Even though there is an overlying expectation on boys in
Unterm Rad to eventually conform to standardized conceptions of relationality, that is, to return home, engage in a heterosexual relationship, and start a family, “romantic friendships” are commonplace at the boarding school. Romantic friendships can be described as intimate and affectionate (although not necessarily sexual) bonds between two people of the same sex.
1For an expanded examination of the concept of romantic friendship, see Lillian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present (London: Women’s Press, 1985). Since romantic friendships often occur in adolescence, while young people are away at school, male relationships in Hesse’s fiction could be regarded as iterations of the concept.
2For a longer discussion, see von Seth, “Outsiders and Others,” 68–73. As we shall see in the following, however, Hans and Hermann’s bond transcends that sort of friendship.
Once Hans is settled at the boarding school, he instantly starts longing for a companion. But even though many friendships take shape around him, he remains alone, watching the newly formed bonds with envy. He is compared with a wallflower who is waiting to be asked to dance: “He sat waiting like a shy girl until someone should come and fetch him, some stronger, more courageous boy than himself who would take him along and compel him into happiness” (73–74). When the bond between Hans and Hermann is formed it is portrayed as a burgeoning love affair. From a queer surface reading perspective, it is meaningful that Hesse’s text is not subtle in its depictions of homoeroticism. There is, for example, kissing: “[Hermann] gripped Hans by the shoulder and drew him towards himself until their cheeks were quite close. Then Hans in a sudden exquisite panic felt his friend’s lips touch his own” (79–80). Although Hans is initially startled, he soon commits to the relationship, and the boys become inseparable: “both boys were filled with a strangely happy feeling of harmony and silent and secret understanding” (100).
Moreover, there are allusions to classical antiquity in
Unterm Rad that draw attention to the intertwinement of male friendship and homoeroticism in that era.
3Here I am referring to the practice of “pederasty,” which, in classical antiquity, was a socially recognized, homoerotic bond between an older man (a teacher) and younger man (a student). The students’ dormitories are called “Forum, Hellas, Athens, Sparta, Acropolis,” Hesse writes, “and the fact that the smallest and last was called Germania might have been taken to indicate … a Graeco-Roman ideal” (64). There is, however, a form of same-sex relationality in the novel that moves beyond classical antiquity and the romantic friendship ideal, which is hinted at in Hermann’s statement: “If any of us wanted to try and live according to the Greek way of life, he would be flung out” (76–77). Hermann clearly acknowledges the existence of homosexuality, and he seems to be critiquing that platonic romantic friendships are sanctioned at the school, whereas homosexuality is not.
While Hans, throughout the story, struggles to adhere to the norm of achievement, Hermann is continually depicted as rebellious, which affects the bond between the boys: “He had thoughts and words of his own and he lived more intensely and more freely” (77), and he is “restless and unruly” (77). Not only does Hermann, by means of his nonconformity, challenge the school’s norm of achievement, but he also challenges its norm of stoic masculinity. After a fight with another boy, he openly sheds tears:
It was a scandalous exhibition; weeping was considered the most unspeakable thing a student could do. Nor was he making any attempt to hide it … he did not wipe his tears or even take his hands out of his pockets. The other boys stood round, staring at him, inquisitive and malicious until [one of the boys] planted himself in front of him and said, “Eh, you, Heilner, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
The weeping boy glanced slowly round him … “Ashamed—what in front of you?” he said in loud, withering tones. “No, my good man.” (78–79)
In the quote, Hermann represents deviance but his public display of crying demonstrates that he is proud that he is different. Students and teachers perceive Hermann’s fearlessness as a threat, but Hans is attracted to his rebellious qualities, even though he also experiences some ambivalence. The homoerotic aspect of their relationship is not a concern for Hans; rather, his schoolwork starts to suffer because of his intense engagement with Hermann. Hans becomes torn between his academic ambitions and his friend, and his headaches return with a vengeance.
Even though romantic friendships are a norm at the school, the bond between Hans and Hermann is regarded as different: “The relationship between the two friends was an odd one” (82–83). In addition, their companionship is perceived as dangerous: “The masters were horror-stricken to see the once exemplary Giebenrath transformed into a problem child and falling under the bad influence of the highly suspect Heilner” (101). The teachers dread the influence of Hermann on Hans as well as fear the queerness that the couple represents, both in terms of nonconformity and because their bond transcends a romantic friendship.
The portrayal of the bond between Hans and Hermann mirrors another
Bildungsroman by Hesse, his first novel,
Peter Camenzind (1904). In
Peter Camenzind, the protagonist also desperately longs for a male friend. And the imagery Hesse uses to portray both Peter’s and Hans’s longings are identical. Like
Peter Camenzind,
Unterm Rad employs the horizon as a symbol for friendship. I turn, therefore, to queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz’s conceptualization of the horizon as signifying a queer utopia. “Queerness,” Muñoz writes, “is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world.”
