Philipp Danne: Teen Horror Hunk

Born in 1985, Philipp Danne is well-known in Germany as a hunk with a chiseled physique who specializes in horror movies: his characters encounter zombies and monsters, a virus that turns you into a zombie, and a few psycho-slashers.

  Hunks in horror movies usually spend so much time falling in love with women before, during, and after the crisis that men are either irrelevant or competitors, but Philipp seems to be surrounded by male friends instead.  And he's had time for a few especially intense gay subtexts in his non-horror related roles:

Klaus, best friend of class bully Diego (Martin Dimant) in The School Trip (2004).

Robert Greinier, the high school swimmer who competes with Rico (Fredrick Lau) and is killed in Freischwimmer (2007).

I haven't seen the Finnish film Black Ice (2007), about a heterosexual romantic triangle, but rumor has it that Philipp plays a gay-vague character (not one of the triangle participants).

Der Mann auf dem Baum (2011): about unmarried father Hans (Jan Josef Liefers) buddy-bonding with the college student Martin (Philipp) after they collide in a skateboarding accident.  They team up to prevent Hans' son from being taken away to Denmark.

And that's not including his tv work.

Kafka's Boyfriend: 10 Surprising Gay Facts about Everybody's Favorite Writer

The one thing I learned from studying literature for ten years at Augustana College, Indiana University, and USC:
Writers must never, ever be gay.

If their gayness is undeniable, it is a trivial thing, not worth mentioning, as irrelevant to their art as their preference for marshmallow sundaes.

If it is deniable, it will be denied.  Diaries, journals, and stories will be scrutinized, ahd the most fleeting reference to a woman's beauty will be pointed out triumphantly: "See?  See?  See?  Not gay!"

And the strongest, most passionate, most intense same-sex friendships will be ignored.  "He never mentions that they had sex!  Not gay!"

Like Franz Kafka (1883-1924), author of The Metamorphosis, which everyone has to read in high school. 

Biographers and literary critics scream loudly and vociferously that he was "Not gay!"  Saul Friedlander discusses some same-sex desire in his new biography, The Poet of Shame and Guilt (2013), but insists that Kafka never acted on his icky impulses.

But Kafka has a substantial gay connection.

1. Gay symbolism in the stories.

The Metamorphosis: Your relatives are shocked to discover that you have turned into a disgusting, slithering monster (like when homophobes discover that you are gay).

The Trial: You are arrested by unspecified agents of an unspecified government agency for an unspecified crime (like homophobes putting you on trial for making a "choice" that you never made to do evil that isn't evil).

2. In a 1917 book, psychiatrist Wilhelm Steckel analyzes The Metamorphosis as an evocation of gay self-hatred. Kafka did not deny the theory, and even wrote to his friend Felix Weltsch to ask his opinion.

3. Kafka was thoroughly disgusted by the idea of sex with women.  He preferred to court them by letter, so they wouldn't need any physical contact.  He writes in his diary of a nightmare in which a woman gropes him and tries to tear his clothes off, while he is struggling desperately and screaming "Let me go!"

Sounds really heterosexual to me.

4. He was immersed in the Physical Culture movement of early 20th century Germany, which idolized the naked young male body and sang the praises of same-sex activity.

5. He tried to read The Role of Eroticism in Male Society (1917), an early gay history by Hans Bluher, but had to put it aside for a couple of days because it was too "exciting."

6. He had crushes on guys throughout his life. In 1914 he saw 24-year old writer  Franz Werfel (left) in a coffee house, and rhapsodized over "the beautiful profile of his face pressed against his chest."  Later he dreamed that he kissed Werfel.

7. At the age of 19, he modeled for a painting St. Sebastian, the Christian saint who was arrowed to death (top photo, not Kafka).  Throughout history, images of St. Sebastian have been renowned for their blatant homoeroticism. I've never heard of a model for St. Sebastian who wasn't gay (Yukio Mishima also posed).

8. In 1902, while a student at Charles University, Kafka sat in on a lecture by Max Brod (left, the one with the chest hair).  Afterwards Brod took him home and...whatever happened, their relationship was the deepest, most intimate in Kafka's life.  After his death, Brod was named executor of Kafka's estate, and supervised the publication of his stories.

9. Kafka was also a close friend of philosopher Felix Weltsch (1884-1964), who wrote about anti-Semitism in a way that presages current views about homophobia.

