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Introduction Revolutionizing German-Language Crime Fiction ANITA MCCHE SNEY/ JOSEPH W. MOSER Te x a s Tech Univ ersity/ We st Che ster Univ ersity George Bernard Shaw famously quipped that there are two areas where Germans lack talent: revolution and crime novels. More than 100 years later, this dismissive view of German crime writing does not seem to have evolved in Anglo-Saxon thinking. In a December 2012 episode of Public Radio International’s program «The World,» Lisa Mullins questioned experts at the Frankfurt book fair about the lack of popularity of German thrillers in English, who answered saying they are «too local, too regional, just too German.» 1 In contrast to this gloomy appraisal from the book market and its relative obscurity amongst an international readership, 2 German-language crime fiction is thriving among German readers. Between 400 and 500 crime novels are published each year in Germany alone. 3 Scholarly engagement with Krimis has also increased on both sides of the Atlantic. In the past decade German-language crime fiction has attracted international literary scholars, thereby expanding the ever-growing body of German-language scholarship of the past thirty years. 4 In 2014 alone two noteworthy English-language anthologies helped advance knowledge of the German crime genre in the English-speaking world - Tatort Germany: The Curious Case of German-Language Crime Fiction, and Detectives, Dystopias, and Poplit: Studies in Modern German Genre Fiction 5 - and this academic interest in the genre promises to continue with additional publications already scheduled for release in 2015-16, including Crime Fiction in German. Der Krimi, and Contemporary German Crime Fiction. A Companion. 6 Even with this recent increase in international scholarly interest, however, research on the German crime genre continues to lag significantly behind that of its English, French, Italian, and Spanish counterparts. Moreover, much of the previous scholarship evaluates German-language crime fiction according to the patterns established by the British analytic mysteries and American hard-boiled detective stories from the early twentieth century. However, the themes, narrative structures, and rules in the Anglo-American tradition are often insufficient for assessing the new directions and innovative approaches in contemporary German-language crime literature and 110 Anita McChesney/ Joseph W. Moser film. Many of the works in this dynamic contemporary literary landscape overturn the narrative models of traditional crime fiction, such as the structural triad of crime, detection, and resolution. 7 Contemporary texts most frequently transform the resolution, the famous dénouement in which the case is resolved and explained and after which order returns to a society thrown into chaos by the crime and investigation. In these works the quest often produces more questions than answers about both the crimes and the society in which they occur. In fact, in German-language Krimis social issues often supersede the mystery. These social themes cover a broad range of topics. Some texts focus on contemporary matters unique to the writers’ countries, such as the so-called «Nazi detective novel» that explores the afterlife of National Socialism and Fascism (Bernhard Schlink’s Selb trilogy) or the Regiokrimi that highlights the peculiarities of a particular rural community (Jacques Berndorf’s Eifelkrimis and a majority of Wolf Haas’s Brenner novels). Other Krimis tackle international concerns, such as multiculturalism and xenophobia (Jakob Arjouni’s Kayankaya series), gender and sexuality (Doris Gercke’s Bella Block novels and films), and political corruption (Eva Rossmann’s Wahlkampf ), to name just a few. Along with the social themes Krimi authors also address fundamental human struggles, in particular the individual’s search for identity in terms of gender, psychology, and social relations. 8 A reevaluation of the rich landscape of Germanlanguage crime fiction thus ultimately refutes the misperception that Krimis are limited to a particular audience or place. This special issue of Colloquia Germanica explores some of the innovative techniques, perspectives, and themes in German-language crime literature and film that demonstrate their transnational relevance. Based on two panels from the 2014 German Studies Association Conference, the contributions are grouped around two thematic categories: first, crime narratives that tackle National Socialism, the Holocaust, and its aftermath; and, second, works that transform perceptions of the national and global by confronting issues such as the search for identity, the struggle with human mortality, and the limits of knowledge, the knowable, and their representation. Assessing new directions in German-language Krimis, the following seven contributions refute the notion of an unimaginative, clichéd genre that is out of touch with the interests and concerns of the world. Since the late 1980s, there has been an upsurge in German-language Krimis that tackle aspects of National Socialism, Fascism, and the Holocaust along with the central crime. Whether set in Weimar and Nazi Germany or the post-1945 world, these Krimis explore connections between the era and its effects on society. The first four contributions in this volume consider the Introduction 111 differing ways in which crime stories participate in the historical events and aftermath of National Socialism and the Holocaust. In «Weimar and Nazi Germany in Contemporary German Historical Crime Fiction» Thomas W. Kniesche examines the return of history in historical crime novels depicting Weimar and Nazi Germany. His analyses of Volker Kutscher’s Der nasse Fisch, Christian von Ditfurth’s Mann ohne Makel and Andrea Maria Schenkel’s Kalteis show in particular how these three contemporary novels criticize the master narratives of traditional historiography that claim to provide a full understanding of, and thereby closure to, history’s questions and dilemmas. As the novels’ protagonists investigate individual crimes, they repeatedly encounter historical accounts that are fragmented and/ or missing completely. The historical crime novels themselves then become a necessary medium to supplement the gaps in historiography on Weimar and Nazi Germany. Kniesche suggests that historical crime novels complement our knowledge of these historical periods just as they also reflect on the methods and theoretical underpinnings of historiography. Ultimately, he concludes, the historical skepticism in these historical crime novels undermines «a belief in the possibility of knowing ‹how it really was.