Mark Cornwall

THE QUALITIES OF THE IDEAL YOUTH LEADER: THE EXAMPLE

OF HEINRICH RUTHA

Heinrich Rutha was perhaps the most famous youth leader of his gener-
ation in the German Bohemian Lands. By the mid-1930s his pedagogic
crusade was a key ingredient in Konrad Henlein’s reformed Turnver-
band, affecting many thousands of Sudeten German adolescents
through a systematic training programme. During the First World War
Rutha had been a singularly energetic leader of the Bohemian Wan-
dervogel, having joined it only in 1913. While the peers whom he
revered departed to fight and die at the front, he explored a comparable
sacrifice on the home front and started to promote there a special youth
mission. Crucially, because of his age and experience (born in 1897,
serving briefly on the Italian front in 1918), he was then able to bridge
the generations, that potential divide between those scarred by the war-
time trauma and those who felt they had missed out on the adventure.
In the early 1920s, seeking a new purpose, he seemed to find it as a phi-
losopher of the youth movement. For three years, his journal Blätter
vom frischen Leben circulated across German Bohemia, coordinating
current thinking on youth development, synthesizing the ideas of Ger-
man writers from across central Europe (including Swiss-German and
Jewish), sometimes incorporating their notions but often delimiting a
special path against them according to his own prejudices. By the late-
1920s this philosophy had veered in a militant national-political (bün-
disch) direction which paralleled similar youth phenomena in Germany;
it now sought a practical outlet in order to help focus a Sudeten German
mission against the regional dominance of the Czechs. Only from 1932
did Rutha’s dream really materialize, when his youth pedagogy was fully
accepted in the Turnverband, the grassroots core for a new national
movement in Czechoslovakia. Most innovative and practical in these
turbulent years was Rutha’s youth leadership school at Wartenberg,
(1935–8), envisaged by him as a “castle of Sudeten youth”. Its purpose
was to propagate and inculcate the principles of youth leadership in
successive generations so that a special Sudeten male youth mission
would continue into the future. From all this, we understand a man who
was committed to the notion of youth leadership, who explored its the-
ory and practice for twenty-five years. Yet Rutha’s downfall and suicide
2 Cornwall

in October 1937 in a major homosexual scandal gave the “sacred mis-

sion” a different notoriety. It became a taboo topic in Bohemian history
until the twenty-first century, almost on a par with the case of the dis-
graced Irish nationalist Roger Casement.1
Rutha therefore offers an ideal touchstone for weighing the concept
of youth leadership in Bohemia in the early twentieth century, encour-
aging us to tackle some difficult and unanswered questions. To some,
not least perhaps to Rutha himself, he almost personified the ideal male
youth leader for Bohemian or Sudeten Germans, since he claimed to
understand how and where male adolescents should be trained and di-
rected. Yet this notional ideal was always shifting and full of contradic-
tions, explicable because of the way the youth mission altered its shape
between the First and Second World Wars. It had to evolve in tandem
with a Czech national-political revolution across the Bohemian Lands,
when local German nationalists saw inter-war peacetime as actually a
continuation of the wartime struggle. While this naturally energized the
regional youth movements, it also created immense instability within
them. On the one hand, a mass of new German youth groups sprang up
to meet the challenge of inter-war Czechoslovakia from different ideo-
logical persuasions and to cater for different audiences – nationalist,
socialist or Catholic. On the other, there was a basic spatial challenge for
all youth movements to face. In the post-Habsburg world, the new
Czechoslovak state borders redefined the movements’ organizational
framework and their regional identity. Yet many continued to aspire
beyond that identity in an Austrian or some broader (Reich) German
direction. This created fundamental tensions within the nationalist
youth movements in particular, even if certain principles about the ideal
youth lifestyle and education remained fairly constant.
Well into the 1920s the Bohemian Wandervogel was the major Ger-
man youth movement of the Bohemian Lands and we will use it as the
main example for our discussion. By the first decade of the twentieth
century, the notion of adolescence as a special life-stage was being more
carefully demarcated across central Europe – mainly through the state
school system but also by some unconventional activist teachers who
believed in unlocking adolescents’ potential in order to revitalize the
nation. In 191l the Wandervogel seeped across the border from Germa-
ny, adopting special characteristics to suit its surrounding Czech envi-
ronment, but always retaining much of the original structure and think-
ing of its German forefathers. This included the basic concept of “au-
tonomous youth”, the idea that youth was in charge of its own destiny,
seeking its own special path independent of and against the strictures of

1 For a full analysis of Rutha’s significance in the Bohemian Lands, see Cornwall, Mark:
The Devil’s Wall: The Nationalist Youth Mission of Heinz Rutha. Cambridge MA 2012.
 The qualities of the ideal youth leader 3

bourgeois society. It was a principle famously reasserted at the youth

festival at Hoher Meißner near Kassel in October 1913, which the Bo-
hemian Wandervogel “Gauwart” attended. If this theory of independent
rebellion was always problematic, it nevertheless meant that youth was
supposed to produce its own leadership rather than have it imposed
from outside.
There was never any doubt that the youth movement required lead-
ers. It seemed an inevitable consequence of the underlying idealist mis-
sion, and a leadership hierarchy would become more prominent after
1918. Yet the special way that this leadership should operate was also in
situ by the eve of the Great War. We can trace it in the many instruction
manuals produced for German youth groups and consulted regularly by
early mentors of the Bohemian Wandervogel. One example was that of
Georg Stammler (a pseudonym for Ernst Krauss). In Worte an eine
Schar (1914), Stammler offered some key maxims about youth leader-
ship. The ideal leader, he advised, should not try to embody a range of
opinions from his youth cohort but should instead stay true to a certain
image; for it was this image or model which attracted others to follow
him, thereby ensuring the unity of the group. To be a “leader” meant
taking the initiative with clear guidance, warmly radiating his spirit up-
on others (a contrast to a “ruler” who had to use force or pressure to
achieve influence).2 In other words, the ideal youth leader was expected
to embody a certain “spirit” (Geist) in order to run his youth cohort on
transparent lines of cooperation and comradeship. This spirit – the
model qualities evinced by the leader – might be divided into three
main themes: those linked to personality, to discipline, and to knowledge.
Each quality to some extent was already expected in a Wandervogel
leader of 1914. Each over the next twenty-five years would become inte-
grated into the philosophy of other youth movements like the Pfadfind-
er or the Catholic Staffelstein, and would also be refined by those youth
pedagogues like Heinz Rutha who emerged from the Wandervogel and
took Sudeten youth in a more worldly direction.

