The two most celebrated intellectuals of the Weimar period — Carl Schmitt on the right and Walter Benjamin on the left — were fascinated by the role of crime in modern politics. In order to shed light on this neglected element of their work, this article explains how crime became a central category in their political theory and a crucial component in their narratives of modern history. Furthermore, it elucidates how both men simultaneously came to characterize their society as a whole, and not only fractions of it, as criminal in essence. Though many have seen the connection between Schmitt and Benjamin as a continuous dialogue, this study contends that the similarity between their theories of criminal politics should be interpreted not as a direct discussion, but within the context of wide debates regarding the origins of crime as well as the blending of criminal and political discourses that occurred during the Weimar period.
Agamben, G. ( 2005) State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2.
Benjamin, W. ( 1972) Gesammelte Schriften, ed. R. Tiedemann, 7 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
3.
Benjamin, W. ( 1996 [1921]) ‘The Critique of Violence’ , in M. Bullock and M. W. Jennings (eds), Selected Writings 1913-1926 , pp. 236-52. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
4.
Berkowitz, M. ( 2007) The Crime of my Very Existence: Nazism and the Myth of Jewish Criminality. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
5.
Bernfeld, S. ( 1996) ‘Die männliche Großstadtjugend’ , in S. Bernfeld, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 11: Sozialpädagogik, ed. Ulrich Herrmann, pp. 227-37. Weinheim: Beltz.
6.
Bredekamp, H. ( 1999) ‘From Walter Benjamin to Carl Schmitt, via Thomas Hobbes’, trans. M. Thorson Hause and J. Bond, Critical Inquiry, 25: 247-66.
7.
Caldwell, P. ( 1997) Popular Sovereignty and the Crisis of German Constitutional Law. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
8.
Derrida, J. ( 1990) ‘Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority’ , Cardozo Law Review, 11: 919-1045.
9.
de Vries, H. ( 2002) Religion and Violence: Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
10.
Diner, D. ( 1996) America in the Eyes of the Germans: An Essay on Anti-Americanism, trans. A. Brown. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener.
11.
Evans, R. ( 1997) Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany 1600-1987. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
12.
Fritzsche, P. ( 2006) ‘Talk of the Town: The Murder of Lucie Berlin and the Production of Local Knowledge’, in R. Wetzell and P. Becker (eds), Criminals and their Scientists, pp. 377-98. New York: Cambridge University Press.
13.
Gross, R. ( 2007) Carl Schmitt and the Jews: The ‘Jewish Question’, the Holocaust, and German Legal Theory, trans. Joel Golb. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
14.
Hanssen, B. ( 2000) Critique of Violence: Between Poststructuralism and Critical Theory. London: Routledge .
15.
Haverkamp, A. (1994) (ed), Gewalt und Gerechtigkeit: Derrida-Benjamin. Frankfurt am Main : Surkamp.
16.
Heil, S. ( 1996) Gefährliche Beziehungen: Walter Benjamin und Carl Schmitt. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler Verlag.
17.
Jacobson, E. ( 2003) Metaphysics of the Profane: The Political Theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem. New York: Columbia University Press.
18.
Killen, A. ( 2006) Berlin Electropolis: Shock, Nerves and German Modernity . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
19.
LaCapra, D. ( 1990) ‘Violence, Justice and the Force of Law’ , Cardozo Law Review, 11: 1065-78.
20.
Mack, M. ( 2001) ‘Between Kant and Kafka: Benjamin’s Notion of Law’, Neophilologus, 85(2): 257-72.
21.
McCormick, J. ( 2001) ‘Derrida on Law, or: Poststructuralism Gets Serious’ , Political Theory, 29(3): 395-423.
22.
Miller, J.H. ( 2001) ‘Derrida, Benjamin, the Internet and the New International’ , Parallax, 7(3): 6-11.
23.
Müller, J.W. ( 2003) A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
24.
Odysseos, L. ( 2007) ‘Crossing the Line? Carl Schmitt on the Spaceless Universalism of Cosmopolitanism and the War on Terror’, in L. Odysseos and F. Petito (eds), The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order, pp. 124-43. London : Routledge.
25.
Ojakangas, M. ( 2004) A Philosophy of Concrete Life: Carl Schmitt and the Political Thought of Late Modernity. Jyväskylä : Jyväskylän yliopisto.
26.
Rasch, W. ( 2003) ‘Human Rights as Geopolitics: Carl Schmitt and the Legal Form of American Supremacy’, Cultural Critique , 54: 120-47.
27.
Rasch, W. ( 2005) (ed.) special issue on The Nomos of the Earth, South Atlantic Quarterly, 104(2).
28.
Scheuerman, W. ( 1994) Between the Norm and the Exception: The Frankfurt School and the Rule of Law. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
29.
Schmitt, C. ( 1925) ‘Der status quo und der Friede’, Hochland, 23(1): 1-9.
30.
Schmitt, C. ( 1975) Theorie des Partisanen zum Begriff des Politischen . Berlin: Duncker und Humblot .
31.
Schmitt, C. ( 1976 [1926]) The Concept of the Political, trans. Georg Schwab. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
32.
Schmitt, C. ( 1995) ‘Die Auflösung der europäischen Ordnung im "International Law" (1890-1939)’, in Staat, Grossraum, Nomos, pp. 372-87. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot.
33.
Schmitt, C. ( 2003) The Nomos of the Earth, trans. G. L. Ulmen. New York: Telos.
34.
Schmitt, C. ( 2004 [1932]) Legality and Legitimacy, trans. Jeffrey Seitzer. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
35.
Schulz, P.M. ( 2004) Ästhetisierung von Gewalt in der Weimarer Republik . Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot.
36.
Schumann, D. ( 2001) Politische Gewalt in der Weimarer Republik 1918-1933: Kampf um die Strasse und Furcht vor dem Bürgerkrieg. Essen: Klartext.
37.
Siemens, D. ( 2007) Metropole und Verbrechen: Die Gerichtsreportage in Berlin Paris und Chicago 1919-1933. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag.
38.
Taubes, J. ( 1987) Ad Carl Schmitt. Berlin: Merve Verlag.
39.
Viesel, H. ( 1988) Jawohl, der Schmitt: Zehn Briefe aus Plettenburg . Berlin: Support.
40.
Weber, S. ( 1992) ‘Taking Exception to Decision: W. Benjamin and C. Schmitt’, Diacritics, 22(3-4): 5-18.
41.
Weigel, S. ( 2004) ‘The Martyr and the Sovereign: Scenes from a Contemporary Tragic Drama, Read through Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt’, trans. Georgina Paul, New Centennial Review, 4(3): 109-23.
42.
Werfel, F. ( 1920) Nicht der Mörder, der Ermordete ist schuldig . Munich: K. Wolff.
43.
Wetzell, R. ( 2000) Inventing the Criminal: A History of German Criminology, 1880-1945. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
44.
Zarmanian, T. ( 2006) ‘Carl Schmitt and the Problem of Legal Order: From Domestic to International’, Leiden Journal of International Law, 19: 41-67.
