02.02.2024

What our teachers are reading: Hanno

Hanno has been taking part in a book club for more than a year now. At the moment, the club which meets once per week discusses „Männerphantasien“ (male phantasies) by German cultural theorist and writer Klaus Theweleit, who wrote it in the late seventies. In two parts, Theweleit raises the question as to how and why German soldiers from the first world war were turned into deeply misanthropic Nazis.

The focus of his analysis are the psychological processes that shape the worldviews and desires of those men, who love war and destruction, but are unable to really socially connect with anyone else than their own kind. The book is quite long and not always easy to digest, but highly recommended for everyone who wants to understand Nazi culture but also German culture in general from a feminist perspective.