Personality
In following Rutha’s career and the principles embedded especially in
the Wandervogel, we can trace the evolution of these leadership qualities
and the tensions which could develop in their implementation. To begin
with “personality”, from 1918 it was a fundamental element in Rutha’s
theory of leadership that a youth leader must be a charismatic personali-

2 Stammler, Georg: Worte an eine Schar. Heidelberg 1914, 33 f: “Führer ist, wer voran-
geht, wer den Geist scharf, warm, leuchtend auf die andern widerstrahlt.”
4 Cornwall

ty who could attract disciples. He himself was viewed by many as just

that. His brother-in-law, Paul Ikrath, who worked as an apprentice join-
er in Rutha’s inter-war furniture business, consistently described him as
a remarkable individual, ceaselessly energetic, who cared about individ-
uals and therefore secured their loyalty.3 Others, like Walter Becher,
who grew up in the youth movement, saw Rutha as a “leader of men, a
fisher of men […] Wherever he discovered a man he cared for him per-
sonally to a phenomenal degree, striving to integrate him into an im-
portant position in the community.”4 By the end of Rutha’s life in 1937,
many of his youth disciples would salute him in glowing terms: “Lucky
are the youths you have inspired and assembled in the magic of our na-
tive landscape, giving meaning to their confused existence.”5 Some of
these acolytes in the 1930s had made a pilgrimage to Rutha’s mill in Bad
Kunnersdorf (Lázně Kundratice) near Niemes (Mimoň), north Bohe-
mia, expecting from him continual mentoring and guidance as they ap-
proached adulthood.
Indeed, Rutha’s enthusiasm for charismatic male adolescents was
crucial in this bonding. He set a pedagogic example – probably exces-
sive to some of his acolytes – through his own self-education; he had
taught himself the classics of Greek and German literature, and delight-
ed in reading aloud to visiting youths from the large library he assem-
bled at Bad Kunnersdorf. He suggested too a confident self-knowledge,
which belied the actual personal insecurities beneath the surface. Even
in physical prowess he had occasionally performed with distinction.
Apart from the rural treks expected of any Wandervogel leader, he had
occasionally skied when head of the Böhmisch Leipa branch, and in his
army training in Linz in 1917 he had excelled in horse riding. Only his
own health – a minor heart defect – prevented him enlisting earlier;
while in later life, incipient osteoporosis probably drained his energy. It
did not, however, stop him extolling youth leaders as Renaissance men,
individuals who needed systematic training both physically and in the
correct völkisch mindset. These were the “new men”, the Sudeten Ger-
man Männerbund, who were to be produced by his Wartenberg exper-
iment.
In turn, Rutha from his own youth could recall some charismatic
heroes whom he himself tried to emulate. Most notable was Rudolf

3 Paul Ikrath (1913–2011), who married Rutha’s sister Gretel, is the anonymous “Rutha
relative” whom I interviewed many times between 2000 and 2011 and cite frequently in
The Devil’s Wall.
4 Walter Becher, talk to Historischer Arbeitskreis des Witiko-Bundes (no date given), 2.
Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, München, Becher Papers, 84.
5 Alfons Wondrak to Rutha, 24 April 1937. Archiv Akademie věd České republiky [Ar-
chive of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic], Prague, Edvard Beneš Papers,
karton 142: písemnosti (opisy), dopisy.
 The qualities of the ideal youth leader 5

Feldberger, once head of the Böhmisch Leipa Wandervogel and then

briefly Gauwart (1916), who died young on the Italian front on the eve
of Caporetto. Feldberger personified the model leader, morally upright
and practical, quite prepared to die for the sacred national mission and
thereby to celebrate youth’s eternity.6 Something of his charisma comes
through in Rutha’s description of one Leipa branch evening in April
1916:
Our Feldberger spoke about the Wandervogel, the room was as quiet as a mouse and only
our eyes were shining. I wish you all could have heard him speak and picked up something
of the joy with which he filled everyone.7
Apart from Feldberger, the words tell us much, too, about Rutha’s own
“shining eyes”.
If Rutha found in Feldberger an obvious charismatic hero, the rela-
tionship between them fully matched expectations that there had to be
some spark between a Wandervogel youth leader and his followers. This
was acknowledged in contemporary youth manuals, but it relied too on
a major theory about same-sex relations that spread across the Wan-
dervogel during the First World War. In 1912 there had appeared in
Germany a book entitled Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als ero-
tisches Phänomen.8 The young author, Hans Blüher, had already pub-
lished a two-volume history of the early Wandervogel movement in
which he stressed the “moral power” of older male youths communing
with their followers. In this third instalment he was much more explicit.
He set out same-sex Eros as the real dynamo which powered the Ger-
man Wandervogel – just as it had inspired the finest male creativity in
ancient Greece. Citing one of his own heroes, the youth leader Wilhelm
Jansen, Blüher argued that it was a leader’s charisma which attracted
disciples to him “like a piece of crystal in brine”.9 Here a basic male
erotic dynamic was at work. Blüher’s theory was probably being dis-
cussed in the Bohemian Wandervogel by 1916 and Rutha read about it
at some point. It may have helped him understand his own repressed
sexual feelings. Certainly it gave a theoretical underpinning to how and
why youth groups could operate effectively with the right leader. By the

6 See Feldberger’s celebration of death: Feldberger, Rudolf: Sterben. In: Burschen heraus!
April 1916, 80.
7 Rutha, Heinz: Leipa. In: Burschen heraus! April 1916, 88.
8 Blüher, Hans: Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als erotisches Phänomen. Ein Bei-
trag zur Erkenntnis der sexuellen Inversion. Berlin 1912.
9 Ibid., 47; For context on Blüher’s theory, see Schoeps, Julius: Sexualität, Erotik und Män-
nerbund: Hans Blüher und die deutsche Jugendbewegung. In: Knoll, Joachim/Schoeps,
Julius (ed.): Typisch deutsch: Die Jugendbewegung: Beiträge zu einer Phänomenges-
chichte. Opladen 1988, 137–154 and Bruns, Claudia: Politik des Eros: Der Männerbund
in Wissenschaft, Politik und Jugendkultur (1880–1934). Köln, Weimar, Wien 2008.
6 Cornwall

