NTM最新文献

In the past, historical research concerning the body supply of the Viennese Anatomical Institute during the inter-war period, the Second World War and the early years of the Second Austrian Republic was largely hampered by the fact that the so called "Leichenbücher" or "Leicheneingangsbücher" (documenting every single body, body part, etc. the institute received) of the Anatomical Institute had been deemed lost. A recent find at the Department of Anatomy in Vienna has now provided us with this long missing source material reaching with a short interruption from 1924 all the way into the first decades of the Second Republic.While this gap in source material has presented itself as an in some cases insurmountable issue for researchers, for example regarding the NS-era and the Pernkopf-Atlas during the late 1990ies, this find now provides ample opportunity for inquiries both for this time frame and beyond. This contribution shows the value the newly rediscovered books hold as source material based on a short study regarding the bodies of the nine individuals whose bodies were transferred to the Viennese Anatomical Institute after their execution during the Second Republic between 1945 and 1950. This example illustrates that this find will enable new research in the form of single case studies, serial inquiries and statistical analysis alike which without this discovery would remain impossible.

The article investigates the psychological evaluations (so-called Gemütszustandsuntersuchungen) that were used in legal interdiction proceedings at Berlin's district courts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The evaluations were undertaken in order to help judges decide whether or not individuals-usually, but not always feeble-minded or mentally ill ones-should be placed under legal guardianship. The following themes are addressed: the evolving procedural statutes that governed the exercise of judicial discretion and the presentation of scientific evidence; the collaborative interaction of judges and forensic experts during the interrogations; the instability of written transcripts and recourse to bodily and behavioral attributes in the face of interrogative failure; and the heated political exchanges about the psy-disciplines and their role in the abrogation or abridgment of citizens' rights in Wilhelmine Berlin. The article will first survey the specific statutory context that framed guardianship cases in Berlin's district court (Amtsgericht). It will then summarize contemporary debates about reforms to procedural law and the administrative adjudication of those cases. Against this backdrop, the analysis will then turn to an examination of court transcripts of the interrogations in order to assess the practice and often contested standing of psy-experts in the courtrooms of Wilhelmine Berlin.

This article provides a historical analysis of the institutional, legal, and psychological foundations of the study of interrogation in the post-Stalinist GDR. Drawing on archival and published documents, the development of the Criminological Section and Forensic Psychology at Humboldt University from the 1960s to the early 1990s is reconstructed. After giving an overview of the institutional context and the main actors in this field, the analysis highlights the relevance of psychological knowledge from the perspective of GDR criminologists. These aspects include the preparation phase, the initial contact with the defendant, the continuous dissection of statements during the interrogation, and the overarching goal of gaining a complete picture of the suspect's personality. It is argued that the defining feature of interrogation practice in the GDR was not so much the technical details as the overarching aim of "educating" the suspect, who was to be persuaded by the interrogator not only to confess to the crime, but also to show remorse and find his way back into socialism.

In this case study, I focus on two previously underresearched groups in the history of police interrogation: officers of the Female Criminal Police, established around 1926, and schoolteachers who, beginning in 1924, collaborated with the Leipzig Criminal Office as so-called criminal aides (Kriminalhelfer). Both the Female Criminal Police and the criminal aides of the Leipzig Criminal Office claimed a distinct niche within the domain of interrogation practices. They publicly asserted a superior aptitude for questioning children and adolescents, particularly in cases involving the sexual abuse of minors (then classified as Sittlichkeitsdelikte, that is, "moral offenses") under §176 of the Imperial Penal Code. The article situates these two groups within a broader discourse about interrogation methods that emerged around 1900, a debate increasingly shaped by new psychological approaches-above all, by the emerging field of the psychology of testimony (Aussagepsychologie). The question of which epistemic persona could most competently interrogate minors reflected, on one level, professional interests-the pursuit of new occupational opportunities for women and for teachers-and, on another, the contested epistemic authority and social recognition tied to particular forms of subjectivity. In the longer run, female police officers succeeded in establishing their legitimacy because they offered a model that could be integrated into existing police structures: a model of psychologically trained, empathetic officers responsible for cases involving children and young people. Teachers, by contrast, were unable to articulate a comparable epistemic or administrative framework, and their involvement in interrogation practices remained highly localized and short-lived.

In 1904, Max Wertheimer and Julius Klein published a paper that shook the worlds of criminal justice and psychology. They proposed using psychological experiments, particularly word association tests, to assess whether criminal suspects had committed a particular crime. Over the following months and years, almost every German-language journal on psychology or criminal law, as well as many foreign-language journals, published something on this so-called Tatbestandsdiagnostik. Some hailed it as the "criminal investigation of the future." However, Tatbestandsdiagnostik's downfall was as swift as its rise to fame. By the advent of World War I, most psychologists and jurists had concluded that the association method was of no use in legal and police practice. This article traces the history of Tatbestandsdiagnostik as a case of how new forms of psychological knowledge circulated, were evaluated, and made an impact. It argues that proponents' insistence on the method's objectivity, its ambiguous relationship with psychoanalysis, and the possibility of demonstrating it to students and colleagues facilitated both its rapid rise and its demise.