Victor Klemperer’s Body (Part I)
As we continue to slide further and further into the abyss of fascism, genocidal racism and war, perspectives like anti-Zionist Holocaust survivor Victor Klemperer’s are more important than ever. As an activist and a socially engaged artist I have found Klemperer’s work extremely valuable for understanding and deconstructing the forces at work in the world today. After working on a conceptual art project based on his writings for several years, I’ve finally arrived at the point where I can clearly explain both my personal connection to the world Klemperer represents and why folks should take a serious look at the work of this important scholar and commentator. This is part one of three.
My interaction with Klemperer and his work concerns an interesting concept called syncretism. Syncretism is when two or more distinct and very different concepts, cultures, schools of thought, languages, etc merge and combine to create something new. A few examples of syncretism include Haitian patois, Creole culture, the Yiddish dialect, Swahili culture, and the Rastafarian movement. I’m a Black, queer, low income man living in a modern context interacting with this text written by a heterosexual, upper middle class German Jewish man who was born in 1881; this is the foundation for the syncretism I’m engaged in with my Klemperer project. Our orientations and life experiences couldn’t be more different, and yet his work has been so valuable to my understanding of fascism in our modern context. Over the past few years I have been attempting to manifest a kind of syncretism that blends Klemperer’s thought and analysis with modernity, and that means trying to make Klemperer more “sexy” for a modern audience. More on this in parts two and three.
Before I go any further let me say that as someone who appreciates body work, somatics, sex positivity and erotic art, I found it noteworthy that Klemperer’s diaries are essentially devoid of any sensuality or eroticism. Even Anne Frank’s diary included some allusions to sex, so I found it strange that a grown man writing about his life in great detail over twelve years never broached the subject. On the few occasions where Klemperer writes about sexuality or the body, it’s almost always in a negative context. One moment of black humor involved Klemperer’s encounter with a friend’s erotic wooden sculptures that I’ll explore more in part two of this series. According to him, these sculptures were “stomach turning.” This is a reflection of both his conservative upbringing in the home of a rabbi and his own inclinations which leaned heavily towards the world of ideas instead of the sensual. There is no mention in his diary of finding other people sexually attractive, sexual fantasies or thoughts, masturbation, nor any mention of physical intimacy with his wife. When the diaries begin in 1933 Klemperer is fifty-two years old, and certainly many people are sexually active at that age, but for people from his social milieu it seems that sex was an extremely taboo subject. For Klemperer especially the subject was unimportant. Sometimes I wonder if his wife felt the same way. Reading between the lines, I get the impression that she did not.
Klemperer’s disregard of the sensual reminds me of a conversation I had recently with a local Philadelphia artist where the concept of “disembodiment” was touched on. We were specifically talking about the ways mainstream culture alienates people from their own bodies and desires, and I believe this relates to the social milieu that Klemperer emerged from and lived in. If you are familiar with the work of Sigmund Freud you might understand my perspective on this. In late 19th and early 20th century Europe, people were assigned very strict roles in society and were expected to fulfill them without question. Their society placed the highest value on mental activities; art, music, philosophy, intellectualism, professionalism and things of that nature. The body, sex and sexuality were generally viewed as primitive and lower tier compared to the lofty and ethereal heights of the world of the mind. This was one reason why women came to Sigmund Freud riddled with anxieties and manias — their toxic society was grinding them down and preventing them from fulfilling their desires or escaping the constraints of patriarchal domination.
One of the ways Klemperer’s work has invigorated my intellectual development and artistic practice concerns how his valuable diaries show us the visceral impact of genocidal racism and fascism on people’s physical bodies under a fascist and genocidal system. The murder of George Floyd forced me to seriously consider this, especially after reading about the deadly interactions between Jewish men and the local Gestapo in Dresden. A frighteningly familiar thing was happening in nazi Germany that deserves more attention, because what we see through Klemperer’s eyes is what happens when the mask finally drops and the state becomes openly and unambiguously genocidal. We’re all familiar with Auschwitz and the general details of that genocide, but did you know that Jewish men were routinely targeted for torture and murder by the secret police within nazi Germany even as the nazis were busy deporting people to camps? According to Klemperer’s diaries, some of their favorite targets seemed to have been Jewish men who were married to “Aryan” women. These men would normally have been protected from deportation because of their marriages because as “Ayrans” their wives still had certain rights the state felt it should respect. Floyd’s murder and the history of lynching in Amerikkka has some shocking direct similarities with what happened in nazi Germany, and much of this revolves around casting the targeted and racialized body as a threat. At the time of his murder, Floyd was dating a white woman, something the cop who murdered him was most likely aware of as they had worked together as security guards previously. The viciousness of Floyd’s on camera murder reminds us of how much of this violence is related to not only demonization but white men’s insecurities. The specter of Black men pleasuring “their” white women was a major part of what motivated lynchings and the castration that often accompanied them.
“The corpse lay naked in a pool of blood,” is how Klemperer describes the aftermath of one of these brutal murders in police custody. I often wondered how he managed to avoid a similar fate. He was under direct Gestapo surveillance and had various interactions with them. Why was he not targeted the way other Jewish men in “mixed marriages” were? From my very thorough reading of this history his luck concerns the fact that the nazis did not view Victor Klemperer as physically threatening. Quite the opposite. This is not to say that the nazis did not also target old people, women, and even children because they did. In Klemperer’s case, what I’m arguing is that his physicality did not draw the kind of attention that would have aroused the jealousy, ire and hatred of the Gestapo. When they saw Victor together with his wife Eva they certainly did not picture them in the throes of wild passion. The reality of how he was generally viewed by the nazi authorities is highlighted by one of Klemperer’s interactions with the Gestapo from the spring of 1942 when one of them randomly pulls him off of public transportation and takes him in for questioning. Note how the Gestapo respond to his physicality.
To be continued in Part 2.
