Berghahn Books

Chapter Title: Between Reform and Repression: Imprisonment in Weimar Germany

Chapter Author(s): Nikolaus Wachsmann

Book Title: Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany

Book Editor(s): Richard F. Wetzell
Published by: Berghahn Books

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 Part II

Penal Reform in the

Weimar Republic

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 Chapter 4

Between Reform and Repression

Imprisonment in Weimar Germany

Nikolaus Wachsmann

The prison, at least as we know it today, is a rather recent invention. It was only
in the course of the late eighteenth and nineteenth century that institutions des-
ignated solely for locking up criminal offenders, dominated by rigid discipline
and hidden from the gaze of the public, became key means of punishment in
the Western world. This birth (or, more accurately, rebirth) of the prison has
caught the eye of historians and social scientists and has been the subject of
several celebrated studies dealing with France, Britain, and the United States,
among other states.1 The focus on the late eighteenth and nineteenth century is
also reflected in scholarship on the German prison.2 By contrast, the German
prison in the twentieth century had long been ignored. The landscape has only
begun to change very recently. But research has generally been limited to the
Nazi years and the period immediately after World War II.3 The prison in the
Weimar Republic (1918–1933), by contrast, has remained uncharted territory,
and many thousands of files on the prison service are still waiting to be discov-
ered in archives all over Germany. This article presents the first overview of the
history of the Weimar prison.4 Such an examination has obvious relevance for
historians interested in crime and punishment and contributes to the still mea-
ger literature on the operation of the criminal justice system in the turbulent
and short life of the Weimar Republic. But it also has a wider bearing on debates
about German history.
Historians have been aware for some time that the study of the treatment of
those excluded from society because of their non-normative behavior can give
important insights into the often unclearly stated values of society itself. One of

Notes from this chapter begin on page 132.

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116 | Nikolaus Wachsmann

the most important works on marginal groups in 1920s Germany has been the
study of deviant youths by the late Detlev Peukert. Here, and in his general work
on Weimar and Nazi Germany, Peukert presented highly original arguments,
which continue to stimulate historians of German social and penal policy.5 Peu-
kert claimed that the study of Weimar was vital because Weimar saw “the emer-
gence of the world we inhabit today.” “In less than a decade and a half,” Peukert
noted, “virtually every social and intellectual initiative we think of as modern was
formulated or put into practice. And yet . . . no sooner had modern ideas been
put into effect than they came under attack, were revoked or began to collapse.”
Looking at modern social policy, Peukert argued, the human sciences and the
emerging social professions held out the promise that state intervention based on
scientific advances in criminology and pedagogy would help to eradicate “social
illnesses” such as deviance, just like modern medicine had made immense prog-
ress in the cure and prevention of physical illnesses. This modern social policy,
Peukert claimed, had a Janus-face: “care for the reformables and exclusion of
the incorrigibles.” However, Peukert suggested that during the 1920s the ques-
tion of selection and exclusion had still been marginal. Instead, this period was
characterized by “pedagogical dreams of omnipotence.” The reigning paradigm
was that of the “universality of provision and correction.” It was only during the
disastrous crisis in the last years of Weimar, according to Peukert, that this uto-
pian vision was reconceptualized in negative terms, “identifying, segregating, and
disposing of those individuals who were ‘abnormal’ and ‘sick.’” This paradigm of
selection and eradication, Peukert concluded, then shaped the approach toward
social outsiders in Nazi Germany, where it gained “unprecedented operational
licence.”6 This paper will evaluate to what extent the development of the German
prison system fits into this general picture of social policy in the Weimar Repub-
lic drawn by Detlev Peukert.

Prisons and Prison Reform in the Early Weimar Republic

The German prison system emerged from World War I in a dire state. Inmate
mortality in the 1,700 or so penal institutions had increased in the last years of
the war, and many prisoners were ravaged by disease. In some institutions, more
than one in ten inmates had died in the last twelve months of the war, often due to
malnutrition.7 But there was no time to take stock after the German defeat as the
prison system was immediately plunged into a succession of unprecedented crises.
Following the collapse of the imperial order in November 1918, life in Germany
was dominated for five years by dramatic political, economic, and social upheaval.
This had a direct impact on penal institutions, not least due to the blatant bias
of the largely anti-Republican German judiciary. Judges often cracked down
with extreme vigor on radical left-wing activists. At the same time, right-wing

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Class, Youth, and Sexuality in the Construction of the LustmörderBetween Reform and Repression | 117

counterrevolutionaries were let off very lightly.8 Penal institutions filled up with
left-wing radicals, and the Weimar prison soon became a political battleground.
Inside, highly politicized inmates were pitched against reactionary governors and
warders. And in the public arena, the prison became a symbol for what commu-
nists and socialists called class justice. Attacks on penal institutions by activists
from the outside, and riots by the inmates on the inside, became familiar events.
Officials in fifteen larger penal institutions recorded no fewer than fifty-one riots
and serious attacks on guards between 1919 and 1924. Thousands of inmates
escaped or were freed. Most local prison officials reacted to the unrest in the only
way they knew: even minor disturbances were answered with extreme brutality.
Many inmates were severely injured or killed during such incidents. Thousands
more were sentenced to further terms of imprisonment for rioting.9
The tensions inside penal institutions were intensified by the very poor living
conditions. The food supply was particularly bad, sparking off further unrest. For
instance, on 28 March 1920, most of the inmates of the Brandenburg peniten-
tiary fled. Several were shot dead, and the recaptured prisoners were tried in June
1920. Asked about his motives, one prisoner replied: “The food was appalling.
For weeks, we got no potatoes and the fish that was dished up all the time stank
seven miles up wind.”10 Nutritional standards only started to improve in the early
1920s. By that time, penal institutions were already engulfed in another crisis:
massive overcrowding. During the war, prisoner numbers had remained rather
low. This soon changed, as the catastrophic hyperinflation triggered a wave of
crime. The desperate circumstances that led many Germans to break the law are
all too manifest in the state in which they arrived in the penal institutions: the
Social Democrat newspaper Vorwärts reported that of one hundred men commit-
ted to the Plötzensee prison in Berlin in 1921, fifty arrived without shirts, sixty
without shoes, and eighty without socks.11 By 1923, crime figures for theft were
three times higher than before the war.12 The dramatic rise in recorded crime
resulted in a rapid increase of state prisoners. From 1920, penal institutions all
over Germany were reporting lack of space, and by 1923, the daily number of
state prisoners in all probability exceeded one hundred thousand. Overcrowding,
with five or more inmates forced into a single cell, further aggravated the poor
hygienic conditions inside penal institutions, which often lacked running water,
proper heating, or sewer systems. One penitentiary inmate complained in 1921
that he had not had a bath for over a year. “The underpants are only changed
every eight weeks,” he added.13
But unrest and chaos were not the only features of the postwar prison. This
period also saw far-reaching reform impulses. During the German empire, prison
regulations had often remained unchanged for years. This contrasts sharply with
the flurry of activity in the individual German states (the prison service was run
by the federated states until 1935) in the early Weimar years. Some measures,
such as the abolition of corporal punishment for male penitentiary inmates in

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118 | Nikolaus Wachsmann

Prussia in late 1918, concluded long-term trends that had begun in the second
half of the nineteenth century.14 But such piecemeal measures no longer seemed
enough. Most leading legal officials agreed that a more decisive shakeup of the
prison system was necessary. While they disagreed about the extent to which they
wanted to break with the prewar prison (largely based on uniform retribution
and military discipline), the officials did accept that a new approach was called
for. Their main impetus was the dramatic crime wave in postwar Germany, which
clearly demonstrated that the old-style prison failed to deter criminal behavior.
The call for prison reform was part of a much wider search for innovative social
policies during the postwar crisis. New solutions were needed, many observers
argued, to deal with the plethora of real and imagined problems which appeared
to threaten Germany, including the increase in sexual promiscuity, venereal dis-
ease, youth delinquency, “trashy literature,” divorce rates, and illegitimate births.15
The postwar proposals to reform penal policy were influenced by the ideas
of the so-called modern school of criminal law, which had emerged during the
German empire under the leadership of the liberal law professor Franz von Liszt.
Famously, Liszt had rejected the established system of criminal law based on gen-
eral deterrence and uniform punishment. Instead, he argued that criminal justice
should aim at the protection of society and the future prevention of crime. Fol-
lowing Liszt, different types of offenders required different treatment, depending
on their future danger. He summarized his demand for special prevention as
the “incapacitation of incorrigibles, reformation of reformables.” According to
Liszt, “reformable” offenders should be rehabilitated. By contrast, “incorrigible
habitual criminals” had to be isolated indefinitely, in most cases until their death.
It was madness, Liszt exclaimed, ever again to let such an offender “loose on the
public like a wild beast.” This dual approach of reform and repression already left
its mark on German penal policy during the empire and later had a significant
impact on the various Weimar drafts for a new criminal code.16 It also influenced
prison regulations in the Weimar years.
The principle of rehabilitation, rather marginal in the prewar prison, was
emphasized for young offenders in the Reich Juvenile Justice Act (16 Febru-
ary 1923). Soon, it was extended to adult prisoners, enshrined in the national
prison guidelines agreed upon by the individual German states (7 June 1923).
The prison regime based on silence and excessive military discipline, still popular
before the war, was rejected in these new guidelines, and particularly cruel disci-
plinary punishment such as detention in a dark cell was also abolished. The aim
of imprisonment was that “the prisoner, as far as necessary, is accustomed to order
and work and morally strengthened in such a way that he does not reoffend.” The
introduction of the so-called progressive stages system was encouraged to aid the
inmate’s “moral advancement.” The stages system rewarded individual inmates
for their “progress” by transferring them to a higher stage, where they enjoyed

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Class, Youth, and Sexuality in the Construction of the LustmörderBetween Reform and Repression | 119

more privileges. Some states had already introduced the stages system in the early
1920s. (It had been experimented with before in Germany, most notably in the
Wittlich prison for juvenile delinquents just before the war, as part of a wider
reform catalogue which had a lasting influence on the debate in the 1920s). By
1926, it had been introduced in all the German states; only inmates with longer
sentences, generally one year or more, were eligible for the stages system.17
But many officials did not regard the stages system only as a tool of rehabil-
itation. Rather, they believed that it helped to institutionalize the distinction
between reformable and incorrigible offenders, the fundamental principle of
Liszt’s modern school of criminal law. At the beginning of their sentence, all pris-
oners would be held on the strict conditions of the lowest stage (stage one). Once
the reformable inmates had demonstrated their “inner change,” they advanced to
the higher stages (two and three). The incorrigibles, by contrast, remained on the
lowest stage. The Bavarian directive that had introduced the progressive system
for adult prisoners in 1921 urged that against “incorrigible prisoners .  .  . the
greatest sternness is called for; during their treatment the aim of retribution and
deterrence in punishment cannot be stressed enough.”18 In the long run, most
prison officials and criminologists agreed, it was not enough to merely treat these
incorrigibles more harshly than others during their sentence. After all, this would
not stop them from reoffending once they were released. What was needed, fol-
lowing Franz von Liszt, was the indefinite detention of dangerous incorrigibles
in security confinement, a measure that had already commanded significant sup-
port before the war and was included in all the Weimar drafts for a criminal code,
starting in 1919.
It should be noted at this point that the division of offenders into reformable
and incorrigible was not peculiar to Germany. It was very much an international
phenomenon of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. A number of
officials in Europe and the United States experimented with policies that tried to
turn the prison into a rehabilitative institution. At the same time, there was wide-
spread agreement that protective measures were necessary against habitual crimi-
nals, and states such as Australia and New Zealand actually introduced indefinite
confinement. Similarly, harsh treatment inside penal institutions was not unique
to Germany. Indeed, disciplinary punishment was often harsher elsewhere, as
several Western states continued to practice corporal punishment long after it
had been abolished in Germany.19
Until now, the focus in this article has been on the general attempts to reform
the prison in the early years of the Weimar Republic. But how did this affect
the lives of individual inmates inside prisons and penitentiaries? This question
will be addressed in the following sections, which examine the reality of policies
directed at reformables and incorrigibles in German penal institutions between
1923 and 1930.

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120 | Nikolaus Wachsmann

Policies and Reforms Directed at

Reformable Prisoners, 1923–1930

Conditions in German penal institutions in the second half of the 1920s were
often still poor. But they were better than before, largely as a result of the improv-
ing economic climate. Following the end of hyperinflation, criminal convictions
declined sharply and judges also passed somewhat more lenient sentences. As a
result, prisoner numbers fell drastically. By 1929, the average number of prison-
ers in the whole of Germany had fallen to about fifty thousand—about half as
many as six years earlier. Much less space was now needed for locking up offend-
ers, and a number of dilapidated penal institutions were shut down. Also, more
resources could be distributed among the remaining prisoners. The daily amount
of money spent by the Prussian authorities on food for each penitentiary inmate
increased by half between 1924 and 1929. There were also improvements in the
health care of prisoners, and some penal institutions set up specially equipped
cells for women giving birth behind bars. It was partly thanks to these develop-
ments that the death rate in penal institutions declined.20
Life in many penal institutions in the second half of the 1920s was also influ-
enced, to some extent, by the concept of the prison as an educational institution.
The most coherent proposals for rehabilitation were put forward by the Study
Group for Prison Reform, formed in 1923 by university teachers, prison officials,
and civil servants. Their political background was rather diverse, including sup-
porters of the liberal and Catholic parties, as well as Social Democrats and social-
ists. What united many of them was their belief in the ideals of the German youth
movement and in the new approaches to education pioneered in reform pedagogy
before World War I—ideas that also influenced schools, social work, reformato-
ries, asylums, and adult education in the 1920s. Thus, the Study Group demanded
that character-building exercises and creative stimulation by inspirational teach-
ers were to take the place of purely mechanical and military forms of discipline.
Only by awarding prison inmates more freedom and personal responsibility, it was
argued, could they become law-abiding citizens after their release. One leading
figure of the Study Group was Lothar Frede, who had been appointed by the pro-
gressive left-wing government in Thuringia in 1922 as head of the prison service, a
position he retained even after power shifted to the right two years later. Thuringia
soon became one of the centers of prison reform in Germany. A case study of the
Untermassfeld penitentiary, the second-largest Thuringian penal institution for
men that was often singled out in the 1920s as a so-called model institution, will
highlight the aims and achievements of the Study Group.
The Untermassfeld penitentiary, still in use today, lies on the edge of a small
village in the Werra valley. Originally a medieval castle, Untermassfeld was rebuilt
after 1813 as a penal institution, resulting in a convoluted construction quite
removed from the nineteenth-century ideal of rational prison architecture, the