end of the war, moreover, Blüher had added extra substance to his ex-
position, claiming that through history it was male heroic groups –
Männerbünde bound together by Eros – which were the creative force
shaping public life.10 Those who belonged in this group of leaders, these
heroes, would naturally rise to the surface through their own inherent
qualities; a process of natural selection was at work so that the finest
male specimens would always dominate.
During the First World War, based on his own experience as well as
circulating theories like Blüher’s, Rutha slowly became convinced that
youth leadership required charisma. By 1918 he would formulate this
publicly in his own language. We should not, however, assume that the
early Bohemian Wandervogel already operated according to this ideal
model. The reality was of boys simply attracted to their local group out
of pure escapism, especially the adventure of rural hiking and of creat-
ing a local den with friends. Reports in the monthly Wandervogel jour-
nal, Burschen heraus!, show that some of these groups were more effec-
tive than others, many operating very casually. But all developed a basic
hierarchical structure, older boys taking the initiative with rural expedi-
tions, leading and learning what was expected of them. The ideal was
firmly laid out for them from 1912 in Burschen heraus! by its editor, the
Leitmeritz schoolteacher Karl Metzner, an enthusiast of contemporary
reformist pedagogy (which Rutha too strongly imbibed). It was always
one of the ironies of Wandervogel organization that Metzner and other
teachers – while conscious that youth should be autonomous – saw fit
to steer their course and offer regular advice. Metzner was foremost
amongst those adult mentors who (having founded the Bohemian
Wandervogel) pushed these adolescents to be physically tough and ide-
alistically engaged with a new German nationalist mission in the Bohe-
mian Lands. The boys needed to be regularly reminded of the underly-
ing combative purpose, performing as if in an embryonic army. As
Metzner wrote in June 1913, “In Bohemia there sits a high-ranking gen-
eral, commanding all Bohemian Wandervogel battalions which on his
signal can be mobilized.”11
This militant dimension, so evident in some adults’ advice on youth
training before 1914, was naturally accentuated by the outbreak of the
war. Just as war pedagogy invaded Bohemian classrooms, as teachers
and pupils enlisted and the school curriculum was transformed, so the
Wandervogel mission – an alternative and unconventional education for
some adolescents – became reconfigured as one of special sacrifice on

10 Blüher, Hans: Die Rolle der Erotik in der männlichen Gesellschaft, 2 vols. Jena 1917/
1919. See, for example, I, 241 ff: Das Bild des Helden.
11 Metzner, Karl: Zum inneren Ausbau des österreichischen Wandervogels. In: Burschen
heraus! Fahrtenblatt der Deutschböhmen. June 1913, 11–13.
 The qualities of the ideal youth leader 7

the home front. As one youth leader explained: “It is doubly vital now
that you are strong Wandervogel, now at this difficult time when every
man is precious to the fatherland: we too want to contribute and help to
strengthen our nation.”12 While about five hundred Wandervogel elders
from across Austria were drafted and were setting a heroic example at
the front, others who remained behind in the hinterland were given the
opportunity to move more quickly into leadership roles. Such was the
case of Heinz Rutha who not only assumed leadership of the Leipa
Wandervogel, but proceeded only eighteen months later to become Bo-
hemian Gauwart (very much thanks to Feldberger’s influence). Photo-
graphs of Rutha from this period at the age of twenty suggest a hand-
some, serious individual who was able to inspire both male and female
Wandervögel through his determined persuasive character. He demon-
strated this as Gauwart, but even in leading the Leipa branch (1915–16)
he had set a clear energetic example. It was in this period, moreover,
that, with a few other branch leaders, he tried to lead the Wandervogel
in an antisemitic Aryan direction, insisting on tighter criteria for youth
recruitment. The initiative failed – mainly again it seems on Feld-
berger’s instruction – but it is striking not least in showing Rutha’s own
peculiar leadership qualities.13
Rutha’s personal conception of how best to strengthen and guide the
future youth movement fully emerged in August 1918 at the Wander-
vogel (Austrian) Bundestag held at Krummau (Český Krumlov). His
theory of the “Leader-Personality” (Führer-Persönlichkeit) undoubtedly
owed something to Blüher’s ideas (even if he publicly disowned Blüher),
and we know he picked up the idea too from Stammler, finding his sim-
ple maxims a real “revelation”.14 But it also came from his own recent
experiences as Gauwart and as a soldier at the front. As Gauwart from
August 1916, he demonstrated himself as a controlling personality who
managed to impose some impressive initiatives on the loose wartime
Wandervogel: restructuring the “Gau” into new districts and successful-
ly managing squabbles among the Prague branches. He thereby coordi-
nated a certain unity on the Wandervogel home front to match the sup-
posed discipline he expected in the trenches; indeed, the sacrifice of the
former was firmly equated with the latter. His organization especially of
the 1917 Gautag (at Trschiblitz near Leitmeritz) ensured it was a vivid
experience for all who took part. Surprising, therefore, was the reality of

12 Kletzl, Otto: Vom Leipschen Wandervogel. In: Burschen heraus! February 1915, 60.
13 For more detail, see Cornwall: The Devil’s Wall, 57–62.
14 See Stammler: Worte, 9; Rutha himself in July 1922 quoted this section and also noted
Stammler’s effect upon him four years earlier. See Ibid.: Blätter vom frischen Leben III/5
(1 July 1922), 68 f., 82: “Seine Sprache ist einfach und rein wie die Linien der Berge,
denen er ein großes Lied singt.”
8 Cornwall

“bad leadership” which he felt he then encountered when serving in the

Habsburg forces in 1918. Far from being led by male idealists (model
Wandervogel officers), the army contained its full share of indifferent,
tactless or bullying individuals – men shamelessly lacking in idealism
and hardly likely to inspire their rank and file.15 This, together with the
sheer trauma of being gassed on the Asiago plateau in June 1918, sharp-
ened Rutha’s sense of the national struggle.
By the time of the Krummau Bundestag in August, according to his
diary, Rutha had come to realize that “to be a leader means to be a per-
sonality” (“Führer sein heisst Persönlichkeit sein”).16 Amidst the usual
lively youth-gathering in the shadow of the Schwarzenberg castle, he
flirted with some “charismatic lads” but, more importantly, he was able
to convince Wandervogel elders like Karl Metzner of his theory about
“personalities”. This immediately bore fruit with a special October edi-
tion of Burschen heraus! produced by the new Gauwart Otto Kletzl and
entitled “Führerspiegel”. It brought together ideas about youth leader-
ship, using Feldberger as a model and quoting aphorisms by Stammler;
Kletzl advised his readers in a quiet hour to pick up Stammler’s books
and “let his golden words about leadership have their effect on you.”
Elsewhere in the journal Rutha highlighted leaders as role models who
guided their flock, and who by natural selection emerged from the
masses as personalities. In turn, they secured the greatest satisfaction for
their efforts by looking into the shining eyes of their followers.17 There
were some hints here too that the ideal charismatic youth leader should
be blond and Aryan. It matched the enthusiasm of Rutha, Kletzl and
others – even if it proved short-lived in 1918–19 – for racial selection in
the Bohemian Wandervogel. But it also probably evinced Rutha’s own
sexual proclivity towards blond youths as the masculine ideal.
In later years as Rutha developed his youth philosophy, he pushed
further with his concept of small groups led by charismatic individuals,
emphasizing the spark that bonded them together. In Blätter vom
frischen Leben, which he composed from 1919 to 1922 partly as a medi-
um for educating new leaders, he noted, for example, how the model
leader harnessed all his energy to build up trust, displaying chivalry and
openness with his followers. A new element in this refrain was the lead-
er as manifest hero, something clearly accentuated by the war experi-