›» The legacy of National Socialism is also central to Dagmar C.G. Lorenz’s analysis, «Transnational Post-Shoah and Postwar Family Stories as Detective Fiction. Descendants as Detectives in Irene Dische, Jurek Becker, Clemens Eich, and Tanja Dückers.» In her reading, Lorenz looks at four novels in which the protagonists engage in detective work to reconstruct knowledge of their family histories. In particular, their fact-finding investigations attempt to reconstruct their families’ cultural identity and place in history in the aftermath of the Third Reich. Inevitably the self-appointed detectives uncover hidden crimes that then become a critical test of the protagonists’ character as they are forced to decide how to proceed with the revelations. For Lorenz, the «intergenerational detective work» in these crime novels demonstrates a continuing German and Austrian literary tradition of engaging with the Nazi past. Moreover, in view of the countries’ association with the Third Reich, the novels affirm the continuing significance of German depictions of such quests in the global context. Anita McChesney similarly considers the connection between investigating family history and the Nazi past in recent crime novels in «The Second History of National Socialism in Contemporary Austrian Crime Fiction.» Looking specifically at the Austrian context, McChesney shows how Eva Rossmann and Lilian Faschinger use the crime schema to present the silenced history of National Socialism as the cultural inheritance 112 Anita McChesney/ Joseph W. Moser of the second postwar generation and as a permanent part of the fabric of contemporary Austrian society. Their differing narrative approaches, however, suggest competing conclusions. Rossmann’s traditional crime narrative Freudsche Verbrechen ends with expanded knowledge about the crimes present and past - specifically two murders in present-day Vienna with roots in the «Aryanization» policies under the Third Reich - and with the main perpetrator’s arrest. By achieving narrative closure, the novel suggests the possibility of gaining an empathetic understanding of the past. Lilian Faschinger’s postmodern twist on the crime genre in Stadt der Verlierer, by contrast, leaves the reader with more questions than answers. The open ending of her portrayal of Austrian crimes past and present suggests an inability to resolve social issues such as continuing ignorance and distorted views about the Nazi past that then find their counterpart in rampant misogyny, bigotry, racism, dysfunctional families, and hypocrisy in contemporary Austrian society. McChesney concludes that the novels’ dissimilar approaches to presenting a parallel social critique underscore both the national and international significance of German-language «Nazi» crime fiction and its potential to comment on a genre’s possibilities and limitations in depicting the Third Reich. In «Detectives in a Criminal Regime: Krimis in Nazi Comedy Film,» Joseph W. Moser looks at the relationship between representations of crime and politics in the Nazi era itself. Considering three Nazi-era crime films, Karl Hartl’s Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war (1937), Ernst Marischka’s Sieben Jahre Glück (1942), and E.W. Emo’s Reisebekanntschaft (1943), Moser suggests that the films use innovative effects to circumvent the regime’s draconian restrictions and mandates on representations of crime. Depictions of crime and detectives were not common in Nazi-era film, he notes, because the totalitarian regime was opposed to the idea of private detectives within the police state and rejected any representation of criminal activity that was not under their control. Film censors, not wanting to scare the regime, complied readily with their demands. Moser claims that these three films are exceptions that use the unlikely approach of comedic detective techniques to deliver veiled political critique. The innovative humoristic techniques thus represent crime in a way that simultaneously avoids current political issues on the surface, while embedding ideological messages within the film. The last three contributions look at innovative narrative techniques in German-language Krimis beyond the context of the Third Reich. Their analyses explore how contemporary crime stories transform perceptions of the national and global on thematic and narrative levels. On the thematic level, the texts tackle complex social issues such as conflicts of identity, Introduction 113 struggles with mortality, or encounters with the limits of knowledge, the knowable, and their representation. As the contributions show, the texts ultimately expand the genre’s boundaries by questioning connections between crime, narrative, and society. Helga Schreckenberger draws out parallels between the Oedipus motif, detection, and psychoanalysis in «To Know or Not to Know: Oedipal Patterns in Wolf Haas’s Detective Novel Das ewige Leben.» Her reading of Haas’s work explores how the Austrian author’s innovative use of intertextual references to the Oedipus theme subverts the usual psychological function of the detective story, namely to reassure readers that guilt is always located elsewhere. As she shows, the novel foregrounds the narrative structure