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FOCUS ON GERMAN STUDIES 69 

 

 
The Poetics of Deniable Plausibility in Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Die Turnstunde” 
 

DARREN ILETT 
 
 

ie Turnstunde”1 opens abruptly: “In der Militärschule zu 
Sankt Severin. Turnsaal” (W 435).2 Provided with only 
these two terse phrases of orientation — which replicate 

the harsh, clipped commands of the military3 — the reader is already 
located in the space of action. The narrative begins immediately and 
relates Cadet Karl Gruber’s atypical athletic performance and 
consequent death. The brevity, scarcity, and seeming objectivity one 
finds in these introductory words also characterize the story generally, 
for it comprises only a few pages and seems to have remained a 
fragment. In addition, one might describe the narrative voice in terms of 
limitation or constraint, for the narrator reports only visual and auditory 
information, those concrete details that one might perceive if present at 
the narrated events. Yet this apparent objectivity makes for an 
inscrutable text resistant to interpretation and in which we have no 
unambiguous access to characters’ thoughts or motivations. The tension 
inherent in this ostensibly and self-consciously objective narrative that 
nonetheless evades a univocal interpretation is the result, at least 
partially, of anxiety regarding the possibility of homosexuality, which 
was often depicted by literary and professional discourses as a constant 
danger in same-sex institutions like the military boarding school. This 
tension finds expression in the narrative peculiarities of Rilke’s text. 

The events of “Die Turnstunde” are easily recounted. After the 
curt introductory phrases, the gym teacher commands the cadets to go 
to various pieces of gymnastics equipment. Cadet Karl Gruber, the 
worst athlete, goes uncharacteristically quickly to the climbing pole and 
is already partway up when the others arrive. The teacher orders him 
either to come down or to finish the climb. He continues, eventually 
reaching the ceiling, and all eyes in the gymnasium follow him up. Karl 
then slides down the pole and inspects his injured hands. After failing to 
respond to the cadets’ jeering remarks, he retreats into a recess in the 
wall. Cadet Jerome, who seems to be Karl’s only friend, comes to him 
and offers solace and advice. Karl sinks deeper into the recess in the wall 
until his head hits the seat, apparently unconscious. Four cadets carry 
Karl’s body to an adjacent room and soon return, yet they have no 
answers for the others’ questions about Karl’s condition. On command, 

“D 



 
 
 
70 THE POETICS OF DENIABLE PLAUSIBILITY IN RAINER MARIA RILKE’S “DIE TURNSTUNDE” 

 

the cadets continue their exercises. Krix, another cadet, listens at the 
door of the room where Karl has been taken and then spreads the news 
among the cadets that the doctor has arrived. Everyone eventually stops 
their exercises to stare at the door that conceals Karl’s body. An officer 
commands the cadets to line up, but they remain still. Another officer 
reemerges from the room to announce that Karl has died of a heart 
attack and then immediately orders the cadets to march out of the 
gymnasium. As the cadets exit, Krix jumps to Jerome’s side and 
whispers that he has seen Karl’s naked body and then bites Jerome’s 
sleeve. With that peculiar action, the story ends as abruptly as it begins.  

Much of the scholarship on “Die Turnstunde” focuses on the 
relationship between Rilke’s works and his experiences as a student at 
the Austro-Hungarian military academies in St. Pölten and Mährisch-
Weißkirchen.4 Other research considers the structure of the text and its 
language and situates “Die Turnstunde” in Rilke’s oeuvre generally and 
in relationship to his novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge 
specifically.5 The crucial topic of sexuality remains, however, relatively 
unexamined. The intention of an analysis of the depiction of sexuality in 
the text is not to resolve its ambiguity; rather, it is to illustrate how 
sexuality serves as a point of convergence for other tensions in the text. 
The same tensions also inform Rilke’s comments regarding the text’s 
composition as well as its later reception. Each of these areas displays 
anxiety surrounding the status of knowledge, especially concerning 
sexuality, and in each this anxiety produces a characteristic move of 
simultaneous iteration and disavowal, a partial covering-of-one’s-tracks 
or deniable plausibility.6 

Eve Sedgwick addresses such anxiety in Epistemology of the Closet 
where she claims an incommensurable but forever shifting and 
unpredictable divide in Western culture between prescribed homosocial 
bonds and proscribed homosexuality for men. However, the sorts of 
prescribed male bonding that play an integral part in “male heterosexual 
entitlement” — such as “male friendship, mentorship, admiring 
identification, bureaucratic subordination, and heterosexual rivalry”—
also and at the same time include “forms of investment” that resemble 
those of an always proscribed homosexuality (185-86). Therefore, “it 
appears that men enter into adult masculine entitlement only through 
acceding to the permanent threat that the small space they have cleared 
for themselves on this terrain may always, just as arbitrarily and with just 
as much justification, be foreclosed” (186). Sedgwick further argues in 
Between Men that homophobic violence has the effect of controlling all 
men; that “no man must be able to ascertain that he is not (that his 



 
 
 

FOCUS ON GERMAN STUDIES 71 

 

bonds are not) homosexual” has resulted in “a structural residue of 
terrorist potential, a blackmailability, of Western maleness through the 
leverage of homophobia” (88-89). Sedgwick terms this structure of 
constant uncertainty “homosexual panic,” the internalized form of 
homophobic social violence (Epistemology 185). The concurrent 
prescription and proscription of male homosocial bonds, not to mention 
the stakes involved in the exceedingly unpredictable task of determining 
and remaining on the sanctioned side of the arbitrary definition of 
homosexuality, make life in a military academy one especially charged 
with homosexual panic (Epistemology 186). 

