Karsten Altenhain – författare

Since the signing of the international conventions prohibiting torture, this extreme form of violence seemed to remain a problem only in individual dictatorships. Discussions over the permissibility of "preventive" torture or torture to save people''s lives and methods practised in the "war on terror" question this assumption. Since the mid-1990s there has been an increase in the portrayal of torture on television, in films and computer games, and even in its use by positive heroes. At the same time medical and psychological evidence testifies to the serious psychological consequences of torture for the victims. Torture not only threatens individuals but also the fundamental social cohesion of human life.The contributions to this volume discuss various aspects of torture. They range from media law provisions to the visual representation of torture, how torture is dealt with in the context of legal residential status procedures, and how medicine and psychology relate to torture and historical and current legal discourse.

The conditions under which torture might be allowed have been the subject of recent discussion particularly in the light of so-called "rescue torture". The fact that the abolition of torture was always seen as a milestone on the way to the rule of law and the constitutional state and a central element of the self-conception of western legal systems at least, seems to have been forgotten.The contributions to this volume analyse on the one hand the increasingly proclaimed abolition of torture in the 18th century, and on the other the various forms and functions of torture that nevertheless continued. The central focus lies on punishments for disobedience in the 18th and 19th centuries including the torture crimes perpetrated by police and military forces not only in the colonies, but also the accusation by the German Red Army Faction of the use of torture. How has the function of torture changed and how does this change relate to the changed view of humanity and the proclaimed proscription of torture? Was there a discourse after its official abolition on torture and physical or mental violence in the context of criminal proceedings? The aim of the volume is to demonstrate under what conditions and in what forms torture has always been able to reassert itself – even in the emergent constitutional state.