Tales from the German Underworld: Crime and Punishment in the Nineteenth Century Book

Richard Evans states in his introduction that "this book presents four distinct and varied narratives of crime and punishment in nineteenth-century Germany." Each story tracks the life of a deviant criminal: a forger on his way to a Siberian prison camp in 1802; a drunken vagrant in the 1830s who spent years suffering corporal punishment in a prison in Bremen; a confidence trickster who earned his living through fraud and deceit in the 1860s; and lastly a young women who fell into a life of prostitution at the end of the century. Evans chooses these figures to represent "the bourgeois discourse of the underworld" in Germany and Europe during the 19th century and to trace the evolution of the penal policy from public punishment to incarceration. Evans persuasively argues that the change in attitude toward crime and punishment in Germany during this period is indicative of the changes throughout Europe--public punishment and mutilation were considered archaic institutions; punishment needed to be more effective. The solution was the use of isolation and hard labor as an alternative to the rough and ready public whippings and humiliations. Crimes that society once turned a blind eye to, such as prostitution and fraud, suddenly became intolerable to the bourgeois. This led to increased professionalism in the police force who in turn used the threat of incarceration and corporal punishment to control criminality amongst the populace. The use of thematic history is often overlooked by some historians who sometimes get lost in seas of facts and statistics, yet the relationship between deviance and control is the centerpiece of Tales from the German Underworld. Evans's lucid and gripping narrative--dealing with a complex, and sometimes ambiguous subject matter--is well thought out historical investigation at its best. Read More