Violent Sensations: Sex, Crime, and Utopia in Vienna and Berlin, 1860–1914 by Scott Spector (review)

This work opens up with an excellent introduction to the premises of Spector’s study, that is, the juxtaposition of modern life in the growing metropolis at the turn of the century with that of the burgeoning violence and deviance on the big city’s underbelly. The world of fin-de-siècle Vienna and Berlin evokes a rather romantic picture of modernity. Culture was in the forefront of society, progress was viewed as a positive for Europe, cafés thrived with their intellectual atmospheres, and mankind was beginning to see the benefits from the giant leaps in scientific and medical discovery.

But Spector’s work reveals the seamier side of this time period: the ailments of the large modern metropolis and the scourge of the underworld whose deviance and degeneracy had, for the most part, been ignored by modern convention. Though Freud’s work in psychoanalysis and the emergence of science and technology marked the positive image of the great metropolis, questions remained: What image do Europeans, specifically Central Europeans, have of themselves? How do the sensational and the scientific affect Central European life? What is one’s place in this “new” world? Spector uses Berlin and Vienna as the sites for his study, as these two cities proffer a rapid growth in science and culture ironically fed by the lurking degeneracy and deviance.

Using social science, court records, philosophical and literary works meant for an educated public, popular culture, crime reportage, emancipation movement literature, and personal records of sexual and criminal subjects, Spector laces together a fascinating study on the “Großstadt,” not only a home to high-level intellectual endeavor but also a haven for the decadent, deviant, and sexually degenerate underworld. Divided into six chapters, the work is devoted to explaining how scientific discourse was fed by studies in criminology, homosexuality, sexual crime, degeneracy, and identity, all of which fed journalistic sensationalism. The work is a great journey into how science was actually fueled by its studies of the underworld and sexology, resulting in new views on identity, culture, and image in Central Europe.

In chapter 1, Spector discusses just that—opposing discourses of the Enlightenment and criminal science. His investigation into whether criminal behavior was viewed as a biological feature or a sociological product of society itself creates a fascinating look into the science of criminology. Shapes of the skull and facial comparatives serve to amplify the question of the origins of crime. Is it nuture or nature? Further, in chapter 2, the author explores marginal identity and how it relates to violence. Homosexuality, homosexual emancipation, and medical discourses on sexuality as well as social and sexual degeneracy are discussed in detail. Spector continues with further studies in chapter 3, entitled “Identical Origins,” in which cases of sex scandals are brought out of court records into the public eye. They not only become fodder for sensationalistic newspapers but also show the emergence of the formerly taboo world of sexuality and how it managed to merge with the worlds of society and politics. This segues well into chapter 4, where feminism comes up against Otto Weininger’s misogynistic work Sex and Character. Here the author provides a thorough discussion of prostitution and sex murderers, for which he utilizes police files and case records. Alongside Sex and Character, Spector uses Robert Musil’s works to explore violent fantasy, linking it to a critique of Central European civilization.

The last chapter, entitled “Blood Lies: The Truth about Modern Ritual Murder Accusations and Defenses,” is a discussion of Jewish ritual murder and how it fits in with the modern metropolis in terms of modernity, enlightenment, degeneracy, race, and gender. As Spector writes, “If the modern central European cultural imaginary had an ambivalent relationship to its community of ‘internal others,’ this pointed to a self-reflection that is obscured by most interpretations of episodic anti-Semitism and the primitive self was as much...