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Class, Youth, and Sexuality in the Construction of the LustmörderBetween Reform and Repression | 121

panopticon. Many of the policies championed by the Study Group were intro-
duced here. Following the demand by the Study Group that trained pedagogues
be recruited, the Untermassfeld prison chaplain was removed and replaced by
three social workers (one for each of the three stages of the new progressive sys-
tem). They were subordinated to the newly appointed, reform-minded governor.
On arrival, inmates were put on stage one, which also contained those demoted
from higher stages for disciplinary offenses, and those who, in the officials’ eyes,
had not yet responded to the educational measures. Over one-third of inmates
were held at this stage. They spent their spare time in solitude in single cells
and did not qualify for any privileges. As Lothar Frede put it, they had to feel
“the full sternness of the penalty.” Once promoted to stage two, the prisoners
acquired greater freedom and responsibility. Stage two was open to most prison-
ers, as the criteria for promotion were not applied very strictly. About half of the
inmate population were held at stage two, including prisoners who had lengthy
disciplinary records because of disobedience and physical violence. At stage
two, school lessons were conducted by the social worker in small groups, and
the inmates spent some of their spare time unsupervised, playing board games,
singing in the choir or orchestra, listening to the radio, or performing plays.
Sports were also popular, and the inmates sometimes played local teams from
the outside. The prisoners were also actively involved in writing and producing
the prison newspaper, a unique innovation in Germany. At stage three, seen as a
preparation for life in liberty, inmates were given an even larger degree of auton-
omy. Their leisure time was unsupervised, their cells were unlocked and had no
iron bars. Among the most controversial innovations were the walks of prisoners
in the woods outside the prison walls, accompanied only by the unarmed gover-
nor (and sometimes a social worker).
Life in Untermassfeld changed in many other ways too. The Study Group
argued that prisoners were imprisoned citizens and should be awarded legal sta-
tus, a demand that had been championed before World War I by the Frank-
furt law professor Berthold Freudenthal, a leading figure in the Study Group.
Before the war, inmates were almost entirely subjected to the whims of the prison
administration. To redress this problem, disciplinary tribunals were set up in
Untermassfeld, consisting of prison officials and inmate representatives (elected
by prisoners at stage two and three). Previously, the governor had not even been
required to hear the inmate’s side of the story in disciplinary cases. Now, the court
listened to witness statements by the accused, other prisoners, and the warders.
True, the final decision still rested with the governor. But he often appears to
have followed the views of the other members of the court. The leading prison
officials in Thuringia also opposed the military atmosphere, which still character-
ized most German penal institutions. Lothar Frede ordered that inmates should
no longer jump up, click their heels, and place their hands on the trouser seam
when he entered a cell or a workshop. Finally, the Study Group demanded that

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122 | Nikolaus Wachsmann

compulsory prison labor, around which the inmates’ day was structured, had to
be transformed. Most inmates were employed in their cells with repetitive and
dirty labor or in workshops where they used outdated equipment. The Study
Group demanded that this approach to prison labor should be replaced with
measures aimed at helping the largely untrained prisoners to develop skills useful
on the labor market after their release. To realize this aim, a limited company was
set up in Untermassfeld, with the governor acting as company director. Modern
machines were introduced into agricultural production and some workshops,
supervised by trained craftsmen. Some inmates could now learn a trade.21
The reform project in Untermassfeld was never uncontested. It came under
immediate attack from some local politicians and journalists, who charged that
the inmates were being pampered. More worryingly, a number of Untermassfeld
guards systematically tried to derail the project. Repeatedly, guards attempted
to engineer a crisis by encouraging prisoners to escape or start a riot. This, they
hoped, would prove that the reforms undermined the safety in the institution.
The motives for the guards’ opposition were complex. To start with, the guards
had often worked in Untermassfeld for decades. Largely, they were former sol-
diers, used to enforcing and obeying strict military discipline. Almost overnight,
the inmates were now to be treated as individuals with specific educational needs,
a task for which many warders had neither sympathy nor training. In addition,
the warders felt threatened by the change of the prisoners’ status and resented
being held accountable in prison tribunals. Also, the reforms increased their
workload. Under the old system, prisoners could be treated by the rulebook. But
individualization was labor intensive, and the warders, who were poorly paid
and overworked, were now expected to take on further duties. Finally, the expe-
rienced warders deeply resented the influence of the much younger social work-
ers, fresh out of university. The Thuringian branch of the Association of Prison
Warders insisted in 1925 that the battle-scarred warders had more to offer than
the young social workers: “Knowledge gained from experience alone is decisive
for the practice of the prison service.” In the Thuringian prison Ichtershausen,
the harassment campaign against the young reformers by veteran prison officials
contributed in 1925 to the dramatic suicide of the twenty-four-year-old social
worker, Dr. Otto Zirker.22 The prison administration in Thuringia was not pas-
sive in the face of this opposition. The most disruptive Untermassfeld warder was
transferred to a small local jail, training courses for the other warders were set
up and it was decided that new applicants were to be judged in part according
to their ability to treat inmates. By the late 1920s, a number of Untermassfeld
warders had been won over and public criticism also became more muted.
For many years, the history of the prison was written as a success story, pro-
gressing from primitive cruelty to enlightened benevolence. Only in the 1970s
did authors like Michel Foucault, David Rothman, and Michael Ignatieff chal-
lenge this narrative.23 This critique has to be taken into account when evaluating

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Class, Youth, and Sexuality in the Construction of the LustmörderBetween Reform and Repression | 123

the reforms in Untermassfeld in the 1920s. Untermassfeld should certainly not

be depicted as an unmitigated triumph of humane policies. Disciplinary pun-
ishment often remained strict, and the general living conditions were still poor.
Half of the cells lacked heating. In winter, prisoners went to bed fully clothed
and often could not wash in the morning, as the water in their bowls had turned
to ice. The inmates also still used worn-out buckets as toilets. The characteristic
smell of Untermassfeld continued to be that of urine and excrement.24 Neverthe-
less, the impact of the reforms was impressive and transformed the lives of many
inmates, who enjoyed previously unheard-of privileges and rights.
The Untermassfeld experience was not typical for imprisonment in the rest
of Germany. Not many leading prison officials proved to be as adventurous as
Lothar Frede in Thuringia. And a large number of local prison officials—gov-
ernors, chaplains, teachers, and warders—remained sceptical about the aims of
the Study Group. Occasionally, they used progressive language to present their
policies as modern, but they often clung to the traditional prison regime based
on strict punishment, military discipline, and moralizing lectures. Finally, at least
in the case of Prussia, size also mattered. In 1927, there were over one thousand
penal institutions in Prussia, compared with only sixty-nine in Thuringia. The
size of the Prussian prison service posed serious administrative problems, one of
the reasons why Prussia was slow to implement new policies. When the Prussian
prison administration did try to introduce an extensive reform package in 1929,
it quickly ran into trouble. The measures included the election of prisoner repre-
sentatives and prisoner leave on the higher stages. Inmates on stage three could
even be allowed to take up ordinary jobs in the free economy for normal pay,
introducing the so-called half-open principle already in place in some reformato-
ries. However, the impact of these regulations was very limited. The regulations
were only introduced fully in the Berlin district, and even here they were never
properly put into practice. One problem was timing, as the new regulations were
introduced only months before the start of the collapse of the Weimar Republic
in the early 1930s. In addition, the regulations were undermined by open criti-
cism from local prison officials, who dismissed them as impractical.25
As a result, changes in many German penal institutions in the second half of
the 1920s were significantly less pronounced than in the Untermassfeld peniten-
tiary. To be sure, the stages system offered more privileges. Some institutions also
introduced more innovative measures such as sports, theater, music, and radio
rooms. But the Study Group’s call for more prisoner autonomy, prisoner repre-
sentatives, and prison tribunals was not widely realized. The same was true for
the educational thrust of the stages system. In practice, it became nothing but a
disciplinary tool, as governors realized that promoting an inmate to a higher stage
as a reward for conforming, and the threat of demotion for breaking the rules,
functioned as an effective control mechanism. Finally, only limited attempts
were made to recruit reform-minded officials. In 1927, the reform strongholds of

