Imagining Justice: Law, Politics and Popular Visual Culture in Weimar Germany (SNSF Project)
"Die Parole der Zeit ist: das Bild, das unbewegte, das bewegte, das Bild in jeder Fasson."
Erich Burger (1929)
"Nicht mehr lesen! Sehen!"
Johannes Molzahn (1928)
Summary
This project offers the first extended investigation of the relations between law, justice and popular visual culture during the era of the Weimar Republic. Its leading premise is that the interwar period in Germany witnessed a remarkable confluence of law, politics and cultural representations that radically altered the shape and texture of the legal imagination. Historical scholarship has not been blind to this, and there is a substantial body of work that considers how traditional journalistic and literary forms contributed to the development of a new popular legal culture. What has been almost entirely overlooked, however, is the impact of the ‘new’ visual media of the era – cinema, photography and mass image-reproduction techniques – that literally changed how legal subjects and the legal system were seen, and which engendered new spaces of conversation, contestation, dissent and critique.
The project seeks to excavate this neglected archive of visual material as a way of opening new lines of enquiry on how perceptions and understanding of law and justice were experienced, constructed, conditioned or challenged through the new image regimes of the Weimar period. The overarching aim is to develop a set of new and innovative critical perspectives on the following three key points of focus:
- the forms of legal image-making generated by the visual media of the Weimar era;
- the meanings these images acquire in the context(s) of their production, circulation and reception;
- the cultural work these images perform in fostering and shaping a popular legal imagination outside the formal spaces of law and politics.
The project comprises three sub-projects that each address these points in relation to a distinct media form. Sub-project 1 attends to cinema, sub-project 2 (postdoc project) to visual art, and sub-project 3 (PhD project) to photography.
The project proposes a novel analytical approach that is both historically-sensitive and conceptually-refined. It takes its initial cue from the ‘visual turn’ in the study of historical cultures, and combines this with impulses from the fields of cultural studies and cultural-legal studies. Within this new framework, the project aims to progress the state of the art in two significant and substantial ways. First, it seeks to enhance historical understanding of the juncture of legal, political and popular visual culture in Weimar Germany, which remains a remarkably under-researched and under-theorised subject in the scholarship. Second, it looks to advance new theoretical concepts and methods for exploring the connections between law and (popular) visual culture at specific sites and conjunctures, and to disseminate these to cross-disciplinary audiences both nationally and internationally.
While the leading research questions are rigorously historical and emanate from the archive, the project also promises to elicit a set of timely reflections relevant to present-day conditions, which continue to prompt comparisons with Weimar Germany. These concern (i) the interplay between law, politics and popular culture in times of crisis, and (ii) how the emergence of new mass media forms might work not only to alter the conditions for public legal-political discourse, but to also (re-)shape popular attitudes towards questions of rights, justice, democracy and the rule of law.
News
ZOOM SESSION: "STOP READING! LOOK!"
On Wednesday 30 April, the team presented an online seminar as part of a series run by the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and Humanities (ASLCH). Titled "Stop Reading! Look! Law, Politics and Popular Visual Culture in Weimar Germany", the session introduced parts of the project work to an international audience of interdisciplinary scholars. Steven Howe began by outlining some of the project's central questions and concepts, before giving some brief notes on the late-Weimar 'Tendenzfilm' (tendency film) as a genre of legal cinema. Laura Petersen spoke about her research into Hans Prinzhorn's book Bildnerei der Gefangenen: Studie zur Bildnerischer Gestaltung Ungeübter (Artistry of the Prisoners: Studies of the Art-Making of the Untrained, 1926), which exhibits and analyses objects made by unnamed prisoners in penal institutions in Germany and throughout Europe. Nicole Schraner rounded things off with some methodological reflections on what it means to work with visual images historically, exemplified via her ongoing work on trial photography of the Weimar period. We thank the ASLCH, and its president Simon Stern particularly, for the opportunity to do the session.
VISITING FELLOWSHIP
For the months of May and June 2025, our postdoc researcher Laura Petersen will be a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Diversity, Media and Law at the University of Giessen. She will be working on her current research on prison art in the Weimar Republic during her stay. We thank Prof. Greta Olson for facilitating the visit and look forward to ongoing collaborations with the team in Giessen. We are also grateful for the support of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) for funding the fellowship. Further details here.
PRESENTATION: RE-IMAGINING THE REPUBLIC?
In mid-December our postdoc researcher, Laura Petersen, presented a paper at the ‘Legal Imaginaries’ 2024 Conference of the Law Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia, held at the University of Hong Kong. Focusing on cartoon art, she contended that the rise of the cartoon in its everyday readership meant different publics were drawn into different imaginaries of law and politics at the time. She was also part of the keynote panel ‘Futures of Law and Humanities Education’ alongside Prof. Ann Genovese, Dr. Ben Goh, Prof. Peter Goodrich, Prof. Shaun McVeigh, Dr. Sabarish Suresh Babu, Prof. Karin van Marle and Dr. Honni van Rijswijk. Further details here. Our thanks to the Swiss Academic of Humanities and Social Sciences (SAGW) for the travel grant which enabled her attendance at this event.
