listen the fuck up my man there’s a reason that martha likes moritz while all the other girls are into melchior; moritz is a gentle, nervous, and sweet sort, and above all: not intimidating. she’s suffering really badly at home, as we all know, and the fact that she admits to liking moritz tells us she is looking for someone who won’t hurt her, who is ‘not like other boys.’ (i could get into a whole spiel on how moritz’s more feminine demeanor and discomfort with masculinity factors into this perception, but that’s a whole deal for another time.) of course martha would still see moritz as just that — a funny sort of boy — and would really know nothing about the conflict in moritz over gender that produces this strange attitude.
also, when martha admits her crush to her friends, she says: “Ich habe mich immer ganz gut mit ihm unterhalten.” (“I’ve always talked to him very well” from my weak-at-best german skills. one english translation has it as “i’ve always found him very interesting company” but i think that changes the meaning a little bit.) she feels comfortable talking with someone whom she normally shouldn’t, namely a ‘boy,’ and this is big! play!martha is a little hardened by her family’s abuse, casually remarking that they only beat her on special occasions, and that the other abusive behavior is therefore ‘normal.’ she accepts that it’s her lot to be treated like that, and is wary of inciting punishment. the fact that she feels comfortable and trusting enough to be made to look foolish and embarrassing around moritz, as thea mentions, tells us that she’s unusually trusting around moritz. in the musical there’s even more reason for her to be cold, especially with men, as her father’s abuse is commuted by the writers specifically into sexual abuse. here, it’s truly a HUGE statement that she could feel safe with moritz, who she perceives as a boy, after what she’s been through. it only confirms how special she finds moritz and how significant the trust she has there really is. the remark about “talking well with him” also tells us that it’s conversation that’s made her like moritz, not looks, or reputation, as is the case with melchior for the other girls. martha remarks “[melchior] has a beautiful forehead, but his friend has a more soulful look” indicating still more that it is something personal and emotional that she likes in moritz.
the attraction is undoubtably more one-sided, and moritz likely doesn’t understand anything about how martha feels, (but seeing a canon-divergence where she’s allowed to know what martha thinks of her would be super interesting!) making it hard to imagine them ending up together. of course, all attraction frightens moritz, and she’d be much too scared to try anything with martha. what’s more, moritz is deeply confused about her attraction to girls (as evidenced in the headless queen speech, which is too long to quote here but here’s the highlight for our purposes: she only feels attraction to a girl’s body when she imagines it without a head because the head represents knowledge and personality). i’ve remarked at GREAT LENGTH about the significance of this and the whole headless queen speech in this post on my personal (a relic from before i officially headcanoned moritz as trans so rip heads up for the misgendering ‘him’s all over the place), but i think i would amend my previous statements with the new understanding that an insecurity in moritz’s own sense of gender is what makes her unable to reconcile her attraction to women. she doesn’t want what a man wants from women, and to have a woman as she is would force her to feel more like a man, which is uncomfortable and undesirable. to want the body without the person in it is as safe as she can get.
with martha, then, moritz would undoubtably struggle to even accept the idea of them together because in her small scope of understanding, it would necessitate that she be a man for martha, because any deviation from the man+woman formula has not been offered to her as an option. there would be a lot of potential for angst and self-discovery in this vein.
but it could also just be wholesome and comforting in that martha proclaims the intent to raise children “free” after what she’s faced — openly criticizing the parents she sees around her, despite her feeling that being abused is normal — and would therefore be more likely to sort through moritz’s feelings of failing her family and understand them as a type of oppressive expectation similar to those put on her in her own house. i talk all the time about how ilse wanted to be that Special Person for moritz but that they just couldn’t see each other — couldn’t grasp the experiences of the other — and so ultimately failed each other. martha would be successful where ilse was not because of her admiration for what moritz IS, and not what moritz COULD BE, which was ilse’s greatest problem in communicating with moritz. so martha and moritz could actually truly help each other and comfort each other, with moritz being a gentle love for martha and martha being an understanding and supportive love for moritz, which is just so gosh darn good how could you not want that??
and like,,, i know that not that many people care to read the play, let alone read it as ‘moritz is trans’ so a few things here are lost on the general fan group, BUT LIKE!!! there’s still so much good content here, even if you see moritz just as a boy who is kinder and gentler than most and in whom martha can place a lot of trust!!