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This article highlights the interdependent interlacing of semi-official sensationalist media coverage and its appropriation by ordinary people in Imperial Berlin, by examining the criminal case of a knifer in 1909 and its repercussions in the urban arena. In 1909, contemporaries swiftly associated “the misdeeds of the knifer” with the London Jack the Ripper Case of the year 1888. In spite of the intriguing Ripper tag particular characteristics distinguished the Berlin knifer: the proactive press policy of the Criminal Investigation Department and the cooperation of Berlin’s newspapers. My contention is that the well established semi-official cooperation between Department IV and Berlin’s press was instrumental in ‘the making of the case’. The police instigated a public manhunt, and the success of this undertaking crucially relied on the effective cooperation of the police and the urban population. However, the public investigation of the case was not without frictions and misunderstandings; relationship between the authority and the “subjects” was ambiguous. Furthermore, the daily circulation of clues of the ongoing investigation went with the proliferation of “the misdeeds of knifer”. Consequently, copycat action was rife, and the suppression of the “stabbings” was achieved only by extending the ordinary means of the public search coordinated by the police.

Covering Crime, Restoring Order. The “Berlin Jack the Ripper” (1909) and the Press Policy of the Berlin Criminal Investigation Department