15 This comes through strongly in Rutha’s unpublished diary, preserved in the Státní ob-
lastní archiv Litoměřice [State Regional Archives Litoměřice], Česká Lípa: krajský soud
– trestní spisy, karton 242. The diary also reveals those young men whose personality
Rutha was attracted to (not least sexually).
16 Ibid., diary entry for 26 August 1918.
17 Rutha: Gedanken über die Führerschaft. In: Burschen heraus! October 1918, 12 f.; Ru-
tha: Vom Führerturm, 17; Kletzl, Otto: Bücher für Führerschaft und Zunft, 20.
 The qualities of the ideal youth leader 9

ence and by Blüher’s theory of the Männerbund. Rutha impatiently re-

ferred back to earlier Wandervogel leaders who had died as war heroes
(Feldberger, Karl Grund or Hans Mautschka), reminding the post-war
generation that it had not yet absorbed half their legacy.18 It was a plea
for up- and-coming leaders to emulate those who had been militant and
energetic in the recent past. In this way in the early 1920s, Rutha also
was indirectly criticizing as lazy thinkers those Wandervogel elders who
(in his view) were mired in rules and traditions – an “ossified” obstacle
to spontaneous “youth creativity”. As he put it on one occasion: “We
don’t want to stand still, to enjoy and be comfortable. We want storm
and passion, yearning and restless wandering. That means living, while
the other means death.”19 This blatant call for youth to take control and
restructure the Wandervogel on the basis of charismatic personalities
would lead by 1924 to an open clash and Rutha’s disruption of the
movement. He was set on a youth mission divergent from the old Wan-
dervogel’s other-worldly mindset.20 Taking shape was the dream of a
Sudeten Männerbund, where those trained as adolescent leaders would
turn into the adult heroic leaders of a revitalized Sudeten German socie-
ty.
As this concept evolved, Rutha’s maxim of model leaders inspiring
their flock did not disappear.21 In the pedagogic programme he pro-
duced for the Jungturnerschaft in the 1930s, adolescence was mapped
out in three “age-stages” with charismatic youth leaders expected to
emerge and take charge at each level. Typically he had adapted the idea
of age-stages from others, from the Scouts (Pfadfinder) in particular but
with thought too about boys’ education in ancient Sparta. In this grand
theory, implemented from 1932 across the Turnverband by means of
two thousand Vorturner or youth leaders, we can also see Rutha assum-
ing a special role for himself, that of “spiritual leadership” (geistige Füh-
rerschaft). As early as 1918 he had thought about such a position, as a
natural solution to the problem of what mature youth leaders should do
when they reached adulthood; most realized it was time to leave the

18 Rutha: Unsere Führer. In: Blätter vom frischen Leben I/2 (15 May 1919), 11–13.
19 Rutha: Den Erkennenden! In: Blätter vom frischen Leben III/4 (1 May 1921), 44: “Wir
aber wollen nicht Stillstand und Genuß und Gemütlichkeit, wir wollen Sturm und Lei-
denschaft, Sehnen und ruhlos Wandern. Das heißt leben, das andere ist totsein.”
20 This was in tandem with the general post-war bündisch shift in the youth movements
across German central Europe, but Rutha was a particularly articulate exponent of the
need for a more practical course. See Berthold, Dunja: Die sudetendeutsche Jugendbe-
wegung und die Turnerjugend des Deutschen Turnverbandes in der Ersten Tschecho-
slowakischen Republik von 1919 bis 1938. Magisterarbeit, Bochum 1985, 21–24.
21 See Rutha, Heinz: Lage, Aussichten und Aufgaben der Erziehung in der Turnerschaft.
In: Turnerzeitung des Deutschen Turnverbandes, 15 May 1928, 147 f.
10 Cornwall

movement.22 Privately, he overcame the precept that youths should lead

themselves, by conceiving his own role as that of a spiritual mentor on a
par with the “philosopher rulers” described in Plato’s Republic. In other
words, Rutha envisaged himself as a supreme youth leader, guiding the
education of adolescents but also training those leader-personalities
who would eventually run Sudeten German society. It was an elitist po-
sition as the overall “wise mentor”, and at times he exaggerated his own
importance as an irreplaceable visionary. As he wrote to one of his
youth acolytes in mid-1935: “In this mass movement forwards, I am
maintaining the spiritual standpoint which nobody coming after me
could uphold and complete.”23 He might well still conceive youth as au-
tonomous, but the reality in the Turnverband was of a worldly youth
movement that was being trained and directed by adults.

Discipline
If the model youth leader required charisma to lead successfully, he also
needed to display discipline and control over his cohort and over him-
self. From pre-1914 this standard was clear in the Bohemian youth
movements, enunciated by Metzner and others in terms of a disciplined
moral army of youth embodying true masculine values. The youth lead-
er was supposedly able, through his sheer personality, to maintain con-
trol. And as in the best of armies, there would therefore be voluntary
obedience from his cohort; Wandervogel youths must be better than
those “stupid lads” who needed to be forced to obey in a “schoolmaster-
ly fashion” (the distinction from formal school discipline was often
made).24 This maxim hinted at a basic potential tension in the move-
ment. For while there had to be rules and discipline, as wartime Gau-
warts like Rutha found out first-hand, youth also had to be allowed its
own creative spirit, to be free to explore the Volk, to wander in the na-
tional countryside without excess regulation. Rutha in his Blätter in the
early 1920s would set out the necessary balance. The youth leader, he

