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2 Experiments in Female Masculinity Sophia Goudstikker’s Masculine Mimicry in Turn-of-the-Century Munich Munich, May 1897. Two women friends, both authors of New Woman fiction , arrive in town for an extended stay, highlighted by visits to theatrical productions and intellectual salons. Through a talented Jugendstil architect active in that milieu, they meet a particularly fascinating woman—a feminist activist and owner of a photography studio. Both authors become a bit infatuated with this unusual woman. One of them spends many evenings with her. The photographer in turn travels out from Munich to visit the writers after they move to a vacation cottage in the countryside. Each of the authors subsequently produces a story featuring a character similar to the photographer. These fictions depict her as cross-dressed and transgressing all the rules of feminine decorum. In each fictional portrait, the character practices a form of same-sex eroticism, charming and flattering women and girls with her attentions. The story related above is a slightly dramatized version of events recorded by one of the writers, Lou Andreas-Salomé, and her biographers.1 Salomé’s diary describes one of the evenings in Munich: “Later with Endell to the premiere . . . where we met Puck and others; went with them and Rilke to Schleich’s, dined very merrily until 1:30 A.M.”2 “Puck” was the nickname of Sophia Goudstikker, the feminist photographer. Later entries for May 1897 record Salomé’s daily socializing with “Puck,” in cafes, in the English garden, and at the theater. On some occasions Salomé spent the night at Goudstikker ’s, where they entertained each other through the night.3 49 50 Desiring Emancipation Goudstikker’s life is remarkable for her professional independence and her emotional and ideological commitment to women. These elements can be documented through her feminist work in Munich, her couple relationships with two powerful feminist leaders, and in connection with her photography and studio building, the Hofatelier Elvira. The stories written by Salomé and Frieda von Bülow, Salomé’s companion on her visit to Munich, add the dimension of female masculinity. The “Puck” characters dress and act in a male style, preach feminism, and court other women. Given the combination of all of these markers, it is surprising that Goudstikker has been largely omitted from German histories of female homosexuality. American scholars, on the other hand, have been quick to pick up on the signs of lesbianism embodied by Goudstikker. Some have confidently represented her as a self-conscious lesbian. Goudstikker’s “liberated” consciousness has been used as a foil for other intellectual and artistic women, including Salomé, Bülow, and painter Gabriele Münter. These better-known artists, who struggled to define their autonomy in the shadow of famous men, appear weak when contrasted with Goudstikker’s bold independence. Biddy Martin’s study of Salomé identifies Goudstikker as a “self-declared lesbian photographer” and her studio as “a gathering place for gay men and lesbians.”4 In a meditation on her scholarly embarrassment over Münter’s passivity, Irit Rogoff argues, “In the world of Munich cultural, artistic, and gender politics, it is the Hof Atelier Elvira which stands out as . . . the site of convergences.” Rogoff describes Elvira’s founders, Goudstikker and Anita Augspurg as “a couple who wished to live out their lesbian sexual identity openly, and feminists who needed a financial and social base for their political activities.”5 In a chapter on Bülow, historian Lora Wildenthal likewise describes the Atelier as “a hub of gay and lesbian social life and intellectual and artistic life in Munich.”6 These confident descriptions of social circles based on affirmative notions of nonnormative sexual identity would seem to point to a conjuncture of fundamental importance to the history of homosexuality and therefore a fruitful site of research into early lesbian consciousness and community. But using these sources, as in those describing university students, the search for origins falters. There is no direct evidence that Augspurg and Goudstikker thought of their partnership as founded in sexual identity. Yet, while it is doubtful that Goudstikker fashioned herself in the late nineteenth century out of a self-conscious “lesbian” identity, it is clear that she was juggling and experimenting with elements that would shortly come together in that configuration (as they already had in the sexological imagination). Bracketing the idea of “lesbian self-consciousness” allows a more open-ended examination of the links historical subjects were making between emancipation, emotional [3.137.161...

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