| Summary: | This paper examines the ways in which the figure of Ahasver, the so-called "Wandering Jew," was utilized by the early German queer magazine culture (1896-1933), with particular attention to literary texts that explore homosocial and homosexual desire between men. Ahasver is an ambivalent figure, with cultural connotations shaped and reshaped over centuries. Coined a "thoroughly un-Jewish figure" by Hans Mayer, he has been employed as an antisemitic projection figure and a personification of the Jewish people, as well as a symbol for resilience, rebellion, or particularity. Against the backdrop of the key topics in the queer magazines' literary texts--conceptualizing nonheteronormative sexuality, affirming male homosocial and homosexual desire, imagining communities and gay genealogies--the figure of Ahasver is employed in a variety of ways that draw from but cannot be subsumed under any of the aforementioned configurations. While he is an overdetermined figure, Ahasver is defined by three main characteristics: immortality, boundless mobility, and solitude. Drawing on queer kinship theory and analyzing three literary texts from one of the leading queer magazines of the Weimar Republic, this article examines Ahasver as a figuration of kinship rupture and social isolation and traces how the figure challenges the imagined union of community, nationality, and statehood.
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