22 A few did not: for example, Josef Forst who was head of the Prachatitz Wandervogel (in
south Bohemia) for two decades beginning in 1913. The post-war career of Karl Metz-
ner as a reformist teacher is also instructive: see Kasper, Tomáš: Výchova či politika?
Úskalí německého reformně pedagogického hnutí v Československu v letech 1918-1933
[Education or Politics? The Pitfalls of the German Pedagogic Reform Movement in
Czechoslovakia, 1918-33]. Prague 2007, 209–225. Metzner was undoubtedly knowl-
edgeable about contemporary theories of education in a way that Rutha and many other
adult youth leaders were not.
23 Rutha to Wolfgang Heinz, 25 June 1935. Státní okresní archiv [State District Archives],
Liberec: Reichenberg police records, I.
24 Günther, Karl [Gauwart]: Von der Wandervogel Art. In: Burschen heraus! October
1913, 5.
 The qualities of the ideal youth leader 11

explained, must allow freedom: he was not a chaperone to his followers

as they explored the Heimat. Yet boundless freedom led to chaos, so
some rules (Satzungen) were necessary; they should, however, develop
“naturally” rather than being imposed in a formulaic way from outside.
In other words, these were the natural rules placed upon youths by a
higher metaphysical power, binding them to their leader and to a set of
ideals.25
Despite this spiritual evocation, discipline in its conventional form
was also certainly accentuated by wartime, by those youth “elders” who
had served at the front. Even if it was understated in post-war youth lit-
erature, in Rutha’s own writings it could often be deduced from his em-
phasis on leadership, his push for creating sharply delineated youth co-
horts who would work avidly for the nation. Like many veterans (Hen-
lein, for example), Rutha had returned from military service wishing to
impose “front-line self-discipline” on the next generation; soldiers’ be-
haviour should serve as “a model for the masculine discipline of the
whole nation and all young men.”26 It was a specific contrast then to
what he viewed as lax discipline and complacency in a post-war Wan-
dervogel which seemed insufficiently alert to national requirements.
Ironically, although Rutha and other nationalists always proclaimed
unity as one of their watchwords, in the 1920s he would persistently
undermine Wandervogel unity in his determination for a more tightly
structured and militant body. The Sudetendeutsche Jungenschaft which
he formally established in June 1924 was characterized by special uni-
forms and strict disciplinary formations, setting it aside from the rest of
the Wandervogel. It was an image that other youth groups like the
Catholic Staffelstein began to imitate a few years later. Indeed,
Staffelstein from its foundation in 1920–1, had assumed much of the
post-war Wandervogel discourse, including the need to shape “leader-
personalities” who would be a vanguard for transforming society (in a
Catholic and national direction).27
In all these youth movements the discipline exercised by the leader
also meant self-control and abstinence. Pre-1914 Bohemia had wit-
nessed many German national activists who explicitly rejected bour-
geois modernity and its accompanying vices of alcohol, tobacco, sexual
promiscuity and frivolous enjoyment; the Reichenberg doctor Gustav
Rössler was just one, influential in both his völkisch work and the fight

25 In die Wälder! In: Blätter vom frischen Leben III/5 (1 July 1922), 70 f.; See also, Beneh-
men. In: Blätter vom frischen Leben III/4 (1 May 1921), 50: “not a chaperone”.
26 Rutha’s retrospective comments: Rutha, Heinz: Sudetendeutschtum auf dem Wege zur
Einigung. In: Volk und Führung 2 (1935), 52 f.
27 Schmid-Egger, Hans/Nittner, Ernst: Staffelstein. Jugendbewegung und katholische Er-
neuerung bei den Sudetendeutschen zwischen den Großen Kriegen. München 1983, 23.
12 Cornwall

against alcohol. Similarly, all who had founded the Austrian/Bohemian

Wandervogel were aiming to draw adolescents in a healthy moral direc-
tion, taking a lead from elders in Germany. As Metzner complained in
1912: “Beer and tobacco, flirting and nights of roaming form the ideal of
so many young people today; this should be changed.”28 It was expected
that youth leaders would be a model of such abstinence, preserving their
healthy minds and bodies, and these warnings continued in the post-
war decade.29 Rutha himself in his Blätter advised youth leaders to re-
cruit adolescents from all walks of life (including the working class), di-
verting them from the pub and the cinema, from alcohol and tobacco,
towards rural hiking and other healthy pursuits. A Carlsbad youth lead-
er set the message in völkisch language: he who misused his own body
was betraying the Volk. He should warn friends against nicotine and
alcohol, encouraging them to pursue physical exercise and to remain
pure.30 As with the constant nationalist appeals for unity, these regular
calls for “purity” implied that many adolescents, rather than following
the advice of their Wandervogel or Staffelstein mentors, were still being
drawn too soon into the seedy adult world.
Further abstinence was expected in sexual relations between Wan-
dervogel boys and girls. The male youth leader ought again to set a
chaste example, devoting himself exclusively to his male flock: “A lead-
er’s love is not the kind of love which a man gives to his wife, which is
physical and leads to children, but that [spiritual love] which produces a
creative movement constantly thirsting after beauty.”31 The quest for
purity, sexual abstinence for adolescent boys in particular, was always
hard to enforce since even before 1914 girls had been allowed to form
their own Wandervogel groups and socialize with boys. The leadership
then strictly monitored gender interaction. During the war, when fe-
male groups expanded as males departed for the front, it tried to ban
joint expeditions and overnight stays, producing in 1916 a typical reac-
tion from the female Gau leader, Irma Schmatt, who queried this mis-
trust and restriction of Wandervogel freedom.32 If most (like Rutha him-
self) probably stayed chaste, the reality was that some male youth lead-

28 Stauda, Johannes: Der Wandervogel in Böhmen, 1911–1920. ed. Kurt Oberdorffer

Reutlingen 1975–1978, I, 16. For Rössler, see Ibid, II, 8.
29 This stance was similar in the post-war Catholic youth movement: see Langhans, Da-
niel: Der Reichsbund der deutschen katholischen Jugend in der Tschechoslowakei
1918–1938. Bonn 1990, 49, 58.
30 Steidl, Oskar: Du und die ‘Andern’. In: Blätter vom frischen Leben II/2 (31 May 1920),
11. See also Rutha’s own remarks in Ibid. II/2, 24–26.
31 “F. M.”, Gegenmeinung. In: Blätter vom frischen Leben I/6 (12 November 1919), 69.
Rutha noted (75) how he approved of this opinion (which chimed again with Blüher’s
theories).
32 Stauda: Der Wandervogel, II, 94.
 The qualities of the ideal youth leader 13

