In the Crosshairs of Justice and the End of Bremen

I spent most of the weekend in Bremen, Germany. Strolling around the city, I encountered two sculptures that I really liked. I saw this right after I arrived in the city. Before anything, its scale made me stop. At first I thought it was a futuristic scene. Then I realized that it was concretely bureaucratic. This was sculpted by Manfred Lohrengel in 1973 on the wall of the district court. Its name is Im Fadenkreuz der Justiz (“In the Crosshairs of Justice”). Before reading the Wikipedia page—which is only available in German—I figured it was depicting some kind of hearing. What’s going on at the bottom? The woman at the center is the most prominent. She looks captured and broken. Is she the accused or the victim? Her appearance is so out of joint. A naked body and an almost erotic posture. In the upper right, just past her shoulder, you’ll notice an angry man shouting at her. Who is he? The offender? The prosecutor? With all these questions running through my mind, I encountered…