Introduction: The Construction of Sexual Deviance in Late Imperial Eastern Europe

• Published in: Journal of the history of sexuality 2011-05, Vol.20 (2), p.215-224
• Main Authors: STAUTER-HALSTED, KEELY, WINGFIELD, NANCY M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Crime Victims - history; Crime Victims - psychology; Criminology - education; Criminology - history; Ethnic Groups - education; Ethnic Groups - ethnology; Ethnic Groups - history; Ethnic Groups - legislation & jurisprudence; Ethnic Groups - psychology; Europe, Eastern - ethnology; History; History of medicine; History, 19th Century; History, 20th Century; Humans; Mass Media - history; Morality; Psychiatry - education; Psychiatry - history; Public Opinion - history; Sex industry; Sex Offenses - ethnology; Sex Offenses - history; Sex Offenses - legislation & jurisprudence; Sex Offenses - psychology; Sexology - education; Sexology - history; Sexual Behavior - ethnology; Sexual Behavior - history; Sexual Behavior - physiology; Sexual Behavior - psychology; Sexual disorders; Sexuality; Social aspects; Social Class - history; Social classes; Social Conditions - economics; Social Conditions - history; Social Conditions - legislation & jurisprudence; Trials; Urban Health - history; Urban Population - history
• ISSN: 1043-4070; 1535-3605; 1535-3605
• DOI: 10.1353/sex.2011.0032

Krafft-Ebing thus joined a growing community of medical professionals and intellectuals in the imperial capital preoccupied with themes of sexuality.1 The same year that Psychopathia Sexualis appeared, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) completed his medical degree and opened a small practice in Vienna.2 Criminologist Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) and physician and homosexuality advocate Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) drew on Vienna's lively atmosphere to refine their theories of human sexuality.3 Viennese philosopher Otto Weininger (18801903) and satirist Karl Kraus (1874-1936) also published soon thereafter their treatises on the related topics of sex, morality, criminal justice, and the Jews.4 Residents elsewhere in eastern Europe had access to a veritable explosion of scholarship on sex as the writings of British sexologist Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), Berlin dermatologist Iwan Bloch (1872-1922), and Russian syphilologists Benjamin and Pauline Tarnowsky (1838-1906, 1848-1910) made their way to booksellers throughout the region.5 This new generation of experts on sexual practices, sexual anomalies, and sexual diseases helped to introduce educated society to new ways of understanding the most intimate of human behaviors. Police investigated allegations of kidnapped sex workers, registered the activities of domestic prostitutes, and explored the sexual predilections of murderers.\n Assumptions about female sexuality and especially about sexually aberrant behavior were closely tied up with the Polish elite's perceptions of working-class culture.19 In its heightened anxiety about venereal contagion among upper-class Poles, the medical community imposed progressively broader guidelines on suspected sex workers.20 Attitudes about lower-class sexuality encouraged them to treat all female urban migrants as prospective prostitutes.