![]() ![]() In Germany far more than anywhere else in Europe, capital punishment was identified with anti-liberal, authoritarian concepts of sovereignty. The abolition of the death penalty became a classic liberal case which triumphed, if only momentarily, in the 1848 Revolution. He shows how this system was challenged by Enlightenment theories of punishment and broke down under the impact of secularization and social change in the first half of the nineteenth century. Richard Evans analyses the system of `traditional' capital punishments set out in German law, and the ritual practices and cultural readings associated with them by the time of the early modern period. This book examines the use of that supreme sanction in Germany, from the seventeenth century to the present. The state has no greater power over its own citizens than that of killing them. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |