| Abstrakt: |
This article uncovers numerous parallels between Schlink’s first detective novel Selbs Justiz (1987) and Schirach's bestselling novel Der Fall Collini (2011), arguing that Schirach is consciously stepping into dialogue with his older colleague Schlink in his approach to the Nazi past. Both novels deal with CEOs of leading German corporations who turn out to have been high-ranking members of the NSDAP with a murderous past, and both ex-Nazis are killed in an act of vigilante justice. I also suggest that Wolfgang Staudte’s 1946 rubble film Die Mörder sind unter uns, which still placed hope in the German judiciary for bringing mid-level Nazi perpetrators to justice, serves as a subtext in both novels. Schlink and Schirach demonstrate how misguided that initial hope was. Yet where Schlink’s approach to Vergangenheitsbewältigung ultimately serves to “normalize” the Holocaust and becomes as such representative of the conservative trend of placing an endpoint–a Schlußstrich–under the Nazi past, Schirach counters this tendency by insisting on the importance of Holocaust remembrance. He may as such be seen as part of the more recent “ethical turn” in memory discourse by placing himself squarely on the side of the victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
