Caught in the Act: Visualizing a Crime-Free Capital

Abstract

A survey of Weimar cinema calls to mind several films that demonstrate a concern with weakened leadership and severed communal ties through the representation of public efforts to apprehend the deviant individual in the shadows of the city. This essay looks behind the scenes at the conditions under which the creators of these films crafted their tales of urban crime and detection, addressing a significant interplay between aesthetic production and actual criminal justice initiatives. Alongside and along with police education and legitimation projects, Weimar visual cultures criminal and legal narratives took part in a larger exploration of the status of the modern urban subject as participant in and product of culture and the law.