Fritz Lang's M: Serial Killers

Fritz Lang’s visionary film, M, was released during an immensely politically and socially relevant time for Germany. With decades of psychological leftovers from the Great War and the rising power of Hitler’s National Socialist party, there were numerous things to be mindful of and much to consider in relation to the deeply politically ruptured state of Germany during this time. Concurrently, media was full of a lot of something else—serial killers. From a contemporary perspective, it seems fitting, but the presence of multiple serial killers has a lot to say about the psyche of the contemporary German at this time. Lang has denied the direct affiliation with any particular killer on trial during the time the film was being written and produced. In his defense, there was a lot of material to work with considering the bounty of serial killers terrorizing Germany at the …show more content…
The amount of sensationalism that developed around these serial killers and trials is something akin to modern media, and something we’ve all grown quite used to. However, the notable presence of serial killers in post-war Germany was something of a direct result of the unprecedented mass-murder that had occurred in such a short amount of time in the war, a compulsion or an emulation of the disturbed psyche of war.
It has been assumed that Lang was working from the media coverage of Peter Kürten, or The Vampire of Düsseldorf. However, there were a handful of serial killers running around Germany at the time including the criminally and violently prolific Friedrich Haarmann, Carl Großmann and the unknown extent of his crimes and intent, and Großmann’s predecessor, Karl Denke and his unfortunate hankering for cannibalism; all of these cases being excellent portraits of the developing criminology world of the