10. He lived in Prague, a city which now has more public penises per square mile than any other city in the world (except maybe Thimpu, Bhutan).

Death in Venice

My sophomore year in college revealed the world of Winnetou and Bravo magazine, but my junior year was oppressively heterosexist: gay-free Modern British Novel and Modern American Literature, and in German Literature, Dr. Weber assigned us the Thomas Mann novel Der Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice, 1912), and then spent a lot of time on a blazing hot spring day pointing out that Aschenbach was not Wearing a Sign.

What I read was obviously about a stymied same-sex courtship.  The middle-aged writer visits Venice on holiday, and becomes obsessed with the beautiful 15-year old Tadzio.  He watches the boy and follows him around Venice, but does not approach.

Aschenbach notices that there is a cholera epidemic in Venice, being covered up by the authorities, but he doesn't warn Tadzio, for fear that he will leave, and beauty will be lost to the earth.  Nor does he leave town himself; he sits, watches Tadzio, and smiles.  Finally he succumbs to cholera and dies. I couldn't help noticing the parallel with Herman Melville's Billy Budd, which we were reading in my American Renaissance class at the same time.

Why didn't Aschenbach just strike up a conversation with the boy? I wondered. Same-sex act were legal in Italy, and the age of consent was 14.  Maybe he thought the match inappropriate due the age difference?  Maybe he was just shy, or maybe same-sex desire was so alien to  his self-image that he was paralyzed?  When Tadzio smiles at him, inviting a "hello," Aschenbach runs away in terror and whispers "I love you" to an empty garden.






But Dr. Weber said: "Aschenbach's obsession for Tadzio is the desire of age for youth, for the new that will supercede the old, even of civilization for savagery.  It is a quest for ideal beauty that always kills.  When Icarus flies too close to the sun, he dies.  There is no hint of homosexuality in the novel."


As "proof" that Aschenbach and Tadzio, like all fictional characters, were straight, Dr. Weber showed us the 1971 film version, Morte a Venezia (this was the same class that showed us a beefcake version of Das Nibelungenlied).  Tadzio was played by 15-year old Swedish actor Bjorn Andresen (left).









But in the movie, Tadzio is obviously gay, engaging in homoerotic horseplay with his friends.  He even appears to have a boyfriend.  And Aschenbach, played by gay actor Dirk Bogarde, is obviously gay, too.  They are separated not by sexual orientation, but by their different worlds.

I've seen the Benjamin Britten opera three times, twice on tv (in 1981 with Robert Garde and an unnamed, non-singing performer, and in 1990 with Robert Tear and Paul Zeplichal). It gives Aschenbach a girlfriend.  But the ballet doesn't; and it transforms Tadzio from an androgynous waif to a muscular, gay-and-proud twenty-something.

So the obsession becomes that of an old-style gay man who believed that his same-sex desire was "too personal" to reveal, who pretended to be heterosexual, who married a woman, and who now longs for the freedom of modern gay youth, cavorting openly on the beach.

See also: Male Nudity in German Class; and The Gay Werewolf of Steppenwolf.

Francois Goeske: Searching for Gay Subtexts

Robert Louis Stevenson's books are sacred, memories of childhoods past where boys conjured up lavish adventures with each other.  Especially Treasure Island, written specifically upon a request from his stepson Lloyd Osbourne that there be "no girls in it."  And there aren't, except for Jim Hawkin's mother.

So I was quite disappointed with the 2007 German miniseries, in which Jim Hawkins (Francois Goeske) not only has sex with a prostitute, he falls in love with a female stowaway, Sheila (Diane Willems)!

Ok, I thought, but maybe Goeske's other work will redeem him.  Some gay characters, or some substantial gay subtexts?

His first starring role was in a 2003 remake of the children's classic Das Fliegende Klassenzimmer (The Flying Classroom), set in a boys' school.  Only this one had girls and girlfriends.

In French for Beginners (2006), Henrick (Goeske) goes to France as part of a student exchange program, where he meets the Girl of His Dreams.  A reviewer on amazon.com suggests that this "charming" move be used in French language classes.

Grimm's Finest Fairy Tales: The Farmer's Daughter (2008).  I'm not familiar with that particular fairy tale, but I imagine it involves Goeske kissing some girls.