PRESENTATION: THE "REICHSTAGS-REENACTMENT"
On Thursday 21 November, our project lead Steven Howe presented an invited paper at the annual conference of the Italian Law and Literature Association (AIDEL) on Law and Memory. His talk focused on the 2019 "Reichstags-Reenactment" as a work of 'memory art' that reactivated the history of Weimar Germany as an address to the contemporary 'crisis' of law and politics. Further details here.
ONLINE SEMINAR: NICOLE SCHRANER
Join us on Wednesday 20 November for the third and final online seminar of the semester. Our own PhD researcher Nicole Schraner will be speaking on "Visual Representations of the 1924 Hitler-Ludendorff Trial in the Context of Law and Media". Further details here.
ONLINE SEMINAR: LUCY BYFORD
We warmly invite you to join us for our next online seminar. On Wednesday 6 November, Lucy Byford (Bremen) will be speaking on "From Imperial Sanctum to Cradle of Democracy: Site and Semantics in Dada Interventions at the Berlin Cathedral and the National Assembly in Weimar (1918-1919)". Further details here.
ONLINE SEMINAR: JAVIER SAMPER VENDRELL
Join us on Wednesday 30 October for our first online seminar of the semester. Javier Samper Vendrell, Assistant Professor of German at the University of Pennsylvania, will present on "A Film for Children? Autonomy and Vulnerability in Emil and the Detectives (1931)". Further details here.
CONFERENCE: IN THE THICK OF IMAGES
Our international conference In the Thick of Images: Law, History and the Visual took place on 10 and 11 June. Featuring nearly 40 panel contributions, and three keynote talks, the event was a lively affair, fizzing with interdisciplinary energy and underpinned by careful, historically sensitive scholarship. Bringing together a global community of academics, both established and emerging, the conference presented a rich array of perspectives on how to think the relations of law, history and the visual - in various contexts, scales and timeframes.
The project team members presented the following panel papers: 'The Paragraph Film in Weimar Germany: Politics, Aesthetics, Historical Context' (Steven Howe); 'Drawn into Law: Legal Cartoons in the Weimar Republic' (Laura Petersen); and 'Photography Laws and Law in Photography: Courtroom Photography and Judicial Criticism in Weimar Germany' (Nicole Schraner).
ONLINE SEMINAR: MOLLY HARRABIN
Join us for the third and final online seminar of the series - on Tuesday 14 May, Molly Harrabin (University of Warwick) will speak on "Competing Models of Motherhood and Reproductive Choices in Weimar Cinema". Further details here.
PUBLICATION: BOOK REVIEW
Our postdoc researcher, Laura Petersen, recently published a review of Frederic J. Schwartz’s latest book The Culture of the Case: Madness, Crime, and Justice in Modern German Art (2023), describing it as “law and humanities scholarship of the best kind” and “a major and exceptional book” that “manages to pull off the rare feat of matching the creativity of its subjects and topic with its own creativity of thought and high-level scholarly analysis.” Full text here.
ONLINE SEMINAR: SARA FRIEDMAN
The next of our online seminars on Cultures of Legality in Weimar Germany will take place on Monday 29 April. Sara Friedman, Visiting Scholar in the Department of History at the University of California Berkeley, will speak on “Through Cinema to Justice: Sex Education Film and Activism in Germany's Revolutionary Moment". More details here.
PRESENTATION: POPULAR VISUAL LEGALITIES IN WEIMAR GERMANY
Steven Howe was recently invited to present at the conference 'Constitutivity', organised by the collaborative research centre 'Law and Literature' at the University of Münster. His talk on 'Popular Visual Legalities' explored some of the key articulations of law, politics and popular visual culture in the Weimar period, focusing particularly on cinematic treatments of contested legal issues. Further details here.
ONLINE SEMINAR: CAITLIN POWELL
We are pleased to announce the next talk in our online seminar series on Cultures of Legality in Weimar Germany. On Monday 15 April, Caitlin Powell (History of Art, University College London) will present on The Problem of the Public: Abortion in German Health Fair Culture (1925-1931). Further details here.
PRESENTATION: KÄTHE KOLLWITZ AND THE WOODCUT
As part of the “Deus Ex Machina – Law, Technology, Humanities” international conference run by the Law Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia, at QUT Law School in Brisbane from 11 to 15 December 2023, our Postdoc Researcher, Dr Laura Petersen, gave a presentation on the woodcuts of Käthe Kollwitz. Laura argued that if we take images seriously as sources when we do our law and humanities work, we need to carefully consider their medium as well as their content. At this conference, Laura also co-led the successful PhD Researcher Day, bringing together around 30 PhD students and 15 academics for a series of panel discussions and mentoring sessions, and at the AGM was given the honour of being elected to serve for another two-year term as Vice-President of the Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia.
