Hesitancy and Hovering: Irony, Camp, and Fetishism in Mädchen in Uniform

Abstract

What accounts for the hesitancy many viewers, including scholars and students, feel in assessing the relationship between von Bernburg and Manuela? Are they lesbians? Is the student-teacher dynamic inappropriate? Is von Bernburg merely a mother figure to Manuela? How can Manuela, depicted as a child, even express erotic longings? This article attempts to counter such questions with an eye to irony, camp, melodrama, and fetishism—starting with the 1931 film and its delicate hovering in the depiction of same-sex attraction, and progressing to its other literary and cinematic versions.