Fragile Minds and Vulnerable Souls: The Matter of Obscenity in Nineteenth-Century Germany by Sarah L. Leonard

Abstract

Sarah L. Leonard. Fragile Minds and Vulnerable Souls: The Matter of Obscenity in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. 272 pp.Scholars have paid little attention to and immoral (obszone und unzuchtige Schriften) in nineteenth century because of their purported irrelevance and lack of literary quality. Sarah L. Leonard's rigorously researched book, in contrast, takes these texts seriously to show their role in the growth of civil society from 1830s until 1880s (7). The author looks at multiple actors-legislators, authors, publishers, critics, and readers-and focuses on how they defined, decried, and defended these texts. Leonard argues that ordinary descriptions of articulated by these actors shed light on history of self, thought, and history of sexuality during this period. To accomplish this, Leonard examines legal records, booksellers' guild archives, psychiatric and theological journals, and, most importantly, numerous texts. Her sources often come from Prussian archives, but she makes a good case about their quality and emphasizes preeminence of Prussian law after unification. Leonard's book is cultural history at its best. Debates about have always been about something else. Leonard demonstrates how regulation of was linked to control of knowledge, gender, and class, as well as to reevaluation of role of religion and state in shaping individuals.The book's five chapters focus on meanings, defenses, and transformations of obscenity. Leonard shows in first chapter how legislators and police agreed that novels contributed to cultivation of self. Protecting readers from harmful effects of obscene texts reflected concerns about morality and politics. Unlike abundant scholarship that focuses on supposed German inwardness and political backwardness, Leonard argues that debates about reading and its impact on inner life delineate limits of both individual autonomy and state power (20-21). Drawing upon Kant, for whom any violation of body implied a violation of freedom, and cameralism, she explains how belief that state ought to protect readers' bodies and minds justified censorship as compatible with promotion of individual freedom (23). Unlike in Britain and United States, liberal thought in Germany did not guarantee right to self-governance. On contrary, individuals needed guidance and protection that state offered, and obscenity justified that involvement.In second chapter, Leonard moves to how discussions about centered on what constituted permissible knowledge, who had authority to produce and consume it, and who should have access to it (58). Anxieties about access were related to transformation of publishing industry between 1810 and 1830. Publishers started to define their profession as a business; their success depended on new readers. For legislators, these new vulnerable readers (mostly poor and women) needed protection, so that they not threaten established order. This perceived vulnerability served as a to exclude certain individuals from civic society. Liberal assumptions about education, sexuality, marriage, gender, and religion, author contends, helped determine who was perceived as sufficiently prepared to participate in civil society, economic motivation, and life (135).Leonard focuses on publishers of texts in chapter 3. They defended their books by contending that such works did not undermine moral integrity (94) and that reading would discipline unruly impulses, refine sensibilities, and further development of reason (125). …