About Hanns Heinz Ewers
In the present generation German horror-fiction is most notably represented by Hanns Heinz Ewers, who brings to bear on his dark conceptions an effective knowledge of modem psychology. Novels like The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Alraune, and short stories like "The Spider", contain distinctive qualities which raise them to a classic level.
- H. P. Lovecraft
German Decadent Author Hanns Heinz Ewers (3 November 1871 – 12 June 1943) wrote the screen plays for important films in the early German cinema (including Der Student von Prag.) He is known today primarily for his horror fiction (such as "The Spider" and the Frank Braun trilogy) and short stories in the conte cruel genre (such as "The Execution of Damiens" and "Fairyland.")
His work features fatal men and femme fatales. It includes motifs of cross-dressing, sadism, masochism, and mutilation. Two more of his themes relevant to EvilMoknk.org are therianthropy and what we would refer to today as transsexualism. He saw the two conditions as being related: In his fiction his characters occasionally have "souls" that are out of sync with their physical gender and even species.
In Vampire (translated here by Guy Endore), an Opera Diva explains her unique theory of animal magnetism.
The cat's soul in a human being longs for the tomcat. The tomcat as he is- with tail and paws and mustache. But here the matter becomes complicated: she docs not long for the tomcat! She is searching for the tomcat's SOUL-and this yearning is unconscious and instinctive. Her human brain docs not help her at all-on the contrary, whenever possible it will lead her astray so that in many millions of cases the poor soul docs not know at all what she is really looking for! Throughout a whole long bodily existence, she will grope in the dark, she will long and yearn and never know for what! And if by chance she finds in another human being a soul of her kind, she will be happy but without knowing why! But in most cases she, the unfortunate blind cat, will offer herself to a fox or an ape or a guinea pig! You can see it every day, in thousands of marriages.
In "The Death of Baron Jesus Maria von Friedel" (tanslated here by Joe Bandel), he describes the tragic situation of a man's masculine and femine aspects at war with each other:
I wish to assert that the psyche of any individual is not of a single sex but contains both male and female aspects. We may honor our manhood but that does not stop the feminine in us from breaking through from time to time, thank God. It is a great deficiency when this does not happen.
Even the way this feminine aspect is aroused within the Baron’s psyche in such a crude manner appears to be only a surface consideration for me. Such perceptions and feelings must be addressed as completely normal and natural.
In a thoroughly masculine body there is a psyche with pure masculine sexual feelings. I use the word psyche as a word image to make a quick point. There is also within this same body a feminine psyche that perceives and feels in a sexually feminine way. In general these feminine feelings and perceptions are not strong enough to overcome all of the inhibitions that are contrary to its expression.
The natural instinctual feelings of the male body stand in opposition to those of the female aspect and support the male psyche instead. While in theory we have both male and female aspects equally within ourselves, under normal conditions the desire of the male body for a woman remains stronger and the feminine is only a mask that shows from time to time.
In the case of Baron von Friedel I see an unusually sharp exaggeration of this classic phenomenon in a manner that I have often observed before but never in such pronounced form.
...
This reminds me amusingly enough of the old fable of Plato and the three sexes of ancient times. It puts this strange love into an entirely different light.
For the average citizen love between a man and a woman is the simplest thing in the world. But when you consider it more closely things become immensely complicated. Such as a man that feels like a woman but loves a woman and a woman that feels like a man yet loves a man!
This intricate problem resolves itself finally in the entirely natural, normal feelings of both sexes that resound within each of them. The mutual feelings are experienced as normal and only slightly tainted by a hint of inversion.
A scene in this story occurs at a meeting of Magnus Hirschfeld's Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (Wissenschaftlich-humanitäre Komitee.)
Ewers supported the Nazis' rise to power by writing flattering books and screen plays, but the Nazis later censored his film Hans Westmar (based on the life of Nazi martyr Horst Wessel) and banned his writings.
He was born in the same year as foundation of the German Reich and died two years before the end of World War Two when it was defeated and divided.
