The Role of Sexology in Spring Awakening’s Vineyard Scene

Written as part of senior capstone

In Act Three, Scene Six of Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play Spring Awakening, two boys, Hänschen Rilow and Ernst Robel, kiss in a vineyard at sunset. The play, which focuses on the trials of adolescence, is understood through the context of when it takes place – the turn of the century, a time of major historical transition. Spring Awakening is a comedic tragedy which highlights the dark realities of society and its impacts on adolescents. Suicide, child abuse, rape, masturbation, homosexuality, and abortion are among the issues featured, and as a result the play was highly censored for many years. Wedekind intended the play to demonstrate a need for good sexual education, and indeed the young characters’ attempts to understand their developing sexuality is central. This focus on sexuality and puberty is both a symbol and an example of the time’s social change. The scene between Hänschen and Ernst is among the most striking moments showing these themes. The boys discuss the passing of the time, and the future they expect to grow into. Despite choosing to focus on the present moment, they are perhaps more aware of the transitional nature of this moment in their lives than any of the other characters. Much of the existing criticism of Spring Awakening focuses on themes of sexuality, transition, or both. Yet although the vineyard scene seems like an obvious example of the intersection of those themes, it is a scene which critics tend to avoid directly addressing. I argue that in addition to being homophobic, the lack of interrogation of this scene and of the role of Hänschen more broadly, and the interesting ways they interact with the writings of prominent sexologists, is an omission which does a disservice to the scholarship on the play.

Several scholars have addressed the ways in which Wedekind represents the struggle of undergoing change when society’s ideologies and institutions are at stake and are pushing conformity. In Germany where the play is set and in the world, the turn of the twentieth century was a time of rapid and dramatic changes in regard to generational relations, gender roles, economics, technology, nationalism, and virtually everything else, and the arts reflected society’s attempts to adapt to that change. Leroy R. Shaw asserts that the content of Spring Awakening is symbolic of these issues, because of its focus on puberty: “puberty is par excellence the symbol of transition, transition as a universal phenomenon of change – in physical and human nature, and, we surmise, in all the forms of history that man has had a hand in making” (Shaw 53). By showing the difficulties and aberrations in the transitional stage of these adolescent’s lives, according to Shaw, Wedekind manages to represent the problems faced by society in a transitional stage of history. Hänschen Rilow, I argue, especially in his scene with Ernst, illustrates this point, despite Shaw barely mentioning him, and this is supported by looking at the connections to sexology.

Spring Awakening was published around the time sexologists were researching the psychology of adolescence, so it is surprising that the relationship between this research and the play has not been explored more. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs began publishing about homosexuality in the 1860s. Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis was first published in 1886, and Wedekind was familiar with his work. Magnus Hirschfeld, G. Stanley Hall, and Sigmund Freud published significant works between when Spring Awakening was published in 1891 and when it was first performed in 1906. Clearly, the play is situated at a point of intense discussion about the psychology of sex and sexuality. But Krafft-Ebing and Freud are the only sexologists most critics discuss in relation to Spring Awakening, and even that is minimal. Elizabeth Boa, for example, applies their ideas about sadism and masochism to Wendla and Melchior, two of the play’s main characters, and briefly mentions Krafft-Ebing’s name in relation to some of Wedekind’s other work, but fails to make explicit connections or to address issues of homosexuality. Leroy Shaw refers to the spectrum of sexual “manifestations and abnormalities” Wedekind shows in the play as “a register, incidentally, that coincides remarkably with the famous categories even then being established by Freud as typical for all human behavior” (Shaw 54) but does not bother to consider the possibility that this is not a coincidence.