shared by psychoanalysis and detective fiction that presents investigation as a process of discovering hidden transgressions. Similar to Oedipus, the detective’s search for the criminal in Das ewige Leben ends with the discovery of his own guilt, and, in an additional parallel, the solution to the crime comes only when the truthseeker recovers his lost or repressed memories and overcomes his reluctance to face the truth. Discovering the truth, however, brings with it a central conflict between «wanting to know and repressing unwelcome or unbearable knowledge,» Schreckenberger claims. Trapped by knowledge he cannot, or does not want to, reveal, Haas’s detective submits a final report in which the true course of events and real motive for murders remain hidden from the public. As Schreckenberger shows, Haas’s innovative use of the Oedipus myth precludes the restoration of order and rationality familiar to detective fiction; rather than ending by presenting the detective’s triumph as a triumph of consciousness, the novel reflects the universal conflict between seeking knowledge and the burden of knowing. Sascha A. Gerhards’ contribution, like Schreckenberger’s, underscores how recent German crime fiction reflects central conflicts facing individuals and society. In «Krimi und Klamauk: Trivializing Murder in the Eberhofer and Kluftinger Series,» Gerhards considers the use of comic elements in recent German crime fiction as a means to effectively deal with death and dying. He shows how the crime novels and their cinematic adaptations trivialize the delicate subject matter by coupling brutal crime and death scenes with elements of narrative parody. For example, the crime narratives depict the detective as bumbling and naïve rather than self-possessed and knowledgeable; they interlace depictions of murder scenes and corpses, which themselves often appear bizarre or surreal, with humorous dialogues, even jokes; or they offer comic relief by poking fun at older cultural traditions and dialects in the German provinces. For Gerhards, these Krimis reflect broader social developments in Germany and the United States by which 114 Anita McChesney/ Joseph W. Moser increased public awareness of discourses on death and dying has provided a means of negotiating death socially but not individually. The use of humor in these contemporary Krimis, he concludes, provides one such individual coping mechanism. As also suggested by Freud, they offer laughter as the only way to deal with the unspeakable. The final contribution, «Knotty Plot and Dense Text: Crime, Detection and Epigraphs in Wolfgang Herrndorf’s Sand,» returns to the subject of innovation in contemporary German-language Krimis. In her reading of Herrndorf’s crime novel, Olivia Albiero shows how the author revolutionizes the genre through its play with convention. The author encourages the reader’s work of detection, she claims, by adding unexpected turns to familiar patterns (combining and blurring multiple genres of crime fiction, questioning the identities and roles of the characters, neutralizing the figure of the detective as «hero») and including extensive paratextual references. Albiero’s reading focuses on the last of these techniques, the use of paratexts in general and epigraphs in particular, to show how they allow the reader to interact with the author in a process of reading and interpreting. In fact, she claims, the paratexts serve a dual function. On the one hand they complicate the novel’s reading by requiring the reader to deduce multiple, often complex references in addition to clues in the mysterious crime in the plot. On the other hand, they also help reorient and redirect the reader’s interpretative efforts through the labyrinthine crime story. Like a lever (or «Brechstange» in Herrndorf’s words), she concludes, the paratexts force themselves into the text but also become the tool that opens new interpretative routes in the reader’s attempt to access and grasp the novel’s mysteries. In drawing out the innovative techniques in Wolfgang Herrndorf’s Sand, Olivia Albiero’s analysis reinforces the argument for the transnational significance of German-language Krimis that is the heart of this special issue «Revolutionizing German-Language Crime Fiction.» Together, the analyses in these seven contributions refute the notion of an unimaginative genre that is out of touch with the interests and concerns of the world by revealing how the texts engage with social issues on the individual, national, and global levels, and do so through innovations to the traditional structures of crime narratives. The analyses thereby also lay to rest George Bernard Shaw’s claim, by demonstrating that perhaps Germans do have a talent for (narrative) revolution and crime novels after all. Introduction 115 Notes 1 Mullins, «Why German Thrillers are Not Popular in US.» 2 In Anglo-American publishing houses a handful of writers have managed to break through some of these preconceptions. Multiple novels have been translated from the detective series by Wolf Haas, Jacob Arjouni, and Bernhard Schlink to critical acclaim; select novels have also appeared by others, including Christian von Ditfurth, Wolfgang Herrndorf, or Eva Rossmann. These remain the exceptions, however, and are not indicative of the popularity of Krimis in Germany. 3 Mullins, «Why German Thrillers are Not Popular in US.» 4 See for example Vogt. 5 Lynn M. Kutch and Todd Herzog, eds. Tatort Germany: The Curious Case of German-Language Crime Fiction; Bruce Campbell, Alison Guenther-Pal and Vibeke Rützou Petersen, eds. Detectives, Dystopias, and Poplit: Studies in Modern German Genre Fiction. 6 Katharina Hall, ed. Crime Fiction in German. Der Krimi (forthcoming 2015); Thomas W. Kniesche. Contemporary German Crime Fiction. A Companion (forthcoming 2016). 7 For more on the narrative structure of crime fiction see Bloch 38-51 and Alewyn 52- 72. 