Convinced that sexual immorality and unstable gender norms were endangering national recovery after World War One, German lawmakers drafted a constitution in 1919 legalizing the censorship of movies and pulp fiction, and prioritizing social rights over individual rights. These provisions enabled legislations to adopt two national censorship laws intended to regulate the movie industry and retail trade in pulp fiction. Both laws had their ideological origins in grass-roots anti-'trash' campaigns inspired by early encounters with commercial mass culture and Germany's federalist structure. Before the war, activists characterized censorship as a form of youth protection. Afterwards, they described it as a form of social welfare. Local activists and authorities enforcing the decisions of federal censors made censorship familiar and respectable even as these laws became a lightning rod for criticism of the young republic. Nazi leaders subsequently refashioned anti-'trash' rhetoric to justify the stringent censorship regime they imposed on Germany.

'Ritzheimer’s ['Trash', Censorship, and National Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Germany] is a multifaceted, well-researched book that has much to offer scholars of widely varying interests. And her larger argument - that 'anti-‘trash’ activists … paved a rhetorical path … even an emotional one' to the far more brutal censoriousness of the National Socialist regime - is sobering.'

David Ciarlo Source: American Historical Review

‘… this is a wellwritten and researched work that makes several important contributions to our understanding of German history in the early twentieth century.’

Jason Phillips Source: European History Quarterly