Krafft-Ebing and Hall’s research into the psychology of adolescents specifically in Hall’s case and “inverts” in Krafft-Ebing’s interrogated the impact of adolescent sexuality on mental health and masculinity. Hall’s Adolescence was published in 1905 – a year before Spring Awakening was performed but fourteen years after it was published – but it certainly echoes and articulates the kinds of concerns that would have been rising when Wedekind was writing. Hall is almost comically paranoid about the moral dangers inherent in what he sees as perverted sexual behavior, and a major consequence for boys is losing their masculinity, highlighting the anxiety Stephanie E. Libbon identifies as a “crisis of masculinity” around the turn of the century, which she says was prompted by the women’s movement and studies into sexology and homosexuality causing fear of feminization and imperialism creating an impossible masculine ideal (165). Krafft-Ebing is a bit less hysterical than Hall, and focuses much more on homosexuality, but also describes mental, physical, and social struggles related to adolescence, sex, and masculinity. Krafft-Ebing, Hall, and other sexologists saw connections between all these issues and believed that they were at the root of an epidemic of suicide especially among youth.

In the light of these concerns, much of Hall and Krafft-Ebing’s commentary about homosexuality and masturbation is almost eerily reminiscent of Spring Awakening’s Hänschen. I have mentioned Hänschen’s romantic scene with Ernst already, but his one other notable scene is a soliloquy directed at an image of a girl, during which readers generally agree he masturbates. In this scene, Act Two Scene Three, Hänschen struggles with his own lust and accuses the girl in the picture of tormenting him. “Don’t you see that it’s your chasteness alone that gives birth to my debaucheries?” he demands, showing both that he recognizes perversion in his own actions and that he feels threatened by women. Krafft-Ebing comments that “every masturbator is more or less timid and cowardly” (287), and Hall likewise says masturbators have weak hearts. Hall claims that “one who has tasted these forbidden joys of youth has a languid appetite for the larger, if less fevered, pleasure of the intellect, of friendship, of high enthusiasms” (443) which given the way the word friendship is used in these texts I interpret to mean that masturbators will be more susceptible to queerness. Hänschen, then, despite claiming “the victory is mine” during his masturbation scene, is an almost archetypical representation of the kind of adolescent who would have been seen as at risk of being “tainted” and tainting others.

Establishing Hänschen as this kind of archetype and then showing him in a same-sex relationship – making him exhibit multiple kinds of “perversions” – draws attention to the play’s depiction of queerness, because it could be assumed that it will be just as archetypical in its reflection of the sexologists’ research. In many ways, that is absolutely true, but there are some notable differences.

Krafft-Ebing sees homosexuality as something which is sometimes a born perversion and sometimes caused by external tainting, and Hall mentions the ancient Greek trend of boys being “taught” by older men (how he feels about this is somewhat unclear, but he certainly does not seem to see actual affection in such relationships). Both seem to see same-sex relationships or feelings in youth as phases to try to move past. Krafft-Ebing gives cases of people describing genuine love for the same sex but being afraid of social stigma and the sense that there is something wrong with them and being encouraged to pursue heteronormative families.

This context seems vital to understanding the vineyard scene. Both Hänschen and Ernst are very aware that the moment we see them enjoying is fleeting, and that the future will look very different. Hänschen draws attention to the sunset, a clear symbol of transition, and the boys reflect on the fact that the moments pass quickly. Ernst describes the future he imagines for himself: a pastor with a wife. And while Hänschen has less normative ideals for his own future – a millionaire enjoying sensual pleasures – and is flippant towards what Ernst imagines, he also acknowledges that “virtue’s not a bad thing to wear” and that their homosexual interlude could seem like a joke when they look back on it. In these ways, Wedekind very clearly plays into the rhetoric that homosexuality can only be a phase in adolescence, which one should move past in favor of a heteronormative marriage. Indeed, the boys commenting that while virtue is a fine garment they are “still tripping on the cuffs” shows that they recognize that there are different rules for morality before and after adolescence, highlighting the transitional nature of this point in their life and the way that relates to sexuality.

However, it is notable that while Wedekind makes it clear that this relationship is temporary, he does not trivialize the boys’ feelings. Ernst says he loves Hanschen, which is significant given Krafft-Ebing’s assertion that “Since love implies the presence of sexual desire it can only exist between persons of different sex capable of sexual intercourse. When these conditions are wanting or destroyed it is replaced by friendship” (13). This statement seems to support the idea that people who believed they experienced homosexual desire were mentally ill, and suggests that there could be no homosexual love. Ernst’s declaration, then, is somewhat unexpected, because it gives a legitimacy and depth to the interlude between Ernst and Hänschen. While Hänschen does not verbally return Ernst’s feelings, he does make a point to repeatedly emphasize how “beautiful” the moment is, and suggests that they will both still be thinking about it thirty years in the future, so it seems clear that the relationship is important to him as well, which is interesting coming from someone who is the archetype of the kind of person the sexologists would dismiss as a seducer.

