Crime Stories

Todd Herzog is an Associate Professor of German Studies at the University of Cincinnati. He is editor of A New Germany in a New Europe (Routledge 2001, with Sander Gilman) and Rebirth of a Culture: Jewish Identity and Jewish Writing in Germany and Austria Today (Berghahn Books, 2008, with Hillary Hope Herzog and Benjamin Lapp). He is currently working on A Critical Filmography of German Cinema to 1945.

The Weimar Republic (1918-1933) was a crucial moment not only in German history but also in the history of both crime fiction and criminal science. This study approaches the period from a unique perspective - investigating the most notorious criminals of the time and the public's reaction to their crimes. The author argues that the development of a new type of crime fiction during this period - which turned literary tradition on its head by focusing on the criminal and abandoning faith in the powers of the rational detective - is intricately related to new ways of understanding criminality among professionals in the fields of law, criminology, and police science. Considering Weimar Germany not only as a culture in crisis (the standard view in both popular and scholarly studies), but also as a culture of crisis, the author explores the ways in which crime and crisis became the foundation of the Republic's self-definition. An interdisciplinary cultural studies project, this book insightfully combines history, sociology, literary studies, and film studies to investigate a topic that cuts across all of these disciplines.

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