Talks
Klaus Theweleit
Review: Male Fantasies
14 March 2025, 6pm
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Written in 1977, German sociologist Klaus Theweleit’s seminal work Male Fantasies laid out the analytical groundwork to consider historical violence—especially the kind of violence that led to genocides and the “unthinkable”, murderous human disasters—in direct relation to male desire and its relation to women (or non-relation) and the Other. The book specifically analyzes and discusses the impetus behind Freikorps’s fascist actions, and how these actions can be seen as blatant expressions of their dread towards women, which, in their fantasies, was the representation of sexual engulfment, communism, imagined Red masses and the unspecified Other. Freikorps (Free Corps) was a compensated militia that upsurged following WWI.
Significantly, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht (co-founders of the German Communist Party) were murdered by a predecessor of the Freikorps in 1919. Many of the Freikorps later became key functionaries for Hitler’s SA and the Nazi Regime. The famous weapon producer and art collector Emil Bührle, for example, had close ties to the Freikorps, this is partially reflected in the exhibition on the collection in the Kunsthaus Zurich.1 Of course, the Freikorps’ specific form of violence paved the way for crimes against humanity, the organized mass murder by the Nazi Regime of the Jewish population, the incarceration of homosexuals, Sinti and Roma, and political suspects. We will talk about the thesis in the light of contemporary events.
Klaus Theweleit, born 1942 Ebenrode/Eastprussia, Prof. Dr. phil, Author, lives in Freiburg/Breisgau. lifelong research on male violence; especially in Male Fantasies, (1977/2020), Deutschlandfilme. Hitchcock. Godard. Pasolini. Filmdenken und Gewalt, (2005) Das Lachen der Täter. Breivik u.a. Psychogramm der Tötungslust (2015).Teaching assignment Institute of Sociology University of Freiburg; Professor of art theory (retired) at Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe; Teaching assignments in Switzerland and Austria; Guest professor in the USA (Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; UC Santa Barbara; UVA Charlottesville). Focus of work: Words, sounds, pictures; Theory of fascism and male violence, Gender Studies, Theory of technical media, Pop culture, Film, Football, Music, Art and Political Power.