A man always has
problems
behind him and tasks
ahead of him.
ahead of him.
Weininger - 1946 - Mind and Death of a Genius
net/2027/wu.
89038364857 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.
hathitrust.
org/access_use#pd-google
? Crossing the Border
his last days wrote down his "Letzte Aphorismen" (Last
Aphorisms). There he speaks of the criminal, and we may un-
derstand that the criminal is himself: "Thus the criminal also
creates woman as a thought (he wants intercourse), but she
does not exist for him. He never finds the woman he is looking
for because he creates only an idea of a woman. He can feel
sexual desire for the absolute prostitute (an old woman) and
he can love a Madonna (if he wants to become pure), but he
finds a Madonna only when he is good; at that moment he
also creates a Madonna" (U. L. D. , p. 180).
Weininger's poem beginning, "Sieh mich gebeugt" tells us
that because of his sexual desire he went to women of the
streets, even though he wept when he returned. He certainly
did not regret his desire for fear of venereal disease; his re-
morse came only from the curse of the moral law--that is, be-
cause of his own strongly moral attitude. Weininger believed
that the woman was debased and used only as a means in sexual
intercourse and that, therefore, sexual intercourse was immoral.
This belief obviously had something to do with his forswear-
ing sex relations.
Weininger's sexual urge could not compromise with his
idealistic tendencies. A deep conflict was created in him. On
the one side was his personality, with his moral ego (super-
ego), on the other his sexual drive, which he feared as harmful
and hostile. A continual struggle took place between these
two forces. Probably the reason for much of his moral rigor--
in a characterological sense--may be found in this biological
circumstance. An ascetic is usually defined as a man who feels
pleasure not in the satisfaction of his drives, but in disregard
of them. The warfare within Weininger's nature was bringing
him to the point of ascetic denial--in fact, to psychological
self-castration.
An argument might be advanced to oppose this view with a
contrary explanation. It might be held that Otto adopted a
sexually abstinent life with the violent energy characteristic of
his schizoid make-up, so that his self-denial became a question
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? 130 Crossing the Border
of will power. Given the personal energy he always demon-
strated, it is easy to picture his asceticism in this light. The
explanation is, however, not really satisfactory, for it only takes
us back to the more fundamental question: What was behind
his wish to become an ascetic?
There is no hint that he might have been forced into ab-
stinence by a venereal disease, and we know that he was in
the prime of life when in April, 1903, he decided to be sex-
ually abstinent. Therefore, it might be easy to jump to the
conclusion that Weininger was homosexual. The question
may be argued. He was unmarried, but that fact, of course,
gives no foundation for the conclusion that he was homo-
sexual; he was, after all, only twenty-three years old when he
decided to be continent. This was no time to be married, par-
ticularly in the case of a university student. Moreover, mar-
riage in itself would be no proof that he was not homosexual,
for many married men are. One fact which may support the
theory of homosexuality was his early sexual maturity. The
result of early puberty may be that the sexual urge is not di-
rected against any particular goal and may sometimes be di-
verted to homoerotic inclinations.
His interest in, and knowledge of, the traits and habits of
homosexuals appear clearly in the pages of Sex and Character.
In opposition to Kraepelin and Fere, he considered homosex-
uality as congenital. He was aware that men who feel sexually
attracted to other men have a feminine appearance. In the
chapter, "Homosexuality and Pederasty" he wrote (p. 53):
"No pure psychosexual hermaphroditism exists; men who feel
sexual attraction to other men are in their appearance femi-
nine men, and women who have sexual desire for other women
exhibit a masculine physical appearance. " His formulation of
the law of sexual attraction states that an individual who is
practically half-man and half-woman requires for his mate an-
other being who is half-woman and half-man. "That is the
reason," he said (p. 59), "why homosexuals practically always
exercise their kind of sexuality only among themselves, why
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? Crossing the Border 131
they hardly ever take into their circle anyone who does not
look for the same kind of sexual satisfaction. The sexual at-
traction is mutual and is the strong factor which makes homo-
sexuals always recognize each other so readily. " These state-
ments were made when Weininger was twenty-one or possibly
even younger. Were they based on personal experience? Did
his opinion result from personal experience? When he reached
the conclusion that "logically the right thing to do would be I
to let homosexuals find satisfaction where they look for it,
which is among themselves" (Sex and Character, p. 61), he
might be considered as defending his own growing homo-
sexual inclinations. Obviously, since his observations were ac-
curate, he must have known a great deal about the habits of
homosexuals. This accuracy may indicate that he was ac-
quainted with homosexuals and familiar with homosexual cir-
cles in Vienna.
At first glance the theory that he was homosexual might
seem to be supported by the fact that Weininger had very few
and carefully selected personal friends. It must, however, be
borne in mind that he was a shut-in, schizoid person, and such
individuals typically have very few, if any, intimate friends.
This peculiarity in Weininger does not, therefore, give any
real support to the theory that he was homosexual. Yet it is of
interest to note that he said in Sex and Character (p. 58):
"Nor is there any friendship between men which does not
have an element of sexuality, no matter how little the friend-
ship is characterized by it. Even though the sexual aspect is
alien to the thought of friendship, though it is quite contrary
to the very idea of friendship, the plain fact is that there can
never be friendship between men who have no physical attrac-
tion for each other, for without attraction they cannot ap-
proach each other. Much of the protection given by one friend
to another and much favoritism originate in such sexual rela-
tionships, which are often unconscious. " Again we may won-
der if personal experience did not dictate these ideas.
In connection with Weininger's Platonic and quite theoret-
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? 132 Crossing the Border
ical division into masculine and feminine substance, it should
be noted that Weininger found in himself traits that he con-
sidered feminine. This awareness--which was more or less
conscious--of having characteristics of the other sex may be
said to be typical of the homosexual. To be a man was, accord-
ing to Weininger, to conquer the passive resistance, to defeat
the feminine part of one's self (which Weininger thought of
symbolically as Ibsen's Boig) . 2 His attitude may be considered
as showing symptoms of homosexual inclinations.
Above all, his appalling and absurd ideas on women in Sex
and Character may hint at homosexual traits in himself. There
and at times in his letters he seems to be defending himself
against the charge that he is a woman. "Am I such a woman? "
he asks at one time, and quite irrelevantly, since the question
seems to have been as to whether or not he was jealous of a
"Miss K. " He is proud of not being seasick when "every
woman on board was seasick. " These remarks are revealing in
connection with his special theory of bisexuality, and they may
reflect some homosexual traits in himself.
It has already been said that Weininger attributed feminine
traits to the Jewish people. Would it be far-fetched to see a
possible symbolic connection between his antifeminism and
his anti-Semitism? Being of Jewish blood, he was loud in his
hatred of the Jews in order to show that he was not really dif-
ferent from other men. Being homosexual, he was loud in his
denunciation of women in order to show that he was not
really different from other men. The hatred of his mother-
religion, Judaism, should also probably be regarded as a sym-
bol of his hatred for his own mother. Even if such speculations
bring no sure answer, nevertheless Weininger did take an
2 John Landquist, "En kritik av Otto Weininger varldsaskadning," in Filoso-
fiske Essayer (Stockholm, 1916), p. 181. There is a theory that the endocrine
disturbances, which may be cause of the schizoid-schizophrenic constitution,
are in definite biological relation to the homosexual disposition. See Hermann
Hoffmann, Vererbung und Seelenleben: Einfiihrung in die psychiatrische Kon-
stitutions- und Vererbungslehre (Berlin, 1922), p. 226. Kretschmer has demon-
strated that we find the occurrence of sexual perversions disproportionately
more frequent in schizophrenic than in cyclophrenic individuals.
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? Crossing the Border 133
overcompensated masculine attitude in order to overcome
traces of femininity in himself, and that fact does indicate the
presence of homosexual traits in him.
Weininger's ascetic tendencies may show an interesting
parallel to the attitude of Plato toward sex. Some students of
Plato believe that he was forced into an ascetic philosophy by
his own tendency toward sexual perversion. We may possibly
see a similar process in Weininger.
His asceticism was to no small extent fostered by the close
intellectual and emotional relationship with his father, which
caused Otto, consciously or unconsciously, to adore the elder
Weininger. This feeling may have led to a kind of adoration
of virility, a phallic cult, through which he sought to realize
the masculine ideal. This phallic cult undoubtedly stressed his
homoerotic drive and was, in addition to the factors previously
mentioned, instrumental in creating his later asceticism.
We may conclude, then, that his deliberate sexual absti-
nence in the last six months of his life may be considered a
change, and in a sense a perversion, of his sexual nature. In
Sex and Character the same twisted shape appears, reflecting
contorted sexual feelings.
The question arises as to whether this ascetic turn was to
some extent constitutionally conditioned. No decisive answer
can be made, since we do not know where heredity starts and
environment ends. 3 This much seems to be fairly well estab-
lished: a person inherits certain materials which, given certain
situations and conditions, will call forth a particular charac-
teristic in his personality. Granting that everyone, including
Weininger, does inherit certain things, we may go on to say
that those things create a predisposition, a frame within which
the influences of his environment work. When we keep in
mind the personality make-up of Otto Weininger, when we
recall how he bent his efforts toward attaining the ideal life
of Jesus, how he ended by arriving not only at sexual asceti-
cism but also at complete unreality, and how under the influ-
8 David Abrahamsen, Crime and the Human Mind (New York, 1944), p. 56.
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? 154 Crossing the Border
ences of his environment he advanced steadily to that asceti-
cism, we may see how personality make-up and environment
worked together, hand in hand.
The one-sided fashion in which Weininger looked at the
sexual problem is worth noting, for it is in itself a symptom of
a schizoid nature. A man of the schizoid type tends to regard
questions with less than the normal breadth of attention, and
consequently his views are narrow and fixed. Weininger's
view of the sexual problem was certainly narrow and rigid be-
cause of the conflict between his strong sexual urge and the
growing repulsion for sexual life which became natural for him
( though morbid for a healthy man. The disturbances of his
^ sexual urge created in him a manifest perversion, compounded
of homosexual and ascetic elements.
The attraction which sexual life had for him seems at a cer-
tain period--from the summer of 1902 to April, 1903--to
have had some neurotic coloring. He tried to free himself by
suppressing of the sexual urge, by sublimation of it. Such
obsessional neurotic phenomena as appeared in him at this
time seem to have been furthered, at least to some extent, by
his abnormal sexual drive. Yet in spite of the fact that he
showed these signs for some time, we need not conclude that
he suffered from a neurosis as such. The decisive evidence to
show that it was not a neurosis is to be found in the fatal
symptoms of symbolism and mysticism, which appeared in
him at least as early as the spring of 1902 (see U. L. D. , p. 115)
and persisted until his death. These cannot be regarded as
anything but the first signs of schizophrenia. 4 The compulsory
neurotic phenomena he showed were the result of perversions,
which had been activated by his sadistic tendencies, as quite
often occurs in such cases.
Gerber, who followed Weininger's mental condition with
some care, thought that he was in more cheerful mood in the
* Ernst Spehr, Von Wesen der Neurose und ihren Erscheinungsformen (Leip-
zig, ! 938), P- 88-
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? Crossing the Border 135
summer of 1903 (Taschenbuch, p. 21), but that impression
must have been only an illusion. Weininger often spoke of his
criminal disposition, but in a more subdued way than formerly
--a change which led the observer to hope that his mental
crisis was passing. Yet he seems still to have been in a crisis
state, though controlling his moods with violent effort and
great mental struggle. Apparently he drew some comfort from
his work. Still it was not true that his crisis had ended. Quite
the contrary, as his later mental development was to prove.
Rappaport claimed (U. L. D. , p. xvii) that Weininger's suffer-
ing deepened shortly after Sex and Character was published.
The words used in the preface to the first edition of Vber die
letzten Dinge leave no doubt as to what Rappaport's estimate
of Otto's state of mind was. "When he had just completed his
first work, he said once to me: 'There are three possibilities for
me--the gallows, suicide, or a future so brilliant that I don't
dare to think of it! ' On the same day he entrusted to me his
last manuscript [probably an incomplete draft of Vber die
letzten Dinge] to publish in case he should not be able to do
so himself. From that day on his condition grew steadily
worse. "
His gloomy mood was also described by Lucka, who said,
"Weininger often made a sinister, uncomfortable impression
on me and others, but he might become quite cheerful again
later. " This description accords well with Lucka's statement
about Otto before Sex and Character was published--"He was
often quite lost in himself and hardly listened to our conversa-
tion. " And Ewald also gives us the same impression by saying,
"In intimate conversations he frequently hinted at terrible
trials by evil forces and mentioned that the idea of a violent
solution was not strange to him. "
Weininger's state of mind during the spring of 1903 was,
then, dark and serious, full of dread and doubt. He lived in
anticipation of a catastrophe. So deep was his skepticism, so
intense his search for what he believed to be truth, that he
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? 136 Crossing the Border
actually appeared to be languishing in despair. The tragic
strain may not have appeared on the surface, but his friends
suspected his condition.
The best expression of that state of mind is to be found in
parts of Sex and Character. He wrote, for instance (pp. 386--
87): "Since every man has some relation to . the idea of the
supreme good without really being part of it, there is no happy
man. Only women are happy. No man is happy; he is com-
mitted to liberty, while on earth he is always bound one way
or another. None but a completely passive creature, like the
<<. true woman, or a completely active being, like the Deity, can
be happy. Happiness is feeling of perfection, which no man
can ever enjoy, but there are women who fancy themselves
perfect.
A man always has problems behind him and tasks
ahead of him. All problems have their roots in the past. The
future is the realm of the tasks. . . . Happiness for a man
would imply full and pure activity, complete freedom; but he
can never be free, and his guilt mounts as he moves away
from the idea of liberty. Life on earth is suffering for him, and
must be so, because human beings are passive in their percep-
tions. . . . Every man needs to make observations; even the
genius is nothing without that power, though he can fill his
observations with his own personality and has no need of com-
plete induction to be able to recognize the idea of a thing. "
Many quotations of this sort could be cited; they all go to
show that he was gravely unhappy. In any event his suicide
makes any other view impossible. Another passage in the book
(pp. 384-85) reads: "I can first recognize a sin when I am no
longer committing it. From the moment that I recognize it I
commit it no more. Therefore, I cannot understand life so
long as I am alive, and time is the great riddle which defies
me so long as I am living in it. . . . When I have conquered
time, then I shall be able to understand it; death alone can
teach me the meaning of life. There has not yet been a mo-
ment when I did not . . . crave not to exist; how then could
this desire become the object of observation, recognition?
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? Crossing the Border xyj
That which I perceive I am already beyond. I cannot under-
stand my sin because I am still sinful. Eternal life and mortal
life do not follow each other. They go side by side, and the
good is such because it is preexistent. "
A man who writes thus feels no happiness in life, nor does
he feel bound to life. A glance at other passages in Sex and
Character--especially those concerning women--yields the
same impression. Rightly we may agree with his good friend
Lucka, who wrote, "He who has put into practice the destruc-
tion of the strongest of all illusions, the faith in the eternal
feminine--which is a rightful need for great men--must re-
main cold in the colorful variety of life. "
Weininger's desperation was made worse by the reception
given his published work. The public reaction, generally in-
different or unfriendly, did not tend to cheer him up. He ap-
parently realized that he had caused some consternation. He
had fomented passions, and now he had to face them; for the
first time he was aware that his words might mean the same as
action. On August 3, 1903, he was writing to Gerber asking
him for an honest opinion of the book.
There is good reason to think that Weininger had written
the book at least partially in order to liberate his own mind.
This was the accusation leveled at him by P. J. Mobius in an
article, "Geschlecht und Unbescheidenheit" (Sex and Im-
modesty), reviewing the book. Otto's answer seemed to bear
out the charge. The book indeed reflected Otto's own mood,
which became worse after the book was published. He was
still able to maintain a superficial composure, but only with a
violent mental struggle. The mental effort increased when the
first sparse applause was drowned in a larger storm of enraged
protest.
The fate of the book worried the author, and Mobius's
sharp criticism angered him. The main points in the review,
which filled two whole pages, were these: "It is hard to give a
fair judgment of the book. Most people will drop it with dis-
like, and one must admit that they are right. Still there are
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? 138 Crossing the Border
many good things in it. . . . We find in Weininger a highly
gifted man who has read much and tried to think sharply,
who has much experience although he must be very young.
. . . But now we must turn to the less fortunate side of the
book. Most of his reflections on sexual phenomena are al-
ready to be found in the works of this reviewer; even the title
is plagiarized. . . . He is even more arrogant when he declares
that the opinion of this reviewer--that great talent in women
is a sign of degeneration--is false and that sexual transitional
forms are quite natural phenomena. This man, disguised as a
philosopher, has set himself to decide what is normal and
what is pathological. . . .
"The book has become so large because the author wanted
to rid himself of his ideas. We hear long lectures about genius,
logic, etc. Much of it is good (especially on compassion in
modern psychology), much is very strange. "
Weininger made an answer, of which Mobius says: "I re-
ceived from Weininger a long, rather formless letter written
from Syracuse, August 17. The author is very upset. I had
accused him of plagiarism, of hypocritical and criminal be-
havior, and of harming others. I had to prove what I had said
or make a public apology. He gave me three weeks, then he
would make public the malicious slander and force me to
bring a law suit against him. " In reply to this Mobius pub-
lished a pamphlet entitled, like the review, Geschlecht und
Unbescheidenheit (Sex and Immodesty). It was printed in
Leipzig in November, 1903.