The peculiar tone of “Die Turnstunde,” one of mystery and rapt 
attention, turns on the thematics of the limits of knowledge and the 
anxiety caused by expressing or knowing too much or too little. 
Miscommunication, uncertainties, secrets, revelations, and anomalous, 
enigmatic behavior abound in the narrative. Each stage is structured 
around an epistemological irregularity: the first is dominated by Karl’s 
inexplicable physical effort and by the cadets as astounded onlookers; 
the second recounts the process of Karl’s death which goes largely 
unnoticed; and the last is marked by the cadets’ intense, hushed interest 
in discovering his fate. 

One can understand the pivotal act of the first section — Karl’s 
climb — either as insubordination against a command, an unusual 
physical feat, or the expression of desperation (Kayser 45). That is, Karl 
is either acting against the authoritarianism of the military academy, in 
accordance with it (but to an exaggerated degree), or he is rejecting the 
situation and the institution completely. The text supports all three 
interpretations of Karl’s climb, respectively: he notices the officer’s 
anger “mit besonderem Vergnügen”; he manages to do something 
which “er sonst niemals begreifen konnte,” yet he does so 
“unwillkürlich” (W 435); and he strives for the ceiling “als hätte er einen 
Ausweg in der Decke des Saales endeckt und strebte danach, ihn zu 
erreichen” (W 436).7 The narrator expresses the inscrutability of 
motivation and the opacity of Karl’s action by placing it “in einer etwas 
dämmerigen Ecke des Saales” (making it difficult for others to see) (W 
435) and by depicting the pole as “unermeßlich” (emphasizing Karl’s 
own inability to understand his act) (W 436).8 It remains undecidable 
whether Karl acts willfully or is under the control of some unknown 
(and perhaps unknowable) power. 

Another epistemological issue is the ambivalence of human 
interaction. Characters repeatedly pay one another too little or too much 
attention. The cadets and officer on duty fail to notice Karl until he is 



 
 
 
72 THE POETICS OF DENIABLE PLAUSIBILITY IN RAINER MARIA RILKE’S “DIE TURNSTUNDE” 

 

already clinging fairly high up the pole (W 435). He returns the favor 
with his own willful inattention to the officer’s commands. All the 
cadets’ eyes then follow Karl’s movements. Apparently sensing, but not 
actually turning around to see, their collective gaze, “macht er hoch 
oben unter der Decke eine Bewegung, als wollte er sie abschütteln; und 
da ihm Das [sic] offenbar nicht gelingt, bindet er alle diese Blicke oben 
an den nackten eisernen Hacken.”9 Having diverted their attention to 
the hook, “saust [er] die glatte Stange herunter, so daß alle immer noch 
hinaufsehen, als er schon längst, schwindelnd und heiß, unten steht.”10 
Despite the rapt attention with which the cadets watch Karl’s climb, 
they fail to notice his movements. Then Karl stares “mit seltsam 
glanzlosen Augen in seine glühenden Handflächen” (W 436).11 He 
beholds his hands with the kind of attention the others give his 
climbing: one which excludes everything apart from the specific object 
of interest yet nevertheless fails to yield the understanding it seeks. That 
his eyes are “glanzlos” merely stresses the failure of perception.  

Other failures of communication in the first section compound 
the difficulties of (in)attention. Karl is a silent figure. After he slides 
down the pole, the cadets around him inquire about his irregular action 
(W 436). He appears to want to answer, but then hesitates and quickly 
lowers his eyes. He censors himself, having internalized their contempt. 
By the time he thinks of a response, the others have lost interest and 
gone away (W 436). The only word Karl utters in the entire story is a 
frightened “Was?” (“What”). The word is a condensation of the story’s 
many confusions and attempts at discovery, all the more so because of 
the quality of Karl’s voice. He responds “mit seiner gewöhnlichen, in 
Speichel watenden Stimme” (W 437).12 This quality of Karl’s voice — as 
if it were wading in saliva — is not the result of overexertion but his 
usual voice. It is as if Karl were always drowning in his own saliva. He 
struggles to utter this single word, even to Jerome, the only character 
with whom he has any sort of caring, personal contact. 

In the story’s second section, we encounter two similar 
(non)exchanges. Jerome speaks to him, but it seems Karl fails to hear; 
instead “er schaut geradeaus in den Saal hinein, aber so, als sähe er etwas 
Unbestimmtes, vielleicht nicht im Saal, draußen vielleicht, vor den 
Fenstern, obwohl es dunkel ist, spät und Herbst.”13 Again, it is as if Karl 
is in a trance-like state and thus cannot see or communicate with others. 
As he gradually loses consciousness, Jerome does not notice until he 
hears Karl’s head hit the seat, and this despite their physical proximity 
and conversation (W 437). The characters alternate between intense 
concentration and distraction: the single-mindedness of military 



 
 
 

FOCUS ON GERMAN STUDIES 73 

 

discipline readily slips into obliviousness. Perception seems inadequate, 
even for a sharply defined object of interest which nevertheless remains 
inscrutable.  

