Just outside of Hanau an officer of the guard interrogates the eponymous hero of Der abenteuerliche Simplicissmus Teutsch. Even as the soldiers wonder at the exotic boy, this socially and nationally indeterminate creature — who could have been exhibited at a fair as a Mongol from Siberia or an Eskimo — looks back, nonplussed by the unusual attire of the officer. In a comic and satiric moment, the naïve Simplicius finds himself perplexed, for he does not know whether the officer is a “he” or a “she,” for he is wearing his hair and beard in the French style. Not only is the officer's beard sparse and his hair long, but his full trousers look to Simplicius more like a woman's skirt than a man's pants. Ironically, Simplicius, whose own indeterminacy plays a central role in this fictional autobiography, feels compelled to categorize. Unable to make up his mind about the sex of the officer, he finally determines him to be both man and woman. Shortly thereafter, when the officer attempts to confiscate his prayer book, Simplicius falls to the officer's feet, embracing his knees and addressing him as “mein lieber Hermaphrodit” only to be met with the gruff reply, “wer Teufel hat dir gesagt, daß ich Herman heiße?” (55). The context makes clear enough that this illiterate oddball, and not the boy Simplicius, is here the principal object of the author's satiric nationalist barb. In following foreign fashion, this man has relinquished something of his German manhood. At the same time, the very fact of the simpleton's ridiculous confusion obliquely confirms the foundation of the social order — the division between the sexes.

The primacy of the category of gender in the ordering and correction of the social world satirized, as well as reconstructed, in Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus in fact becomes apparent a few chapters earlier in the hermit's catechism of the forlorn and ignorant peasant boy. When the hermit asks Simplicius his name, Simplicius replies that his name is “Boy.” We immediately learn, however, that although Simplicius can name his gender assignment, he does not understand its social significance and consequences; language is severed from social knowledge. He does not even know what a mother, father, husband, or wife is.