ABSTRACT
In 1902, as Germany was confronting the news of Friedrich Krupp’s suicide and rumours of his ‘immoral’ activities in Italy, a certain Dr A.Sper published a pamphlet on Capri und die Homosexuellen. Subtitled ‘A Psychological Study’, the little work aimed to investigate the circumstances which had driven Krupp to take his life. Sper first considered the anthropology of sexuality and argued that sexual behaviour had much to do with climate and geography. In colder, northern climes, where men were obliged to work hard just to survive, the sexual instinct was less strong than in southern and tropical regions, where warmth, fertility and temperament provoked greater sexual desire-Sper commented on the ‘enormous erotic heat’ of both beasts and humans in India and Italy, and he dwelt on the great sexual potency of animals ranging from chickens to donkeys. To this heightened sexuality in the South was coupled earlier sexual maturation; whereas Germans reached sexual maturity only between the ages of 15 and 17, Italians did so by the age of 12. Early sexual maturity led to a particularly active fantasy life and ‘from dream to act is only a short step’. Adolescent boys began to play sexual games with one another; juvenile sexuality was common among people like the Italians whose physical and psychological development filled them with unbounded sexual desire.
