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  • Fragile Minds and Vulnerable Souls: The Matter of Obscenity in Nineteenth-Century Germany by Sarah L. Leonard
  • Esther K. Bauer
Fragile Minds and Vulnerable Souls: The Matter of Obscenity in Nineteenth-Century Germany. By Sarah L. Leonard. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Pp. 272. Cloth $55.00. ISBN 978-0812246704.

In Fragile Minds and Vulnerable Souls, historian Sarah Leonard traces changes in the meaning and use of the term "obscenity" in descriptions of certain secular printed texts and images in nineteenth-century Germany, predominantly Prussia (a focus determined by the availability of sources). Leonard proposes that during this period, legal concepts of immorality and obscenity were intricately linked to culturally constituted notions of the delicacy of the human mind and soul. Underlying this connection was the belief that inappropriate publications could cause intellectual and emotional damage, thus harming the individual and, by extension, society. Uncovering the intertwined histories of legal approaches to obscene publications, of the creation and distribution of these works, and of the development of notions of the mind and soul, Leonard suggests a shift in the concept of obscenity that was directly linked to new ways of defining the self and its relationship to society.

The main part of Leonard's study is organized into five chapters, of which the first three focus on the period between 1788 and 1840, when obscenity was not yet prosecuted as a criminal offense. Chapter 1 explores texts that strove to define obscene publications in order to justify censorship, e.g., police codes, local ordinances, court reports, and writings by pedagogues, theologians, and scientists. To these critics, the [End Page 644] immoral works' potential harm lay in their "ability to damage the heart and mind, distort the intellect, and inflame the imagination" (11), and consequently to influence the behavior of susceptible readers, especially women and the lower uneducated classes. As Leonard emphasizes, at this point the term obscenity was not limited to sexual transgressions, but covered a wide range of offenses that could disturb readers' mental and emotional balance. Censorship aimed at controlling the generation and access to knowledge that might stir politically, socially, or sexually unruly behavior—effectively shifting from protecting political or religious authorities to protecting fragile individuals and, by extension, the bourgeois social order, which depended on dutiful citizens. The author shows that texts were more likely to be censored if they were associated with certain minorities (e.g., Jews), or with specific geographical and social spaces or the crossing of borders, or for instance if texts came from abroad, were sold by itinerant peddlers or ill-reputed booksellers, or were available through lending libraries thought to foster "frivolity, the loss of time, and the cultivation of fantasy" (78). Leonard then analyzes the ways in which those producing and disseminating books defended erotica and thus contributed to the debates on the dangers of reading and the right to knowledge and Bildung. Responses to the threat of censorship varied from careful stretching of contemporary notions of decency within narratives to prefaces or afterwords that "proved" the validity of publications or that problematized contradictions in censors' expectations regarding the rendition of reality. Thus texts were supposed neither to distort reality nor to harm readers' minds and souls with "too realistic" depictions. Detailed analyses of the contemporary discussions surrounding Casanova's Memoirs (1822–1828) and Brockhaus Conversations-Lexikon (1796–1808) provide vivid illustrations of these efforts. The final chapters study the narrowing in the meaning of "obscenity" to a sexual transgression, which effectively separated moral and political offenses. This began during the Vormärz, when obscenity was also first classified as a crime. Leonard proposes that the semantic change was driven by liberal desires to move control of printed publications from the police to the courts and to largely achieve freedom of the press, while still controlling "immoral" publications. Simultaneously, obscene publications' effects were redefined as hurting readers' Sitten- or Schamgefühle, potentially decreasing their capacity for "shame" or "empathy" (129). The involvement of physicians and psychiatrists in the obscenity debates shifted the emphasis to medical questions and the "mechanics of the inner life." Consequently, books appeared as stimuli that could trigger certain responses and hence could be...

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