Back into the Unmasterable Past: Southwest Germany and the Judicial Odyssey of Mayor Reinhard Boos, 1947–1949 Michael S. Bryant The article examines a series of trials involving the November 1938 destruction of the synagogue in Lörrach, Germany, held between 1947 and 1949. The alleged ringleader of the pogrom was acquitted, as were some of his codefendants. These acquittals, together with the probationary terms offered to several of the defendants, suggest that the South Baden authorities had found they could censure Nazi violence toward Jews through criminal indictment and conviction, while simultaneously reintegrating compromised individuals – some of them now burdened with a criminal record for crimes of violence against Jews – into the new West German polity. The article examines the case in light of Émil Durkheim’ s normative-integrative theory of criminal law/criminal deviance, suggesting that the history of the trials requires qualification of Durkheim’ s theory as applied to human rights abuses by agents of the nation-state. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby Introduction In July 1947, in the idyllic South Baden city of Freiburg im Breisgau, a criminal trial was held that sent shockwaves through southwest Germany, scandalizing a population still reeling from six years of total war and complete military defeat. In the dock of the Freiburg regional court (Landgericht) stood 12 defendants accused of participating in the destruction of a synagogue in Lörrach, a city located in the far southwestern corner of Germany near the French and Swiss borders. The defendants ranged from the former mayor of Lörrach, Reinhard Boos, to various municipal departmental heads, Nazi party of ficials, and rank-and- file city employees, all charged, among other offenses, with crimes against humanity. Each defendant was charged with performing one or more acts in furtherance of the pogrom, links in a descending chain of violence against Lörrach’ s Jewish community that began with calls from local Nazi party headquarters to the town mayor and ended with hammer-wielding vandals who demolished the synagogue’ s interior. 199