Hypochondriacal Homoeroticism: Sickness and Same-Sex Desire in Theodor Johann Quistorp’s Der Hypochondrist

The comedy Der Hypochondrist (1745) by Theodor Johann Quistorp (1722–76) deals with the “fashionable” eighteenth-century illness hypochondria, thereby placing itself squarely at the crossroads of contemporary medical, literary, and popular discourse on the ailment. Moreover, Quistorp’s text articulates hypochondria as a mask for male same-sex desire, a textual strategy that has not been recognized in critical opinion on this comedy up until now. By reading Quistorp’s text against the background of the contemporary medical discourse on the ailment of hypochondria and its relationship to sexual behaviour, this article examines the innovative way in which the comedy constructs the concept of hypochondria as same-sex desire. It then investigates the text’s conceptions of male same-sex desire and masculinity, showing how it constructs a closet of sorts by placing male-male desire in opposition to normative marriage. Also, by gendering hypochondria and, by extension, male same-sex desire as feminine, the text seems to be banning homoeroticism from the sphere of normative masculinity. Finally, this analysis considers the significance of genre, for this text is not by accident a satirical comedy. As such, it makes use of laughter as a disciplinary mechanism to enforce a normative vision of sexual behaviour and masculinity. Throughout, this discussion uses the terms “male same-sex desire” and “homoeroticism” as synonyms, as opposed to the anachronistic and over-determined term “homosexuality.”

Der Hypochondrist is a play about a young man, Ernst Gotthart, who is suffering from hypochondria, which is believed by all the other characters in the play to be an imaginary sickness, but which is also apparently incurable. Herr Gotthart, the father of young Ernst, has a plan to cure his son. Herr Gotthart’s cousin, Herr Fröhlich, a former hypochondriac, had been cured by marriage to a merry young woman, and the two men plan the engagement of Ernst and his cousin Jungfer Fröhlichin, the joyful daughter of Herr Fröhlich. Ernst, who is very attached to his manservant Heinrich, attempts to use his hypochondria as a means both of avoiding marriage and of bonding more closely with Heinrich. At the point when marriage to Jungfer Fröhlichin appears unavoidable, Ernst attempts suicide, only to be rescued by Heinrich and sent off to announce his engagement with visible reluctance to his father and his prospective father-in-law.

The author of this neglected comedy, Theodor Johann Quistorp, was born in Rostock into the family of a respected tradesman. He studied law in Rostock and then in Leipzig, where he became a member of the Deutsche Gesellschaft, met Johann Christoph Gottsched, and became one of Gottsched’s most faithful adherents (Bigler and Müller; “Der Rostocker Familienstamm”; Schmidt 56–57). Having concluded his studies as a “Doctor der Rechte,” Quistorp moved to Wismar, where he practised law and wrote literary works (Adelung and Rotermund 1172–73; Schmidt 57). In 1742, Quistorp published his first drama, the tragedy Alcestes, oder die ungleiche Vaterliebe. He published one other tragedy, Aurelius, oder Denkmaal der Zärtlichkeit (1743); two full-length comedies, Der Bock im Processe (1744) and Der Hypochondrist (1745); and one one-act comedy, Die Austern (1743). Der Hypochondrist and all of Quistorp’s other dramas, with the exception of Alcestes, were published in Gottsched’s influential anthological instrument of theatre reform, Die Deutsche Schaubühne.

In 1759, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, in his famous “Siebzehnter Litera-turbrief,” in which he condemns the influence of Gottsched on the German theatre, singles out each and every one of the four dramas by Quistorp in Die Deutsche Schaubühne as examples of the poor quality of the original German dramas that Gottsched brought forth with his theatrical reform (Lessing 4: 499). Certainly, Lessing is attempting to position himself with respect to Gottsched and his school and is likely exaggerating here for polemical purposes, but literary historians have generally, though not always, dismissed Der Hypochondrist and its author, considering Quistorp as lacking in talent and his work as boring.

Der Hypochondrist nonetheless achieved moderate success in its own time. It was performed...