Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/590

 his boyhood, when only a royal page, amid the other lads of that aristocratic office in Munich, we find him experiencing what was a first and immature love, extremely ideal but vehement and never forgotten, for another young man, a guest at the Court, Count Mercy d'Argenteau, An even more vivid sexual-sentimental passion came to him through the charming personality of young Prince Oettingen-Wallerstein, whose untimely death on the battlefield of Hanau deeply shocked Platen. Yet prematurely strong as we shall find these experiences were, they become pale beside the chronicle of Platen's secret love for two young officers, Friedrich von Brandenburg (called "Federigo" in the Journal) and Captain Wilhelm von Hornstein; both which affairs came into progress during Platen's first military years. But in turn, these episodes seem superficial and jejune, when contrasted with the self-revelations of his passionate University-loves, during his semesters at Würzburg and Erlapgen. Here we meet with the records of, successively, his intimacy with Eduard Schmidtlein ("Adrastus"); with Hermann von Rotenhan; with young Otto von Bülow; with a student not clearly identified except as "Cardenio" (a pseudonym in the Journal); with Justus Liebig, and with Karl Theodore German. Also mentionable, as either earlier or at this time, are some other intimacies more or less homosexual in tincture, continued into his later years; though in some cases going through the mutation to "mere friendship," or else evaporating altogether from his heart and mind—those with Issel and Perglas, and with a passing military acquaintance (visiting Ansbach); with Kopisch, and so on. These however are not recorded in such graphic detail and poignant clarity.

Platen was never a woman-hater. On the contrary, he much admired the beautiful and the intellectual and the ideal-feminine in woman. All his life long, occurred intimate friendships with women. Several women fell in