For eighty years, the Gotham City Police Department has had a special emergency call.

It is always used when the already rampant crime in the metropolis can no longer be brought under control.

It is a searchlight that projects a stylized bat into the night sky.

The device celebrated its premiere in the sixtieth volume of “Detective Comics”, which was published in 1942.

It is officially introduced to Gotham's citizens at the end of Tim Burton's 1989 film adaptation of the story.

When terror and chaos reign supreme, the message goes, we summon Batman with this signal - and everything will be fine.

Kai Spanke

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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That is reassuring and at the same time a legal declaration of bankruptcy.

On the one hand we have a superhero who risks his life for civil order.

On the other hand, the necessity of his interventions shows the greatest desperation.

Politicians and the police can relieve themselves of their duties at the push of a button.

In this respect, it is logical that Commissioner Gordon destroys the Bat-Signal with an ax in the second part of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, "The Dark Knight" (2008).

This grimly executed iconoclasm can be understood as an act of self-assertion, after all the city can only regain its autonomy without Batman.

Of course, here too the vigilante is the greatest opponent of vigilantism.

It is not easy to find your way out of this paradox.

It could still succeed if you take into account that the black cape hides billionaire Bruce Wayne, whose commitment to Gotham represents a kind of "republican heroism".

For the lawyer and historian Daniel Damler, this form of heroism is in conflict with “democratic liberalism with its postulates of universality and equality”.

Wayne is different from everyone else.

He did not have to abide by the rules of society, "just as in Rome charisma and personal ability were important prerequisites for succeeding as a dictator and terrorist hunter".

Cincinnatus serves as an example,

who became a brief ruler in the fifth century BC when enemies threatened the Roman Empire.

After sixteen days he had defeated his opponents, then he resigned his office.

A virtuous leader.

With great power comes great responsibility

If one is willing to grant Wayne such a special status, the lack of transparency around his person seems acceptable, even though surveillance of public life is part of his day-to-day business.

A so-called "high frequency generator" with which he can access the cell phone data of all citizens makes it clear in "The Dark Knight" that it is not about the extent of strength and influence, but about the character suitability of the person who has both owns.

What is true of Spiderman cannot be wrong of Batman: "With great power comes great responsibility."

According to Damler, anyone who is interested in global and national crises in the 21st century cannot avoid the Batman character conceived by Bob Kane and Bill Finger in 1939, because their homeland is known to billions of people and stands for the “permanent state of emergency”.

The city stretches across several islands, and that's not the only reason why it's always seen as a negatively over-formed version of New York.

Terrorist attacks are taking place on its streets, it is to be destroyed with weapons of mass destruction and it is home to a whole squad of lunatics.

The "Batman" films, on which the author concentrates, excluding the comics, deal with central themes of political philosophy and state theory.

That is why authors like Plato and Machiavelli keep coming up in Damler's treatise.

Incidentally, the latter recommended