8 For more on the range of issues in German-Language Krimis see the introduction in Campbell et al. 10-16. Works Cited Alewyn, Richard. «Anatomie des Detektivromans.» Der Kriminalroman. Poetik, Theorie, Geschichte. Ed. Jochen Vogt. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1998. 52-72. Bloch, Ernst. «Philosophische Ansicht des Detektivromans.» Der Kriminalroman. Poetik, Theorie, Geschichte. Ed. Jochen Vogt. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1998. 38- 51. Campbell, Bruce, Alison Guenther-Pal, and Vibeke Rützou Petersen, eds. Detectives, Dystopias, and Poplit: Studies in Modern German Genre Fiction. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014. Hall, Katharina, ed. Crime Fiction in German. Der Krimi. Cardiff: U of Wales P, 2016. Kniesche, Thomas W. Contemporary German Crime Fiction. A Companion. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016. Kutch, Lynn M., and Todd Herzog, eds. Tatort Germany: The Curious Case of German-Language Crime Fiction. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014. Vogt, Jochen, ed. Der Kriminalroman: Poetik, Theorie, Geschichte. Munich: Fink, 1998. «Why German Thrillers are Not Popular in US.» Narr. Lisa Mullins. The World. Public Radio International. 28 Dec. 2012. Weimar and Nazi Germany in Contemporary German Historical Crime Fiction THOMA S W. KNIE SCHE Brow n Univ ersity In his seminal study From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film (1992), Anton Kaes provided valuable insights into the «Politics of Representation» (3) and the culture of memory, culminating in the assertion that the «past is in danger of becoming a rapidly expanding collection of images […], available in an eternal present by pushing a button on the remote control. History thus returns forever - as film» (198). In this article, I would like to discuss yet another turn in the return of the repressed and the working of repetition compulsion or Wiederholungszwang: the return of history as crime fiction. Crime fiction by contemporary authors who use Weimar and Nazi Germany as the backdrop for their stories has been enjoying increasing popularity since the late 1980s. Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir trilogy, published right around German unification between 1989 and 1991, 1 was particularly successful. Other mystery authors writing in English about this particular part of the German past include J. Robert Janes, David Downing, Alan Furst, and Paul Grossman. In Germany too this variety of historical crime fiction represents a growing segment of the market. Bernhard Schlink’s first mystery novel, co-authored with Wolfgang Popp, about the Nazi past haunting the present and featuring Gerhard Selb, appeared already in 1987, and additional installments to the series were published in 1992 and 2001. Other authors such as Robert Hültner, Ulrich Ritzel, Bernward Schneider, Robert Brack, Gunnar Kunz, Uwe Klausner, Elisabeth Herrmann, Susanne Goga, Rainer Gross, Uta-Maria Heim, and Mechthild Borrmann followed Schlink’s lead and used Weimar or Nazi Germany as the setting for their crime stories, in some cases writing not just one novel but a whole series using the same protagonist(s) in every subsequent book. Given that the culture of memory is a complex phenomenon, that Erinnerungskultur or Geschichtskultur, Geschichtspolitik and Geschichtsbesessenheit come in many different forms and have found articulation in a variety of media, from public debates to history channels on TV, one could ask: Why write historical crime fiction about prefascist and fascist Germany? A preliminary response could offer three possible reasons. Weimar and Nazi Germany 117 First, crime fiction sells and history sells. So why not combine the two? This may sound trivial but, at least as an opening argument, it has some justification. For a sizable reading audience this combination is sufficient to make the genre more than palatable. Crime fiction is what people read, it can make history accessible in new ways and reach audiences which scholarly historiography or other media that talk about history do not normally reach. Also, one should not forget that a lot of German history, not just that of the 1920s through the 1940s, is being reworked, or, perhaps one should say, represented in historical crime fiction today. It has been argued that this trend, including novels that are set during the Weimar Republic, provide «a nostalgia for a time before the evils of Nazism» (Campbell 142). This may explain the mass appeal of this kind of writing. Secondly, and more specifically, framing the individual cases of crime (what can be called «small scale crime») within the larger context of Weimar and Nazi history inevitably refers to the criminal structures of society itself («large scale crime»); every criminal act that is committed in the context of right-wing or fascist activities refers the reader to the basic injustice of society and the political system as a whole. The reader is therefore confronted with the continuing challenge of how to deal with this past, a problem which Adorno had discussed in his essay on «Vergangenheitsbewältigung» (1959) and which Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich have called the «Inability to Mourn» (1967). Addressing those key twentieth-century issues could be called the «didactic» dimension of historical crime fiction writing. An excellent example that displays this double reference to microand macro-style crime is provided by the title of Volker Kutscher’s fourth novel of his Berlin series, the first of which I will discuss in some detail below. The title of the fourth «case» is Die Akte Vaterland (2012). The «case file» is named after the crime scene of a murder, the «Vergnügungspalast» «Kempinski Haus Vaterland,» a pleasure palace on Potsdamer Platz that existed from 1928 to 1943. However, the title also resonates with the implication that «Vaterland» is not only the setting for the specific murder under investigation in the novel but for a much larger crime