Literatur und Recht im Vormärz (review)

This volume is the fifteenth yearbook of the Forum Vormärz Forschung, an organization founded in 1994 to promote scholarly interaction with and reception of the multifaceted literature of the Vormärz time period (1815–1848/1849). Each yearbook is devoted to a general theme connected to the Vormärz. The 2009 topic was “Literatur und Recht im Vormärz,” and it contains three subsections, each consisting of three or four essays: “Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Rechts- und Literatursystem,” “Rechtsverhandlungen in der Vormärzliteratur, und Liberalismus,” “Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtsphilosophie im Vormärz.” In addition to the essays, there is a short response piece to an article in the 2008 yearbook, as well as a number of book reviews relevant to the Vormärz time period. The essays approach the general topic from a wide variety of angles. Readers will most likely come to this book to peruse one or two articles in depth, not read the whole thing. That being said, I found all the articles creditable and informative.

One of the most intriguing contributions in the first section is a preliminary presentation of firsthand documents that have been uncovered by an interdisciplinary workgroup at the Archiv für Leipziger Psychiatriegeschichte regarding the famous Woyzeck trial. This group is working on a reconstruction of the court case, based on authentic archival materials. They plan on publishing all the historical sources in a new historical-critical edition of Woyzeck. Also in this first section, Wilfried Sauter’s essay examines what impact the prison experiences of prominent prorevolutionary activists had on general societal debates concerning the state’s social and penitentiary systems. Moving slightly beyond the parameters of the Vormärz time period, Christine Haug’s essay on Ernst Steiger, whom she describes as the “Prototyp eines frühmodernen Medienunternehmers” (88), discusses the development of a German-language book market in America as a result of the political emigration of numerous German liberals and democrats after the 1848 revolution. It provides a good overview of the different understanding of copyright law in America and Germany/Europe.

The second section presents four specific examples of how societal changes during the Vormärz period contributed to the rising popularity of crime-related fiction and drama. In her essay on Eduard Hitzig, the influential chief criminal investigator and newspaper publisher in Berlin, Anna Busch shows how he was able to influence public opinion in a controversial court case through changes in how justice was administered, as well as the rise of what she describes as a “culture of debate” in Berlin.

In the first essay of the third and perhaps most intriguing section, Kasper Renner examines Jacob Grimm’s fluid and often changing concept of Poesie as presented first in his essay “Von der Poesie im Recht.” Christoph Schmitt-Maaß’s essay focuses on questions concerning poetry and justice in light of the controversial firing of seven professors from Göttingen University in 1837. It also contains an informative section outlining the sociopolitical context within which Hoffmann von Fallersleben wrote the Lied der Deutschen. Walther von der Vogelweide functioned for von Fallersleben as the ideal political poet. Schmitt-Maaß draws attention to specific motifs in Vogelweide’s poetry and shows how they are paralleled in the Lied der Deutschen. The final essay of the collection, by Eva Werner, examines the turbulent background behind the genesis of the Rotteck-Welckersche social sciences encyclopedia (Staatslexikon), a compendium of essays on politically relevant themes written by prominent members of the progressive liberal camp.

This collection of articles makes up for a certain disparity in theme and approach by being consistently instructive and informative. The majority of nineteenth-century German Studies scholars will no doubt be able to find something of interest in this compilation.