Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany

Richard F. Wetzell is a Research Fellow and Editor at the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C. His other publications include Beyond the Racial State: Rethinking Nazi Germany (coedited, 2017), Criminals and Their Scientists: The History of Criminology in International Perspective (co-edited, 2006), and Inventing the Criminal: A History of German Criminology, 1880–1945 (UNC Press, 2000).

• Introduction: Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern GermanyRichard F. WetzellPart I: Criminal Justice in Imperial GermanyChapter 1. Justice is Blind: Crowds, Irrationality, and Criminal Law in the Late KaiserreichBenjamin Carter Hett *This chapter is not available in the open access edition due to rights restrictions. It is accessible in the print edition, spanning pages 31-55Chapter 2. Punishment on the Path to Socialism: Socialist Perspectives on Crime and Criminal Justice before the First World WarAndreas FleiterChapter 3. Reforming Women’s Prisons in Imperial GermanySandra LeukelPart II: Penal Reform in the Weimar RepublicChapter 4. Between Reform and Repression: Imprisonment in Weimar GermanyNikolaus Wachsmann*This chapter is not available in the open access edition due to rights restrictions. It is accessible in the print edition, spanning pages 115-136.Chapter 5. The Medicalization of Wilhelmine and Weimar Juvenile Justice ReconsideredGabriel N. FinderChapter 6. Welfare and Justice: The Battle over Gerichtshilfe in the Weimar RepublicWarren RosenblumPart III: Constructions of Crime in the Weimar Courts, Media, and LiteratureChapter 7. Prostitutes, Respectable Women, and Women from “Outside”: The Carl Grossmann Sexual Murder Case in Postwar BerlinSace ElderChapter 8. Class, Youth, and Sexuality in the Construction of the Lustmörder: The 1928 Murder Trial of Karl HussmannEva Bischoff and Daniel SiemensChapter 9. Crime and Literature in the Weimar Republic and Beyond: Telling the Tale of the Poisoners Ella Klein and Margarete NebbeTodd HerzogPart IV. Criminal Justice in Nazi and Postwar GermanyChapter 10. Serious Juvenile Crime in Nazi GermanyRobert G. WaiteChapter 11. Criminal Law after National Socialism: The Renaissance of Natural Law and the Beginnings of Penal Reform in West GermanyPetra GödeckeChapter 12. Repressive Rehabilitation: Crime, Morality and Delinquency in Berlin-Brandenburg, 1945-1958Jennifer V. EvansContributorsBibliography

“The history of criminal justice in modern Germany has become a vibrant field of historical research. The chapters in Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany not only lay the groundwork for writing a history of crime and criminal justice from the Kaiserreich to the early postwar period, but demonstrate that research in criminal justice history can make important contributions to other areas of historical inquiry.”  ·  SirReadaLot“Overall the volume effectively moves beyond offering a one-dimensional legal history of modern Germany. Rather, the essays treat the history of crime, criminal law, and criminal justice as offering the means to reflect on broader social, cultural, and political issues facing Germany in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”  ·  Greg Eghigian, Penn State University“These essays make significant contributions. Thoroughly researched in primary sources, for the most part archival, they are also based on close familiarity with the most recent writings by other scholars. Together, the essays should interest a wide range of scholars whose concerns encompass modern Germany, criminal justice, or both.”  ·  Andrew Lees, Rutgers University“Gathering more than a dozen of the leading mid-career historians of crime and criminal justice in Germany from the United States, Canada, Germany, and Britain, this collection of essays represents a stunningly important contribution to one of the most vibrant fields in German history today… Deeply scholarly, sweepingly encompassing recent and older secondary work, but firmly grounded in empirical research, the essays in this volume represent an indispensable introduction to the field for scholars and students new to it, while at the same time stimulating the interpretive focus of scholars already working in the field.”  ·  Kenneth Ledford, Case Western Reserve University