Weininger, deeply wounded, had already answered his critic
in the August 22 issue of Zukunft. "I believe," he said, "that this
book has solved the psychological problem of sexual difference
and has given the final answer to the so-called problem of
woman's emancipation. " This statement justifies Mobius in
ascribing to Weininger a complete lack of modesty. Because
of the attack, which he considered to be mean, Weininger's
feeling of his own greatness mounted to dangerous heights.
His words in the Zukunft article show a pathologically height-
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? Crossing the Border 139
ened self-esteem and lack of self-criticism. His reactions seem
to have been based on the theory that everybody took an interest
in his book, which was far from the truth. True, Sex and Char-
acter did arouse public interest, but it did not immediately
bring the fame that Weininger expected. Only the members
of his small circle of friends and acquaintances were enraged
by the strong condemnation of the book. The world did not
pay much attention to his work or his personality while Wei-
ninger was still alive. Even when he killed himself, though the
dramatic character of his death drew more attention than
would have attended death from natural causes, public inter-
est was still small. His importance was, for instance, so slight
in Scandinavian public opinion that his death was not even
mentioned in the Scandinavian press. In the Norwegian papers
of that time not one word can be found about his work or his
death.
Only in Weininger's imaginary world had his work and his
person caused any sensation. He was, therefore, so much the
more wounded by Mobius's suggestion that he had imitated
Mobius's work. His reaction to this was also unreasonable.
Mobius writes on this point: "Weininger believed that I had
called him an imitator. How could I have done such a thing?
That would have been impolite, even insulting. No, I did no
such thing. My words should have been perfectly clear; Wei-
ninger's usual sagacity must have left him for a moment when
this unfortunate thought entered his mind. I said that I
thought people might consider him a plagiarist. That is the
reason for this malicious and arrogant attack. "
Weininger apparently wanted to forestall any claim that he
had imitated the work that Mobius had written concerning
the psychological feeblemindedness of woman in 1900.
Mobius maintained flatly that the title Weininger used was
an imitation. "Otto Weininger writes that he had already
chosen his title early in 1902. This must, of course, be the
case if he says so. But he adds that he had seen my Geschlecht
und Entarung (Sex and Degeneration) before his own book
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? 140 Crossing the Border
was published. On the cover of that book the words 'Sex and
--' are printed five times. When someone has looked at my
title and then chooses 'Sex and --he is at least committing
a breach of tact. "
A man of composed mind would have admitted that the
main idea in Sex and Character could be recognized in the
earlier work by Mobius, even though Weininger had worked
out the theory on a larger scale. But Otto was not willing to
( admit this debt. He maintained that he alone had solved the
psychological problem of sex difference. Therefore he felt that
he was insulted by criticism. The reaction of a man of normal
mind would have accorded better with the real facts than did
Weininger's. Yet there is no reason to believe that the criti-
cism brought about any systematized ideas of persecution in
Weininger or created in him a paranoid attitude. In spite of
his twisted relation to reality, he did not develop any ideas of
persecution totally divorced from the real world. His self-
esteem did become greater after the attack by Mobius, but
probably not because of any paranoid tendency. He already
had the conviction that he was a great man. The criticism of
Mobius and others--which Weininger did consider base per-
secution--only caused him to feel greater.
Sex and Character did not bring him the comfort he antic-
ipated. A few passages in Taschenbuch reveal one side of his
mental state, his great pain. "If the flat-headed Schiller, in-
stead of writing that sentence that is a desert of beautiful-
sounding comfortable moralizing, 'Shared happiness is double
happiness, shared pain is half pain,' had written, 'A man can
share his happiness but never his pain,' he would have told
the truth" (p. 43). Obviously this means that Weininger felt
that he could never share his own pain with anyone. Again he
writes, "Your double is the complex of all your bad qualities.
All minor fears are only a part of this total fear, the fear of
your double" (p. 42). Here the mood of suffering is combined
with growing gloom, characteristic of his mental development
in this period. To add to this despair he had the knowledge
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? Crossing the Border 141
that the world was moving along just as it had before his book
was published, that no one was paying deep attention to his
revelations. There is no doubt that he became depressed, and
he thought his melancholy due to a sudden moral deficiency
in himself (U. L. D. , p. xvii). 8
In June, 1903, Weininger left his quarters in Vienna and
spent six weeks with his family at Brunn-bei-Modling. His
mood in this period was illustrated in two incidents. One was
his comment on praise of his book. "A man of letters in
Vienna, a brilliant intellectual, wrote him in most enthusias-
tic praise of the masterpiece. Otto only muttered to his father,
'I have written a book for the thousands of years to come,
and I am still not understood. ' " The other was also recorded
by his father. "Before Otto left for Italy that summer, he told
me that no woman could ever understand his work" (Der Fall,
P-9)-
These statements show that this self-esteem was still grow-
ing within him, as were discouragement and despair. "He
must have harbored the thought of suicide for a long time,"
says Lucka. "That is apparent in the fact that he wrote his last
will that summer" (Die Fackel, October 17,1903, pp. 15-16).
He was so dispirited that he wanted to get away from him-
self. And so he went to Italy. "He was very upset when he left
for Italy," says Ewald (p. 68). He had fled from the world
and its people; now he wanted to flee from life itself. But
there was something that still held him back, that still kept
him bound to life--his book and its recognition. Yet there
was no word from home, he gained no fame, and few voices
were lifted up to laud his work.
The letters he wrote show his frustrated hope for fame and
his sadness. He wrote to Gerber from Syracuse, August 10,
1903, "Please write to me very soon! " (Taschenbuch, p. 93. )
And yet his mind was open enough to allow him to start his
8 In a psychological-psychiatric light this conclusion may be taken as evidence
of a primary insufficiency of the psychic activity. See A. Storch, "Bewusstseins-
bahnen und Wirklichkeitsbereiche in der Schizophrenic," in Zeitschrift fur die
gesammte Neurologie und Psychiatric, LXXXII (1923), 336.