The story’s final two sections present additional epistemological 
issues, namely the relationship between circulation and knowledge, and 
the nature of secrets and their discovery. There is a double move of 
circulation here. First, it seems imperative to remove Karl’s body from 
sight. What had been the figure of a highly visible inscrutability is now 
altered into a hidden one, the figure of a secret. Second, the information 
that Karl has collapsed travels quickly among the cadets in the 
gymnasium, causing a great deal of curiosity: “Dann hastige Fragen: 
‘Was? Was? Wer? Der Gruber? Wo?’ Und immer mehr Fragen.”14 These 
questions float in the story, neither attributed to nor directed toward a 
particular character. Another anonymous cadet says loudly, 
“Ohnmächtig” (“unconscious”), but otherwise no information is 
exchanged. Upon their return from removing Karl’s body, the others 
naturally press them with questions, since these four have had direct 
contact with Karl. They ask: “Wie sieht er aus? Was ist mit ihm? Ist er 
schon zu sich gekommen?” (W 438).15 But these four know nothing. 

The impetus to discover what has become the (now concealed 
but ultimately ascertainable) secret of Karl’s body continues, despite—
and because of — the four cadets’ ignorance. On command, the cadets 
resume their exercises but with a change in the atmosphere and in their 
movements, “als hätte ein Horchen sich über sie gelegt.”16 The group is 
overcome and unified by the drive to discover Karl’s secret. Even their 
voices undergo a transformation: “Die Stimmen sind weniger verworren 
und ihre Summe summt feiner, als ob alle immer nur ein Wort sagten: 
‘Ess, Ess, Ess...’” (W 438).17 Their noises are unified and uniform. The 
language is accentuated here: the repeated “mm” in “Stimmen,” 
“Summe,” “summt,” and “immer” reproduces the cadets’ humming 
onomatopoetically, and the “wor” found in “verworren” is literally 
entangled in the word “Wort.” The cadets’ voices are joined in a confused, 
intertwined, and oppressive unity. The form the noise takes also changes 
from the 1899 to the 1902 version of the text under consideration here. 
In the former, the cadets’ word was “Es” (SW 599). The shorter spelling 
seems to refer to an unknown but specific “it,” that is, the secret 
something they all want to discover about Karl. The addition of a 
second “s,” however, lengthens the fricative, thereby making it a hiss, an 
ominous, threatening sound.  

It is at this particular moment — one of concentrated, 
threatening group attention — that Cadet Krix appears for the first time 



 
 
 
74 THE POETICS OF DENIABLE PLAUSIBILITY IN RAINER MARIA RILKE’S “DIE TURNSTUNDE” 

 

in the narrative. He at once interrupts and sharpens the group’s 
listening: “Der kleine schlaue Krix horcht inzwischen an der 
Kammertür.”18 When the non-commissioned officer runs him away with 
a swat on the behind, “Krix springt zurück, katzenhaft, mit hinterlistig 
blitzdenden Augen.”19 But he is successful: “Er weiß schon genug” (W 
438).20 Krix alone discovers what is happening on the other side of the 
door, namely that the regiment doctor has arrived. The “Horchen” — 
or, as the English translation has it, “a need to keep listening” — that 
has descended on them finds its embodiment and active form in him. 
Krix then disappears from the narrative until the last few lines, at the 
same moment that Jerome is mentioned again. The latter “fühlt sich 
plötzlich am Arm gefaßt, so angesprungen.” Krix hangs on him, and 
“[s]eine Augen glänzen und seine Zähne schimmern, als ob er beißen 
wollte.”21 Desire, violence, and knowledge, all closely associated with 
Krix, return in this passage, and are again intertwined with the status of 
Karl as a secret. “‘Ich hab ihn gesehen,’ flüstert er atemlos und preßt 
Jeromes Arm und ein Lachen ist innen in ihm und rüttelt ihn hin und 
her. Er kann kaum weiter: ‘Ganz nackt ist er und eingefallen und ganz 
lang.’”22 He bites into Jerome’s sleeve and laughs “spitz und kitzlich” (W 
440).23 

Krix’s excitement derives at least partially from the fact that he 
possesses a secret and is able to disclose it to another person. Georg 
Simmel’s 1907 essay on secrets offers a way of conceiving of that 
excitement. He claims that “[d]as Geheimnis gibt der Persönlichkeit eine 
Ausnahmestellung, es wirkt als ein sozial bestimmter Reiz.”24 Simmel 
cites as the source of this exceptional status and its consequent social 
appeal two related phenomena necessarily a part of any secret: first, the 
pronounced exclusion of outsiders and, second, a corresponding sense 
of ownership. (318). Krix, who, because of his small stature, probably 
occupies a relatively low position in the social hierarchy of the military 
academy, here feels himself privileged above the other cadets, for the 
possession of secret knowledge about Karl affords him a temporarily 
exceptional, higher status. Yet, according to Simmel, a secret also always 
entails an inherent tension which finds its release in the moment of 
revelation. One realizes and experiences the full significance of a secret 
only at the moment one divulges it (319). There is also a certain power 
in knowing that one can disclose a secret, that is “die Macht zu 
Schicksalswendungen und Überraschungen, zu Freuden und 
Zerstörungen” (320).25 Besides the elevated social position that the 
possession of the secret of Karl’s body affords Krix, it also allows him 



 
 
 

FOCUS ON GERMAN STUDIES 75 

 

to inform, to surprise, and to inflict emotional pain: in short, to control 
the knowledge of that body.  

