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

Abstract

Sarah L. Leonard’s Fragile Minds and Vulnerable Souls: The Matter of Obscenity in Nineteenth-Century Germany is an enticing exploration of obscenity as a category of print in the short nineteenth century in Germany. The book focuses on so-called “immoral and obscene texts” in a period in which a growing number of people were able to read and printed material became obtainable for larger audiences (4). Yet Leonard is not so much interested in the so-called “common reader,” but rather in how the authorities conceived and dealt with “obscenity” in the context of the democratization and individualization of reading. Reading, she suggests, was seen not just as a phenomenon reflecting a given social reality, but also as a formative activity that influenced patterns of behavior and shaped the conceptual framework through which people perceived the reality in which they were situated. Consequently, the primary motive behind the authorities’ interest in reading, and, for that matter, behind the idea of “obscenity” as such, was the attempt to manipulate and control what Leonard calls “inner life” (4). By underscoring the preoccupation with “inner life,” Leonard invites us to take a second look at the notion of the German Sonderweg (special path). She challenges the claim that the “Germans have long favored transformations in inner life at the expense of changes … in politics and institutions” (8). Moving beyond the image of “inward” and thus apolitical Germanness, Leonard forcefully argues that discussions of inner life were in fact political. What the broader implications of this approach are, and how particularly German this type of politics is, still remain to be investigated.