With all of this in mind, it is striking that Libbon believes that Hänschen is the character in Spring Awakening who “suffers the least” (173). That could be debated – it is an objective designation, and the audience does not see enough of him to decide how happy he is or will be; I would also point out that in two seemingly overlooked lines in separate scenes, he suggests that he has put thought into the merits of hanging, which does not seem like a marker of a well-adjusted individual and which could suggest that the sexologists are right to think that someone like him is susceptible to suicidal thoughts. But it is certainly true that within the confines of the play he does not die, he is not beaten, he is not criticized by teachers, parents, or classmates, he does not fail in school, he is not raped, and he does not lose anyone who is canonically close to him, and Libbon is not wrong that that is more than could be said for most of his peers. She says that this is because he has the least parental influence of any of the children, which suggests that the institutions pushing conventional behavior are harmful. It is also worth noting, as Libbon does, that Wedekind himself did not see homosexual interludes as inherently threatening to masculinity. For Wedekind to present a character like Hänschen, whose behavior and perhaps identity fail to go along with the system and who therefore represents everything people like Hall would come to fear, and then imply that he is the best off of all the characters is fairly subversive, especially in a historical moment of such insecurity.

The fact that this topic has been largely neglected serves to illustrate the fact that many of the existing Wedekind scholars demonstrate unfortunate blind spots. They largely ignore interpretative focuses other than their own. Shaw says that focusing on sex as the core of the play – which most critics before and after him do – is “a bit off target” (53) and claims the actual subject is obviously puberty, while Boa insists that “the focus in the play is masculine desire” (46). The failure by Boa, Shaw, and many other critics to recognize the inherent connections between these themes means that they have been unable or unwilling to explore studies into the intersection of sex, adolescence, and masculinity.

This gap in scholarship is baffling and troubling. There are several possible explanations, but none are particularly valid. One could argue that the scenes I mention were the most heavily censored when the play was first performed. But the uncensored version is readily available, and the role of the censor in Wedekind’s career is a subject of fairly considerable interest. Sol Gittleman focuses heavily on both censorship and sex, yet he somehow manages to avoid even mentioning Hänschen at all. One could argue that Hänschen and Ernst are only secondary characters. Yet Ilse, a character with fewer scenes than Hänschen, is subject to in-depth analysis. One could argue that the connection to sexology is not obvious. But many critics have mentioned Krafft-Ebing, and he even appears in Wedekind’s own diary, which critics have also read, so it seems logical to think critically about his application to all parts of the play. The only possible explanation for this gap is homophobia, whether intentional or not. Moving forward with literary scholarship, it is important to consciously recognize these biases and work to reverse them. Using sexology as a contextual background allows us to better understand the vineyard scene, and examining that scene gives a lens to understanding the rest of Spring Awakening in its historic moment in a more intersectional way.

Works Cited

Boa, Elizabeth. The Sexual Circus: Wedekind’s Theatre of Subversion. Basil Blackwell, 1987.

Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence. Vol. 1. 1905. Arno Press & The New York Times, 1969.

Krafft-Ebing, Richard von. Psychopathia Sexualis. 1886. 12th ed., Pioneer Publications, 1950.

Libbon, Stephanie E. “Anxious Masculinity in Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening.” Culture, Society & Masculinity, The Men’s Studies Press, vol. 2, issue 2, 2010, pp. 165-180.

Shaw, Leroy R. The Playwright and Historical Change: Dramatic Strategies in Brecht, Hauptmann, Kaiser, and Wedekind. University of Wisconsin Press, 1970.

Wedekind, Frank. Spring Awakening. 1891. Translated by Jonathan Franzen. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.