Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600-1987

The book begins with an account of the system of 'traditional' capital punishments set out in German law, and the ritual practices and cultural readings associated with them in the early modern period. It examines how this system broke down under the impact of secularization and social change in the first half of the nineteenth century. The abolition of the death penalty became a classic liberal cause which triumphed, briefly, in 1848. Its definitive reinstatement by Bismarck in the 1880s coincided with the emergence of new, Social Darwinist attitudes towards criminality whose eventual triumph laid the foundations for the massive expansion of capital punishment which took place during Hitler's 'Third Reich'. After 1945, the death penalty was abolished in the West but continued to be used in East Germany until its abandonment in the 1980s. This compelling study brings a mass of new evidence to bear on the history of German attitudes to law and order, deviance, cruelty, suffering, and death. It tells the stories of the men and women who went to the block, the politicians, philosophers, and officials who debated whether they should be sent there, and the executioners whose job it was to kill them. The book's findings are used to test the argument of Norbert Elias that there was a deficit of the 'civilizing process' in Germany, to examine Michael Foucault's theory of the formation of a 'carceral society' in the modern period, and to cast new light on the social history of death, as pioneered by Phillipe Aries.