Murderesses In German Writing 1720 1860

An analysis of how female criminals were perceived both in the legal sphere and in general culture.

Identifies and analyzes thematizations of women and death from the past five centuries, illuminating the present and recent past. The theme of women and death is pervasive in the German culture of the past five centuries. With the conviction that only an interdisciplinary approach can explore a typology as far-reaching and significant as this, and in accordance with the feminist tenet that images are accountable for norms, this volume investigates how iconic representations of women and death came about and why they endure. Traditionally, representations of women as agents of death -- when they have been considered at all -- have been considered separately from women as victims, as though there was no shared thematic ground. Here, familiar depictions of female victims are examined alongside the more unsettling spectacle of women as killers, exposing cultural assumptions. Essays explore, among others, the themes of virgin sacrifice and female infanticides, "Death and the Maiden" in art, female vampires in literature, and women killersin the media. Others compare cultural practices such as female mourning across historical contexts, examining change and the reasons for it. The authors' judgments eschew the simplistic and programmatic, contributing not just to current research in German literature, but also to understanding of cultural history in general. Contributors: Stephanie Knöll, Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Anna Linton, Bettina Bildhauer, Mary Lindemann, Helen Fronius, Anna Richards, Jürgen Barkhoff, Lawrence Kramer, Kathrin Hoffmann-Curtius, Clare Bielby, Gisela Ecker. Anna Linton is Lecturer in German at Kings College London, and Helen Fronius is an AHRC Research Fellow and College Lecturer at Exeter College Oxford.

Crime Fiction in German is the first volume in English to offer a comprehensive overview of German-language crime fiction from its origins in the early nineteenth century to its vibrant growth in the new millennium. As well as introducing readers to crime fiction from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the former East Germany, the volume expands the notion of a German crime-writing tradition by investigating Nazi crime fiction, Jewish-German crime fiction, Turkish-German crime fiction and the Afrika-Krimi. Other key areas, including the West German social crime novel, women’s crime writing, regional crime fiction, historical crime fiction and the Fernsehkrimi (TV crime drama) are also explored, highlighting the genre’s distinctive features in German-language contexts. The volume includes a map of German-speaking Europe, a chronology of crime publishing milestones, extracts from primary texts, and an annotated bibliography of print and online resources in English and German. Contents Map of German-speaking areas in Europe Crime Fiction in German Chronology 1. Crime Fiction in German: Key Concepts, Developments and Trends, Katharina Hall: Der Krimi; The pioneers (1828–1933); Crime fiction under National Socialism (1933–45); Post-war crime narratives (1945–59) and East German crime fiction (1949–70); The West German Soziokrimi (1960–) and further East German crime fiction (1971–89); Turkish-German crime fiction and the Frauenkrimi (1980–); Historical crime fiction, regional crime fiction and the rise of the Afrika-Krimi (1989–); Crime fiction of the new millennium and the lacuna of Jewish-German crime fiction (available Open Access at Swansea University) 2. The Emergence of Crime Fiction in German: An Early Maturity, Mary Tannert 3. Austrian Crime Fiction: Experimentation, Critical Memory and Humour, Marieke Krajenbrink 4. Swiss Crime Fiction: Loosli, Glauser, Dürrenmatt and Beyond, Martin Rosenstock 5. Der Afrika-Krimi: German Crime Fiction in Africa, Julia Augart 6. Der Frauenkrimi: Women's Crime Writing in German, Faye Stewart 7. Historical Crime Fiction in German: The Turbulent Twentieth Century, Katharina Hall 8. Der Fernsehkrimi: A Short History of Television Crime Drama in German, Katharina Hall Annotated Bibliography of Resources on German-language Crime Fiction, Katharina Hall ‘Katharina Hall’s knowledge of and enthusiasm for crime fiction in translation is prodigious, but (crucially) it is matched by her nonpareil analytic skills. This combination, when focused on her particular speciality of genre fiction from Germany, makes her the perfect editor for and contributor to Crime Fiction in German: Der Krimi. The book becomes at a stroke the definitive modern guide to the subject – scholarly, lively and accessible.’ Barry Forshaw, author of Euro Noir and Nordic Noir