Krix takes obvious physical pleasure in this exchange. He can 
barely utter the words due to an inner laughter that shakes his body. He 
whispers them breathlessly as his eyes gleam and teeth shimmer. 
Language is again highlighted here and underscores Krix’ animal-like 
nature. Both passages in which Krix appears are dominated by the 
sounds “x,” “tz,” and “ch,” which mimic those of a hissing cat (W 438, 
440). His animalistic aspect underscores the erotic pleasure he derives 
from seeing the corpse and subsequently describing it to Jerome. 
Friedrich Loock, apparently the only scholar who has noted this 
passage’s homoeroticism, posits the sadistic and homoerotic pleasure 
which Krix gains from his position. According to Loock, Krix’ 
epistemological and voyeuristic pleasure draws from the control of the 
mysterious body that has proved too defiant and performed a feat that 
Krix and his fellow cadets dare not attempt for fear of punishment 
(122). While Loock’s observation is apt, Krix performs an additional 
function along the familiar lines of deniable plausibility. While 
demonstrating the erotic pleasure of learning, possessing, and divulging 
a secret, this character simultaneously contains the deviant, dangerous 
possibilities associated with him. The narrator and reader participate in 
the pleasures he represents — and the homoeroticism that attends them 
— from the safe distance that this odd, animalistic character seems to 
demand. 

If Krix exemplifies the eroticism of secret knowledge, Karl is 
the embodiment of the sexual secret. In a diary entry, Rilke refers to him 
as “de[r] blasse Mondsüchtige mit der flachen Brust” (Tagebücher 161).26 
Indeed, his surname has similar significations of morbidity and 
exhaustion: “Grube” can designate a (mining) pit, hole, cavity, or open 
grave. Karl is thereby characterized by death and degeneration. His 
anomalous and exaggerated athletic performance appears in this context 
as another sign of degeneration: in the final stages of physical decay, the 
body produces a final surge of energy before expiring. One might also 
read Karl’s climb symbolically as one of the period’s common causes of 
degeneration, namely masturbation. The phallic connotation of the pole 
is obvious, but its dim, semi-hidden location also points to the illicit, 
sexual nature of the act. So, too, do the discomfort Karl feels as the 
object of the cadets’ collective gaze and the concern over his injured 
hands. Rilke’s choice of the word “nackt” to describe the hook is 
similarly telling. While signifying “bare” in this instance, the word 
nevertheless retains the connotation of nudity and thereby connects this 



 
 
 
76 THE POETICS OF DENIABLE PLAUSIBILITY IN RAINER MARIA RILKE’S “DIE TURNSTUNDE” 

 

image to that of Karl’s corpse at the end of the story, which, as we have 
seen, Krix also describes as “ganz nackt.”  

A key passage in “Die Turnstunde” has Karl looking for a 
second time at his hands, this time “ganz darüber gebückt wie einer, der 
bei wenig Licht einen Brief entziffern will” (W 436-37).27 He is alienated 
from his body and sexuality — which are depicted as illegible and 
foreign — and he approaches them as one would something to be 
analyzed and understood. This enterprise is not free from difficulty or 
stigma, however. It is as if there were little light to undertake it, and 
when Jerome approaches, Karl “erschrickt” (“is startled”) as if caught 
committing a proscribed act (W 437). This scene is emblematic of the 
status of homosexuality at the turn-of-the-century. Regarding same-sex 
desire, Sedgwick asserts that “there had in fact developed one particular 
sexuality that was distinctively constituted as secrecy: the perfect object 
for the by now insatiably exacerbated epistemological/sexual anxiety of 
the turn-of-the-century subject” (Epistemology 73). This epistemological 
terrain is typified, as Sedgwick points out, by the “imponderable and 
convulsive” relations of the open secret (Epistemology 80). The figure of 
Karl intently and anxiously attempting to decode his hands in a semi-
secret dim corner illustrates both the contemporary conditions of 
homosexual (self-)knowledge and the limits of depicting homosexuality. 
It also parallels at once the difficulty and interpretive labor required of 
the reader confronted with this inscrutable text as well as the narrator’s 
position and strategies. 