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124 | Nikolaus Wachsmann

Thuringia, Saxony and Hamburg, which together only held some 12 percent of
all German state prisoners, employed fifty-five of all the fifty-eight social workers
in German penal institutions. By contrast, Prussia, which held well over half of all
German prisoners, engaged only one social worker. Instead, the Prussian author-
ities continued to put their faith in the traditional guardians of the inmates’ spir-
itual guidance: more than seven hundred chaplains were still working in Prussian
penal institutions in 1927.26 Open and sustained opposition to new policies by
local prison officials remained limited to the states like Thuringia, which had
introduced more extensive changes. Elsewhere, internal criticism was largely lim-
ited to individual aspects of prison policy. Most of this grumbling by local offi-
cials centered around their claims that inmates were treated too leniently. Among
the most controversial issues were prisoner complaints. Before the war, senior
civil servants had generally dismissed complaints passed on by the governors. But
in the Weimar Republic, they were reviewed more conscientiously, resulting in
an increase of prisoner complaints, as more and more inmates believed that it was
worth raising their voices.27
This development was closely linked to the growing influence of the public
sphere. Weimar was obsessed with crime and criminals, and this fixation was
reflected in newspaper articles, novels, plays, and films about imprisonment,
which mostly painted a bleak picture of life inside penal institutions. Publishers
rushed more prisoner memoirs into print than ever before, often penned by for-
mer left-wing inmates who were also active in pressure groups such as the Ger-
man League for Human Rights.28 There can be no doubt that the public spotlight
on the prison had some impact on the civil servants in the prison administra-
tion, who ultimately decided about inmate complaints. This was deeply resented
by many local prison officials. According to the radical left-wing prisoner Max
Hoelz, the governor in the Gross-Strehlitz penitentiary “went completely ber-
serk” as soon as anyone as much as mentioned the League for Human Rights.29
However, the public sphere did not function exclusively as a check on the dis-
ciplining power of officials. To start with, a number of articles in right-wing
newspapers pictured penal institutions as five-star hotels, an image which was to
feature heavily in the attacks on German prisons in the early 1930s. In addition,
a number of articles raised the specter of the incorrigible prisoner. This issue was
not confined to the right-wing press, but occupied a central place in the Weimar
discourse about crime and punishment.

Policies and Reforms Directed at

Incorrigible Prisoners, 1923–1930

Most Weimar prison officials and criminologists were convinced that some indi-
viduals were destined to reoffend, and that biological factors played an important

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Class, Youth, and Sexuality in the Construction of the LustmörderBetween Reform and Repression | 125

role in creating these incorrigibles. To be sure, not everybody agreed. Some mem-
bers of the Study Group argued that it was absurd to speak of incorrigibles as
long as no real attempts were made to rehabilitate inmates. When explaining
persistent criminal behavior, they pointed instead to poor social and economic
circumstances on the outside and the widespread prejudice that ex-convicts faced
from the population.30 But most commentators dismissed these arguments as
the delusions of naive theoreticians and attacked them for ignoring the demand
for the “incapacitation of incorrigibles,” one of the core principles of Franz von
Liszt and the modern school of criminal law. “Let’s return to Liszt!” one leading
criminologist exclaimed in 1927.31 Although there was never an agreed definition
of the incorrigible, German criminologists constructed two types of offenders
who were often described as incorrigible. The first were the habitual (or asocial)
criminals, characterized as drifting into small-time criminality such as theft and
begging because they were supposedly weak and driven by primitive urges. Their
frequent recidivism was often taken as a sign of their incorrigibility. The second
type associated with the incorrigible was the professional (or antisocial) criminal,
a construction that was popularized in numerous books and films, such as Fritz
Lang’s 1931 masterpiece M. “Professional criminals,” the criminologist Robert
Heindl claimed in his lurid book on the subject, did not drift into crime, but
actively pursued it as their chosen profession. Between photos of gruesome crime
scenes and public executions, which no doubt contributed to the book’s popular-
ity, Heindl presented his particularly unrefined typology of dangerous, trained,
and highly specialized criminals.32
Most commentators believed that many incorrigibles had to be interned in
security confinement after their prison or penitentiary sentence to protect society.
They would have to be held either until they died or until they posed no more
risk to society, for example because their health had seriously deteriorated. It was
not clear how many offenders would be targeted by security confinement. The
various drafts for a criminal code described it vaguely as a measure against “dan-
gerous habitual criminals,” and much would depend on what was considered
dangerous. Robert Heindl argued that only about one thousand or so profes-
sional criminals should be locked up.33 But most observers showed less restraint,
arguing (in line with Franz von Liszt) that security confinement should target
not only the supposed criminal elite, but also a number of habitual criminals,
including small-time thieves. German prison officials largely supported this more
repressive approach.
Security confinement was never realized in the Weimar Republic, because the
parties in the Reichstag, increasingly paralyzed in the early 1930s, failed to push
through the new criminal code. Nevertheless, the heated debates about the incor-
rigible did influence the lives of criminal offenders in Weimar Germany. Many
prison officials agreed that, as long as security confinement had not become law,
incorrigible inmates should at least be excluded from most benefits. As we have

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126 | Nikolaus Wachsmann

seen, the stages system was ideally suited to fulfill this demand. Incorrigibles
could be left on the harsh conditions of stage one, and reformables could be
promoted. This meant that prison officials had to distinguish between these two
criminological types. Apparently, most officials relied on their gut feeling. But
in July 1923, the hard-line Bavarian prison administration announced that a
“scientifically reliable basis” was required for the classifications. Prison doctors
were asked to conduct detailed examinations of inmates, which soon became
known as criminal-biological investigations—a mix of various scientific theories
popular at the time, including criminal anthropology, psychiatry, criminal psy-
chology, genetics, and racial hygiene (rather similar examinations were carried
out in Saxony too). At the center of the examinations stood the question whether
the inmate was reformable or not. Those prisoners regarded as incorrigible often
faced the harsh conditions of stage one during their entire sentence. It is hardly
surprising, then, that some of them tried to undermine the examinations by lying
about their family background, keeping silent when asked whether they came
from broken homes or whether their parents were alcoholics.34
By the late 1920s, criminal-biological investigations had spread to other Ger-
man states. In Prussia, they were introduced in the context of the new prison
regulations of 1929, which are a good example of the connection between reform
and repression in Weimar penal policy. Although the regulations introduced poli-
cies intended to rehabilitate prisoners, such as prisoner leave, they also stipulated
that new institutions for incorrigibles be set up. A wing of the Plötzensee prison
was set aside “for the most antisocial elements, with a particularly bleak social
prognosis,” as they were described by the progressive head of the Berlin prison
administration, a member of the Study Group.35 The formal criteria for transfer
to Plötzensee was that the prisoner was older than twenty-three, had been sen-
tenced to at least three months, and had three or more previous convictions of at
least one year. Additionally, experts had to confirm the inmate’s lack of reform-
ability. For this purpose, prisoners were taken to the Moabit prison, where they
were examined by warders, chaplains, and teachers. The final decision was made
by the prison doctor, who carried out a criminal-biological investigation.
The examinations of prisoners in Moabit and in the Bavarian penal institutions
give an important insight into the construction of the incorrigible in the Weimar
Republic. The authority of the examinations derived from the claim that they
were based on neutral, scientific observation. But under the veneer of scientific
objectivity, the examinations were largely determined by unproven allegations,
moralizing assumptions, and the reduction of deviant behavior to biological
determinants. Prison officials were particularly inclined to write off those inmates
who had most manifestly failed to conform to the moral, political, and social
values of bourgeois society. Most of the inmates judged incorrigible had grown
up in unstable families in urban centers, which had long been regarded by prison

