There is a growing acknowledgement by historians that sensational criminal trials—and particularly newspaper coverage of such trials—played an important and hitherto underestimated role in the popular culture of Europe before WWI. Certainly, causes célèbres such as the Dreyfus Affair could dominate the European press for months at a time. But a closer look at German and Austrian newspapers reveals that coverage of sensational trials was a surprisingly common feature for both political and “non-political” newspapers. In an era of explosive growth and fierce competition, coverage of sensational trials was often key to increasing newspaper circulation. When cases touched upon important social issues, trial commentary could also be used to score political points. Of course, if any trials involved Jewish defendants (and sometimes even when they did not), they might also be exploited by anti-Semitic newspapers in their desperate quest for both readers and followers.

Daniel Vyleta's book, Crime, Jews, and News: Vienna 1895–1914, is one of a growing number of new works that focus on the role of sensational trials in public discussions of the “Jewish Question” at the turn of the century. The cornerstone of Vyleta's book is an analysis of the trials following the 1899 ritual murder accusations in the Bohemian town of Polna. Unlike the recent studies of ritual murder cases by Helmut Smith and Hillel Kieval, however, Vyleta's book is less interested in the historical origins or sociological triggers for such accusations and more in the particular tropes and narratives constructed within the trial coverage by the Viennese press. Since public perceptions of ritual murder accusations in Vienna were largely shaped by the press, such a study can tell us much about the nature of contemporary discussions concerning the “Jewish Question.”

Although an examination of the Polna affair is clearly the climax of his book, Vyleta touches upon this case in detail only in his final chapter. He builds toward the Polna case by first systematically surveying the development of professional criminology and criminalistics, examining the common characteristics of trial coverage, and describing the nature of other sensational trials involving Jews. His findings here are surprising. Vyleta concludes that the old model of attributing criminal behavior to the psychological or physiological degeneracy of the criminal had fallen out of favor by the turn of the century. Instead, it was replaced by a model that commonly depicted criminals, not as driven by biological or physiological urges, but as expert dissimulators who exploited a frequently gullible and suggestible populace.

Vyleta then presents numerous examples to show that this new discourse of criminality was also dominant in popular newspaper coverage of criminal trials. In a range of cases involving fraud, sex crimes, and murder, defendants were consistently characterized as hyper-rational dissimulators who sought to hide their true selves through theatrical performances in the courtroom. Vyleta carefully deconstructs the rhetoric used in the trial coverage to demonstrate that newspapers enticed readers not only through sensational descriptions of courtroom events, but also by allowing them to assume the viewpoint of a detective; that is, newspapers commonly described the artificiality or theatricality of defendants and witnesses in a manner that allowed readers to play detective and “discover” the dissimulation.

Vyleta's most interesting (and most controversial) conclusions come in the last chapters of his book. While trial coverage of occasional incidents involving “truly exotic” defendants (i.e., Gypsies or Chinese) would often revert to biological or racial characterizations, trial narratives of cases involving Jewish defendants would not. Even in the anti-Semitic press, Jewish defendants were rarely characterized as atavistic monsters driven to criminal activities, but instead as highly intelligent men and women who counted upon their interpersonal skills to defraud a generally naïve populace. This was also true in the Polna ritual murder case, an episode that one might otherwise assume to be perfect fodder for a portrayal of Jews as backward and bloodthirsty.

Based on this evidence, Vyleta throws doubt on Sander Gilman's notion that criminality in fin de siècle Europe, and particularly Jewish criminality, was depicted primarily in stereotyped racial and physiological terms. Anti-Semitic newspapers that wanted to highlight Jewish criminals rarely availed themselves of common racial stereotypes to make their point. Perhaps most surprising, Vyleta also concludes that other than a narrow and specifically anti-Semitic press, most newspapers were highly reluctant to engage in any discussions of the “Jewish Question” during trial coverage or even identify particular defendants and witnesses as Jewish. Liberal and socialist newspapers exploited trials involving Jewish defendants with equal gusto, but almost entirely as public spectacles devoid of racial or religious significance. Thus, in concluding his book, Vyleta not only casts doubt on the dominance of racial stereotypes in anti-Semitic propaganda at the turn of the century, but also questions the degree to which anti-Jewish rhetoric and stereotypes gained substantial “respectability” in prewar Austria.

Although his evidence is clear and persuasive, Vyleta may occasionally overstate his case. Racial stereotypes of “degenerate” Jews, for instance, were still present in trial narratives (especially in the form of satirical illustrations), even if they were often overshadowed by portraits of Jewish defendants as master criminals. Older racial stereotypes undoubtedly must have seemed inconsistent with contemporary anti-Semitic notions of a successful Jewish conspiracy that dominated the continent. In addition, Vyleta does not go far enough in explaining his surprising conclusions. If, as he suggests, the “mainstream” newspapers of Vienna covered trials such as the Polna case primarily for sensationalistic value and not to score political points, can this properly be attributed to changing attitudes about Jews, to changes in the “politicization” of the press, or to particularities in the Austrian political constellation?

Although Vyleta's book lacks the narrative richness of Benjamin Hett's recent study of the culture of the Wilhelmine courtroom, it is nonetheless an important contribution that balances previous interpretations of “modern” ritual murder accusations. The sensational cases that arose in places such as Tisza-Eszlár, Xanten, Konitz, and Polna were not simply a product of local tensions or age-old myths, they were also episodes largely driven by a modern (or modernizing) mass media.