This book is the first work to look at the full range of three centuries of the early modern period in regards to infanticide and abortion, a period in which both practices were regarded equally as criminal acts. Faced with dire consequences if they were found pregnant or if they bore illegitimate children, many unmarried women were left with little choice. Some of these unfortunate women turned to infanticide and abortion as the way out of their difficult situation. This book explores the legal, social, cultural, and religious causes of infanticide and abortion in the early modern period, as well as the societal reactions to them. It examines how perceptions of these actions taken by desperate women changed over three hundred years and as early modern society became obsessed with a supposed plague of murderous mothers, resulting in heated debates, elaborate public executions, and a media frenzy. Finally, this book explores how the prosecution of infanticide and abortion eventually helped lead to major social and legal reformations during the age of the Enlightenment.

This volume examines the world of German women writers who emerged in the burgeoning literary marketplace of eighteenth-century Europe.

This new critical biography provides a complete picture of German novelist, playwright, and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Offering fresh, thought-provoking interpretations of all Goethe’s major works, including novels such as The Sorrows of Young Werther and The Elective Affinities, plays such as Egmont and Iphigenia in Tauris, and Goethe’s greatest work, Faust, Jeremy Adler also provides many original readings of Goethe’s poetry, beginning with the poems written in his early youth. Alongside Goethe’s work, Adler analyzes the incidents of his life, including his love affairs and his meetings with the luminaries of his age, such as Napoleon Bonaparte. Uniquely, Adler also shows how Goethe’s encyclopedic interest in literature, science, philosophy, law, and many other fields became important for a wide range of later scientists and thinkers. Among the figures he influenced were Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim and Susan Sontag. Goethe has often been called the last Renaissance man. This biography shows that Goethe was in fact the first of the moderns—a maker of modernity.

With the growth of printing in early modern Germany, crime quickly became a subject of wide public discourse. Sensational crime reports, often featuring multiple murders within families, proliferated as authors probed horrific events for religious meaning. Coinciding with heightened witch panics and economic crisis, the spike in crime fears revealed a continuum between fears of the occult and more mundane dangers. In Crime and Culture in Early Modern Germany, Joy Wiltenburg explores the beginnings of crime sensationalism from the early sixteenth century into the seventeenth century and beyond. Comparing the depictions of crime in popular publications with those in archival records, legal discourse, and imaginative literature, Wiltenburg highlights key social anxieties and analyzes how crime texts worked to shape public perceptions and mentalities. Reports regularly featured familial destruction, flawed economic relations, and the apocalyptic thinking of Protestant clergy. Wiltenburg examines how such literature expressed and shaped cultural attitudes while at the same time reinforcing governmental authority. She also shows how the emotional inflections of crime stories influenced the growth of early modern public discourse, so often conceived in terms of rational exchange of ideas.

New essays on diverse topics from the Age of Goethe, with a special section on Goethe scholarship's role in the establishment of Germanistik. The Goethe Yearbook is a publication of the Goethe Society of North America, encouraging North American Goethe scholarship by publishing original English-language contributions to the understanding of Goethe and other authors of the Goethezeit while also welcoming contributions from scholars around the world. Volume 19 of the Goethe Yearbook continues to investigate the connection between Goethe's scientific theories and his aesthetics, with essays on his optics and his plant morphology. A special section examines the central role that Goethe philology has had in establishing practices that shaped the history of Germanistik as a whole. The yearbookalso includes essays on legal history and the novella, Goethe Lieder, esoteric mysticism in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, and Werther's sexual pathology. The volume also includes three essays re-examining Goethe's aesthetics in the context of the history of deconstruction, as well as the customary book review section. Contributors: Beate Allert, Frauke Berndt, Sean Franzel, Stefan Hajduk, Bernd Hamacher, Jeffrey L. High, Francien Markx, Lavinia Meier-Ewert, Ansgar Mohnkern, Rüdiger Nutt-Kofoth, Edward T. Potter, Chenxi Tang, Robert Walter. Daniel Purdy is Associate Professor of German at Pennsylvania State University. Book review editor Catriona MacLeod is Associate Professor of German at the University of Pennsylvania.