Strafrechtliche Theorie und Praxis um 1800 als eine Herausforderung für die ›Vernunft der Literatur‹?

Abstract

Abstract The starting point for this article is the question of the extent to which knowledge generated and mediated by literature can supplement or modify the professional knowledge of criminal law and practice around 1800. In particular, the article looks at the genres of the criminal case study and crime story, which were popular in this period, as a field of experience for the literary-productive observation of crime and criminal law. It explores the discursive constellations for possible relations between the areas of knowledge produced by the ›professional reason of law‹ and the ›reason of literature‹. These relations are discussed with regard to (1) types of ›medial places‹ in which legal as well as literary texts on criminal matters were published, (2) the aforementioned literary genres and (3) the literary approach of so-called poetic lawyers (›lawyers as writers‹). These perspectives determine the final analyses of texts by August Gottlieb Meisner, Karl Friedrich Muchler and Paul Johann Anselm von Feuerbach.