Mann unter Männern: Männerbünde und die Angst vor der Masse in der Rede Von deutscher Republik

In his speech Von deutscher Republik (1922), Thomas Mann bases his idea of a German republic on a charismatic community of men, rejecting both rational and traditional types of legitimate authority (Max Weber). This community based on male bonding is rooted in the tradition of German culture, guaranteeing the survival of this culture in the face of "Western civilization" and "Eastern political mysticism." Mann's cultural and political visions of male bonding are, at the same time, part of a binary construction which permeates the culture of modernism. Masses and crowds, conceptualized and represented as feminine, are the threatening, yet also fascinating, opposite which endangers German culture and a male homosocial community.