ers certainly had girlfriends and were not setting a pure example; Rutha
observed this at the Krummau Bundestag in 1918 and noted it in his
diary.
The discussion about gender separation resurfaced especially after
the war, as part of a wider Wandervogel discussion across German cen-
tral Europe in 1919. Veterans returning from the front particularly felt
that female Wandervögel had unnaturally encroached upon what was
essentially a male sphere, compromising its essence in the process. Ru-
tha was prepared in the Blätter to present both sides of the argument for
male and female youth leaders, but his own view was never in doubt. In
June 1919 he reproduced several pieces, describing how many Wan-
dervogel girls instead of following their own “natural course” had mim-
icked the boys and become a caricature of femininity. The result was
“hybrids” (Zwittermenschtum) – masculine or laddish girls – whom,
Rutha suggested, adolescent boys rejected with “natural loathing”. In-
stead, “real girls” should be devoting themselves to their own female
purity, striving towards real “womanhood”; like the boys they should of
course avoid superficiality and certainly shrink from liaising with “arti-
ficial muscle men”.33
These views produced a flurry of correspondence with the editor
through the summer, so that in November 1919 he was able to devote a
whole edition of the Blätter to the subject. One letter, from a Protestant
minister, countered that the two sexes needed to interact as adolescents
as they prepared for later life. Another, from a female Wandervogel,
bluntly told “Heinz” that while the girls certainly lacked male creativity,
they in their own way had been quietly consolidating what boys had ini-
tiated in the movement.34 To be clear, Rutha himself drew readers’ at-
tention to three particularly valid viewpoints. One female correspond-
ent urged the need for gender separation; it was time for girls to carve
out their own sphere and set their own goals, to be “total girls” and fol-
low the leadership of mythical Wagnerian heroines like Brünnhilde. In
another letter, a boy explained that he had left the Wandervogel because
the passions he wished to express with other male youths had been ex-
tinguished by feminine influence; an older girl had prematurely led him
in a sexual direction only suitable for adults, not for adolescents who
were not yet men (but who needed male guidance). A third contributor
then set out what Rutha fully believed – namely, that male youths were
not seeking women and did not need to learn about them. Instead they
wanted a model leader, a youth like themselves who rejected girlfriends,
someone “strong, pure and devoted” who embodied their highest val-

33 Blätter vom frischen Leben I/3 (5 June 1919), 26, 29, 31.
34 Ibid., I/6 (12 November 1919), 59, 61 f.
14 Cornwall

ues, who through the sheer strength of charismatic personality could

take his lads forward.35
Rutha’s obsession with strict separation of the sexes was not accepted
by other Wandervogel elders and contributed to his growing split from
them; in the next two decades he would maintain his belief in gendered
pedagogic training in preparation for demarcated roles in adulthood.
The discussion in the Blätter, however, did reveal a basic consensus
across the youth movements that all male and female leaders should
strive for “purity” and abstain from intercourse with the opposite sex.
One result, moreover, of this ruling on sexual abstinence was the phe-
nomenon, in the Wandervogel at least, of a normative “homosocial” cul-
ture where male same-sex desires could be expressed and sometimes tip
over into homosexual practices. As we have seen, the theories of Hans
Blüher, the concept of the loving and charismatic leader with whom
other boys should readily share their adolescent joys and anxieties, the
regular bonding which was experienced on rural expeditions – all this
facilitated and even celebrated homoerotic liaisons. Most boys might
not interpret such “love” in homosexual terms, but some did, the Wan-
dervogel culture enabling them to make sense of their sexual awaken-
ing.36
And a few youth leaders then set a homoerotic example. Most noto-
rious was the behaviour of Oskar Just, a physically imposing and char-
ismatic Wandervogel leader in Gablonz (Jablonec). During the war, Just
had created his own model youth cohort, selecting blond and “Nordic”
lads – suiting his racist Aryan specifications – and also those whom he
found sexually alluring. There were as usual some didactic guides for
such a course, like the popular work of one Austrian reform pedagogue,
Ferdinand Büttner.37 Having once been sexually repressed, Just found
release in this new leadership role. As one of his disciples remembered,
Just “leapt over the obstacles and expanded his viable and legitimate
stance on sexual morality into a practical system.”38 It seems to have
been well known and accepted, or at least tolerated, in the rather dis-
tracted wartime movement. Rutha’s diary of 1918 recorded meeting Just
at a Gau event in Leitmeritz, when the Gablonz leader was accompanied
by his “bleary-eyed sweetheart” Ernst Schöler. Even if Rutha seemed to
disapprove of the uncontrolled passion of this male relationship, it
seems clear that the audacious public example gave him some solace.

35 Ibid., 66–72.
36 On this subject see the excellent study by Geuter, Ulfried: Homosexualität in der deut-
schen Jugendbewegung. Frankfurt am Main 1994.
37 Büttner, Ferdinand: Ich und meine fünf Jungen. Weimar 1914.
38 Frühauf, Erich: Von den Führern. In: Jantsch, Walter (ed.) Gablonzer Wandervogel:
Geschichtlicher Abriß von 1913–1938. Schwäbisch Gmünd 1974, 9.
 The qualities of the ideal youth leader 15

For he was struggling with his own same-sex desires and would never
wholly resolve them. His diary shows him aspiring to be the ideal, pure
youth leader, but realizing that his same-sex inclinations were similar to
Just’s, exceeding the bounds of what most Wandervögel would accept in
their homosocial world. As he wrote cryptically, “I’ve stayed pure, yes,
in the face of women, but have not done so naturally […] I want to be
pure but I also want to be normal”. Typically he felt aggrieved when a
potential male intimate went off instead with a girl he considered a
“floozy” (Schickse).39 Some male Wandervögel were clearly breaking the
rules on sexual abstinence. Others, like Rutha, were anxiously trying to
maintain the old model of self-control, of spiritual creativity, but realiz-
ing that there was a basic flaw in their own sexual desires.
For most youth leaders this could be resolved when they stepped into
adulthood and left the Wandervogel ideals behind. Rutha himself was
unusual since he continued his career as a youth leader, privately justi-
fying to himself his same-sex desires by means of a Sudeten German
youth mission built upon homoerotic bonding.40 A mindset that had
first drawn upon commonplace Wandervogel ideals about youth bond-
ing, was then shaped by Hans Blüher and the mystical homoerotic poet-
ry of Stefan George, and lastly by Plato who presented “male-spiritual
love” as the purest and most creative. Rutha by the 1930s could there-
fore convince himself that he had developed, alongside his systematic
youth pedagogy, his own disciplined and deeply moral personal philos-
ophy. A few close disciples were initiated into the full philosophy, peda-
gogic and homoerotic. But remaining on this moral pedestal was diffi-
cult in view of how some in the Turnverband might perceive it. When
the homosexual scandal broke and engulfed Rutha in late 1937, his ideal
for youth would be cast in quite a different light, as one of “corrupt ped-
erasty”. Several commentators, including Rutha himself, equated his
fate with that of Socrates. Other, mainly Czech, voices were less charita-
ble, pointing out that Rutha had not been a leader (vůdce) but a seducer
(svůdce) of youth.41 He, the “spiritual leader”, had ultimately failed in
his own self-discipline and fallen from grace.