Summertime Blues (2009), based on the juvenile novel by Julia Clarke: Alex (Goeske) goes to the countryside with his mother, and meets a girl.

Dornroschen (2009): The fairy tale of Sleeping  Beauty.  Guess who wakes her with a kiss?

Schlaflos in Schwabing (Sleepless in Schwabing 2012): Consultant investigates a proposed deal with a Chinese company, and her nephew (Goeske) romances the boss's daughter.

Come on, I'm getting nervous.  There must be something.  How can you star in over 25 vehicles over a period of 10 years, and not have a single gay character or gay subtexts.

Ok, let's try his tv work:

On an episode of the German police procedural SOKO Stutgart (2011): Johannes (Goeske) comes out to his father, a conservative politician.

And on an episode of SOKO 5113 (2012): Julian (Goeske) is a gay concert pianist who suffers a homophobic attack.

I knew there had to be some somewhere.

Shock-headed Peter: Castration and Gay Panic in a German Children's Story

When I was in Germany a few years ago, my friend Doc took me to a restaurant called the Struwwelpeter Apfelweinwirtschaft (The Slovenly Peter Apple Wine Tavern).

Its logo was a boy with wild blond hair and long sharp nails like Edward Scissorhands.

Nearby there was a statue of the same boy, along with some other children.

"You've never heard of Struwwelpeter?" Doc asked.  "He's a national hero, like Bart Simpson in America!"









Turns out that all German schoolchildren read Der Struwwelpeter, written and illustrated by Heinrich Hoffmann (1809-1894), about children who misbehave and get their comeuppance -- usually a violent retribution.

A girl who plays with matches burns to death.
Kaspar, who won't eat his soup, wastes away and dies.
Hans, whose "head is always in the clouds," falls into a river.
Robert, who goes outside in a storm, blows away.

Hoffmann was a psychiatrist, though he lived before Freud's discovery of the unconscious, and many of his stories have been analyzed for their psychosexual undertones

The most obvious gay connection is in the story of Konrad, der Daumenlutscher (the Thumb-Sucker).  

Though his mother warns him to not suck his thumb, Konrad persists in the bad habit.  Then he encounters the Tailor with the Scissors (in modern versions, the monstrous Scissor-Man), who cuts both of his thumbs off.  

Oral fixation, symbolic castration, gay anxiety, and a 19th-century Freddie Kruger!

The stories have been translated into several languages.  They were adapted into a 1955 movie (available on youtube), an operetta (1992) and a musical (1998).  

In 2010, Richard Mansfield filmed an explicitly homoerotic shadow-puppet version,  of the Daumenlutscher story, "Suck-a-Thumb." It made the rounds of the gay film festivals.

In an even more explicitly gay sequel, Konrad is sent to a psychiatric hospital for a brutal "cure."

Don't worry, that's a door handle, not what you're thinking.

Every Gay Man Should Have a Pair of Lederhosen

Like the kilt, lederhosen has gotten mired down in cliches and stereotypes, blond people yodeling and saying "Yah" to each other, like that crazy Aryan kid  who sells "Toaster strudel."

But lederhosen simply means leather pants in German.  It was worn throughout the Alps, and especially in Bavaria, for hunting, farming, and other outdhoor activities.

Its popularity declined during the 19th century, when it was considered uncouth, "hayseed" clothing, like the hillbilly's overalls in America.  Today it is worn primarily at festivals like Oktoberfest.

There are many variations, but all lederhosen have suspenders and a side holster that shows off the pecs (shirts are optional).

The front flap, called a hosenturl, was designed to make it easy to take your penis out and urinate.  But the consequence of making you look especially gifted beneath the belt has not gone unnoticed.

Especially with modern men, who add special lining down there to enhance their size.

And add a lot of ornate embroidery to draw the eye to their crotch.

Some men like lederhosen so much that they are starting to use it for everyday wear.

Gay men especially.  Many of them already have leather outfits, so why not get custom-made black lederhosen?

See also: 10 Things You Should Know About Kilts.

Goetz George: A Gay Dad with a Chest

This Chest belongs to Goetz George, playing a rancher trying to find his father's killer in Treasure of the Silver Lake (1962), a German Western that tried to introduce famous boys' book characters Winnetou and Shatterhand to America.   Unfortunately, it didn't sell well outside of Germany, even though Shatterhand was played by muscleman Lex Barker of Tarzan fame.

