Women as Children, Women as Childkillers
Poetic Images of Infanticide in Eighteenth-Century Germany
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 16004335 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Susanne Kord (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1993 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 449-449 |
| Publication date | 1993-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Eighteenth-Century Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-2586 • E-ISSN: 1086-315X |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2739413 |
| OpenAlex | W1968223256 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
1 Considering this fact, it is surprising how little literature there is on the subjects, particularly on infanticide. The four main studies that should be mentioned here are Wilhelm Wachtershauser's Das Verbrechen des Kindesmordes im Zeitalter der Aujkldrung (Berlin, 1973); Jan Mathias Rameckers' 1927 dissertation Der Kindesmord in der Literatur der Sturmund Drang-Periode (Rotterdam); Beat Weber's study Kindsmorderin im deutschen Schrifttum von 1770-1795 (Bonn, 1974); and Germaine Goetzinger's article Mannerphantasie und Frauenwirklichkeit, Kindermorderinnen in der Literatur des Sturm und Drang, Frauen-Literatur-Politik, ed. Annegret Pelz et al. (Hamburg, 1988), p. 263-86. Wachtershauser's book is the first legal history of infanticide in the eighteenth century, particularly of the Enlightenment period, and especially valuable because of the many court records he either quotes or includes in the appendix. Rameckers interprets works by H. L. Wagner, Lenz, Goethe, Maler Muller, Sprickmann, Schubart, Gemmingen, Schiller, and Klinger in the context of contemporary criminology, and includes many poems on the subject that are now hard to obtain. Weber gives a survey of the legal context and applies some psychoanalytical theories in his analyses of selected Storm and Stress writings and Goethe's Faust. Goetzinger is the first critic to contrast some of the infanticide literature (Schiller's ballad Die Kindsm6rderin, Lenz' novella Zerbin and Goethe's drama Faust) with real-life cases, and to suggest the court records of the time as a source for contemporary reality as opposed to the fictional accounts. Since the purpose of her essay is largely to establish that contrast, Goetzinger places more emphasis on the transfiguration of
Art · Literature · Poetry · Sociology · Gender Studies · German Literature and Culture Studies · History · Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse · Medicine · Psychoanalysis and Social Critique · Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.14 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2004 - 2017 (14) |
| Highly cited | No |