for which the case file has never been closed. Thirdly, historical crime fiction set in the 1920s to the 1940s depicts crime within a criminal society where the understanding of what crime is becomes itself problematic. A crime by definition is an antisocial or anti-civilized act. In a society that is itself undergoing a process of decivilization (as in prefascist and fascist Germany), the concept of «crime» itself becomes a problem. The clearest indication of that in historical crime fiction are upright (nonor anti-fascist) policemen who start to doubt what they are doing, who no longer know what their role in society is. The very notion of a civilized society, 118 Thomas W. Kniesche of social stability, of what it takes to destabilize and to defend the civil order is at stake here. When historical crime fiction is read in this light, the focus is on the social and political dimensions. 2 Given the abundance of crime fiction writing about the Weimar and Nazi past, a number of further questions could be asked: Does historical crime fiction contribute to our knowledge of the Weimar and Nazi past? How does historical crime fiction compare to the historiography of this historical period? Does historical crime fiction provide something that historiography cannot? Can historical crime fiction enhance our understanding of the past? Volker Kutscher’s Der nasse Fisch (2007), Christian von Ditfurth’s Mann ohne Makel (2002), and Andrea Maria Schenkel’s Kalteis (2007) more or less implicitly claim that the historiography of Weimar and Nazi Germany is in some way deficient, that it needs to be complemented - and that historical crime fiction is the medium to do that. However, this rhetoric of deficiency needs to be examined within the wider contexts of recent developments in historiography and contemporary scholarship on the historical novel. In turning to the three novels just mentioned, I will in each case first indicate the specific subgenre of historical crime fiction to which the novel belongs. After briefly summarizing the contents of each respective novel, I will point out in which way it tries to demonstrate how the historiography of the Weimar and Nazi period becomes problematic and needs to be complemented. This will establish how the rhetoric of deficiency works in these texts. Finally, I will examine briefly how these texts relate to the paradigm of Alltagsgeschichte (history of everyday life) and where they should be located within the continuum of contemporary historical fiction between the documentary historical novel and historiographic metafiction. This classification will show to which extent the novels under consideration here can actually contribute something new to our understanding of the past and how we conceptualize reconstructions of that past. As a «history from below» (Eley ix), Alltagsgeschichte has been called «a radically new paradigm of social historical research» coming out of Germany (Crew 395). By focusing on the everyday experience of ordinary people, Alltagsgeschichte has introduced a new critical perspective into historiography. The historical crime novels under consideration here mirror this point of view from below: they feature protagonists and minor characters belonging to the middle class and the lower strata of society. The stories of these fictional characters are embedded in broader historical contexts, such as the period immediately preceding the Great Depression in 1929, rape and serial killings in the early and late 1930s, and the Nazi «Aryanization» of Jewish property during the 1940s, but the focus is always on the everyday life of these ordinary people. While it is true that Alltagsgeschichte has been ac- Weimar and Nazi Germany 119 cused of participating in mythologizing German suffering during World War II by avoiding contextualizing and analyzing the stories of ordinary people within a critical and theoretical framework (Crew 402), the analytical potential of Alltagsgeschichte cannot be overlooked. It has made major contributions to criticizing the tendencies of traditional historiographies to create master narratives that claim to fully explain history’s complexities and to provide closure to intricate questions and moral dilemmas. 3 On the level of narrative analysis of historical crime fiction, these concerns are addressed by examining where the novels under consideration here should be placed in the continuum of historical fiction between traditional historical novel writing with its claim to give fictional and entertaining accounts of what really happened in history, and, to invoke the other extreme, the critical and self-reflexive stance of historiographic metafiction, in which the very possibility of knowing what happened in history is put into question. 4 Volker Kutscher has written five novels revolving around his protagonist, Kommissar Gereon Rath. Kutscher’s novels are each between five and six hundred pages long and span a narrated time of only a few months, respectively. Each novel ends with the URL «www.gereonrath.de.» This reference can be interpreted as a signature to each novel and encourages readers to visit the website where they will not only find information about the author and his other books but also a wealth of historical and critical sources for his writing. In other words, the website does not only advertise, it is also meant to prove that an enormous amount of historical research has gone into writing these novels. The author thus tries to show that he has done his historical homework, referring the reader to novels such as Alfred Döblin’s Berlin, Alexanderplatz or Erich Kästner’s Fabian, movies such as Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin - Die Sinfonie der Großstadt or Fritz Lang’s M, and to relevant web links, museums, biographies, documentaries, and historical research. In short, the author claims to have looked at everything literature, popular culture, and historiography has to offer on the period he is using as the setting for his novels. Assuming thus a position of knowledge, the author can then proceed to provide that which has been left out, which has either not been covered at all by the historical record or which has not been exposed appropriately and forcefully enough. We shall see below what that might be in the case of the Gereon Rath novels. These novels belong to what John Scaggs has called «straight» historical crime fiction, that is, «crime fiction that is set entirely in some particular historical period, but which was not written during that period» (125) or what Achim Saupe has described as a «historischer Kriminalroman» or 120 Thomas W. Kniesche «historischer Thriller» where both the «Aufklärungsgeschichte» and the «Verbrechensgeschichte» are set in the past (267-70). As is often the case in historical fiction, the fictional story of the novel is embedded into authentic events and the fictional characters join historical personalities such as the charismatic director of the Berlin Mordkommission, Kriminalrat Ernst Gennat, or the vice president of police, Dr. Bernhard Weiß. The fact that Weiß was Jewish plays a major role in the novel, for example when one of Rath’s colleagues, who has just left the police force to concentrate on a writing career, complains to his readers about the «Verjudung des Polizeiapparats» (Kutscher, Der nasse Fisch 292). The first novel in the series, Der nasse Fisch, introduces the protagonist Gereon Rath, a provincial police officer who has just been transferred to Berlin. Each of the three parts of the novel is provided with exact dates spanning the period from 28 April to 21 June 1929, thus creating a sense of historical accuracy and reliability. Rath experiences the street fighting in communist neighborhoods called the «Blutmai» of 1929. The political atmosphere of the time is captured in great detail and the antagonism between the police and the communist masses in the Arbeiterviertel of Berlin is given much attention in the opening chapters. In addition, throughout the novel the different social backgrounds of the police officers, their various political connections and shifting loyalties are constantly brought up, so that the influence of the political parties, the military, the Reichswehr, and of such groups and organizations as the SA, the Stahlhelm and others on the supposedly apolitical police force becomes obvious. The story is narrated from the point of view of Gereon Rath in free indirect discourse, but includes passages told by an omniscient narrator and long stretches of dialogue. In Genette’s terms, the narrative oscillates between zero focalization and internal focalization. Rath’s position as the focalizer in the story is rendered problematic when he himself becomes involved in criminal acts. He exchanges favors with one of the bosses of a «Ringverein» - a criminal organization in Berlin - and accidentally kills a suspect which he then covers up. As it turns out in the end, the numerous murders and widespread machinations that comprise the story of the novel are all related to a scheme concocted by corrupt police officers and members of the military to use an intercepted shipment of gold smuggled out of Soviet Russia to arm right-wing paramilitary groups such as «Stahlhelm, Scharnhorstbund, Wiking und wie sie alle heißen» and also the SA (Kutscher, Der nasse Fisch 541). A journalist, with whom Rath discusses the case at the end, claims that those paramilitary groups, «supported by the military and financed by the arms industry,» Weimar and Nazi Germany 121 would then train their members as future combatants and provide the armed forces with enough personnel for the next war. This brings us to the question of how historical crime fiction complements historiography, how (relatively) small scale crime in fictional form reflects historical events that can be called criminal in the sense of destabilizing the social and political order and, ultimately, in the case of Germany, the civic order itself. At the conclusion of the novel, the involvement of the masterminds of the plan to provide the SA and other right-wing groups with arms from the police force and the military, two police officers who are members of the Stahlhelm, and a Reichswehr general, is swept under the carpet - for political reasons. Gereon Rath is disgusted by this turn of events which he calls a farce - he actually uses the far more accusatory term «Schmierenkomödie» (Kutscher, Der nasse Fisch 542) - and decides to publish his own account of what happened. So Rath writes everything down - «[d]ie ganze Geschichte» - from the point of view of the SA-Mann Schäffner, a minor player who didn’t know what was really happening (538), and gives this account to his friend, the journalist Weinert. In writing down «what really happened,» Rath’s act mirrors the writing of the novel itself. The fictional character becomes an author and the real author turns into a historian. If the official account of events is a «Schmierenkomödie,» then only Kommissar Rath knows the whole truth. By writing a semi-fictional account of the whole story, which he then gives to a journalist who will supposedly publish the truth, he refers to the writing of the novel itself. Historiography has been compromised, it has been manipulated for political reasons, and only the historical novel presents what has really happened. While what I have called the rhetoric of deficiency, the notion that not all aspects of everyday life and the history of institutions (in Kutscher’s case, the police force) have become part of collective memory, does apply, the underlying trust in the possibility of historical knowledge and the belief that it is achievable to get it right, to arrive at a correct and comprehensive historical account, is not being revoked. In Der nasse Fisch (and the other novels of the series) Kutscher offers a complement to the historiography of prefascist and fascist Germany with a didactic turn. The readers are supposed to learn more about this period than historical scholarship can provide. The narrative elements and structures of the novel remain within the boundaries of the «realistic historical novel» (Ansgar Nünning 262-67), though. The fact that the police detective and protagonist engages in various illegal activities does not render him an unreliable focalizer. With the possible exception of Rath’s authorship of a counterhistorical narrative, the novel does not feature any metafictional elements or other indicators that would foreground the 122 Thomas W. Kniesche epistemological and ontological complexities of historical knowledge. His story of what really happened, written from the point of view of a simple man, mirrors the efforts of Alltagsgeschichte to provide a view on history from below. 5 Christian von Ditfurth’s novels featuring Josef Maria Stachelmann also comprise a series of - so far - six cases, published between 2002 and 2011. Unlike Kutscher’s novels, however, von Ditfurth’s Stachelmann mysteries reveal crimes committed in the present as a consequence of criminal activities in the past. This type of historical crime novel has been called «transhistorical crime fiction» in which «a contemporary detective [is] investigating an incident in the more or less remote, rather than very recent, past» (Scaggs 125). This variety has also been labeled «retrospektiver historischer Ermittlungsroman» (Saupe 292) and has been deemed of particular interest because of its closeness to postmodern fiction and because it shows the proximity of the detective and the historian (Vera Nünning 14). A number of very popular novels written by German contemporary authors such as Bernhard Schlink, Mechthild Borrmann, Rainer Gross, and Elisabeth Herrmann fall into this category. Whereas Volker Kutscher’s first Gereon Rath novel is set in Weimar Germany, Stachelmann’s first case is concerned with the Nazi past. What makes the Stachelmann novels particularly interesting is the fact that the protagonist is a historian. Josef Maria Stachelmann, ailing from several organic and mental afflictions, is not only a classic antihero, he is also dissatisfied with his job performance and disillusioned with his profession. Although he investigates his first case with the help of a former friend who is now a Kommissar with the Kripo in Hamburg, it is Stachelmann who will ultimately solve it, not without risking his own life in the process. Since one of the detectives in this novel is a historian, the reader is introduced to the world of academic historiography in Germany, with its petty rivalries among faculty members, their pecking orders, their exhibitionism, with mostly indifferent and sometimes hysterical students («Alicia»), but also with the pressure on young scholars to position themselves in the field and to produce cutting-edge research. 6 With elements of the police procedural, the thriller, and the campus novel, this historical crime novel belongs to one of the hybrid genres so typical for contemporary fiction. The plot of the novel contains two related story lines. On the one hand, an unknown killer is murdering the family members of a prominent and popular Hamburg real estate magnate (the «Mann ohne Makel» of the title). On the other hand, somebody is assassinating everybody who seems to acquire too much knowledge about the past of the victim’s family. The identity of Weimar and Nazi Germany 123 the serial killer can be deduced by the reader rather early in the novel: He is a Jewish survivor who was on a Kindertransport and who kills the descendants of a high SS-officer who was responsible for the deportation of his parents. The identity of the second killer is a surprise and is only revealed at the end, though. All the killings that take place in the present are related to events that happened during the Nazi reign in Hamburg, and it takes a historian-as-detective to uncover them. And what Stachelmann uncovers in the course of his historical investigation is this: a group of SS-men in Hamburg, a «Nazi-Mafia» (von Ditfurth 372) had pursued their own kind of «Aryanization,» or, as Stachelmann puts it, «was Historiker später als wilde Arisierung bezeichneten» (268). Instead of turning over their Jewish victims’ property to the government, they stole it for themselves, thus enriching themselves at the cost of the state. Although the tax authorities protested against this kind of chicanery, the SS-officers prevailed because they were well connected among the upper echelons of the Nazi state. In the course of his investigation, Stachelmann visits the German Federal Archives in Berlin and breaks into a copy center where he finds letters pertaining to his case. One of the letters, dated July 1941, spells out how the SS-members of the «Nazi-Mafia» were able to hold on to their spoils: Die betreffenden Erwerbungen der verdienten Kameraden sind rechtlich nicht zu beanstanden. In dieser heldenhaften Zeit, in der die Schutzstaffel unermesslichen Herausforderungen im Kampf gegen unsere Feinde im Äußeren wie im Innern ausgesetzt ist, grenzt es an Wehrkraftzersetzung, dieses überflüssige und ehrabschneidende Verfahren weiter zu betreiben. Der RF-SS hat zugesichert, die Sache dem Reichsfinanzminister vorzutragen. Außerdem wurde die Stapo-Leitstelle Hamburg angewiesen, auf die dortigen Finanzbehörden einzuwirken. (296, italics in the original) This quote, clothed in Nazi jargon and containing several threats against those who want to uphold the law (which was itself already a manifestation of racism and a step towards the upcoming genocide), demonstrates what I discussed earlier: relatively small scale crime reflects the criminal foundations of society as a whole, and, in this case, crime is no longer punished but is part of the breakdown of the civic order itself when even Nazi Germany’s own laws are subverted and become meaningless. What is the role of crime fiction vis-à-vis historiography here? Not only is