In his essay on “Die Turnstunde,” Dirk Dethlefsen addresses 
the issue of its narrator. He argues that the story presents neither a 
narrator nor a character with which readers might identify and thus 
frustrates attempts at orientation (249). Gérard Genette’s narrative 
concepts help to specify the particular type of narration Dethlefsen 
describes. “Die Turnstunde” is an example of what Genette calls 
“simultaneous narrating” in the present tense. It appears to unfold along 
with the events it recounts and thus seems “like the height of objectivity, 
since the last trace of enunciating […] now disappears in a total 
transparency of the narrative” (219). This apparent objectivity is also 
enhanced by a “heterodiegetic” narrator, one that is not a character in 
the story (248). Our narrator also features “external focalization” which 
designates a narrator who shares no knowledge of the characters’ 
thoughts (189-90). At first glance this seems to describe the narrator 
exactly and accounts for Dethlefsen’s claim that there is no tangible 
narrator. Despite the accuracy of Dethlefsen’s observations, “Die 
Turnstunde” does nevertheless contain a narrative voice. However, it 



 
 
 

FOCUS ON GERMAN STUDIES 77 

 

constantly attempts to cover any trace of its existence — with one 
important exception. The narrator accomplishes this partial and self-
conscious erasure by limiting severely the attribution of intent. We know 
nothing of Karl’s thoughts except the narrator’s suppositions about 
them. The exception to, or perhaps ultimate evidence of, the narrator’s 
“objectivity” takes the form of these speculations in the form of 
comparisons: the narrator often uses subjunctive verbs and comparative 
phrases such as “als ob” (as if) and “wie” (like or as) and the verb 
“scheinen” (to appear). Such a strictly limited narrator can only surmise 
what characters are thinking; and this scrupulous narrator never fails to 
mark assumptions as such. The characteristic move of “Die 
Turnstunde,” that of deniable plausibility, here simultaneously marks the 
limits of the narrator’s knowledge and oversteps those limits. Since the 
narrator’s conjectures constitute the only information by means of 
which we have access to characters’ inner states, they retain a narrative 
authority despite their being marked as dubious. These statements invite 
us to read them as authoritative at the same time as they withdraw from 
authority. The tension between this narrative lack (the narrator’s inability 
to know characters’ thoughts) and simultaneous excess (the assumptions 
about those thoughts that the narrator nonetheless provides) makes any 
univocal interpretation impossible and preempts the association of the 
narrator with the possibility sexually illicit subject matter. 

Not only do these suppositions attempt to describe an ultimately 
unknowable (or simply proscribed) reality, they do so in a way opposed 
to and distinct from that of the military academy. Whereas the latter 
forcibly imposes a particular knowledge or behavior and allows no room 
for doubt, the former makes suggestions which are emphatically marked 
by doubt. Dethlefsen understands these features as Rilke’s effort to 
break from narrative conventions, such as a confident narrator who 
directs and limits the reader’s interest, and to shock the reader into a 
new, more intense type of attention (253-54). They are also the signs, 
according to Dethlefsen, of a fundamental inability to narrate 
experience, a theme explored in more depth in Malte (245).While this is 
certainly the case, Dethlefsen does not examine this narrative impasse in 
its relationship to the story’s homoerotic elements. In our discussion of 
Rilke’s writings on his boarding school experiences and of the studies 
about him, the arbitrarily shifting valences of homosexual definition 
produce an anxiety that manifests itself in deniable plausibility. This 
strategy allows for the withdrawal from a particular position should that 
position suddenly be foreclosed by the forever shifting definition of 
homosexuality. 



 
 
 
78 THE POETICS OF DENIABLE PLAUSIBILITY IN RAINER MARIA RILKE’S “DIE TURNSTUNDE” 

 

Anxieties about homosexuality which inform the narrative 
strategies in “Die Turnstunde” can also be found in Rilke’s diaries and 
journals regarding his boarding school experiences. This story makes up 
part of what Rilke apparently intended to develop, perhaps along with 
the short story “Pierre Dumont,” into a novel set in a military academy 
(Butler 18). Indeed, in the journal entry immediately preceding the first 
version of “Die Turnstunde” Rilke declares: “Seltsam, nachts wurde 
plötzlich der Militärroman so dringend, daß ich glaubte, ich würde, 
wenn nicht sofort, so doch wenigstens heute beginnen müssen, ihn zu 
schreiben.”28 A journal entry immediately following the story makes it 
clear that Rilke was planning an episode which depicted Karl’s burial (T 
169). Thus, while turning away from the project for the moment, he 
intended to continue the narrative. Unfortunately, this seems never to 
have occurred. Nevertheless, Rilke continued his engagement with “Die 
Turnstunde,” and a revised version was first published in the 1 February 
1902 edition of Die Zukunft, approximately three years after Rilke 
composed the first draft (W 862). 

The question arises as to why Rilke felt compelled to begin 
writing his military novel and, only a few hours later, wrote that the 
same topic “tritt jetzt als gleichberechtigt mit zwei, drei anderen Stoffen 
auf und nicht einmal als inniges Bedürfnis, sondern als literarische 
Absicht” (T 161).29 This is a moment in which an intense, personal 
matter is transformed into a literary work. The two exist in a tense 
relationship with each other, one threatening to overcome the other. 
This tension produced “Die Turnstunde,” which Rilke later admired, so 
much so that he singled it out as the only short prose piece he would 
have liked to have included in the 1921 edition of his early works (W 
862). Yet that same tension also prevented further work on his proposed 
military novel, with the possible exception of the prose fragment 
“Erinnerung” in 1914.  

