The rule of law and the role of literature: German public debates on husband-killers and human rights (1788-1845)

Abstract

In this article, I show that the great human rights debates of Germany's eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which focused on torture in the eighteenth and the death penalty in the nineteenth, were waged not predominantly in the courts of law, but far more significantly and effectively in that of public opinion. Contemporary literature about each century's most famous husband-killer, Maria Katharina Wächtler (1750-88) and Christiane 'Nanette' Ruthardt (1804?-45), shows that the struggle for human rights - understood here as the right to life and the right not to be tortured - owed more to literary portrayals in the press than to legal argument. Along the way, I contest some common assumptions, including Sven Kramer's assertion that the educated elite predominantly opposed torture during the eighteenth century, and Richard Evans's claim that eighteenth-century pamphlets inevitably took their cue from the authorities in their portrayal of criminals and crimes. © The Author (2011). Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved.