Rituals of Retribution Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600-1987

by Evans, Richard J.

• ISBN13: 9780198219682
• ISBN10: 0198219687
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-05-09
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The state has no greater power over its own citizens than that of killing them. This book examines the use of that supreme sanction in Germany, from the seventeenth century to the present. Richard Evans analyses the system of 'traditional' capital punishments set out in German law, and the ritual practices and cultural readings associated with them by the time of the early modern period. He shows how this system was challenged by Enlightenment theories of punishment and broke down under the impact of secularization and social change in the first half of the nineteenth century. The abolition of the death penalty became a classic liberal case which triumphed, if only momentarily, in the 1848 Revolution. In Germany far more than anywhere else in Europe, capital punishment was identified with anti-liberal, authoritarian concepts of sovereignty. Its definitive reinstatement by Bismarck in the 1880s marked not only the defeat of liberalism but also coincided with the emergence of new, Social Darwinist attitudes towards criminality which gradually changed the terms of debate. The triumph of these attitudes under the Nazis laid the foundations for the massive expansion of capital punishment which took place during Hitler's 'Third Reich'. After the Second World War, the death penalty was abolished, largely as a result of a chance combination of circumstances, but continued to be used in the Stalinist system of justice in East Germany until its forced abandonment as a result of international pressure exerted in the regime in the 1970s and 1980s. This remarkable and disturbing book casts new light on the history of German attitudes to law, deviance, cruelty, suffering and death, illuminating many aspects of Germany's modern political development. Using sources ranging from folksongs and ballads to the newly released government papers from the former German Democratic Republic, Richard Evans scrutinizes the ideologies behind capital punishment and comments on interpretations of the history of punishment offered by writers such as Foucault and Elias. He has made a formidable contribution not only to scholarship on German history but also to the social theory of punishement, and to the current debate on the death penalty.

Author Biography

Richard J. Evans is Professor of History, and Vice-Master, at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Abbreviations
Introduction	p. 1
Theatres of Cruelty	p. 27
The Death Penalty in Early Modern Germany	p. 27
Crime and the Law around 1600	p. 35
The Decline of Capital Punishment	p. 41
Honour and Dishonour	p. 53
The German Executioner	p. 56
Rites of Blood	p. 65
Pronouncing Sentence	p. 65
The March to the Scaffold	p. 73
The Scene at the Ravenstone	p. 77
Languages of the Dismembered Body	p. 86
Reversing the Signs	p. 99
A Rational Degree of Pain	p. 109
The Decline of Torture	p. 109
Penal Reform in the Enlightenment	p. 121
Beccaria and the Abolition of the Death Penalty	p. 127
The Prussian General Law Code of 1794	p. 133
The Legacy of the Guillotine	p. 140
Farewell Songs and Moral Speeches	p. 150
Execution Verses 1680-1760	p. 150
Gender and the Representation of Punishment	p. 159
The Silence of the Malefactor	p. 168
The Ambiguities of Folk-Song	p. 173
Popular Culture and Capital Punishment	p. 181
The Wheel, the Sword, and the Axe	p. 193
An Execution in Berlin	p. 193
'Coarseness and Immorality'	p. 202
Cultural Change and the Reform of Executions 1800-1835	p. 207
Reducing the Variety of Punishments 1794-1839	p. 213
Paradoxes of Reform	p. 225
From Reform to Revolution	p. 240
Reforming the Criminal Law 1813-1848	p. 240
The Attack on the Death Penalty in the 1840s	p. 248
Public Executions and Public Order	p. 257
The Debate in the Frankfurt Parliament	p. 266
Capital Punishment in the 1848 Revolution	p. 277
Restoration and Change	p. 285
The Condemned and the Reprieved	p. 285
Structures of Mercy	p. 300
The Abolition of Public Executions 1851-1863	p. 305
The Revival of Abolitionism in the 1860s	p. 321
The Debates in the North German Reichstag 1870	p. 329
The People's Executioners	p. 351
Capital Punishment and the Foundation of the German Empire	p. 351
The Re-establishment of Capital Punishment in the 1880s	p. 361
The Explosive Substances Law of 1884	p. 368
The Professionalization of the German Executioner	p. 372
'Licensed Pieceworkers'	p. 384
The Culture of Embarrassment	p. 396
The Issue of Entry Cards	p. 396
The Printed Public Sphere 1880-1914	p. 402
The Search for Secrecy	p. 413
The Growth of Squeamishness	p. 421
New Justifications for the Death Penalty	p. 428
The Revival of Abolitionism	p. 446
Liberals, Pacifists, and Capital Punishment 1895-1912	p. 446
The Social Democrats and the Death Penalty	p. 455
Reforming the Criminal Code 1906-1914	p. 462
The Sternickel Trial	p. 470
Wilhelmine Apocalypse	p. 477
A New Beginning?	p. 487
Capital Punishment in the November Revolution	p. 487
The Weimar National Assembly	p. 491
The Social Democrats and the Death Penalty 1919-1927	p. 499
Capital Punishment and Party Politics	p. 507
The Restoration of Normality	p. 518
'The Death Penalty Practicality Abolished!'	p. 526
Criminal Biology and Serial Murder	p. 526
Executions and the Public Sphere 1922-1928	p. 536
The Crisis of the German Executioner	p. 542
The Jakubowski Case 1923-1928	p. 548
The Suspension of Executions 1928-1929	p. 561
'Murderers Amongst Us'	p. 572
The Failure of Criminal Law Reform 1929-1930	p. 572
The End of the Jakubowski Case 1928-1932	p. 575
An Execution in Wurttemberg	p. 587
The 'Dusseldorf Vampire'	p. 591
The Restoration of Capital Punishment 1931-1932	p. 605
'Healthy Popular Feeling	p. 613
Uncertainty on Death Row 1932-1933	p. 613
The Reichstag Fire and the Lex van der Lubbe	p. 618
National Socialism and Capital Punishment	p. 624
Legal Reform and the Death Penalty 1933-1939	p. 631
The Expansion of Capital Punishment 1933-1939	p. 641
The Third Reich and its Executioners	p. 651
Changing the method of Execution 1933-1936	p. 651
Capital Punishment and the Divided Public Sphere	p. 659
The Volunteer Executioners	p. 665
Apogee of a Profession	p. 669
'Antisocial Elements'	p. 681
From Execution to Extermination	p. 689
Capital Punishment and the Judiciary 1939-1942	p. 689
'Cleansing the Raical Body'	p. 696
Towards Assembly-Line Execution	p. 710
Executioners in Wartime	p. 720
Capital Punishment and Racial Extermination 1939-1945	p. 726
Legacies of Terror	p. 741
Capital Punishment and the Occupying Powers 1945-1951	p. 741
German Justice and the Restoration of the Death Penalty	p. 756
The End of the Death Penalty in the West	p. 775
The Campaign to Reintroduce Capital Punishment	p. 789
Article 102 and the Legacy of the Third Reich	p. 797
'In the Interests of Humanity'	p. 805
Capital Punishment in the Soviet Zone 1945-1950	p. 805
The Stalinization of East German Justice 1949-1953	p. 815
Espionage, Sabotage, 'Diversion': The Aftermath of 17 June	p. 834
Destalinization and its Limits 1956-1961	p. 846
The End of the Death Penalty in the East	p. 855
Conclusion	p. 873
Statistical Appendix	p. 913
Bibliography	p. 939
Index	p. 993
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.