39 Rutha diary, 21 f., 28: entries for 7–8 April 1918.

40 For fuller discussion see Cornwall, Mark: Homoerotika v sudetoněmeckém mládežni-
ckém hnutí. Teorie a praxe Heinze Ruthy [Homoeroticism in the Sudeten German
Youth Movement: The Theory and Practice of Heinz Rutha]. In: Himl, Pavel/Seidl, Jan/
Schindler, Franz (ed.): “Miluji tvory svého pohlaví”. Homosexualita v dějinách a společ-
nosti českých zemí [“I Love Creatures of My Own Sex”: Homosexuality in the History
and Society of the Bohemian Lands]. Prague 2013, 175–203.
41 Večerník práva lidu, 16 October 1937, 1.
16 Cornwall

Knowledge
It was self-evident that the youth leader, as a “personality” who exer-
cised self-control and discipline over his cohort, had to be well educated
in the values of the youth mission. After 1918 this training naturally
varied, depending on the ideological approach of new youth bodies run
by the Agrarian or Social Democrat parties, or the focus on Catholic
renewal promoted by Staffelstein. For the Wandervogel, the Pfadfinder,
and the later Jungturnerschaft (which from 1933 slowly began to super-
vise education in most German youth bodies except the socialist),42 a
key dimension of youth pedagogy was of course “national”: adolescents
needed to imbibe völkisch culture. In the inter-war period this took a
practical politicized direction, but for the earlier Wandervogel it had
mainly meant exploring the Volk’s sacred national space through its
eternal landscape.
Youth journals often offered suitable literature on this subject (Bo-
hemian authors like Hans Watzlik or Gustav Leutelt), but the main way
to learn was to walk the Heimat landscape.43 The latter was not only
supposedly the antidote to ephemeral and dissolute urban culture; it
served almost as a metaphysical substitute for conventional religion, for
it was the place where youth could freely commune with the national
spirit. “Wandering” with a purpose at weekends also ensured that ado-
lescents from across the Heimat met each other and bonded together in
their common mission. As Metzner explained in April 1914,
like apprentices we are going once more into nature, from which culture has torn us away.
We learn through nature how to value pure pleasure; its superiority gives us a standard by
which in life we distinguish between the best and the ordinary, between the real and the
false […] For us the homeland [Heimat] is no empty concept, for we have walked it.44
It was therefore essential, at least until the 1930s, for youth leaders to
take their cohorts on regular expeditions, hiking and camping in the
countryside. Wandervogel gatherings, such as the annual Gautag, also
deliberately took place in different locations around the Sudetenland so
that more of the national landscape would be uncovered. While this ac-
tivity was an intrinsic part of the Bohemian Wandervogel before the
war, the expeditions gained special significance in wartime for those left
on the home front. They might now interpret their wandering (often
deliberately along the Czech-German Sprachgrenze) as akin to defend-
ing national space against potential Czech encroachment. In the words

42 See Berthold: Die sudetendeutsche Jugendbewegung, 62–70.

43 See the advice offered by Kletzl, Otto: Bücher für Führerschaft und Zunft. In: Burschen
heraus! October 1918, 20–22: he suggested a full list of books was now needed for youth
leaders preparing their rural trips.
44 Metzner, Karl: Der Wandervogel Deutschtum. In: Burschen heraus! April–May 1914,
111.
 The qualities of the ideal youth leader 17

of the head of the Leipa girl group, Anni Grund (who by mid-1915 had
lost her brother on the Eastern Front): “Thus we are learning more and
more to value and love our Wandervogel. We too want to maintain and
cherish its ideals, so that our ‘wander-brothers’, who are now out brave-
ly defending our fatherland, see on their return home that we have not
been idle.”45
Many youth reports about these expeditions were purely factual, but
some leaders tried to go further and to capture the romantic mystique
of the national landscape, especially the wild splendor of the moun-
tains.46 Rutha too easily slipped into this spiritual interpretation of the
mission. In 1919 he vividly described a walk in the forested foothills of
the Isergebirge, equating it with encountering the German soul:
When you climb the tranquil gloomy paths up the mountain that men seldom walk, the
infinite forest is a chorus around you. On bright days it rustles and whispers as if it knew a
great secret, making you pensive as you feel your heartbeat. Hours slip by as you follow the
fortune that your soul seeks. Then you throw yourself on the soft-green bed of moss where
rings of sunlight flit, and clench your hands in the bulging moss […]. When you awake,
white evening mist is creeping through the tall ferns and the ghostly dead arms of the fallen
trees. Fear touches you, and over tree, boulder and brook you hurry on in bounds to reach
the hunting lodge.47
In his desire for a more militant post-war youth movement, Rutha was
still among those insisting that youth groups should continue to wander
in nature and explore the rural Heimat; this was “the expression of our
being”, since such trips produced that deep friendship which stirred
Wandervögel against conventional society.48 One edition of the Blätter,
in 1920, was used to coordinate advice for youth leaders on hiking. The
leader should prepare his expedition by reading about the designated
landscape; he would then ideally camp with his group in the open air:
“With dear companions you lie around the fire, and in you too the
flame is lit up, hot and ardent.” Groups should also take the initiative
and visit each other’s region to understand its beauty and enhance na-
tional friendship.49 But the priority was for all to be more physically ac-

