Explaining crime

Abstract

In the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic, well-known journalists working for leading newspapers regularly covered the proceedings of the criminal court in Berlin-Moabit. In seeking sensational news as well as stories about everyday life in the metropolis, the court provided them with insights into contemporary urban problems such as unemployment, political struggle, gender-based conflict, and crimes of passion. The court and the journalistic coverage of its activities are historically important because they were a locus of legal and social conflicts intermingled with popular entertainment and mass media. This article sheds light on the engagement of the press with criminal trials in Weimar Berlin. By examining material never previously discussed, it claims that, contrary to what is generally believed today, German public opinion did not on the whole accept the idea that criminals could be categorized as a genetically inferior social class. In fact, most crime reporters — who reflected and formed public opinion — argued that the psychological problems of overstrained individuals and inferior living conditions were responsible for most crimes. Offenders were therefore considered as unfortunate ‘ordinary men’, or, more generally, as ‘victims of society’. Some journalists even claimed that crimes passionelles were the result of society’s oppression. This article goes on to argue that the extreme popularity of these reports shows that the journalists’ perspective on criminality met with the approval of contemporary readers and accorded with common views on crime. As part of the larger discourse on ‘victimization’ so important to the Weimar period, this journalistic coverage of the court can help us understand the unique role the criminal played as a central symbol of the German press and public.