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? Crossing the Border
his last days wrote down his "Letzte Aphorismen" (Last
Aphorisms). There he speaks of the criminal, and we may un-
derstand that the criminal is himself: "Thus the criminal also
creates woman as a thought (he wants intercourse), but she
does not exist for him. He never finds the woman he is looking
for because he creates only an idea of a woman. He can feel
sexual desire for the absolute prostitute (an old woman) and
he can love a Madonna (if he wants to become pure), but he
finds a Madonna only when he is good; at that moment he
also creates a Madonna" (U. L. D. , p. 180).
Weininger's poem beginning, "Sieh mich gebeugt" tells us
that because of his sexual desire he went to women of the
streets, even though he wept when he returned. He certainly
did not regret his desire for fear of venereal disease; his re-
morse came only from the curse of the moral law--that is, be-
cause of his own strongly moral attitude. Weininger believed
that the woman was debased and used only as a means in sexual
intercourse and that, therefore, sexual intercourse was immoral.
This belief obviously had something to do with his forswear-
ing sex relations.
Weininger's sexual urge could not compromise with his
idealistic tendencies. A deep conflict was created in him. On
the one side was his personality, with his moral ego (super-
ego), on the other his sexual drive, which he feared as harmful
and hostile. A continual struggle took place between these
two forces. Probably the reason for much of his moral rigor--
in a characterological sense--may be found in this biological
circumstance. An ascetic is usually defined as a man who feels
pleasure not in the satisfaction of his drives, but in disregard
of them. The warfare within Weininger's nature was bringing
him to the point of ascetic denial--in fact, to psychological
self-castration.
An argument might be advanced to oppose this view with a
contrary explanation. It might be held that Otto adopted a
sexually abstinent life with the violent energy characteristic of
his schizoid make-up, so that his self-denial became a question
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? 130 Crossing the Border
of will power. Given the personal energy he always demon-
strated, it is easy to picture his asceticism in this light. The
explanation is, however, not really satisfactory, for it only takes
us back to the more fundamental question: What was behind
his wish to become an ascetic?
There is no hint that he might have been forced into ab-
stinence by a venereal disease, and we know that he was in
the prime of life when in April, 1903, he decided to be sex-
ually abstinent. Therefore, it might be easy to jump to the
conclusion that Weininger was homosexual. The question
may be argued. He was unmarried, but that fact, of course,
gives no foundation for the conclusion that he was homo-
sexual; he was, after all, only twenty-three years old when he
decided to be continent. This was no time to be married, par-
ticularly in the case of a university student. Moreover, mar-
riage in itself would be no proof that he was not homosexual,
for many married men are. One fact which may support the
theory of homosexuality was his early sexual maturity. The
result of early puberty may be that the sexual urge is not di-
rected against any particular goal and may sometimes be di-
verted to homoerotic inclinations.
His interest in, and knowledge of, the traits and habits of
homosexuals appear clearly in the pages of Sex and Character.
In opposition to Kraepelin and Fere, he considered homosex-
uality as congenital. He was aware that men who feel sexually
attracted to other men have a feminine appearance. In the
chapter, "Homosexuality and Pederasty" he wrote (p. 53):
"No pure psychosexual hermaphroditism exists; men who feel
sexual attraction to other men are in their appearance femi-
nine men, and women who have sexual desire for other women
exhibit a masculine physical appearance. " His formulation of
the law of sexual attraction states that an individual who is
practically half-man and half-woman requires for his mate an-
other being who is half-woman and half-man. "That is the
reason," he said (p. 59), "why homosexuals practically always
exercise their kind of sexuality only among themselves, why
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? Crossing the Border 131
they hardly ever take into their circle anyone who does not
look for the same kind of sexual satisfaction. The sexual at-
traction is mutual and is the strong factor which makes homo-
sexuals always recognize each other so readily. " These state-
ments were made when Weininger was twenty-one or possibly
even younger. Were they based on personal experience? Did
his opinion result from personal experience? When he reached
the conclusion that "logically the right thing to do would be I
to let homosexuals find satisfaction where they look for it,
which is among themselves" (Sex and Character, p. 61), he
might be considered as defending his own growing homo-
sexual inclinations. Obviously, since his observations were ac-
curate, he must have known a great deal about the habits of
homosexuals. This accuracy may indicate that he was ac-
quainted with homosexuals and familiar with homosexual cir-
cles in Vienna.
At first glance the theory that he was homosexual might
seem to be supported by the fact that Weininger had very few
and carefully selected personal friends. It must, however, be
borne in mind that he was a shut-in, schizoid person, and such
individuals typically have very few, if any, intimate friends.
This peculiarity in Weininger does not, therefore, give any
real support to the theory that he was homosexual. Yet it is of
interest to note that he said in Sex and Character (p. 58):
"Nor is there any friendship between men which does not
have an element of sexuality, no matter how little the friend-
ship is characterized by it. Even though the sexual aspect is
alien to the thought of friendship, though it is quite contrary
to the very idea of friendship, the plain fact is that there can
never be friendship between men who have no physical attrac-
tion for each other, for without attraction they cannot ap-
proach each other. Much of the protection given by one friend
to another and much favoritism originate in such sexual rela-
tionships, which are often unconscious. " Again we may won-
der if personal experience did not dictate these ideas.
In connection with Weininger's Platonic and quite theoret-
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? 132 Crossing the Border
ical division into masculine and feminine substance, it should
be noted that Weininger found in himself traits that he con-
sidered feminine. This awareness--which was more or less
conscious--of having characteristics of the other sex may be
said to be typical of the homosexual. To be a man was, accord-
ing to Weininger, to conquer the passive resistance, to defeat
the feminine part of one's self (which Weininger thought of
symbolically as Ibsen's Boig) . 2 His attitude may be considered
as showing symptoms of homosexual inclinations.
Above all, his appalling and absurd ideas on women in Sex
and Character may hint at homosexual traits in himself. There
and at times in his letters he seems to be defending himself
against the charge that he is a woman. "Am I such a woman? "
he asks at one time, and quite irrelevantly, since the question
seems to have been as to whether or not he was jealous of a
"Miss K. " He is proud of not being seasick when "every
woman on board was seasick. " These remarks are revealing in
connection with his special theory of bisexuality, and they may
reflect some homosexual traits in himself.
It has already been said that Weininger attributed feminine
traits to the Jewish people. Would it be far-fetched to see a
possible symbolic connection between his antifeminism and
his anti-Semitism? Being of Jewish blood, he was loud in his
hatred of the Jews in order to show that he was not really dif-
ferent from other men. Being homosexual, he was loud in his
denunciation of women in order to show that he was not
really different from other men. The hatred of his mother-
religion, Judaism, should also probably be regarded as a sym-
bol of his hatred for his own mother. Even if such speculations
bring no sure answer, nevertheless Weininger did take an
2 John Landquist, "En kritik av Otto Weininger varldsaskadning," in Filoso-
fiske Essayer (Stockholm, 1916), p. 181. There is a theory that the endocrine
disturbances, which may be cause of the schizoid-schizophrenic constitution,
are in definite biological relation to the homosexual disposition. See Hermann
Hoffmann, Vererbung und Seelenleben: Einfiihrung in die psychiatrische Kon-
stitutions- und Vererbungslehre (Berlin, 1922), p. 226. Kretschmer has demon-
strated that we find the occurrence of sexual perversions disproportionately
more frequent in schizophrenic than in cyclophrenic individuals.
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? Crossing the Border 133
overcompensated masculine attitude in order to overcome
traces of femininity in himself, and that fact does indicate the
presence of homosexual traits in him.
Weininger's ascetic tendencies may show an interesting
parallel to the attitude of Plato toward sex. Some students of
Plato believe that he was forced into an ascetic philosophy by
his own tendency toward sexual perversion. We may possibly
see a similar process in Weininger.
His asceticism was to no small extent fostered by the close
intellectual and emotional relationship with his father, which
caused Otto, consciously or unconsciously, to adore the elder
Weininger. This feeling may have led to a kind of adoration
of virility, a phallic cult, through which he sought to realize
the masculine ideal. This phallic cult undoubtedly stressed his
homoerotic drive and was, in addition to the factors previously
mentioned, instrumental in creating his later asceticism.
We may conclude, then, that his deliberate sexual absti-
nence in the last six months of his life may be considered a
change, and in a sense a perversion, of his sexual nature. In
Sex and Character the same twisted shape appears, reflecting
contorted sexual feelings.
The question arises as to whether this ascetic turn was to
some extent constitutionally conditioned. No decisive answer
can be made, since we do not know where heredity starts and
environment ends. 3 This much seems to be fairly well estab-
lished: a person inherits certain materials which, given certain
situations and conditions, will call forth a particular charac-
teristic in his personality. Granting that everyone, including
Weininger, does inherit certain things, we may go on to say
that those things create a predisposition, a frame within which
the influences of his environment work. When we keep in
mind the personality make-up of Otto Weininger, when we
recall how he bent his efforts toward attaining the ideal life
of Jesus, how he ended by arriving not only at sexual asceti-
cism but also at complete unreality, and how under the influ-
8 David Abrahamsen, Crime and the Human Mind (New York, 1944), p. 56.
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? 154 Crossing the Border
ences of his environment he advanced steadily to that asceti-
cism, we may see how personality make-up and environment
worked together, hand in hand.
The one-sided fashion in which Weininger looked at the
sexual problem is worth noting, for it is in itself a symptom of
a schizoid nature. A man of the schizoid type tends to regard
questions with less than the normal breadth of attention, and
consequently his views are narrow and fixed. Weininger's
view of the sexual problem was certainly narrow and rigid be-
cause of the conflict between his strong sexual urge and the
growing repulsion for sexual life which became natural for him
( though morbid for a healthy man. The disturbances of his
^ sexual urge created in him a manifest perversion, compounded
of homosexual and ascetic elements.
The attraction which sexual life had for him seems at a cer-
tain period--from the summer of 1902 to April, 1903--to
have had some neurotic coloring. He tried to free himself by
suppressing of the sexual urge, by sublimation of it. Such
obsessional neurotic phenomena as appeared in him at this
time seem to have been furthered, at least to some extent, by
his abnormal sexual drive. Yet in spite of the fact that he
showed these signs for some time, we need not conclude that
he suffered from a neurosis as such. The decisive evidence to
show that it was not a neurosis is to be found in the fatal
symptoms of symbolism and mysticism, which appeared in
him at least as early as the spring of 1902 (see U. L. D. , p. 115)
and persisted until his death. These cannot be regarded as
anything but the first signs of schizophrenia. 4 The compulsory
neurotic phenomena he showed were the result of perversions,
which had been activated by his sadistic tendencies, as quite
often occurs in such cases.
Gerber, who followed Weininger's mental condition with
some care, thought that he was in more cheerful mood in the
* Ernst Spehr, Von Wesen der Neurose und ihren Erscheinungsformen (Leip-
zig, ! 938), P- 88-
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? Crossing the Border 135
summer of 1903 (Taschenbuch, p. 21), but that impression
must have been only an illusion. Weininger often spoke of his
criminal disposition, but in a more subdued way than formerly
--a change which led the observer to hope that his mental
crisis was passing. Yet he seems still to have been in a crisis
state, though controlling his moods with violent effort and
great mental struggle. Apparently he drew some comfort from
his work. Still it was not true that his crisis had ended. Quite
the contrary, as his later mental development was to prove.
Rappaport claimed (U. L. D. , p. xvii) that Weininger's suffer-
ing deepened shortly after Sex and Character was published.