45 Grund, Anni: Vom Leipschen Wandervogel. In: Burschen heraus! July 1915, 142.
46 See for example, Kletzl, Otto: Im Höllengebirge. In: Burschen heraus! Oct–Nov 1914,
5 f.
47 Rutha, Heinz: Isergebirge. In: Burschen heraus! May 1919, 98 f.
48 Ihr Wandervögel (Aus dem Schweizer Fahrtenblatt). In: Blätter vom frischen Leben I/2
(15 May 1919), 15.
49 Blätter vom frischen Leben II/3 (13 July 1920), 33–35. The main purpose of the trip (33)
was “Mit möglichst wenig Mitteln der Zivilisation der Natur möglichst viele Gehemnis-
se abzulauschen.” Rutha in the Blätter occasionally recommended reading lists for
youth leaders. By 1922, as he himself read more widely, these were becoming more di-
verse, including alongside Plato and Georg Stammler the works of Stefan George, Frie-
drich Hölderlin, Theodor Storm, Eduard Mörike and even Walt Whitman; he particu-
larly enthused about Der weiße Ritter (Führerzeitung der Neupfadfinder), feeling that it
18 Cornwall

tive, the leaders gaining knowledge from nature rather than sitting and
pondering amongst their books: “Alone on the meadow, in rustling
woods, in streams and under the unbounded frame of the sky – near to
earth, we develop the new vision.”50
These rural expeditions lived on in those movements which compet-
ed with the Wandervogel in the 1920s, including the Pfadfinder and
Staffelstein. In all of them the youth leaders of the post-war generation
were maturing in a heightened national environment, their “national
space” more precisely defined because of the creation of Czechoslo-
vakia. This restriction, however, did not wholly lead to the inter-war
youth groups turning inwards onto Sudeten territory. Rather, the 1920s
witnessed a flourishing of German youth expeditions abroad, not least
to Switzerland and north Italy where similar German minority cohorts
could appreciate their perspective and offer advice. The horizons of
many youth leaders in this way were expanded. Similarly, in the 1930s,
even if many Sudeten nationalists like Rutha kept their focus largely on
a regional mission, others in the new Henlein movement began to put
much greater emphasis on the wider German spiritual community and
the security it seemed to offer. The resulting frictions and tensions were
reflected in the Jungturnerschaft where after 1933 some youth leaders
veered in a Reich and Nazi direction. The Heimat which they sought to
discover now included the vibrant ideology to the north as well as a
broader understanding of “national space”. Theirs was a radically new
direction, but the similarity in many of their basic youth ideals enabled
these radical “cuckoos” more easily to challenge and subvert Rutha’s
own Sudeten-focused crusade.51
For those Sudeten German nationalists who had once experienced
the old “spiritual” Wandervogel expeditions, the sacred power of the
landscape never left them. Rutha in 1935, for example, was sensitive
about where his youth leadership camp should be built, so that his
Männerbund would learn in the right geographical environment. How-
ever, with the transfer of his youth pedagogy into the Turnverband from
the late 1920s, his hierarchical programme for training model youth
leaders had shifted further in a practical direction. Although wandering
in the rural wild was still encouraged, a priority now for male youth
leaders was competitive sports, group athletics and feats of heroic en-

captured the original Wandervogel spirit: see Blätter vom frischen Leben III/5 (1 July
1922), 81–83.
50 Wandern. In: Blätter vom frischen Leben III/5 (1 July 1922), 59 f.
51 For the way these tensions developed (a major challenge to youth discipline), see Corn-
wall: The Devil’s Wall, 173–180. Gradually many of Rutha’s ideals about the youth lead-
er were under attack, with a particularly negative interpretation of his fondness for close
male bonding.
 The qualities of the ideal youth leader 19

durance. The pedagogy was set out systematically in 1934 in a special

manual by Tonl Sandner, combing physical fitness with a full völkisch
education about young Turners’ historic mission; guidelines for girl
leaders, also in three age-stages, came later in June 1936.52 By 1937 this
idealistic programme had been imposed upon at least 60,000 young
Turners, but it then collapsed after Rutha’s suicide and the Henlein
movement’s shift towards Nazi Germany.

* * *

Over a period of about thirty years, from 1910 to 1940, the virtues ex-
pected of German Bohemian youth leaders had a certain consistency
(comparable perhaps to the ideals set out in Czech youth movements).
Indeed, some who preached about the leadership of youth in a special
life-stage would suggest these were eternal values – espoused since the
time of Plato, honed by medieval chivalry, and simply waiting to be cy-
clically rediscovered by the right generation. Among nationalist youth,
who had the most impact in German Bohemia in these decades, the idea
that a youth leader should be charismatic, disciplined and knowledgea-
ble was sustained from earlier Wandervogel precepts and continued in
the later Jungturnerschaft; for there too, personality and personal disci-
pline (abstinence) were the qualities expected and extolled.53 Yet in fact,
this turbulent period also witnessed a sharper exposition of these rules
as the post-war youth movements became ever more shaped and man-
aged by determined adults. As Jürgen Reulecke has stressed, for all the
talk of autonomous youth, it was always adults who directed the youth
movements and their leaders, imposing their own hopes and anxieties
on flexible minds.54 This was certainly evident in German Bohemia
where a post-war generation of nationalist veterans, with Heinz Rutha
as one key pioneer, moved to steer male adolescents in a militant direc-
tion with a politicized programme; it was a direct response to the les-
sons of wartime and to the traumatic Czechoslovak aftermath. Rutha

52 Sandner, Tonl: Leibeserziehung der Mannesjugend. Graslitz 1934. Sandner, from the
time of the key youth training camp at Görkau near Most in July 1932, headed this
training programme as Verbandsjugendwart. For detail on the youth organization, see
Luh, Andreas: Der Deutsche Turnverband in den Ersten Tschechoslowakischen Repu-
bik. Vom völkischen Vereinsbetrieb zur volkspolitischen Bewegung. München 1988,
193–196, 331–350. More regional research is required on the impact of this education,
but for its implementation in Rutha’s own “Jeschken” locality, see Cornwall: The Devil’s
Wall, 162–173.
53 Luh: Der Deutsche Turnverband, 179, 192: at adult Turn meetings the old beer tents
disappeared.
54 Reulecke, Jürgen: “Ich möchte einer werden so wie die.” Männerbünde im 20. Jahr-
hundert. Frankfurt 2001, 33, 81.
20 Cornwall

expected his male youth cult to be the basis for creating and moulding a
Sudeten German Volksgemeinschaft: carefully trained youth leaders
would become the Männerbund and run the (Sudeten German) state.
Such an idealistic notion was also considered but abandoned early on in
Nazi Germany, where the Hitler Youth movement was simply blended
into the National Socialist state.55 In the Sudetenland it survived longer
because the Turnverband, the new centre for a revitalized and unitary
youth body, was a crucial grassroots base for Henlein’s national move-
ment. However, as the Sudeten German phenomenon became more
prominent in central Europe, from 1935 the victim of its own success,
Rutha’s careful youth experiment began to unravel as it competed with
stronger political forces, not least the allure of Greater Germany. Some
of his “eternal” pedagogic philosophy about youth leadership surely
survived his death, not least in the minds of those who had undergone
the special education of the Jungturnerschaft. But in the end, his youth
mission was as transitory as the reality of adolescence itself. It was also
an ideal rooted in a German Bohemia or a Sudetenland which by 1945
had disappeared. Only the landscape once tramped by the care-free Bo-
hemian Wandervogel remained.

55 Ibid., 20.