Contributi di Carlo Sabbatini

"The pessimism of my book". Carl Einstein in the first blasphemy trial of the Weimar Republic

ABSTRACT: The conviction for blasphemy imposed in 1922 on the writer Carl Einstein for the comedy Die schlimme Botschaft provides us with the opportunity of using the debate on crimes against religion to reflect on the epochal transition from the Wilhelminian Empire to the Weimar Republic. A picture emerges marked by strong contradictions, which manifest themselves also in violent street clashes and innumerable political murders, highlighting that the change of regime and the promulgation of the Constitution were not enough to overcome the profound resistance of a strongly conservative culture, still deeply rooted in the administration, judiciary and army leaders.

SOMMARIO: 1. Un triste anniversario - 2. La blasfemia: un dibattito ‘ponte’ tra primo e secondo Reich - 3. Il riformismo di Kahl e la tregua tra classici e moderni - 4. Dall’abrogazionismo militante di Thümmel alla conservazione di Moser - 5. La vexata quaestio del bene giuridico - 6. L’insuccesso dei progetti di riforma - 7. La formazione critica di Einstein tra poetica e politica - 8. Primitivo, immediato, proletario - 9. Dalla rivolta alla rinuncia - 10. Sanguinosamente serio - 11. Rassegnazione e blasfemia: La cattiva novella - 12. Verso il processo - 13. Un procedimento ‘per sentito dire’ - 14. La parola all’imputato: “Dio ridotto in articoli” - 15. “Invecchiati troppo in fretta”

SOMMARIO: 1. Panizza, un suddito infedele - 2. Scalpori e processi - 3. La pietra dello scandalo - 4. Un “teologo [...] eretico pittore di immagini sacre” - 5. Una scelta [quasi] obbligata - 6. Una foresta di simboli performativi - 7. Ordine religioso e ordine politico: l’ecosistema del processo - 8. Un “martire” a processo - 9. Martedì 30 aprile 1895, ore 19: la condanna - 10. Panizza sulla censura - 11. Morale religiosa come morale sessuale - 12. Manicomio, prigione, fuga - 13. “Un uomo fuori dal mondo”: ontologia di un blasfemo - 14. Istituzioni che succhiano il sangue.

The broken mirror of Liebeskonzil: a case of blasphemy in the Wilhelminian Empire

ABSTRACT: In 1895, due to the publication of the play Liebeskonzil, the writer Oskar Panizza was sentenced to one year imprisonment for blasphemy. Starting with such exemplary conviction, the essay reconstructs some aspects of the writer's existential and creative path, treating his vitriolic satires of religion as an access key to the political and social situation during the Wilhelminian Empire, where press laws and targeted use of crimes such as lèse majesté, obscenity and profanity, highlight the tenacity of Government, right-wing parties and Catholic Centre Party in pursuing the common purpose of silencing the opponents of the status quo.

SOMMARIO: 1. In forma di premessa - 2. L’immensa maggioranza degli spiriti -  3. Una forma particolare della speranza: religione e libertà tra dispotismo e repubblica - 4. Dal dogma teologico al dogma della maggioranza -  5. Quale religione? - 6. Contro la patologia del dubbio - 7. Polvere intellettuale: il metodo filosofico tra America ed Europa - 8. Chiesa e Stato tra America e Francia - 9. Democrazia e Cattolicesimo americano - 10. Una democrazia cristiana: Stato e Chiesa nell’ ‘ultimo’ Tocqueville.

“A salutary yoke on the intellect”: Religious Dogma and Political Freedom in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

ABSTRACT: The essay examines the relationship between religion and politics in Tocqueville's thinking, with particular attention to the synergy between Christianity and the development of democratic institutions, studied by the author in the United States. In the two volumes of Democracy in America, he observes that the doctrine of Christianity, subject to a process of popularization characteristic of American social dynamism, constitutes an essential connective tissue, through which the principle of equality permeates custom, law and institutions. This stabilization function finds a fundamental premise in the separation between spiritual and temporal sphere, which allows the former not to be bent to the conveniences of the second and, above all, not to be subjected to attacks which, as in the French Revolution, have confused and condemned it with its institutional form under the ancien régime. Such a circumstance, according to Tocqueville, has deprived society of the fundamental ethical background that unites it, neglecting above all the powerful egalitarian message that he identifies as a general character of Christianity and in particular of Catholicism, which he thinks even more appropriate to the democracy as the Protestant faith and which, by acting on custom, would enable the establishment and development of an indigenous democratic model also in France.