“Trash ” Censorship and National Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Germany

Abstract

Convinced that sexual immorality and unstable gender norms were endangering national recovery after World War One, German lawmakers drafted a constitution in 1919 legalizing the censorship of movies and pulp fiction, and prioritizing social rights over individual rights. These provisions enabled legislations to adopt two national censorship laws intended to regulate the movie industry and retail trade in pulp fiction. Both laws had their ideological origins in grass-roots anti-'trash' campaigns inspired by early encounters with commercial mass culture and Germany's federalist structure. Before the war, activists characterized censorship as a form of youth protection. Afterwards, they described it as a form of social welfare. Local activists and authorities enforcing the decisions of federal censors made censorship familiar and respectable even as these laws became a lightning rod for criticism of the young republic. Nazi leaders subsequently refashioned anti-'trash' rhetoric to justify the stringent censorship regime they imposed on Germany.

Performing National Identity in the Interwar Period: The Sarrasani Circus in Germany and Latin America

“…33 Kara Ritzheimer argues that local landmarks were an integral element for identity building in Imperial Germany, where geographical peculiarities helped to create a sense of familiarity. 34 Through the presentation of American Indians in front of regional landmarks, the Circus offered Germans a new emotional connection to both American Indians and their local concerns. In this way, the Circus employed regional knowledge effectively to frame Lakota Indians in support of a national narrative.…”

More than a case of mistaken identity: Adult entertainment and the making of early sexology

“…Article 184 of the National Code of Criminal Law banned the sale, distribution, and public display of ‘immoral and indecent literature’ from 1871, and defined the obscene as ‘anything that offends the public’s sense of modesty and morality in a sexual sense’ (Stark, 1981: 213). However, until the Nazis came to power in the early 1930s, the state largely targeted ‘mass-produced commercial items’ such as photographs, postcards, films, magazines, and advertisements made with the ‘intent to arouse’ (Leonard, 2005: 30; Ritzheimer, 2016: 54–71; Springman, 1995). 3 As long as they were distributed to a relatively small elite, medical and scientific works circulated undisturbed (Stark, 1981: 226).…”