In his journal Rilke explains his difficulties with the theme of the 
military academy thus: 

 
 Auch erscheint mir der Stoff, je mehr ich mich an ihn 
verliere, immer noch unmöglich und grob; noch fühle 
ich nicht die Geschicklichkeit, diese Gesellschaft von 
Knaben in ihrer ganzen Roheit und Entartung, in dieser 
hoffnungslosen und traurigen Heiterkeit zu zeigen . . . 
diese ganze Masse beständig als solche wirken zu lassen, 
erscheint mir ebenso wichtig wie schwer. Denn der 
einzelne ist ja eben — auch der verdorbenste — Kind, 



 
 
 

FOCUS ON GERMAN STUDIES 79 

 

was aber aus der Gemeinsamkeit dieser Kinder sich 
ergibt, — das wäre der herrschende Eindruck —, eine 
schreckliche Gesamtheit, die wie ein fürchterliches 
Wesen wirkt, welches bald diesen und bald jenen Arm 
verlangend ausstreckt (T 161).30 
 

Scholars such as Loock have rightfully highlighted the fact that this 
passage indicates the importance Rilke placed on the project of depicting 
the harsh, totalitarian nature of the military academy (119-21). 
Additionally, as York-Gothart Mix argues, the passage illustrates the 
discrepancy Rilke felt between the subjective understanding of a 
personal experience and the depiction of that experience in literary form 
(62). 

Yet what Loock and Mix overlook is that the anxiety of this 
passage finds expression in sexualized images. Rilke fears losing himself 
to the material he is attempting to depict, which takes on a seductive, 
overwhelming, and destructive quality. He deems it “grob” and doubts 
his ability to render fully the “Roheit und Entartung” of this 
“Gesellschaft von Knaben.” This last phrase emphasizes the subjects’ 
youth but also the exclusive same-sex nature of the circumstances. He 
uses the term “verdorben” to describe the worst type of boarding school 
pupil. And finally, the “Masse” of boys takes the form of a 
“fürchterliches Wesen” which extends its arms in every direction, 
“verlangend.” This passage both demonstrates the anxiety caused by the 
forced homosocial community and the source of that anxiety in the 
constant possibility that it might be of a sexually deviant nature, or at 
least understood as such. The images also parallel the oppressive unity 
of the cadets’ voices in “Die Turnstunde” as they await news of Karl’s 
fate (W 438). Finally, the passage describes the tension between the 
urgency to depict the social constellation of the military academy and the 
trepidation Rilke felt in doing so. The two-part move of deniable 
plausibility that characterizes Rilke’s remarks about “Die Turnstunde” 
serves as one strategy for navigating the double bind that Sedgwick 
outlines. The literary theme of the boarding school proves too close for 
Rilke, both because of the similarity to his own experiences and the 
danger of being engulfed in the process of depicting it. In narrating the 
boarding school, one might unwittingly express what always runs the 
risk of being understood as homosexual thematics. Strategies of 
disavowal allow the space for both the expression of a homosocial 
milieu, with its ever-present homoerotic possibilities, and the 
containment of the latter. 



 
 
 
80 THE POETICS OF DENIABLE PLAUSIBILITY IN RAINER MARIA RILKE’S “DIE TURNSTUNDE” 

 

This anxiety — along with strategies of disavowal and oblique 
reference — expanded beyond Rilke’s own understanding of “Die 
Turnstunde” to its reception as well. Two related controversies 
regarding his years at the military academy — the sincerity of Rilke’s 
later depictions of his suffering there and the circumstances of his early 
release from the Mährisch-Weißkirchen academy — seem to have begun 
with Rilke’s letter, dated 4 December 1894, to his then fiancée Valerie 
von David-Rhonfeld in which he told of his experiences at the military 
academy. Regarding his intention to leave the school, he described the 
latter period of his tenure as spent primarily in the infirmary, due more 
to grief than physical illness (Sieh 165). Rilke also shared the story of his 
friend Fried with whom he developed “eine auf gegenseitiger 
Übereinstimmung beruhende wahrhaft brüderliche Neigung” and “einen 
Bund — fürs Leben” which they sealed “mit Kuss und Handschlag.”31 
Rilke mentioned the jealousy that accompanied their relationship and 
the tear-filled nights he spent waiting for Fried’s return from a trip. Yet 
Fried later grew aloof. Rilke learned “dass Mitzöglinge unseren reinen 
Bund in den Schmutz gezogen und Fried überdies von höheren Orts 
Weisung erhalten hatte nicht so viel mit dem Narren zu verkehren” (Sieh 
166).32 David-Rhonfeld later transposed Rilke’s account into three 
possible reasons for his release: “ein Gerücht sagte wegen 
‘Kränklichkeit,’ das andere wegen ‘Narretei’ und das dritte bezichtigte 
ihn der Knabenliebe” (Hirschfeld 715).33 

Taking up these themes, the controversy about Rilke’s military 
school years has persistently continued. One can divide the two 
positions assumed by Rilke’s biographers and literary scholars thus: 
those who doubt Rilke’s suffering in the academy and those who dismiss 
what they understand as rumor and emphasize instead the sincerity of 
Rilke’s remarks on his school years. Peter Demetz, who falls in the 
former camp, argues that Rilke’s complaints about his suffering in the 
academy amount to subsequent exaggeration and self-stylization (36-37). 
Further, Demetz’ argument sexualizes Rilke’s relationship with his 
mother, Phia, and renders her as an overbearing, emasculating force and 
a possible cause of perversion (39). To this suspicious description 
Demetz adds that Rilke’s fellow cadets asked for his dismissal from the 
academy (40-41). He also claims that Rilke admitted to David-Rhonfeld 
that he was expelled because of a “Sittlichkeitsaffäre” (41).34 Demetz’ 
statements seem calculated to cause speculation about Rilke’s sexuality. 
In a related move, the Rilke biographer E. M. Butler’s comments on the 
cult that developed around him also lend Rilke an effeminate and 
sentimental air, two attributes closely related with the gender-inversion 



