Döblin's Epic: Sense, Document, and the Verbal World Picture

The case was replete with all of the fantastic elements of a stranger- than-life story-a domestic melodrama, a homosexual affair, a murderous intrigue, and a courtroom spectacle-that had earlier made the trial of the two women a gigantic media event in March 1923 and that seemed to guarantee the commercial success of this first installment of Die Schmiede's new "Pitaval" crime series. In addition to the testimonies of twenty-one witnesses during the trial, there were the expert opinions of "a little flock of schooled men," enlightened scientists and psychiatrists brought in to collect and anatomize the dreams that Elli had while in prison, to scrutinize the motivations and mental dispositions of the two outsiders, and ultimately to determine, through state-of-the-art scientific instrumentation, whether one of the lovers or Link himself bore the burden of guilt for his death.