Description
Book SynopsisAlthough largely forgotten now, the 1885 trial of German artist Gustav Graef was a seminal event for those who observed it. Graef, a celebrated sixty-four-year-old portraitist, was accused of perjury and sexual impropriety with underage models. On trial alongside him was one of his former models, the twenty-one-year-old Bertha Rother, who...
Trade ReviewHartston's book is a well written and engaging study. The author successfully uses the Graef trial to shine a light on the reactions of German male bourgeois elites to social and economic transformations taking place in the 1880s, an era, he argues, that historians too frequently ignore in favor of the 1890s. The book speaks to several historiographic discussions within German history and will be of value to students of the legal, cultural, and social history of late nineteenth-century Germany.
* Central European History *
Hartston skillfully weaves art and society into his description of a political critique of German liberalism, relying on the criminal justice system to demonstrate a 'silent revolution' against bourgeois dominance.In the end, Hartston insists, 'substantial progressive and democratizing tendencies within imperial Germany' moved the country forward through a series of nearly constant 'political, cultural, and legal clashes.'
* German History *
...engaging study of a court case that took place in Berlin in the fall of 1885.
* The Journal of Modern History *
It is Hartston's deft balancing of a particular focus on the Graef trial and a broader view of its historiographical implications that makes this book a successful example of microhistory.In clear and beautiful prose
* American Historical Review *
