Imagendering II

6      The extent to which German women were seen as vessels for reproduction of the nation can be seen in the state's response to Lilly's request for divorce from her husband, Günther. Lilly filed for divorce on the grounds that Günther had broken his marriage vows (through extramarital affairs). Günther denied culpability on the basis that Lilly had refused conjugal relations since December 1942 because she did not want to have any more children. The court decided that Lilly's reason (that she already had four children) was not justifiable (Fischer 138). In this instance, the state decided that already having four children was no justification for not wanting more, and that Lilly and Günther were equally culpable for the divorce. The ideology of reproducing the Aryan race becomes codified in the legal system when marital infidelity and the desire to stop having children (after four) are equivalent violations of a marriage contract.

7      The character of Elisabeth Wust provides a rich text for examining the gendered production of the nation. As a dutiful German wife, she reproduces the Aryan race while her husband fights for expanded territory. For her efforts, which produce four blond, blue-eyed sons, she receives the 'Cross of Motherhood' in bronze. She is so efficient in her motherhood that she manages to raise four boys while her husband is away, and still has time to entertain various other high-powered Nazi officials. This extramarital heterosexuality does not really interfere with the Aryan agenda, which focuses more on reproducing racially pure citizens than on the moral structures that inform those relationships.[3]This can be seen in the assignment of culpability in Lilly and Günther's divorce, to which I will return in a moment. Her extraordinary feats of motherhood also make her eligible for state-provided domestic assistance of an obligatory domestic service worker, in the form of Inge Wolf. Ironically, it is through her connection to Inge Wolf that Lilly meets Felice Schragenheim.

8      Lilly's love for Felice, and her newfound lesbian identity, eventually lead her to seek a divorce from her husband. Felice therefore disrupts the National Socialist agenda for propagation of a pure Aryan race in a way that Lilly's infidelities with other Nazi officials do not. Felice's interruption of the mechanism of race-propagation is complicated by the fact that she is both female and Jewish. She embodies at once the threat of racial and moral contamination through her ethnicity and her sexuality. Reading Aimée and Jaguar as a commentary on nationalism illustrates the nation's investment, indeed, dependence on, the enforcement of heterosexuality and the exclusion of ethnic others. Lesbianism can be seen therefore, as a site of resistance to nationalism and the nation.

9      Lilly's trajectory from anti- to philo-Semitism follows her conversion to lesbianism. In a true Western "coming-out" narrative, once Lilly falls in love with Felice she finds evidence of her "true" lesbian self in her past, recounting stories of school girl crushes and an obsession with a gym teacher. "Actually, my parents weren't surprised at all. At that moment [when Lilly told them about her love for Felice] they probably thought back to my youth, when they had done everything in their power to suppress that" (Fischer 115). Interestingly, once she finds out that Felice is Jewish, she retraces a similar past affiliation with Jews, by acknowledging the family secret (her brother's Jewish father), Jewish friends in school, and the fact that her parents really weren't convinced by Nazi rhetoric. She also recounts that one of her school-girl crushes was on a Jewish girl, and adds as an aside, "Just as Jews showed a liking for me, I showed a liking for them, that's the way it was" (Fischer 116).

10      Felice and her friends also looked at Lilly as the object of a dual conversion. Elenai Pollack recalls that they "had their own missionary tic, of course. A woman like that can indeed become "different," we thought, maybe we'll do it" (Fischer 110). And Gerd Ehrlich states, "Frau Wust was known in her neighborhood as a true Nazi. It was our (positive) influence that converted her. Of course, in order to be of even greater help to us she remained a loyal follower of the Führer on the outside" (111). Lilly's conversion from heterosexual Nazi to lesbian philo-Semite was thus widely acknowledged and embraced by her new circle of friends, who attributed this enlightenment to their own efforts.