Abstract
I will begin by looking at three criminals, all from Germany in the spring of 1931. The first scene takes place in a courtroom in Düsseldorf during the trial of Peter Kürten, the “Vampire of Düsseldorf,” who stood accused of nine counts of murder and seven further counts of attempted murder. Kürten’s defense attorney cross-examines one of the victims who escaped from her attacker:
Counsel for Peter Kürten: What did Kürten look like when he attacked you?
Woman Witness: Like the devil—like the devil incarnate.
President of the Court: What does the devil incarnate look like? (Laughter.)1
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Notes
Quoted in Henry T. F. Rhodes, The Criminals We Deserve (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937), 126.
See Janet Bergstrom, “Psychological Explanation in the Films of Lang and Pabst,” in Psychoanalysis & Cinema, ed. E. Ann Kaplan (New York: Routledge, 1990), 163–80.
Walter Benjamin, Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire, in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuse (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972), I, 2:550.
Bernhard Weiß, “Kriminalsensationen,” Vossische Zeitung (Morgenausgabe [The Morning Edition]), January 16, 1927.
Curt Elwenspoek, Mord und Totschlag: Polizei greift ein! (Stuttgart: Dieck, 1931), 7.
Heindl, Der Berufsverbrecher (Berlin: Pan-Verlag Rolf Heise, 1926), 113.
Robert Heindl, Polizei und Verbrechen (Berlin: Gersbach & Sohn Verlag, 1926), 118.
See George Godwin, Peter Kürten: A Study in Sadism (London: Acorn Press, 1938), 9.
See Gennat, “Die Düsseldorfer Sexualverbrechen,” Kriminalistische Monatshefte 4, nos. 1–4 (January–April 1930). Anton Kaes discusses Gennat’s involvement in the Düsseldorf murders in his wonderful study of Fritz Lang’s film Min its sociohistorical contexts (See Anton Kaes, M [London: British Film Institute, 2000], 32–33). My discussion of Kürten and M owe a large debt to Kaes’s study, but my placement of the case and the film within the wider context of criminal investigation and the involvement differs in crucial respects, as will become clear.
Gennat, “Die Düsseldorfer Sexualverbrechen,” Kriminalistische Monatshefte 4, no. 4 (April 1930): 79–85, 84. Gennat repeats this call in a special issue of the Deutsches Polizeiblatt on “Die Düsseldorfer Sexualverbrechen von 1929,” which appeared on April 8, 1930, pp. 1–18.
Kriminalpolizeirat Kleinschmidt, “Problematik in der Kriminalistik,” Kriminalistische Monatshefte 4, no. 5 (May 1930): 103–6, 103.
Margaret Seaton Wagner, The Monster of Düsseldorf: The Life and Trial of Peter Kürten (London: Faber & Faber, 1932), 44.
Herbert Ihering, “M,” Berliner Börsen-Kurrier 218 (May 12, 1931).
Gabriele Tergit, “Der Fritz-Lang Film: Der Film des Sadismus,” Die Weltbühne 27, no. 23 (1931): 844–45, 844.
Fritz Lang, “Mein Film ‘M’: Ein Tatsachenbericht,” Die Filmwoche 9, no. 21 (May 20, 1931), rpt. in Fritz Lang: Die Stimme von Metropolis, ed. Fred Gehler and Ullrich Kasten, 267–70 (Berlin: Henschel Verlag GmbH, 1990), 267–69.
Hans Fell, “Fritz Lang’s Tonfilm: ‘M’” Film-Kurier 110 (May 12, 1931).
Anton Kaes, “The Cold Gaze: Notes on Mobilization and Modernity,” New German Critique 59 (1993): 105–17, 116.
Noël Carroll, “Lang, Pabst, and Sound,” in Interpreting the Moving Image, by Noël Carroll, 92–104 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 94.
See Kaes, “Das bewegte Gesicht. Zur Großaufnahme im Film,” in Gesichter der Weimarer Republik, ed. Hrsg. Von Claudia Schmölers and Sander L. Gilman, 156–64 (Köln: DuMont Buchverlag, 2000), 166–68; and Kaes, Ml, 56. See Gunning, The Films of Fritz Lang, 178–79. See also Herzog, “‘Den Verbrecher erkennen.’ Zur Geschichte der Kriminalistik,” in Gesichter der Weimarer Republik, 51–75.
Walter Benjamin, “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technichen Reproduzierbarkeit,” in Illuminationen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977), 148. See Seltzer’s discussion of this passage in Serial Killers, 245. Seltzer’s discussion of what he calls the “sociality of the wound” and the formation of a community around the figure of the serial killer informs my reading of M (see esp. 276–81).
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© 2007 Klaus Mladek
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Herzog, T. (2007). A City Tracks a Murderer: Mass Murder and Mass Public in Weimar Germany. In: Mladek, K. (eds) Police Forces. Studies in European Culture and History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230607477_6
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