however, does not restrict itself to mere parallelization but establishes an intrinsic connection between the Jewish and the male homosexual character by integrating homosexual codes into the Jew's "parasitic" repertoire. The article concludes by offering an explanation of this connection that draws on Moishe Postone's critique of modern antisemitism. Antisemitism and homophobia are shown as two complementary and intrinsically connected ways of dealing with two dimensions of the experience of modernity: capitalism and social contingency.