4José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 1. Although Muñoz’s work demonstrates that we might never reach utopian queerness, it can still be felt “as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality.”
5Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 1. When the bond between Peter Camenzind and his friend Richard is established, the pair have exchanged the stifling heteronormativity of urban life for nature, where they stand on a mountaintop, gazing toward the horizon. The hopefulness in Muñoz’s concept can be seen in that scene, and it can be identified in
Unterm Rad as well: “[Hans] was strongly predisposed to see the land of friendship rise up on the sky-line in glowing colours; quietly but irresistibly it drew him on” (73).
6In Hesse’s German original, the link to Muñoz’s thinking on queer utopia is easy to identify because of the word Horizont (horizon): “Ein starkes Gefühl ließ ihm das Land der Freundschaft selig in sehnsüchtigen Farben am Horizont erscheinen und zog ihn mit stillem Trieb hinüber.” (Hermann Hesse, Unterm Rad, in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 2: Die Romane. Peter Camenzind, Unterm Rad, Gertrud, ed. Volker Michaels [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001], 190.) The same is true in the 1968 translation: “A powerful longing made the land of friendship glow with alluring colors on the horizon and drew him quietly in that direction.” (Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel, trans. Michael Roloff [New York: Picador, 1968], 72.)The similarities between Peter Camenzind and Unterm Rad are many. Both novels tell the story of a promising young man who leaves his home to go to school; both emphasize progression and personal development; both portray contrasts between civilization and nature. For example, when Hans visits a larger town, he is profoundly anxious: “he felt a deep constriction inside him as he got his first view of the town … the noise of the traffic intimidated and distressed him” (18). It is not until he is on the train back toward the countryside that his anxiety dissipates: “he travelled homeward over the green, mountainous land. Only when the blue-black Tannenberge [mountains covered with fir trees] rose up before him did a feeling of joy and relief come over him” (26).
Unterm Rad and Peter Camenzind diverge in one key aspect though. In Peter Camenzind, nature is always available for the protagonist, whereas in Unterm Rad, when the romance between Hans and Hermann has taken shape, they are forbidden to spend time in nature together. When the pressure of Hans’s schoolwork starts giving him “nervous disorders” (113) his remedy is to stroll in the forest after dinner. Hermann is “expressly [forbidden] to join him on these walks” (113), likely because nature (like the romance between the boys) symbolizes something that must be controlled: “An ancient forest must be cleared and tidied up and greatly reduced in area; it is the school’s job to break in the natural man, subdue and greatly reduce him” (51).
Hesse’s writing tends to convey that wandering in nature leads to rejuvenation and discovery of a more-than-conventional way of life. In “
Outsiders and Others”, I demonstrate that hiking on unbeaten paths is a queer activity in
Peter Camenzind, not only because it is entwined with expressions of homosexuality, but also because wandering in nature relocates characters from the heteronormativity of urban life.
7For a more thorough explanation, see von Seth, “Outsiders and Others,” 75–82. If one applies that interpretation to
Unterm Rad, the boarding school comes to represent a boundary. To be confined to school and deprived of companionship in nature—because of nature’s queer appeal—signifies that it is not only nonconformity that must be crushed beneath the wheel, but queer forms of sexuality as well.
As time goes by the relationship between Hans and Hermann is obstructed on all fronts. The teachers keep them separated and the students view them as an “odd couple.” Even Hans contributes to the romance’s disintegration by means of an ever-growing ambivalence. The nonconformity they both represent becomes too much for him to handle. He pendulates back and forth between wanting to hold on to Hermann and letting him go. At one point, when Hermann is punished for having broken school rules, Hans distances himself because he knows it will invite “a bad reputation to have any dealings with him” (88). Eventually, Hermann escapes the boarding school. He wants to prove to everyone that he refuses to conform to its norms.
8Here it bears mentioning that Hesse himself was a student at Maulbronn in 1891–1892 and that his rebelliousness made him run away from the school at one point. Because of Hesse’s personal experience, previous research has given plenty of attention to autobiographical underpinnings of Hermann Heilner’s escape, what has been labeled “the most sacred commonplace of criticism on Unterm Rad.” (Jefford Vahlbusch, “Novel Ideas: Notes toward a New Reading of Hesse’s Unterm Rad,” in A Companion to the Works of Hermann Hesse, ed. Ingo Cornils [Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009], 17.) However, as pointed out by Vahlbusch, although Hesse and his character flee the same institution, their reasons for escaping are not identical and Unterm Rad should first and foremost be regarded as fiction. His escape is labeled a “scandalous case of insubordination and decadence” (120) and he is expelled. After his dismissal Hans never sees Hermann again and their romance is effectively extinguished.