In this scene The Chest about to be rescued by Winnetou and Shatterhand.

 Here's a shot of his shoulders and biceps.

Perhaps you're wondering what else the Chest has been in?

According to the IMDB, 123 movies and tv shows, beginning in 1953, at age 15, and extending through 2013.  But mostly small roles in his young adulthood; he is most famous for his starring role in the police procedural Tatort (1981-1991).

Ok, but what about movies where he displays his Chest?

Surprisingly, not a lot.  An internet search revealed this photo from, apparently, a boxing movie.

This daddy shot of Goetz fully nude, approaching a bed containing a lady wearing black fishnet stockings.

And this candid shot of The Chest peeking out from behind a child, no doubt his daughter.

There's also some gay content in his career: in The Trio (1999), he plays Zobel,  a gay thief in a gang with his lover and his daughter.  When the lover dies, he recruits the bisexual Rudolf (Felix Eitner), and Dad and daughter end up competing for his affections.

See also: Winnetou: German Gay Western.

The Gay Werewolf of Steppenwolf

When I was an undergraduate at Augustana College in the early 1980s, I took three German classes with tall, gray-haired, constantly-scowling Professor Weber, who was obsessed with demonstrating that homosexualitat did not exist in modern Germany.

Stefan George, Thomas Mann, the Physical Culture Movement, Robert Musil, Magnus Hirschfield, the Kit-Kat Club of Berlin between the Wars?

"Posh!  Nonsense!  About friendship and the nationalist ideal, not homosexualitat!"

He would allow no discussion of current campus favorite Steppenwolf  by Herman Hesse: "Posh!  Nonsense!  A book of monsters!  Fit only for the Late-Late Show!"

So of course, I had to read it.

The cover illustration of two nearly-naked women nearly turned me away.

As did the clueless school librarian who kept trying to point me to the music section, insisting that the book was about the rock band Steppenwolf.

But finally I managed to get a copy.

I saw immediately why Dr. Weber forbade the class from discussing it.

The protagonist, Henry Haller, feels depressed, friendless, and alienated from the world he no longer understands -- what adolescent hasn't felt like that?  Especially gay adolescents.

The source of his alienation: he is a werewolf, a man with two natures, one civilized and stable and heterosexual, the other wild.

Wild, savage, untamed, homoerotic.

While wandering aimlessly through the city, he sees an advertisement for "Magic Theater -- not for everybody." (Or, in this Spanish sign, "for lunatics only.").

 Maybe in the Magic Theater he will find a way to reconcile his two natures.  Or maybe it will lead him to oblivion.  He resolves to seek it out.

En route, he meets two people.  Hermine nurtures his "civilized" side, introducing him to the pleasures and constraints of heterosexual normalcy, including sex with women.

Seductive saxophonist Pablo offers him a "walk on the wild side."

(In the 1974 film version, Henry is played by Max von Sydow, and Pablo by Pierre Clementi).

Eventually Henry kills his "civilized side," and Pablo announces that he is ready for the Magic Theater. He walks inside, through a narrow corridor into the future.

For the gay men of my generation, it sounds precisely like your first visit to a gay bar.  You circle the block a few times, then park, and walk slowly, terrified, to that door marked "Magic Theater: Not for Everybody."  Your future lies behind it.

Hesse envisioned several other close male "walks on the wild side," in Narcissus and Goldmund (1930) and Magister Ludi (1943).  

See also: Death in Venice; and Male Nudity in German Class;

The Beefcake Museum of Vienna

I love museums, especially museums with ancient Egyptian antiquities, Greek and Roman sculptures, or a good selection of European paintings from the Renaissance to the present.  The Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna has all three, plus the best ambiance of any museum anywhere: cozy, beautifully appointed galleries (try to visit on a rainy afternoon).

And of course, lots of beefcake.

Enter the main building on Ringstrasse, go upstairs, and turn left to the Egyptian and Oriental Collection, some 12,000 objects, including mummies, stelae, and objects from everyday life.  The Egyptian collection is quite good, the Ancient Near Eastern not great, but they do have a lion from the Ishtar Gate in Babylon.

