My research for this week was focused on two separate things: the first was getting a more general context for women’s magazines and lesbian subculture of the time through secondary sources, while the second was looking further into the trend of orientalism/xenophobic fetishization in the magazine that I observed in my discussion post from last week. While both of the secondary sources that I looked at this week were incredibly interesting and valuable to read through, I found that the chapter “Lesbianism, Reading, and Law” by Laurie Marhoefer spoke directly to my question of how a lesbian identity interacted with belonging as a German citizen: while it was no doubt a concern, it was not considered as dangerous a threat to the Nation as male homosexuality due to a lack of “penetration” during lesbian sex. At the same time, however, concerns were rising in popular women’s magazines about the masculinization of women as their loss of femininity posed a danger to the future of the Nation, as explained by Patrice Petro in her chapter “Weimar Photojournalism and the Female Reader”. The content of these chapters, both of which emphasized the magazine as a critical site of political engagement for women in Weimar Germany, will be interesting to keep in mind as I build further understanding of how lesbian identity and belonging was represented in Freundin. As for my primary sources, I read two short stories which revolved around a German lesbian falling in love with a foreign woman: the first an unspecified “oriental” woman, and the second a woman from Morocco. While these stories were interesting in that they both contained a startling amount of foreign fetishization and a posing of the German lesbian as some sort of irresistable, romantic hero, I think that my future research will continue to focus more on issues of gender and national belonging for German lesbians. I am still glad that I looked into some of these stories, but find myself more interested in the questions I was tackling last week; I also believe that there will simply be more content to work with if I continue down that route.
Overall, I would say that I am feeling good about my topic at the moment! For next week, I am hoping to continue looking into more general content on Weimar Germany’s queer community. I have started reading through Robert Beachy’s Gay Berlin, and also hope to look at Marti M. Lybeck’s Desiring Emancipation: New Women and Emancipation in Germany, 1890-1933, which focuses specifically on women, both queer and straight, of the time. I also am hoping to track down content in Freundin that deals more specifically with ideas of national belonging and assertion of citizenship/political rights. My biggest goal moving forward is to further refine my topic and figure out how to better articulate and refine my main question/topic. I am having lots of fun going down different rabbit holes, but need to find one to actually focus my efforts in!