The words used in the preface to the first edition of Vber die
letzten Dinge leave no doubt as to what Rappaport's estimate
of Otto's state of mind was. "When he had just completed his
first work, he said once to me: 'There are three possibilities for
me--the gallows, suicide, or a future so brilliant that I don't
dare to think of it! ' On the same day he entrusted to me his
last manuscript [probably an incomplete draft of Vber die
letzten Dinge] to publish in case he should not be able to do
so himself. From that day on his condition grew steadily
worse. "
His gloomy mood was also described by Lucka, who said,
"Weininger often made a sinister, uncomfortable impression
on me and others, but he might become quite cheerful again
later. " This description accords well with Lucka's statement
about Otto before Sex and Character was published--"He was
often quite lost in himself and hardly listened to our conversa-
tion. " And Ewald also gives us the same impression by saying,
"In intimate conversations he frequently hinted at terrible
trials by evil forces and mentioned that the idea of a violent
solution was not strange to him. "
Weininger's state of mind during the spring of 1903 was,
then, dark and serious, full of dread and doubt. He lived in
anticipation of a catastrophe. So deep was his skepticism, so
intense his search for what he believed to be truth, that he
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? 136 Crossing the Border
actually appeared to be languishing in despair. The tragic
strain may not have appeared on the surface, but his friends
suspected his condition.
The best expression of that state of mind is to be found in
parts of Sex and Character. He wrote, for instance (pp. 386--
87): "Since every man has some relation to . the idea of the
supreme good without really being part of it, there is no happy
man. Only women are happy. No man is happy; he is com-
mitted to liberty, while on earth he is always bound one way
or another. None but a completely passive creature, like the
<<. true woman, or a completely active being, like the Deity, can
be happy. Happiness is feeling of perfection, which no man
can ever enjoy, but there are women who fancy themselves
perfect.
A man always has problems behind him and tasks
ahead of him. All problems have their roots in the past. The
future is the realm of the tasks. . . . Happiness for a man
would imply full and pure activity, complete freedom; but he
can never be free, and his guilt mounts as he moves away
from the idea of liberty. Life on earth is suffering for him, and
must be so, because human beings are passive in their percep-
tions. . . . Every man needs to make observations; even the
genius is nothing without that power, though he can fill his
observations with his own personality and has no need of com-
plete induction to be able to recognize the idea of a thing. "
Many quotations of this sort could be cited; they all go to
show that he was gravely unhappy. In any event his suicide
makes any other view impossible. Another passage in the book
(pp. 384-85) reads: "I can first recognize a sin when I am no
longer committing it. From the moment that I recognize it I
commit it no more. Therefore, I cannot understand life so
long as I am alive, and time is the great riddle which defies
me so long as I am living in it. . . . When I have conquered
time, then I shall be able to understand it; death alone can
teach me the meaning of life. There has not yet been a mo-
ment when I did not . . . crave not to exist; how then could
this desire become the object of observation, recognition?
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? Crossing the Border xyj
That which I perceive I am already beyond. I cannot under-
stand my sin because I am still sinful. Eternal life and mortal
life do not follow each other. They go side by side, and the
good is such because it is preexistent. "
A man who writes thus feels no happiness in life, nor does
he feel bound to life. A glance at other passages in Sex and
Character--especially those concerning women--yields the
same impression. Rightly we may agree with his good friend
Lucka, who wrote, "He who has put into practice the destruc-
tion of the strongest of all illusions, the faith in the eternal
feminine--which is a rightful need for great men--must re-
main cold in the colorful variety of life. "
Weininger's desperation was made worse by the reception
given his published work. The public reaction, generally in-
different or unfriendly, did not tend to cheer him up. He ap-
parently realized that he had caused some consternation. He
had fomented passions, and now he had to face them; for the
first time he was aware that his words might mean the same as
action. On August 3, 1903, he was writing to Gerber asking
him for an honest opinion of the book.
There is good reason to think that Weininger had written
the book at least partially in order to liberate his own mind.
This was the accusation leveled at him by P. J. Mobius in an
article, "Geschlecht und Unbescheidenheit" (Sex and Im-
modesty), reviewing the book. Otto's answer seemed to bear
out the charge. The book indeed reflected Otto's own mood,
which became worse after the book was published. He was
still able to maintain a superficial composure, but only with a
violent mental struggle. The mental effort increased when the
first sparse applause was drowned in a larger storm of enraged
protest.
The fate of the book worried the author, and Mobius's
sharp criticism angered him. The main points in the review,
which filled two whole pages, were these: "It is hard to give a
fair judgment of the book. Most people will drop it with dis-
like, and one must admit that they are right. Still there are
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? 138 Crossing the Border
many good things in it. . . . We find in Weininger a highly
gifted man who has read much and tried to think sharply,
who has much experience although he must be very young.
. . . But now we must turn to the less fortunate side of the
book. Most of his reflections on sexual phenomena are al-
ready to be found in the works of this reviewer; even the title
is plagiarized. . . . He is even more arrogant when he declares
that the opinion of this reviewer--that great talent in women
is a sign of degeneration--is false and that sexual transitional
forms are quite natural phenomena. This man, disguised as a
philosopher, has set himself to decide what is normal and
what is pathological. . . .
"The book has become so large because the author wanted
to rid himself of his ideas. We hear long lectures about genius,
logic, etc. Much of it is good (especially on compassion in
modern psychology), much is very strange. "
Weininger made an answer, of which Mobius says: "I re-
ceived from Weininger a long, rather formless letter written
from Syracuse, August 17. The author is very upset. I had
accused him of plagiarism, of hypocritical and criminal be-
havior, and of harming others. I had to prove what I had said
or make a public apology. He gave me three weeks, then he
would make public the malicious slander and force me to
bring a law suit against him. " In reply to this Mobius pub-
lished a pamphlet entitled, like the review, Geschlecht und
Unbescheidenheit (Sex and Immodesty). It was printed in
Leipzig in November, 1903.