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Class, Youth, and Sexuality in the Construction of the LustmörderBetween Reform and Repression | 127

officials as cesspools of depravity and degeneration. The officials highlighted the

offenders’ unsettled lifestyle and their purportedly abnormal sexual appetite.
One prisoner, a Moabit official complained in 1930, talked with “almost cynical
openness of his marriage to a prostitute who . . . continued to pursue her trade
even after the wedding.” The classifications were also strongly influenced by the
offense committed. Property offenders were much more likely than any others
to be judged incorrigible. They were seen as dangerous threats to the established
social order, part of the asocial and degenerate subproletariat. Their offenses were
often petty, consisting of minor thefts rather than white-collar crimes. As these
offenders received comparatively short sentences of imprisonment, they had
accumulated many convictions. On average, each inmate examined in Moabit
had fourteen previous convictions. With recidivism often seen as one of the signs
of the incorrigible, petty property offenders were thus particularly vulnerable to
be singled out. By contrast, prison officials showed greater consideration for sex
offenders or violent criminals.36
The classification as an incorrigible could not only influence the treatment of
prisoners during their sentence. The label also stuck after their release. First of all,
help for ex-convicts was restricted to those regarded as reformable. For example,
the Lichtenau institution in Bavaria (founded in 1927) provided a temporary
home for ex-convicts. But it was open only to deserving offenders. The author-
ities reassured potential private donors that the assumption that resources were
“squandered on the unworthy, habitual, and professional criminals, incorrigibles
and dangers to security, is completely false.” These ex-convicts did not deserve
support but security confinement.37 Secondly, many incorrigible ex-convicts in
Germany were put under strict police supervision. Continual checks by police
officials often resulted in the dismissal of former inmates from their jobs or the
eviction from their lodgings, leading some ex-convicts to commit further offenses
that were then taken by police officials and judges as further proof of their incor-
rigibility.38 Thirdly, some incorrigible inmates were detained even after the end
of their sentence of imprisonment. In 1926, the Bavarian diet passed the “Law
for the fight against Gypsies, travellers, and the work-shy.” Article 10 introduced
“correctional postdetention” for up to two years in a workhouse for “incorrigible
habitual criminals.” The Bavarian prison administration welcomed this measure
and instructed governors to provide the police with statements about incorrigible
offenders who were coming to the end of their sentence.39 Most Bavarian prison
officials were happy to comply, as can be illustrated by the case of Johann W.,
an unskilled laborer with numerous convictions for property offenses. In 1929,
when W. reached the end of his most recent sentence in the Straubing peniten-
tiary, the Munich police asked the Straubing officials for an assessment of W.
In response, the Straubing officials compiled a detailed report, concluding that
W. was an “incorrigible habitual criminal . . . who leads a parasitic existence.”

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128 | Nikolaus Wachsmann

Following this devastating assessment, Johann W. was interned by the police for
sixteen months in the workhouse in Rebdorf, even though he was not guilty of
any new offenses.40

Prisons and Prison Reform in the Final Years of the Republic

Germany was hit harder than any other Western state by the dramatic global
economic crisis following the New York stock exchange crash of 29 October
1929. The economic collapse exposed the frailty of a political system that had
lacked legitimacy even during the preceding brief period of relative stability. It
also led to the dismantling of the Weimar welfare state: unemployment benefits,
pensions, welfare payments, and expenditure on deviant groups were all reduced.
The prison service was also immediately affected. Living conditions for inmates
deteriorated once more, as the budget for food, clothing, electricity, and health
care was cut. Furthermore, just as during the inflation of the early 1920s, the
economic collapse contributed to an increase in property crime, with recorded
figures for “serious theft” almost doubling between 1928 and 1932. Combined
with the fact that German courts at the height of the depression passed almost as
many prison sentences as fines, reversing the long-term trend toward more fines
of the previous decades, inmate numbers began to rise again. The average num-
ber of inmates in Germany increased to about sixty-three thousand in 1932.41
Many of these prisoners were recidivist property offenders, as former convicts
found it harder than most to find subsistence. As Maria B., a prisoner in the
Aichach penal institution with numerous convictions for pickpocketing, told the
prison officials in August 1930: “I don’t yet know how I shall avoid my offenses
in future, as I don’t yet know what I shall live on.” She was released in July 1931
and recommitted to Aichach only four months later, following another sentence
for theft.42
The economic crisis brought about a strong attack on the Weimar prison.
But this backlash was not just a reaction to the economic hardship. Just as the
crisis served as a pretext for political and economic elites to abolish innovations
that conflicted with their interests, prison officials used the cover of economic
arguments to attack some of the new policies they had opposed in the past. What
united the attacks on the prison service was the claim that prisoners were pam-
pered and that precious resources were being squandered on incorrigibles, who
should instead be locked away indefinitely under harsh conditions. Already in
1930, the head of the Bavarian prison administration announced that he would
restructure the stages system to prevent the waste of time, effort, and energy on
“unnecessary ballast.”43 Soon, the vast majority of Bavarian inmates were held at
stage one, where penitentiary inmates were banned from buying extra rations
and from talking to one another during work and could only write one letter

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Class, Youth, and Sexuality in the Construction of the LustmörderBetween Reform and Repression | 129

every two months. The shift in Bavaria was profoundly influenced by the prison
doctor Theodor Viernstein, a key figure in the criminal-biological movement and
a fanatical racial-hygienist. Viernstein claimed in 1930 in several high-profile
lectures that half of all inmates were incorrigible, mostly on hereditary grounds.
This signified a dramatic turnaround, for Viernstein had previously declared that
at least two-thirds of all inmates were reformable. What had led him to revise his
figures was not any more refined methodology, but the crisis which had begun
to engulf Germany: “The state in its present financial and political situation can
and must deal, in terms of education and welfare, unreservedly only with those
elements . . . who really offer hope for re-socialization . . . There is absolutely no
room today for sentimentality! Strictest selection is a duty to state and commu-
nity.”44 Viernstein was not the only local prison official who demanded a change
of direction. Many others claimed that “exaggerated and dangerous humanity”
(such as walks outside the prison walls and theater productions) had to be rooted
out to be replaced by a renewed emphasis on discipline, obedience, and religion.
The officials also hoped that restrictions of the right to complain would restore
their total power over inmates.45 The attack on the prison system went far beyond
the prison officials and involved right-wing journalists and politicians, as well as
judges and state prosecutors, who joined in the call for cuts in prisoner provisions
and a “limitation of exaggerated measures of education and reform.”46
The Study Group was too weak to put up any meaningful resistance. To start
with, the attacks coincided with growing doubts by the reformers regarding their
own methods. Social workers in Thuringia acknowledged that they were still
“very much at sea” regarding the best way to treat prisoners. They also faced
occasional resistance from the prisoners themselves against some measures that
had been introduced. The officials became painfully aware that some prisoners
did not agree with the aims and methods used to reform them. In addition, the
reformers badly missed their two most influential supporters, Moritz Liepmann
(a liberal professor for criminal law in Hamburg) and Berthold Freudenthal,
who had died in 1928 and 1929, respectively. Finally, the political and economic
upheaval undermined many of the principles the reformers stood for. Prison
labor, seen by the reformers as central for rehabilitation, was in deep crisis as
unemployment quickly spread to penal institutions during the depression. In
some states, well over half the inmates were without work by 1932. The aim to
rehabilitate convicts by training them in productive work methods became com-
pletely unrealistic.47 The members of the Study Group knew that the tide had
turned against them and were weighed down by pessimism and despair.
The backlash was also influenced by the changing political climate in Germany.
The sharp turn to the far right, with the Nazis (NSDAP) becoming the largest
party in the July 1932 national elections, was accompanied by demands for a
more authoritarian approach to punishment.48 The NSDAP had no coherent pro-
gram for prison policy, but remarks by the party leadership left no doubt about

