I don’t know how much the people of Chicago knew or cared about the daily happenings in Berlin in 1913 (WWI wouldn’t start for another year), but the editors of the The day book, on 12/29/1913, found this little snipped worthy of publication:
It’s unclear why the formation of this club was relevant on the other side of the planet — maybe it was just a fun way to slip in a jab about Germans as joiners — except that “freak social organizations” (and the uproar around them!) were extremely hot at this time. Seriously, people loved forming clubs to piss off other people, and people loved to be pissed off about the clubs other people were forming. There are a billion little news clips like this that just grouse about the weirdness of other people’s social clubs.
It wasn’t just freaky weird clubs where [scans notes] people wore sandals and robes, people also just loved to read about anything having to do with “lunatics.” Local newspapers were constantly picking up wire stories — stories that had precisely zero impact on their own towns — describing crazy people getting up to various antics.
Why the fascination with the lunacy? In part, this was a way to retain the social order. It was important for people, on a sociological level, to collectively hold tight to the things they saw as pillars of their own “normal” society. At a time when so much was changing — children going to school instead of a factory, cars, electrification, indoor toilets — it was vital for people to establish what wasn’t going to change. The social mores (including not wearing strange beards or flirting with gender ambiguity) had to be rigorously maintained at home.
It was also part of a larger fear that (cue the theremin music) anyone could be crazy!
The beginning of the 1900s through the First World War was a time marked with new medical and social advancements. Surgeries were more common. With the 1895 invention of the X-ray, a doctor could see inside of you for God’s sake! Medications and treatments were being prescribed based on a foundation of research, instead of history, tradition, or gut feeling.
All of this coincided with a changing attitude toward mental diagnoses, as well. As this article in the BC Medical Journal explains:
Departing from a simplistic view centred on supernatural causes, modern theories in the early 20th century began to recognize mental disorders as unique disease entities, and two main theories of psychodynamics and behaviorism emerged as potential explanations for their causes. With the increasing acceptance of mental illness as a unique form of pathology, official diagnostic classification systems were adopted, new avenues of research spawned, and modern approaches to treatment incorporating pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy were established.
This was great for people who were actually living with mental illness — but it also tore down some of the veil of safety held by neurotypicals (and people who thought they were neurotypical). Instead of assuming that all crazy people had a.) ghosts in their blood, b.) blackness in their blood?, or c.) too much blood, they had to, at least subconsciously, acknowledge the realty that a brain that misfires might be lurking in every skull in the county.
Such a terrifying proposition had to be met with some kind of certainty about one’s own sanity. After all, if anyone was crazy, then how could people be sure they weren’t going to wind up committed, dining on a daily menu of old prunes and weak beer?
So instead, people read about the lunatics of far-flung lands to make themselves feel better and tried to pretend like mental illness wasn’t something that could ever happen to them or their families. And of course, as we all know, it worked out great.