Beschreibung

Join us for a monthly, multimedia exploration of popular literature and film with d.a.i. teacher Scott Stelle.

This quarter, we'd like to explore American organized crime as it evolved into a national Syndicate and the, more or less, contemporaneous demise of old style big-city politicians. The alliance between crime and political machine was systemic in urban American and an open secret ever since Lincoln Steffens had written The Shame of the Cities(1904).With the coming of Prohibition, crime became Big Business and organized on business principles that required a new kind of gang. Until the 1920s, gangsters were anarchic, fighting each other as much as outsiders, and only flourished under the protection of the crooked politician to whom they served.

Yet, once hoodlums became disciplined, financially independent and possessed a chain of command, the old politician-underworld relationship shifted. Hoodlums gained ascendancy over urban politicians, and the Italian-Jewish Mob over the Irish, whom were the first large immigrant group with an identity distinct and separate from America's dominant White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture. So, once again, we shall continue our exploration of urban politics and crime through bestsellers of fiction, true crime and popular films.

Fr. 1.4. Robert Rockaway, But He Was Good to His Mother (1993, film Lansky, 2021)

• In English
• Location: d.a.i. hall
• Admission free, current COVID regulations apply

Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut Tübingen (d.a.i.)

Karlstrasse 3
72072 Tübingen

Lageplan