“Criminal types”: The criminal psychological representations of delinquents around 1900

Abstract

Analysing the work of the German criminologist and jurist Erich Wulffen (1862–1936), Jan Lazardzig in his essay shows how the representation of delinquency in criminal anthropology was echoed in dramatic literature, which corresponds with the time of urbanization, mass culture and cultural and medial transformation around 1900. Wulffen’s analytical approach is examined in the context of the systematic identification, archiving and dissemination of information about delinquency that became a primary police technique. The evocation of dramatic ‘criminal types’, the author argues, simultaneously serves as affirmation and as self-assurance of the Bildungsbürgertum and the identity of the bourgeoisie.