 
 
 

FOCUS ON GERMAN STUDIES 81 

 

model of male homosexuality (5). Butler’s summary of Rilke’s friendship 
with his fellow cadet Fried is telling; she terms it a “conventional” and 
“well-worn” “story” and writes that it “recalls public-school novels of 
the more lurid and distressing type” (17). Taken as a whole, these critical 
interpretations of Rilke and his boarding school years create the 
impression of a coddled artist with a tendency toward hypochondria and 
self-stylization who is too close to his mother and therefore ostracized 
from his classmates but nevertheless has a suspicious relationship with 
another boy (for which he is sent home shamefully). 

The opposing trend, exemplified in the studies by Hans-
Christoph Kayser and Byong-Ock Kim, is to “recuperate” Rilke’s image 
by shifting the focus toward the reality of his suffering and away from 
intimations of homosexuality. Kayser cites a long series of letters and 
prose works in which Rilke consistently depicts the horrors of school 
life (46-50). In open opposition to Demetz, Kayser concludes from this 
mass of evidence that the consistency and sheer number of Rilke’s 
damning references to the military academy substantiate the fact that his 
time there was marked by real suffering (50). In another extensive study 
of Rilke’s military academy experiences, Kim sharply criticizes Demetz’ 
methods and conclusions. He accuses Demetz of careless research and 
contends that there was no scandal upon Rilke’s departure and that, 
rather, Rilke was released early and not expelled (75-76). Kim argues that 
Demetz’ rhetoric amounts to a thinly veiled accusation of dishonesty on 
Rilke’s part (74). He concludes that his real aim is an attack on Rilke’s 
character and that Demetz therefore loses all claim to scholarly 
objectivity (75-77). Kim then turns his attention to Valerie von David-
Rhonfeld. According to Kim, she was simply embittered by the 
disappointment of her first love and therefore intent on degrading 
Rilke’s reputation (77). The importance of Kim’s criticism here lies less 
in the facts surrounding the end of Rilke’s military education than it 
does in the tone of the criticism. It seems this is more than a simple 
correction of scholarly methods. Kim’s criticisms may be true, but his 
fervor arises from the threat to Rilke’s reputation. The anxiety that Kim 
seems to express has to do with the type of accusations being made: 
denials of intimations of “Knabenliebe” and a “Sittlichkeitsaffäre” here 
give rise to a disproportionate amount of passion. 

The issue is not the truth of Rilke’s adolescence, but how it is 
deployed. As we have seen, David-Rhonfeld, Demetz, and Butler 
attempt to demythologize Rilke. However, the terms they use to 
humanize Rilke’s image reveal something akin to schadenfreude in 
“dragging him in the filth” of homosexual suspicion. Those who take 



 
 
 
82 THE POETICS OF DENIABLE PLAUSIBILITY IN RAINER MARIA RILKE’S “DIE TURNSTUNDE” 

 

issue with them see it as their task to defend Rilke’s honor against 
outlandish accusations of aberrant sexuality (and the related images of 
the coddled, effeminate, self-styled, hypochondriac artist). Both sides 
display misogynist tendencies, especially Demetz in his discussion of 
Phia Rilke’s unhealthy influence on her son and Kim in his criticism of 
David-Rhonfeld’s memories of Rilke. Both sides take part in the anxiety 
of the constitutive uncertainty of homosexual definition.  

It is on at least three levels, then, that the functions of policing 
and defining the boundary between sanctioned homosocial behavior and 
illicit sexuality occur: Rilke’s school experiences and his anxieties about 
depicting them, the textual strategies of “Die Turnstunde,” and the 
reception of the text and Rilke’s image. The narrative itself thus takes 
part in a larger discourse regarding Rilke’s sexuality. This set of 
discourses presents a range of textual responses to the anxiety attending 
the project of narrating the military boarding school, an 
epistemologically complex space given its self-contradictory and 
concurrent prescription of a homosocial “schreckliche Gesamtheit” and 
proscription of homosexuality. The deniable plausibility that Rilke 
creates in his journal entry regarding “Die Turnstunde” — the 
oscillation of his engagement with the topic of the boarding school — 
suggests the anxiety he experienced regarding this problematic, 
homosocial institution and its literary depiction. In the story, 
homosexual panic creates the necessity for and possibility of narrative 
innovation that turns on the limits of knowledge and the possibility of 
knowing or expressing too much, a possibility that the narrator in “Die 
Turnstunde” endeavors to control through disavowal. Ironically, he 
retains narrative authority precisely by drawing away from it. A certain 
narrative distance both allows for the depiction of the totalizing 
homosocial environment of the military academy and presents the limits 
of the project. Taken together, Rilke’s letters, journals, and prose that 
touch on the military academy form a sparse and indirect, yet rich and 
compelling commentary on the relationship among homosociality, 
homoeroticism, and narrative. In fact, with careful attention, the 
narrator’s assessment of Krix might tacitly apply just as well to the 
possibilities and limitations of the reader’s knowledge: “Er weiß schon 
genug.”  
 