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130 | Nikolaus Wachsmann

its general outlook. “Marxism,” Hitler charged in 1929, “had made its baleful
influence felt in the German judicial system in that humanitarianism was misused
and blindly applied to penal policy.”49 The party attacked all “weakness” and “sen-
timental humanitarianism” toward common criminals, employing terminology
popular among the critics of the Weimar penal system.50 The Nazis aimed to turn
back some of the recent prison reforms, which had actually benefited some of
their own supporters. For example, Rudolf Höss, later the first commandant of
Auschwitz, had profited from new regulations favouring “delinquents motivated
by conviction.” According to his own testimony, Höss, committed to the Bran-
denburg penitentiary in 1924 for his part in a gruesome sectarian killing, was the
first inmate in the penitentiary to reach the coveted third stage. The light in his
cell was kept on until 10:00 p.m., he was allowed to write a letter every two weeks
and got an easy job in the administration of the institution.51
The Nazi call for a stricter prison service was more than rhetoric. This became
clear even before 1933. Following their victory in the Thuringian state elections
of 31 July 1932, the Nazis took over the prison administration in the state that
for a decade had been dominated by the Study Group. The Nazis quickly dis-
mantled the Thuringian prison service. As one Nazi deputy argued, the prison
reformers had to “disappear.”52 It only took the Nazis six months to get rid of the
three senior officials in Thuringia associated with the Study Group. By mid-Jan-
uary 1933, the governors in Untermassfeld and Eisenach (Albert Krebs and Curt
Bondy) had been removed and the architect of the Thuringian prison service,
Lothar Frede, had been transferred to a different position in the judiciary. Events
in Thuringia were soon replicated in other German states, after the Nazis had
taken control of the whole of Germany in 1933. Those penal institutions that
still pursued progressive policies were quickly transformed: prison tribunals and
social workers were abolished, the right of inmates to complain was cut back, and
the stages system was effectively abandoned. It took several decades before some
of the measures championed by the Study Group and pioneered in states like
Thuringia were reintroduced into German penal institutions.

Conclusion

The picture that has emerged of imprisonment in the Weimar period is a complex
and dynamic one. Carceral institutions have sometimes been described as “total
institutions,” virtually divorced from the outside world.53 While this perspective
offers valuable insights into the institutional life of the inmates, it is not really
concerned with the way in which these institutions were shaped by wider social
forces. Looking at the Weimar prison, the life of inmates was profoundly influ-
enced by social, economic, and political developments on the outside, such as
the revolution of 1918, the hyperinflation, the expansion of the welfare state, the

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Class, Youth, and Sexuality in the Construction of the LustmörderBetween Reform and Repression | 131

depression, and the rise of the Nazis. The experience of imprisonment depended
on many different factors, such as when the prisoner was held. Location was also
crucial, as the ability and willingness of senior officials to introduce new policies
differed from state to state. The life of an inmate in Thuringia in 1929 was dif-
ferent in many ways from that of a Bavarian prisoner three years later. There was
no typical Weimar prison.
Some aspects of the general development of imprisonment in the Weimar
Republic fit well into the evolution of Weimar social policy as sketched by Detlev
Peukert. The measures introduced in institutions such as Untermassfeld did con-
tain many of the seeds of the contemporary prison. This is evident in the gradual
relaxation of strict military discipline, the introduction of more prisoner auton-
omy, the emphasis on sport and recreation, the growing recognition of the legal
status of the prisoner, the influx of social workers at the expense of chaplains,
and the attempts to ease the inmates’ transition into society by teaching them
practical skills in workshops and in school. In the last years of Weimar, progres-
sive penal institutions like Untermassfeld were hit by a backlash, which can be
seen as part of what Peukert described as the “crisis of classical modernity,” when
policies that had only just been introduced were attacked and started to crumble.
Similar developments occurred in other carceral institutions at the same time. In
workhouses, policies pioneered in the 1920s, including the employment of social
workers, were abolished, and new measures in mental asylums, such as outpatient
care and “active therapy,” were also scaled down.54
However, the history of the Weimar prison also runs counter to some of Peu-
kert’s claims. The Weimar prison was certainly never dominated by the optimistic
belief that new educational measures could rehabilitate the inmates. Few prison
officials had “pedagogical dreams of omnipotence.” On the contrary, many offi-
cials continued to put their trust largely into the traditional and authoritarian
prison regime based on military discipline and retribution. These officials cannot
be described simply as conservatives, for they strongly supported the persecu-
tion of the incorrigible—the repressive side of the dual policy advanced by the
modern school of criminal law. True, this dark side of modern penal policy was
pursued with more vigor than ever before during the depression. But it had not
been hidden in the shadows in the previous years, as Peukert has suggested in
his work on social policy. It was out in the open and played a central role in the
1920s, both in the drafts for a new criminal code and inside penal institutions.
The support for the “incapacitation of the incorrigible” was one of the most
important legacies for the Nazi prison. Security confinement for “dangerous
habitual criminals” was introduced less than one year after the Nazi “seizure of
power,” drawing heavily on the criminological debates of the Weimar years. The
Nazi prison was influenced above all by the prison policy that had emerged in
the early 1930s, just like the backlash against the Weimar welfare state during the
depression laid the ground for the Nazi racial state.55 Thus, from 1933, measures

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132 | Nikolaus Wachsmann

against incorrigible prisoners went hand in hand with the stricter treatment of
most other inmates, while the call for the rehabilitation of reformable prisoners
was largely ignored. This approach was very much in line with the wishes of
many local prison officials. It comes as no surprise that there was a strong conti-
nuity among local officials from Weimar to the Third Reich. There was simply no
need for the Nazis to purge the prison service.

Notes
is chapter was originally published in the Historical Journal 45 (2002). It is republished here by
Th
permission, with minor revisions.

1. Among others, see David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder
in the New Republic (Boston, 1971); Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison
(Paris, 1975); Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revo-
lution, 1750–1850 (New York, 1978). The term rebirth of the prison is introduced in Norbert
Finzsch, “Elias, Foucault, Oestreich: On a Historical Theory of Confinement,” in Norbert
Finzsch and Robert Jütte, eds., Institutions of Confinement (Cambridge, 1996), 3–16.
2. Thomas Berger, Die konstante Repression: Zur Geschichte des Strafvollzugs in Preussen nach
1850 (Frankfurt/Main, 1974); Frank Mecklenburg, Die Ordnung der Gefängnisse: Grund-
linien der Gefängnisreform und Gefängniswissenschaft in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhun-
derts in Deutschland (Berlin, 1983); Paul Sauer, Im Namen des Königs: Strafgesetzgebung
und Strafvollzug im Königreich Württemberg von 1806 bis 1871 (Stuttgart, 1984); Richard
J. Evans, Szenen aus der deutschen Unterwelt: Verbrechen und Strafe, 1800–1914 (Rein-
bek, 1997); Helmut Berding, Diethelm Klippel, and Günther Lottes, eds., Kriminalität
und abweichendes Verhalten: Deutschland im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1999);
Thomas Nutz, Strafanstalt als Besserungsmaschine. Reformdiskurs und Gefängiswissenschaft
1775–1848 (Munich, 2001).
3. For an overview of the literature, see Nikolaus Wachsmann, Hitler’s Prisons: Legal Terror
in Nazi Germany (New Haven and London, 2004), 1–13, and Wachsmann, “Reform and
Repression: Prisons and Penal Policy in Germany, 1918–1939” (Ph.D. diss., University of
London, 2001), 6–23. I have dealt with aspects of the Nazi prison service in two articles,
“From Indefinite Confinement to Extermination: ‘Habitual Criminals’ in the Third Reich,”
in Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus, eds., Social outsiders in Nazi Germany (Princeton,
2001), 165–91; “‘Annihilation through Labor’: The Killing of State Prisoners in the Third
Reich,” Journal of Modern History 71 (1999), 624–659.
4. The great majority of penal institutions in Germany were small local jails for fifty or fewer
inmates, which generally held offenders serving sentences of three months or less. The focus in
this article is on larger penal institutions, where longer sentences were served.
5. Detlev J.K. Peukert, Grenzen der Sozialdisziplinierung: Aufstieg und Krise der deutschen Jugend-
fürsorge von 1878 bis 1932 (Cologne, 1986); Peukert, The Weimar Republic (London, 1993);
Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany (London, 1993). For Peukert’s influence, see Patrick Wagner,
Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher: Konzeptionen und Praxis der Kriminalpolizei in der Zeit der
Weimarer Republik und des Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg, 1996); Young-Sun Hong, Welfare,
modernity and the Weimar state, 1919–1933 (Princeton, 1998); David F. Crew, Germans on

