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  • Murder Scenes: Normality, Deviance, and Criminal Violence in Weimar Germany
  • Michelle Mouton
Murder Scenes: Normality, Deviance, and Criminal Violence in Weimar Germany. By Sace Elder (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010. ix plus 266 pp. $75.00).

In Murder Scenes Sace Elder explores why murder became a public event in Weimar Berlin. Through exhaustive research into newspapers and popular and professional treatments of murder cases, as well as archival accounts of police investigations and murder trials, Elder demonstrates that the increased murder rates during the 1920s were interpreted by Germans not only as an effect of the First World War, but also as an effect of modernity itself. The study enters [End Page 866] debates about Weimar's crisis of modernity and casts new light on issues of police control and surveillance. It also explores the cultural intersections of art and cinema with societal debates about violence, as well as providing fascinating insight into both class and gender relations in Berlin's neighborhoods during the 1920s.

Murder Scenes begins with an introduction into contemporary understandings of homicidal violence in Weimar Berlin. Elder argues that Berliners, the police, and the press understood violence as a reflection of the "irrevocable brutalization of German society [as a result of the First World War], the failures of the Republic, and the dangers of modernity itself" (2). In solving murder, Elder asserts that the police, the press, and the citizens of Berlin aided—and undermined—one another. Chapter One discusses Berliners' perception that criminal violence was on the rise in the postwar years. Elder reveals that while this perception was created partly by the overrepresentation of stories of murder in the press, it also reflected the degree to which criminal violence became part of popular understandings of urban modernity. Although the police thought of themselves as professionals, they depended on the public to be their eyes and ears and the press to publicize their investigations. As Elder makes eminently clear, neither of these relationships was easy. These arguments are developed further in Chapter Two, which focuses on three facets of murder investigation: police methods of detection; the limits of partnership between police, the press, and private citizens; and individual witnesses. Elder argues that while the police were effective in mobilizing public interest in criminal investigation, they fundamentally distrusted citizens as witnesses, especially when class, gender, or racial status seemed to compromise their reliability. Furthermore, police appeals for help rooting out hidden criminality ultimately undermined the very community of citizens they sought to create. The police also found the press's tendency to treat its readers as consumers interested in gruesome and prurient details rather than as citizens fighting crime highly problematic. As Elder concludes, the culture of surveillance that emerged in the Weimar period was "seriously compromised" (14).

Each of the following four chapters focuses on a case study, its evidence, trial, police investigation, and media representation to explore the constructions of deviance and victimization and the role of communities in investigations. Chapter Three examines the 1921 murder case of Carl Grossmann, one of Weimar's most notorious sexual murderers. Elder's fascinating examination of Frederichshain, Berlin's poorest neighborhood, uncovers a transient neighborhood characterized by increased immigration; high unemployment, especially among women; and people struggling to survive. She argues that normative assumptions about class and gender in the postwar years helped to mask Grossmann's violent behavior.

In Chapter Four, Elder turns her gaze on Neu Westend, a new neighborhood still partly under construction in 1929. The neighborhood was home to middle-class Germans confident that their neighborhood was safe. When a child was murdered, however, the close neighborhood community suddenly became defined by '"outsiders' versus 'insiders,' 'Strangers' and 'familiars.'" The overriding belief in a connection between inward and outward manifestations of deviance became clear. Elder uses a discussion of Fritz Lang's movie M to highlight [End Page 867] the pervasive belief that the mother had failed to adequately protect her child and that the community bore responsibility for capturing the murder.

In Chapter Five, Elder examines the murder of an elderly man in Prenzlauer Berg. This case is shrouded in mystery since neither the personality of the victim nor...

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