The Queer Nazi Artist

On the cover, the person doesn’t truly look like a soldier. Yes, the figure wears dark green-gray tones, something like a shoulder strap is hinted at. But there is no weapon, just as there is no head covering. And the gaze isn’t stern, resolute, or military, but wanders off into the distance. The eyes carry a melancholy, a certain longing is perceptible.

And yet, the painting bears the title “Portrait of a Soldier.” It is said to be a self-portrait. However, not of a male artist, but by the artist Stephanie Hollenstein.

Three Months as a Soldier at the Front

Whether it is truly a self-portrait is indeed a matter of debate—and of secondary importance. What is interesting above all is that such a possibility is even entertained: a woman painting herself as a soldier.

Stephanie Hollenstein, born in 1886 in Lustenau, far western Austria near the Swiss border, was indeed a soldier in the First World War. She actually wanted to go to the front as a Red Cross nurse, but she was deemed too frail. Instead, she went to the Dolomites front for three months under the name Stephan. Photos show her on a horse with a sketchbook in her breast pocket—shortly cropped hair, a somewhat uncertain stance, yet convincing in her role.

The Artist Won’t Fit into Any Box

It isn’t only this brief foray into soldier life that makes the artist intriguing. The Austrian art historian and culture journalist Nina Schedlmayer dedicates a biography to her that shows: a progressive, queer way of living and volkisch racialist racism do not exclude one another. Expressionism and antisemitism no more than that. It is a matter of enduring ambivalences, both in retrospective history and today. For Stephanie Hollenstein resists conventional boxes.

Her book bears the rather blunt title “Hitler’s Queer Artist. Stephanie Hollenstein – Painter and Soldier” (Amazon affiliate link). Hitler and queer, that certainly grabs attention. Yet Nina Schedlmayer proves that the title is more than just eyeballing.

Racial Nationalism and Emancipation at the Same Time

She narrates the life of this painter, who was born in the countryside of Vorarlberg and studied in Munich. There she felt at home among the Schwabing bohemia, saw early successes as an artist—and lived out her homosexuality. Schedlmayer devotes a whole chapter to these “complicated affairs” of the time, quotes letters that reveal her lesbian love life “shaped by mutual dependencies, emotional blackmail, empty promises, perhaps manipulation.”

After the First World War, she moved with her partner to Vienna, exhibited works, and participated in the founding of the feminist artists’ circle “Vienna Women’s Art.” By 1934, as she later reported, she joined the then-banned NSDAP, wrote antisemitic tracts, and worshiped Adolf Hitler. “The fundamental conflict between volkish-national thinking and emancipated modernity lives within her,” Schedlmayer succinctly sums it up.

Even in 1986, Medals Bearing Hollenstein’s Portrait Appear

In 1944, the artist died of a heart attack, not yet sixty. After the war she was even honored as a resistance fighter, and medals bearing Hollenstein’s portrait appeared as late as 1986. Only later did this image begin to be reassessed. One would have liked to learn more about the reception of the painter; the final chapter feels unusually brief.

Nevertheless, the overall portrayal reads as incredibly engaging and fresh, aided by the deftly placed cliffhangers. The author’s style is easygoing where possible, yet precise and fact-oriented. Where something is unclear or opinions diverge, the culture journalist presents it as such. And she invites readers along on the research journey, repeatedly recounting visits to archives or museums in a reportage format.

She Could Have Been a Victim

“Hitler’s Queer Artist. Stephanie Hollenstein – Painter and Soldier” goes far beyond a conventional artist biography: the work delves deeply into background topics, such as Nazi cultural policy or the relationship between other artists and the Nazi state. Moreover, the author attempts to approach the apparent paradox of a lesbian Nazi supporter by invoking the concept of cognitive dissonance.

And of course she mentions Alice Weidel, the lesbian but not queer co-chair of the AfD. In parallel to today’s conditions, nationalist-right attitudes push to the fore even more openly. People have always inhabited contradictions, then and now. Or, as Nina Schedlmayer states in her concluding assessment: Stephanie Hollenstein could have been a victim, but she stood on the side of the perpetrators.