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Class, Youth, and Sexuality in the Construction of the LustmörderBetween Reform and Repression | 133

Welfare: From Weimar to Hitler (New York, 1998); Edward R. Dickinson, The Politics of Ger-
man Child Welfare from the Empire to the Federal Republic (Cambridge, Mass., 1996).
6. Quotes in Peukert, Weimar, 276, 282; Peukert, Sozialdisziplinierung, 259, 307; Peukert, “The
Genesis of the ‘Final Solution’ from the Spirit of Science,” in David F. Crew, ed., Nazism and
German Society (London, 1994), 289.
7. See, for example, Untermassfeld penitentiary to state ministry, 31 December 1918, Thüringisches
Staatsarchiv Meiningen (ThSTA Mgn.), HSM Staatsministerium, Abteilung Justiz, Nr. 990.
8. Heinrich Hannover and Elisabeth Hannover-Druck, Politische Justiz, 1918–33 (Frankfurt/
Main, 1966).
9. Bund der Gefängnisbeamten Deutschlands, ed., Der Aufsichtsbeamte im Strafvollzuge (n.p.,
n.d.), 32–34. In 1921 alone, 649 state prisoners were sentenced to further imprisonment of
three months or more for their participation in riots; Reichsjustizministerium and Statistisches
Reichsamt, eds., Kriminalstatistik für das Jahr 1921 (Berlin, 1924).
10. “Revolte im Zuchthaus,” Berliner Tageblatt, 29 March 1920, Bundesarchiv Berlin (BA Berlin),
61 Re 1/1527, fo. 163; “Das Schwurgericht im Zuchthaus,” Berliner Tageblatt, 19 June 1920,
ibid., fo. 167.
11. “Das Elend der Strafgefangenen,” Vorwärts, 17 April 1923, BA Berlin, R 3001/5606.
12. Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft, 31.
13. Complaints by inmates of the Untermassfeld penitentiary, 15–16 December 1921, ThSTA
Mgn., HSM Staatsministerium, Abteilung Justiz, Nr. 985, fo. 187–200.
14. For corporal punishment in nineteenth-century Germany, see Evans, Szenen, 141–198.
15. For the wider context, see Richard Bessel, Germany after the First World War (Oxford, 1995),
220–253; Peukert, Weimar, 129–144, 263–273.
16. Franz von Liszt, “Der Zweckgedanke im Strafrecht,” in Liszt, Strafrechtliche Aufsätze und Vor-
träge, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1905), 1, 126–179, here 169, 173. See also Richard F. Wetzell, “From
Retributive Justice to Social Defense: Penal Reform in Fin-de-Siècle Germany,” in Germany
at the Fin de Siècle: Culture, Politics, and Ideas, ed. Suzanne Marchand and David Lindenfeld,
(Baton Rouge, 2004), 59–77; Wetzell, Inventing the Criminal: A History of German Criminol-
ogy, 1880–1945 (Chapel Hill, 2000), 33–38, 75–90; Max Grünhut, The Development of the
German Penal System 1920–32 (Cambridge, 1944), 28.
17. For the general background, see “Grundsätze für den Vollzug von Freiheitsstrafen vom 7. Juni
1923,” Reichsgesetzblatt, part II; Herbert Schattke, Die Geschichte der Progression im Strafvollzug
und der damit zusammenhängenden Vollzugsziele in Deutschland (Frankfurt/Main, 1979), 150–
157. For experiments with the progressive stages system in nineteenth-century Germany, see
Rudolf Plischke, “Historische Rückblicke ins 18. und 19. Jahrhundert zum Stufenstrafvollzug,”
Monatsschrift für Kriminalpsychologie und Strafrechtsreform (MSchriftKrim) 19 (1928), 417–429.
18. Ministerial decision Nr. 57911, 3 November 1921, in Bayerisches Staatsministerium der Jus-
tiz, ed., Der Stufenstrafvollzug und die kriminalbiologischen Untersuchungen der Gefangenen in
den bayerischen Strafanstalten (Munich, 1926), 10–18, here 15.
19. For a good introduction to the history of the prison, see Norval Morris and David J. Rothman,
eds., The Oxford History of the Prison (New York, 1995).
20. “Statistik des Gefängniswesens”; Statistik über die Gefangenenanstalten der Justizverwaltung in
Preussen 1924 (Berlin, 1927); Statistik über die Gefangenenanstalten der Justizverwaltung in
Preussen 1929 (Berlin, 1931); Hermann Stepenhorst, Die Entwicklung des Verhältnisses von
Geldstrafe zu Freiheitsstrafe seit 1882 (Berlin, 1993), 41–57; Claudia von Gélieu, Frauen in
Haft (Berlin, 1994), 68. The estimate of prisoner numbers is based on the Prussian statistics
for 1929. Prussia held about 60 percent of all German inmates.
21. For the Study Group and Untermassfeld, see Gefängnisse in Thüringen. Berichte über die Reform
des Strafvollzugs (Weimar, 1930); Albert Krebs, “Die Selbstverwaltung Gefangener in der
Strafanstalt,” MSchriftKrim 19 (1928), 152–164; Krebs, “Die GmbH als Betriebsform der

