Word: sadists
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...cosmopolitan and perverse Berlin, Sadism and kindred anomalies are well known and understood. The Sadist is recognized as an individual who commits acts of cruelty upon animals or humans not in a spirit of simple violence but because he derives from them complex sexual satisfaction. As every Berlin detective knows, Sadism takes its name from a Frenchman born in the reign of dissolute Louis XV, famed Donatien Alphonse François Comte ("Marquis") de Sade, whose incredibly voluminous and wearisomely detailed writings glorify "the philosophy of cruelty for its own sake" much as Christian writers exalt Divine Love...
Seemingly the Berlin detectives worked on the theory that a genuine Sadist in the audience would react with pleasure if not glee, while everyone else would be revolted or would scream or faint, as many did last week. Results from this strenuous method of crime detection were said to be "promising," and several arrests were made, though no one was actually charged with being a Crime Clubber last week...