PRESENTATION: VISUALISING THE CORPSE IN ART AND LAW
Our Postdoc Researcher, Dr Laura Petersen, was recently invited to present at an international, interdisciplinary workshop held on 4 and 5 December on the theme of “Visualising the Corpse in Art and Law”, run by Dr Marc Trabsky at La Trobe Law School, Melbourne. Laura spoke about Käthe Kollwitz’s representation of Karl Liebknecht on his death bed (1920). Further details here.
ONLINE SEMINAR: BIRGIT LANG
Join us on Monday 13 November for the third and final online seminar of the semester. Birgit Lang, Professor of German at the University of Melbourne, will present on "Between Education and Promotion: Sex, Power and Visual Culture at the Great Police Exhibition (1926) in Weimar Germany". More details here.
ONLINE SEMINAR: FREDERIC J. SCHWARTZ
The next of our online seminars on Cultures of Legality in Weimar Germany will take place on Wednesday 8 November. Frederic J. Schwartz, Emeritus Professor of History of Art and Architecture at University College London, will speak on “Lustmord: Images of Violence and the Legal Contours of the Public Sphere in Weimar Germany”. The talk will draw on material from Prof. Schwartz’s recently published book The Culture of the Case: Madness, Crime and Justice in Modern German Art (2023). Further details here.
PUBLICATION: ON CARTOONS AND THE CONSTITUTION
During the Weimar era, the cartoon genre became an important medium to support and satirise the new constitution. In this essay, Laura Petersen offers a close reading of a selection of images, all drawn by cartoonist Karl Arnold for the journal Simplicissimus, and considers their possible effects in shaping a visual legal imagination beyond the formal texts of law and politics. Full text here.
ONLINE SEMINAR: SABINE KRIEBEL
Our online seminar series on Cultures of Legality in Weimar Germany will kick off on Friday 27 October with a talk by Sabine Kriebel (University College Cork) on "Law, Love and Desire in the Art of Christian Schad". Further talks will follow in the coming weeks from Frederic Schwartz (University College London) and Birgit Lang (University of Melbourne). More details here.
NEW PHD RESEARCHER
We are pleased to announce that Nicole Schraner has joined the project team as a PhD researcher. Nicole read cultural studies and history at the University of Lucerne, and has a particular interest in both legal and visual history. Her PhD project will focus on law and photography during the Weimar years. Further details here.
PROJECT START & NEW TEAM MEMBER
To mark the start of the project, we are delighted to confirm that Dr. Laura Petersen has officially joined the team as postdoctoral research fellow. Laura is a cross-disciplinary scholar, specialising in approaches to jurisprudence and aesthetics, with a particular interest in twentieth-century Germany. Her postdoc project will focus on law and visual art in the Weimar period. Further details here.
SNSF PROJECT APPROVED FOR FUNDING
The project application «Imagining Justice: Law, Politics and Popular Visual Culture in Weimar Germany» has been approved for funding by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
The four-year project will be led by Dr. Steven Howe in collaboration with Laura Petersen, and hosted by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies at the University of Lucerne.
The project work is scheduled to begin in February 2023. The total approved funding is 655'498.- CHF.
Seminar Series
Upcoming Talks
A new series of seminars is planned for the second half of 2025. Further details to follow shortly.
Previous Talks
20.11.24: Nicole Schraner (Lucerne), Visual Representations of the 1924 Hitler-Ludendorff Trial in the Context of Law and Media
06.11.24: Lucy Byford (Bremen), From Imperial Sanctum to Cradle of Democracy: Site and Semantics in Dada Interventions at the Berlin Cathedral and the National Assembly in Weimar (1918-1919)
30.10.24: Javier Samper Vendrell (Pennsylvania), A Film for Children? Autonomy and Vulnerability in Emil and the Detectives (1931)
14.05.24: Molly Harrabin (Warwick), Competing Models of Motherhood and Reproductive Choices in Weimar Cinema
29.04.24: Sara Friedman (Berkeley), Through Cinema to Justice: Sex Education Film and Activism in Germany's Revolutionary Moment
15.04.24: Caitlin Powell (UCL), The Problem of the Public: Abortion in German Health Fair Culture (1925-1931)
13.11.23: Birgit Lang (Melbourne), Between Education and Promotion: Sex, Power and Visual Culture at the Great Police Exhibition (1926) in Weimar Germany
08.11.23: Frederic J. Schwartz (UCL), Lustmord: Images of Violence and the Legal Contours of the Public Sphere in Weimar Germany
27.10.23: Sabine Kriebel (Cork), Law, Love and Desire in the Art of Christian Schad
Conferences & Workshops
10-11.06.24: In the Thick of Images: Law, History and the Visual (international conference)