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134 | Nikolaus Wachsmann

Arbeit in der Strafanstalt,” in Heinz Müller-Dietz, ed., Freiheitsentzug: Entwicklung von Praxis
und Theorie seit der Aufklärung (Berlin, 1978), 498–508; Lothar Frede, “Der Strafvollzug in
Stufen,” in Lothar Frede and Max Grünhut, eds., Reform des Strafvollzuges (Berlin, 1927), 102–
136; Frede, “Der Strafvollzug in Stufen in Thüringen,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Strafrechtswis-
senschaft (ZStW) 46 (1925), 233–248, quote 236. For archival material on Untermassfeld, see
the files of the Thuringian Ministry of Justice in the Thüringisches Hauptsstaatsarchiv Weimar
(= ThHStAW). Secondary sources include Ursula Sagaster, Die thüringische Landesstrafanstalt
Untermassfeld in den Jahren 1923–33 (Frankfurt/Main, 1980); Katharina Witter, “Funktion
und Organisation der Zuchthäuser im kapitalistischen Deutschland, dargelegt am Beispiel
des Zuchthauses Untermassfeld” (Diplomarbeit, East Berlin, 1982). For prison labor in gen-
eral, see Philipp Borchers, “Die Gefangenenarbeit in den deutschen Strafanstalten,” Blätter für
Gefängniskunde (BlGefK) 54 (1921), 7–146.
22. Association of prison officials in Thuringia to state ministry, 14 February 1925, ThHStAW,
Thüringisches Justizministerium Nr. 423, fo. 4–5. See also disciplinary procedure against the
inmate Alfred S., 10 November 1925, ThHStAW, Thüringisches Justizministerium Nr. 1719,
fo. 76–78; memorandum by Lothar Frede, 15 June 1931, ThHStAW, Thüringisches Justizmin-
isterium Nr. 1683, fo. 167; Association of prison officials in Thuringia to ministry of justice,
16 April 1928, ThHStAW, Thüringisches Justizministerium Nr. 423, fo. 45–46; Untermassfeld
penitentiary to ministry of justice, 7 June 1933, ThHStAW, Personalakte Dr. Albert Krebs;
memorandum by Lothar Frede, 5 February 1925, ThHStAW, Personalakte Dr. Otto Zirker.
23. See note 1.
24. Untermassfeld penitentiary to ministry of justice, 8 December 1927, ThHStAW, Thüringisches
Justizministerium Nr. 1339, fo. 129–130; Untermassfeld penitentiary to ministry of justice,
20 November 1924, ThHStAW, Thüringisches Justizministerium Nr. 1683, fo. 30–35.
25. Rudolf Sieverts, “Die preussische Verordnung über den Strafvollzug in Stufen vom 7. Juni
1929,” MSchriftKrim, Beiheft 3 (Heidelberg, 1930), 129–151; Bernd Koch, “Das System des
Stufenstrafvollzugs in Deutschland” (Ph.D. diss., Freiburg University, 1972), 63–71; “20.
Mitgliederversammlung des Vereins der deutschen Strafanstaltsbeamten,” BlGefK 62 (1931),
1–332, here 201, 229, 293–296.
26. “Statistik des Gefängniswesens.” For the role of prison chaplains, see Brigitte Oleschinski,
“‘Ein letzter stärkender Gottesdienst . . . ’: Die deutsche Gefängnisseelsorge zwischen Republik
und Diktatur 1918–45” (Ph.D. diss., Free University Berlin, 1993).
27. In 1924, one in every fifteen penitentiary inmates submitted a written complaint. By 1929,
this figure was down to one in every eleven inmates; Gefangenenanstalten der Justizverwaltung
1924; Gefangenenanstalten der Justizverwaltung 1929.
28. Memoirs include Felix Fechenbach, Im Haus der Freudlosen (Berlin, 1925); Ernst Toller, Justiz
(Berlin, 1927); Max Hoelz, Vom “Weissen Kreuz” zur Roten Fahne (Frankfurt/Main, 1969 edi-
tion); Karl Plättner, Eros im Zuchthaus (Berlin, 1929).
29. Hoelz, “Vom Weissen Kreuz,” 362.
30. See, for example, Berthold Freudenthal, “Massregeln der Sicherung und Besserung,” in P. F.
Aschrott and Eduard Kohlrausch, eds., Reform des Strafrechts (Berlin, 1926), 153–172; Curt
Bondy, “Zur Frage der Erziehbarkeit,” ZStW 48 (1928), 329–334; Liepmann, Krieg.
31. Franz Exner, “Der Vollzug der bessernden und sichernden Massnahmen,” in Lothar Frede and
Max Grünhut, eds., Reform des Strafvollzuges (Berlin, 1927), 244–260, here 257.
32. Rorbert Heindl, Der Berufsverbrecher (Berlin, 1926).
33. Ibid., 191–195.
34. Ministerial decision Nr. 32222, 7 July 1923, in Bayerisches Staatsministerium der Justiz, ed.,
Stufenstrafvollzug, 26–38. For criminal biology in Bavaria, see Wolfgang Burgmair, Nikolaus
Wachsmann, and Matthias M. Weber, “‘Die soziale Prognose wird damit sehr trübe .  .  . ’:

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Class, Youth, and Sexuality in the Construction of the LustmörderBetween Reform and Repression | 135

Theodor Viernstein und die Kriminalbiologische Sammelstelle in Bayern,” in Michael Farin,

ed., Polizeireport München (Munich, 1999), 250–287.
35. “Die einschneidenste Gefängnisreform West-Europas,” Berliner Tageblatt, 11 July 1929, BA
Berlin, R 3001/5631, fo. 139.
36. I have examined the investigations carried out in Moabit between 1 May 1930 and 29 Decem-
ber 1930, collected in Landesarchiv Berlin, Rep 5 Acc 2863, Nr. 97 (for the quote, see the
examination of the inmate Erich B., 12 November 1930, ibid., fo. 134). For Bavaria, see Oliver
Liang, “Criminal-Biological Theory, Discourse, and Practice in Germany, 1918–45” (Ph.D.
diss., Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, 1999), 141–157. For contemporary criticism of
the Bavarian examinations, see Werner Petrzilka, Persönlichkeitsforschung und Differenzierung
im Strafvollzug (Hamburg, 1930).
37. Bayerisches Obsorge Amt, ed., Die Gefangenenobsorge (Lichtenau, 1928), 18.
38. Walter Luz, Ursachen und Bekämpfung des Verbrechens im Urteil des Verbrechers (Heidelberg,
1928), 243–246; Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft, 146–148.
39. Law for the fight against Gypsies, travellers and the work-shy, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv
(BayHStA), MInn 71579; ministerial decision regarding the implementation of the law for
Gypsies and the work-shy, BayHStA, MInn 71579; ministry of justice to penal institutions,
16 February 1927, BayHStA, MJu 22525.
40. Straubing penitentiary to Munich police, 24 May 1929, BayHStA, MInn 71560.
41. Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft, 215; Stepenhorst, Entwicklung, 42; Edgar Schmidt, “Aus der Statis-
tik der preussischen Gefangenenanstalten,” Deutsche Justiz 96 (1934), 1023–1026; Schmidt,
“Die Kosten des Strafvollzuges,” Deutsche Justiz 96 (1934), 1346–1347. The estimate of pris-
oner numbers is based on the Prussian statistics for 1932.
42. Curriculum vitae of the inmate Maria B., 22 August 1930, Staatsarchiv München, Justizvol-
lzugsanstalten Nr. 1820.
43. Conference of the Federal Officials Responsible for the Prison Service on 18 January 1930,
ThHStAW, Thüringisches Justizministerium Nr. 1337.
44. Report by Dr. Viernstein and Dr. Trunk, 4 February 1930, BayHStA, MJu 22507; Statistical
Material of the Report, 3 February 1930. For Viernstein, see Burgmair et al., “‘Die soziale
Prognose.’”
45. For the quote, see Heinrich Seyfarth, “Der Humanitätsgedanke im Strafvollzug,” Monatsblätter
des deutschen Reichszusammenschlusses für Gerichtshilfe 5 (1930), 67–82.
46. “Ersparnisvorschläge des Preussischen Richtervereins,” Juristische Wochenschrift 61 (1932),
916–917; “Anregungen der Vereinigung der Preussischen Staatsanwälte zu Ersparnissen auf
dem Gebiet der Justizverwaltung und Rechtsprechung,” ibid., 917–918.
47. Heinz Brandstätter, “Zur Situation der Strafvollzugsreform,” MSchriftKrim 23 (1932), 431–
432; Eduard Hapke, “Landesstrafanstalt Untermassfeld: Die Behandlung in der Gemeinschaft
der II. Stufe,” in Gefängnisse in Thüringen (Weimar, 1930), 96–105. See also Curt Bondy,
“Fortschritte und Hemmungen in der Strafvollzugsreform,” MSchriftKrim, Beiheft 3 (Heidel-
berg, 1930), 90–102.
48. See Klaus Marxen, Der Kampf gegen das liberale Strafrecht: Eine Studie zum Antiliberalismus in
der Strafrechtswissenschaft der zwanziger und dreissiger Jahre (Berlin, 1975).
49. Cit. in Richard J. Evans, Rituals of Retribution (London, 1996), 625.
50. Janus, “Rückblick—Ausblick,” Der Strafvollzug 22 (1932), 169–175.
51. See Höss’ prisoner file in Landeshauptarchiv Brandenburg, Pr. Br. Rep. 29, Zuchthaus Bran-
denburg Nr. 691. See also Martin Broszat, ed., Kommandant in Auschwitz: Autobiographische
Aufzeichnungen des Rudolf Höss (Munich, 1963).
52. Karl Rompel to Dr. Weber, 13 November 1932, ThHStAW, Thüringisches Justizministerium
Nr. 1707, fo. 32–35.

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136 | Nikolaus Wachsmann

53. See Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other
Inmates (London, 1971).
54. Wolfgang Ayass, Das Arbeitshaus Breitenau (Kassel, 1992), 253–258; Michael Burleigh, Death
and Deliverance: “Euthanasia” in Germany 1900–45 (Cambridge, 1994), 33–34.
55. See Crew, Germans, 208.

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