Cloistered Boyhood. Becoming a Man at Boarding Schools in Germany and England, 1870 to 1930

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Daniel Gerster
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2017 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 353613065

What qualifies a man as a man depends on many things: his relations to other men and women, his own age and sexuality, but also his social class, religion, and national affiliation. Thus, being a man can find expression in different concepts and social practices, and has been a controversial issue throughout history. Youth has offered a new battlefield for those conflicts ever since societies in Western Europe re-discovered it as an independent phase of life between childhood and adulthood in the late 19th century. In which way, however, did a boy differ from a man, and how did boys in fact become men? Questions like these were now in view and heavily contested in debates on adolescent masculinities. Answers varied depending on the social, religious, and national background of the speaker. Differences appeared especially in boarding schools where boyhood and male education were imagined and practiced without familial involvement and in a cloistered environment.The research project will systematically historicize the semantics and practices of adolescent masculinities applied in school boarding in Germany and England between 1870 and 1930. By examining carefully selected examples like the traditional English boarding school Harrow or the German reform boarding school Schloss Bieberstein, the study will ask:1. Which concepts of adolescent masculinity did pedagogues and teachers of boarding schools advertise? How did they differentiate these ideas from other gender concepts? And what were the impacts of the social dispositions of different speakers?2. In which form was masculinity actually practiced in different boarding schools? How were the practices of becoming a man connected to the social function of boarding schools as elite, reformist, or religious institutions? And how did semantics and practices interconnect?3. Which differences existed between concepts and social practices of adolescent masculinity in Germany and England, and which transnational interdependencies? What influence did historical events like female emancipation, or the First World War, have?By answering these questions, the research project will contribute to fundamental debates regarding the contemporary histories of youth and masculinity. It will explore how (new) concepts of adolescent masculinity emerged during the late 19th century, and explain how their transformation during the following decades connected to factors like social class and religion, and to the broader historical context. In addition, the study will provide historical answers to the long neglected question of the part social practices played in shaping men. It is expected that despite evident differences, concepts and practices of adolescent masculinity will interact. Finally, by comparing Germany and England, the research project will analyse structural similarities and differences between masculinities in Western Europe, thereby testing the concept of High Modernity and its associated claims.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Thomas Großbölting; Professor Dr. Paul Nolte; Professor Dr. Jürgen Overhoff