University of Chicago 
 
 
 



 
 
 

FOCUS ON GERMAN STUDIES 83 

 

 
Notes 

 
 
1 The title is translated either as “The Gym Class” or “The Drill-Class.” German citations of 

the published 1902 version are taken from the third volume of Rilke’s Werke 
(hereafter cited as W). Occasional citations are from the original 1899 version 
contained in the fourth volume of Rilke’s Sämtliche Werke (hereafter cited as SW). 
English citations of this text are from Appelbaum’s translation. All other 
translations from German texts are my own.  

2 “In the military school at Sankt Severin. Gymnasium” (85). 
3 See especially Minder 77; Mix 63; and Ryan 71 for observations on this similarity. 
4 See especially Demetz, Kayser, and Kim. 
5 See especially Dethlefsen, Loock, Mix, and Ryan. 
6 Cf. Downing, especially 178-79, on the disavowal of narrative authority as a strategy in 

German realism. 
7 “with particular pleasure”; “he has never before been able to understand”; “involuntarily” 

(85); and “as if he had discovered a way out in the ceiling of the gym and were 
striving to reach it” (87). 

8 “in a rather shady corner of the gym” (85) and “immeasurable” (87). 
9 “high up below the ceiling he makes a gesture as if he wanted to shake them off; and since 

he obviously doesn’t succeed in this, he ties all those gazes to the bare iron hook 
up there” (87). 

10 “he whizzes down the smooth pole so fast that everyone is still looking upward after he 
has been standing down below for some time” (87). 

11 “at his burning palms with oddly dulled eyes” (87). 
12 “in his usual, saliva-clogged voice” (87). 
13 “he is looking straight into the gym, but as if he saw something indefinable, perhaps not in 

the gym, outdoors perhaps, right outside the windows, even though it’s dark and 
late on an autumn day” (89). 

14 “Then, hasty questions: ‘What? What? Who? Gruber? Where?’ And more and more 
questions” (89). 

15 “How does he look? What’s wrong with him? Has he come to yet?” (91). 
16 “as if overlaid by a need to keep listening” (91). 
17 “The boys’ voices are less confused and their humming has a more delicate sound, as if 

they were all constantly saying only: ‘Sss, sss, sss. . .’” (91). 
18 “Sly little Krix, meanwhile, is eavesdropping at the door to the small room” (91). 
19 “Krix jumps back like a cat, his eyes flashing with cunning” (91). 
20 “He already knows enough” (91). 
21 “suddenly feels someone grabbing his arm, as if leaping onto him”; and “[h]is eyes are 

shining and his teeth are glimmering as if he was about to take a bite” (93).  
22 “‘I’ve seen him,’ he whispers breathlessly, squeezing Jerome’s arm, and there’s laughter 

inside him which shakes him back and forth. He can hardly continue: ‘He’s all 
naked and caved in and very long.’” (93). 

23 “short, high” (93). 
24 “a secret gives the personality an exceptional position, it functions as a socially determined 

appeal.” The last term, “Reiz,” has many possible translations, including 
“attraction,” “allure,” “charm,” “enchantment,” and “stimulus.” 

25 “the power of twists of fate and surprises, of joy and ruin.” 
 



 
 
 
84 THE POETICS OF DENIABLE PLAUSIBILITY IN RAINER MARIA RILKE’S “DIE TURNSTUNDE” 

 

 
26 “the pale, moonstruck boy with the sunken chest.” Subsequent references to Rilke’s 

Tagebücher aus der Frühzeit will be cited as T. 
27 “completely stooped over them like someone trying to decipher a letter in insufficient 

light” (87). 
28 “Strange, last night the military novel suddenly became so urgent that I believed I would 

— if not right away — at least today have to begin to write it.” 
29 “now appears as being just as valid as two or three other themes and not even as a fervent 

desire, but rather as a literary objective.” 
30 “Also, the more I lose myself in this topic, the more it still appears to me impossible and 

crude; I do not yet feel the ability to show this society of boys in its full coarseness 
and degeneracy [. . .] to let this whole horde constantly come across as such 
appears just as important as it is difficult. Because each one is after all — even the 
most depraved — a child, but what results from the community of these children 
— this would be the prevailing impression — a terrible totality that appears like a 
dreadful creature which stretches out this and then the other arm longingly and 
insistently.” 

31 “a truly brotherly affection based on mutual accord”; “a bond — for life”; and “with a kiss 
and a handshake.” 

32 “that fellow pupils had dragged our pure bond in the filth and, moreover, Fried had 
received an order from higher up not to associate with the fool.”  

33 “one rumor said because of ‘sickliness,’ another because of ‘foolery,’ and the third accused 
him of pederasty.”  

34 “Scandal.” This term strongly connotes a sexual scandal. 
 
 

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18 (1982): 235-60. 
Downing, Eric. Double Exposures: Repetition and Realism in Nineteenth-Century German Fiction. 

Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000. 
Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. 1972. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: 

Cornell UP, 1980. 
Hirschfeld, C. “Die Rilke-Erinnerungen Valery von David-Rhonfelds.” Die Horen 5 

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