Band 297, Heft 3 -

Ambigous, ‚hermaphroditic‘ bodies are liminal bodies, making visible what normally remains invisible, namely, the construction of sex and gender. For the Middle Ages, the history of intersex cannot be written on the basis of medical and legal texts, even less so than for other periods. Narrative sources from the late Middle Ages display a strikingly sober tone when reporting on ambigous bodies, even in cases of people who were married first as women and consecutively as men. Even in polemic usage, ‚hermaphroditism‘ referred to failed masculinity (denoting effeminacy), but not specifically to sexual deviance. Contrary to what has been thought, it does denote sodomy, and there is no primary source evidence for the assumed persecution of intersex people in the Middle Ages. This all should not be seen as evidence for ‚tolerance‘ or Laqueur’s ‚one sex model‘; rather, it indicates relatively low requirements for masculinity in general and for getting married in particular. Medieval marriage had, in historical perspective, rather low barriers, and did not require anatomically unambiguous bodies; for this very reason, it was an institution apt to produce unambiguous genders. This changed dramatically in the sixteenth century, and the figure of the ‚hermaphrodite‘ became increasingly sexualised, as access to marriage became more restricted, demands on masculinity were rising, and sodomy was re-defined as gender-symmetrical.

Did the Barbary states belong firmly to the Mediterranean space in the Early Modern Age, were they almost ,Europeanʻ thanks to the many renegades and the high rate of exchange between Southern Europe and Northern Africa – or are we dealing with a European/extra-European relationship? with a strong ,entanglementʻ or with a disconnexion? The article shows that there is no simple yes or no, but that we have to differentiate precisely between the levels of communication between Northern Africa and Europe. Surely, on a first level, there was a strong connection between the regions through the daily exchange of merchants, despite piracy and the ransoming of captives. At the opposite end of the spectrum, on the level of general political and public reasoning about European politics, the peripheric Barbary states were stereotypically dealt with as literally barbarian societies or despotisms. A narrow analysis of the historiae , travel diaries and land descriptions from the 16 th to the 18 th century – especially the extremely rich and not yet edited travel log of Christian Gottlieb Ludwig 1731/33 – shows that we can determine a medium level of encounter and perception by learned specialists (but not necessarily learned as orientalists): If we analyze how history and the social and political order of Northern Africa is described and how the appropriate knowledge was acquired, we are facing the methodological problem of how to analyze transfers and translations of something without any original: There were no translations of Arabic chronicles or anything like it but the European texts were generated in a rather shaded process from direct observation, oral questioning and compilation of already existing works. But we can analyze the structural historiographic patterns of the texts applied to the Northern African city states, borrowed from classical and early modern political theory and history writing: This way we will gain a much more precise insight into how the European code did determine the ,Africanʻ content ; we can make a distinction between code and content , but we cannot separate one from the other in the texts resulting from such an amalgamation. This way we get a more detailed idea of the How of the cognitive relationship.

By the second half of the eighteenth century the style of administrational language was an issue in both textbooks on administration and the public debate. A number of specialists (many eminent figures of the German Enlightenment among them) voiced annoyance at the „Kanzleistil“, which they considered linguistically incoherent, long-winded, and having an unfortunate tendency towards a subservient way of expression. They resented an administration which kept maintaining the appearance of Absolutism and which refused to  communicate with the public in its usual language. In the nineteenth century, this habit already affronted the readers’ identity as citizens. The administrational language being a substantial part of the government’s ceremonial observances, critics asserted its ritual procedures to be anachronistic and meaningless. Accordingly, civil servants were considered as men without manners and education, and their writing was accused of bad taste. The point of having a refined taste played a crucial role in the critic’s argumentation, as it was regarded a distinguishing feature of the milieu they belonged to. By employing the topic of good taste as a means of confrontation, the milieu strengthened its identity as a group. Thus, adjusting the language of administration to the aesthetic principles of this milieu was part of the struggle for cultural hegemony in the political sphere. Furthermore, the demand for a new administrational language implied a new form of communication between the government and the public altogether.

Both the American saloon and the Swiss tavern („Wirtshaus“) were the favorite male political and social meeting points. Innkeepers acted as politicians and mobilized voters, often by treating their patrons freely with alcohol. The temperance movements in both countries stigmatized the saloons as dangerous, frivolous and politically harmful hot spots. In the United States, the fight against the saloon was temporarily won by the prohibitionist forces led by the Anti-Saloon League. This ushered in National Prohibition in the U.S. which was in effect from 1920 to 1933. Nevertheless, there were fundamental differences in the saloon cultures of the two republics. It seems that in the U.S. the patrons called in order to gulp down a quick shot, to get drunk as soon as possible and to leave as promptly, whereas the clients in Switzerland spent more time with chatting and political discussions, enjoying an occasional glass of wine and a smoke. The Swiss „Wirtshaus“ remained a well-respected institution, praised for its democratic education of the guests, while the „saloon crisis“ brought the public house into disrespect in the U.S., including its latent political functions. Swiss publicans assumed high ranks in politics, they were more than vote acquisitors and sellers as they were in the U.S. Thus in Switzerland the crusade against the „Wirtshaus“ finally failed.