The Temple (novel)

The Temple begins in Oxford, where Paul Schoner meets Simon Wilmot and William Bradshaw, caricatures of the young W.H.

During his time at the Stockmann household, Paul experiences the liberality of German youth culture first-hand, attending a party at which he drinks too much and meets Irmi.

In Sankt Pauli, at a bar named The Three Stars, Paul meets some young male prostitutes who claim to be destitute.

Nevertheless, Paul is distressed when Joachim books him an adjacent hotel room so that he can stay with a young man named Heinrich who he had met on the beach.

In this section, Paul visits several of his friends again, most notably Willy Lassel, who is now engaged to a Nazi woman, and Joachim Lenz, whose relationship with Heinrich is struggling.

During the holiday in 1929 on which The Temple is based, Spender formed friendships with Herbert List (photographer) and Ernst Robert Curtius (German critic), the latter of which introduced him to and cultivated his passion for Rilke, Hölderlin, Schiller, and Goethe.

His taste for German society sets him apart from some of his contemporaries; however, even after contemplating suicide if the Nazis were to invade England due to his abhorrence of their regime, he still maintained a love of Germany, returning to it after the war and writing a book about its ruins.