Follow it to the Antikensammlung, the Greek and Roman antiquities, 9 galleries of statues of naked, muscular men, plus vases, columns, bas reliefs, and ephemera.

Upstairs to the second floor and turn right for 16 beautifully-appointed galleries of Italian, Spanish, and French art, including Mazzolo's Amor (a bare-butt Cupid), and some nice Pietas and religious art.

Follow it around to the Flemish, Dutch, and German collections, with Brueghel's Return of the Hunters, van Heemskerk's Triumph of Bacchus (left), and some Rubens, Van Dycks, and Durers.

The third floor contains the Coin Collection, plus some nice views from the window.

More after the break.

Matthias Schweighoefer: What a Man

Matthias Schweighoefer is one of the most popular young actors in Germany, notable for his stunning physique, his nonchalance about full frontal nudity, and his intense buddy-bonding.  Indeed, he often combines nudity and gay subtexts (or texts) in the same movie.

12 Paces without a Head (12 Meters ohne Kopf, 2009): Pirate pals Klaus (Ronald Zehrfeld) and Gödeke (Matthias) must decide whether to retire to a farm or to remain pirates to the end.

Friendship! (2010): East German buddies Tom (Matthias) and Veit (Friedrich Mucke) go on a road trip to San Francisco to track down Tom's long-lost father, and have picaresque adventures, including stripping at a non-stereotypic gay bar, before hugging at Golden Gate Bridge.

What a Man (2011): Alex (Matthias) is dumped by his girlfriend, and takes lessons in how to become more "macho" from his friend Jens.

Woman in Love (Rubbeldiekatz, 2011): Alex (Matthias) is cast as a woman in a movie, and soon finds that he can only get parts in drag. He ends up kissing Adolph Hitler.

Russiendisko (2012): Three Russian friends, Wladimir, Andrej and Mischa (Matthias, Friedrich Mucke, Christian Friedel), travel to Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall to seek their fortunes.

Schlussmacher (2013): Paul (Matthias) is a professional "separator" (he breaks up with your boyfriend or girlfriend for you).  Then he meets Toto (Milan Peschel), the dumped boyfriend of a customer, and they buddy-bond.

He's cool about being an object of desire for men or women, or heterosexual men while dressed as a woman.

Michael Strogoff: Jules Verne's Gay Couple

Jules Verne is most famous today for his science fiction novels, like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island, but during his lifetime his biggest fame came for a romance, Michel Strogoff, or Michael Strogoff: Courier for the Czar (1876).  

It was translated into a dozen languages, and there are film versions in English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Turkish. The 1970 French-Italian version starred counterculture beefcake icon John Phillip Law (the nude angel in Barbarella), and the 1975 German version rugged bear Raimund Harmstorf (left).

The plot sounds unrelentingly heterosexist:  In "contemporary" Russia, Tartar rebels have taken control of Siberia, and the governor, brother of Tsar Alexander II, is trapped in the besieged city of Irkutsk.  Michael Strogoff is assigned the task of traveling across enemy-occupied territory to warn him of a plot to blow up Irkutsk.

On the way he meets and falls in love with Nadia, who is traveling to meet her exiled father.  They are captured by the Tartars, who decree that Michael be blinded (in a shirtless scene that appears on almost every book cover and movie poster).

But the blinding doesn't work, and Michael and Nadia escape and continue on to Irkutsk to save the day.  Then they are married. The end.

But there is also a gay-subtext couple, French and English reporters Alcide Jolivet and Harry Blount (played by Donatello Castallaneta and Christian Marin in the 1970 version), who accompany Michael on his journey.

They meet as jealous rivals for the same "scoop," but then they must work together.  They help Michael fight off a giant bear.  Harry is shot, and Alcide tends to him.  They are captured by the Tartars, and escape together.

At the end of the novel, they attend Michael and Nadia's wedding, with an exchange that sounds very much like a marriage proposal:

"And doesn't it make you wish to imitate them?" asked Alcide of his friend.

"Pooh!" said Blount. "Now if I had a cousin like you—"

"My cousin isn't to be married!" answered Alcide, laughing.

"So much the better," returned Blount, "for they speak of difficulties arising between London and Pekin. Have you no wish to go and see what is going on there?"

"By Jove, my dear Blount!" exclaimed Alcide Jolivet, "I was just going to make the same proposal to you."

And that was how the two inseparables set off for China.