Weininger, deeply wounded, had already answered his critic
in the August 22 issue of Zukunft. "I believe," he said, "that this
book has solved the psychological problem of sexual difference
and has given the final answer to the so-called problem of
woman's emancipation. " This statement justifies Mobius in
ascribing to Weininger a complete lack of modesty. Because
of the attack, which he considered to be mean, Weininger's
feeling of his own greatness mounted to dangerous heights.
His words in the Zukunft article show a pathologically height-
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? Crossing the Border 139
ened self-esteem and lack of self-criticism. His reactions seem
to have been based on the theory that everybody took an interest
in his book, which was far from the truth. True, Sex and Char-
acter did arouse public interest, but it did not immediately
bring the fame that Weininger expected. Only the members
of his small circle of friends and acquaintances were enraged
by the strong condemnation of the book. The world did not
pay much attention to his work or his personality while Wei-
ninger was still alive. Even when he killed himself, though the
dramatic character of his death drew more attention than
would have attended death from natural causes, public inter-
est was still small. His importance was, for instance, so slight
in Scandinavian public opinion that his death was not even
mentioned in the Scandinavian press. In the Norwegian papers
of that time not one word can be found about his work or his
death.
Only in Weininger's imaginary world had his work and his
person caused any sensation. He was, therefore, so much the
more wounded by Mobius's suggestion that he had imitated
Mobius's work. His reaction to this was also unreasonable.
Mobius writes on this point: "Weininger believed that I had
called him an imitator. How could I have done such a thing?
That would have been impolite, even insulting. No, I did no
such thing. My words should have been perfectly clear; Wei-
ninger's usual sagacity must have left him for a moment when
this unfortunate thought entered his mind. I said that I
thought people might consider him a plagiarist. That is the
reason for this malicious and arrogant attack. "
Weininger apparently wanted to forestall any claim that he
had imitated the work that Mobius had written concerning
the psychological feeblemindedness of woman in 1900.
Mobius maintained flatly that the title Weininger used was
an imitation. "Otto Weininger writes that he had already
chosen his title early in 1902. This must, of course, be the
case if he says so. But he adds that he had seen my Geschlecht
und Entarung (Sex and Degeneration) before his own book
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? 140 Crossing the Border
was published. On the cover of that book the words 'Sex and
--' are printed five times. When someone has looked at my
title and then chooses 'Sex and --he is at least committing
a breach of tact. "
A man of composed mind would have admitted that the
main idea in Sex and Character could be recognized in the
earlier work by Mobius, even though Weininger had worked
out the theory on a larger scale. But Otto was not willing to
( admit this debt. He maintained that he alone had solved the
psychological problem of sex difference. Therefore he felt that
he was insulted by criticism. The reaction of a man of normal
mind would have accorded better with the real facts than did
Weininger's. Yet there is no reason to believe that the criti-
cism brought about any systematized ideas of persecution in
Weininger or created in him a paranoid attitude. In spite of
his twisted relation to reality, he did not develop any ideas of
persecution totally divorced from the real world. His self-
esteem did become greater after the attack by Mobius, but
probably not because of any paranoid tendency. He already
had the conviction that he was a great man. The criticism of
Mobius and others--which Weininger did consider base per-
secution--only caused him to feel greater.
Sex and Character did not bring him the comfort he antic-
ipated. A few passages in Taschenbuch reveal one side of his
mental state, his great pain. "If the flat-headed Schiller, in-
stead of writing that sentence that is a desert of beautiful-
sounding comfortable moralizing, 'Shared happiness is double
happiness, shared pain is half pain,' had written, 'A man can
share his happiness but never his pain,' he would have told
the truth" (p. 43). Obviously this means that Weininger felt
that he could never share his own pain with anyone. Again he
writes, "Your double is the complex of all your bad qualities.
All minor fears are only a part of this total fear, the fear of
your double" (p. 42). Here the mood of suffering is combined
with growing gloom, characteristic of his mental development
in this period. To add to this despair he had the knowledge
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? Crossing the Border 141
that the world was moving along just as it had before his book
was published, that no one was paying deep attention to his
revelations. There is no doubt that he became depressed, and
he thought his melancholy due to a sudden moral deficiency
in himself (U. L. D. , p. xvii). 8
In June, 1903, Weininger left his quarters in Vienna and
spent six weeks with his family at Brunn-bei-Modling. His
mood in this period was illustrated in two incidents. One was
his comment on praise of his book. "A man of letters in
Vienna, a brilliant intellectual, wrote him in most enthusias-
tic praise of the masterpiece. Otto only muttered to his father,
'I have written a book for the thousands of years to come,
and I am still not understood. ' " The other was also recorded
by his father. "Before Otto left for Italy that summer, he told
me that no woman could ever understand his work" (Der Fall,
P-9)-
These statements show that this self-esteem was still grow-
ing within him, as were discouragement and despair. "He
must have harbored the thought of suicide for a long time,"
says Lucka. "That is apparent in the fact that he wrote his last
will that summer" (Die Fackel, October 17,1903, pp. 15-16).
He was so dispirited that he wanted to get away from him-
self. And so he went to Italy. "He was very upset when he left
for Italy," says Ewald (p. 68). He had fled from the world
and its people; now he wanted to flee from life itself. But
there was something that still held him back, that still kept
him bound to life--his book and its recognition. Yet there
was no word from home, he gained no fame, and few voices
were lifted up to laud his work.
The letters he wrote show his frustrated hope for fame and
his sadness. He wrote to Gerber from Syracuse, August 10,
1903, "Please write to me very soon! " (Taschenbuch, p. 93. )
And yet his mind was open enough to allow him to start his
8 In a psychological-psychiatric light this conclusion may be taken as evidence
of a primary insufficiency of the psychic activity. See A. Storch, "Bewusstseins-
bahnen und Wirklichkeitsbereiche in der Schizophrenic," in Zeitschrift fur die
gesammte Neurologie und Psychiatric, LXXXII (1923), 336.
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