the protagonist a disenchanted and disillusioned historian who has lost faith in his academic field; in the course of his research he also discovers that the tax files on «wilde Arisierung» were never published. This, in turn, hampered historical research: 124 Thomas W. Kniesche Die Forschung kam nicht so recht voran, auch weil der Bundestag 1988 die Schutzfrist für Finanzamtsakten verlängert hatte. Sonst wäre der braune Morast aus den Kellern der Finanzverwaltung auf die Straße gequollen. Vielen war die Erkenntnis unerträglich, dass die Besitztümer der Juden nicht in deutschem Namen geraubt wurden, sondern von deutschen Finanzämtern, wie das Recht es befahl. Es war der kleine graue Beamte, der nichts als seine Pflicht tat, vor 1945 und danach. (von Ditfurth 268) The continuity of «before 1945 und afterwards,» compounded by legislation enacted as late as 1988 made it impossible for historical research to do its job. The realization that «[d]as Recht,» the law itself, was not only complicit, but that it was instrumental in robbing the Jews of their property was unbearable, intolerable, insufferable («unerträglich»). It would have been precisely the result of a scholarly endeavor, an insight or recognition («Erkenntnis») that would have uncovered what was «unerträglich.» Under such circumstances, historical scholarship becomes impossible. There remains only one thing to do: write a historical novel. And as if this strategy or act of writing needs some kind of reaffirmation or signature, the author ends the novel with «Nachbemerkungen» in which he not only thanks his collaborators but he also adds this final remark: «Natürlich habe ich die Personen und Ereignisse in diesem Buch erfunden, sofern sie nicht zeitgeschichtlich verbürgt sind. Das wäre vielleicht nicht nötig gewesen, wenn alle deutschen Finanzämter ihre Akten aus der Zeit des Dritten Reiches offen gelegt hätten» (von Ditfurth 381). What Gerard Genette has called «paratexts» are just as important in von Ditfurth’s novel as in Kutscher’s Der nasse Fisch (and, as will be shown below, in Andrea Maria Schenkel’s Kalteis). In his afterword, von Ditfurth claims that he had to invent a story because certain files have never been made public. If that is the case, however, historians are powerless. Time and again the fictional historian Josef Maria Stachelmann asserts that access to historical documents is essential for finding the truth: «In den Akten lagen Wahrheiten. Nicht immer in Reinform, aber wozu war er Historiker, wenn er nicht Wahrheiten aus Papier herausfiltern konnte? » (von Ditfurth 343). To extricate truth from documents is the trade of the historian. But if that fails because the documents are not available, only the writer of novels can provide historical truth. To prove his point, von Ditfurth applies a threefold textual strategy. First, he uses paratexts to employ extraliterary evidence: certain files have never been made available by the authorities after the war, so historians are helpless. Secondly, Stachelmann is used intradiegetically as a focalizer to reflect on this reality when his thoughts about the action of the German parliament are presented as evidence for the coverup. And, thirdly, after Stachelmann had obtained copies of letters show- Weimar and Nazi Germany 125 ing the involvement of some of the suspects he is after, a copy center where these documents are processed burns down and a substantial part of the archival evidence is destroyed. Later, Stachelmann receives a letter from the Bundesarchiv, telling him that «Wir müssen davon ausgehen, dass es von den meisten verbrannten Akten keine Kopien gibt» (317). Thus, by extraand intradiegetic narrative techniques, the novel drives home von Ditfurth’s point. Only the historical (crime) novel can provide us with a full picture of the past. With its strong referentiality concerning historical events and historiography, its constant shifting between the present and the past, and, most of all, by featuring a disillusioned historian as protagonist, Der Mann ohne Makel is an example of «revisionistischer historischer Roman» (Ansgar Nünning 268-76). In this novel, the feasibility and reliability of historical research are constantly challenged. By using a professional historian as focalizer and protagonist, the author questions the viability of historiography as such, without, however, taking the ultimate step of condemning history as an academic discipline that is useless. The final word on Stachelmann’s profession will remain ambivalent, though. In the following novels, he will succeed in finishing his Habilitationsschrift on the concentration camp Buchenwald, but eventually he will give up his academic career and will become a private investigator specializing in historical cases (at the end of the fourth novel of the series). This can be interpreted as saying that while historiography as such may not be a pointless undertaking, our knowledge of the reign of National Socialism in Germany and our ability to understand the Holocaust will remain problematic. After the bestselling and critically acclaimed Tannöd (2006), with which the author had exploded onto the scene of German crime fiction, Kalteis (2007) was Andrea Maria Schenkel’s second novel. Kalteis tells the story of a serial killer who committed his crimes between 1931 and 1939. Although Kalteis is another example of «straight» historical crime fiction, it differs from the previously discussed texts as it spans the last years of the Weimar Republic and the first six years of the Third Reich. The story is presented from a multitude of perspectives and remains within the temporal framework of the narrated past - with one important paratextual exception which I will discuss below. Katharina Hertl («Kathie»), the victim whose story unfolds in the course of the novel, resembles the heroine of Irmgard Keun’s Das kunstseidene Mädchen (1932), who comes from the provinces and fantasizes about making it in the big city (Boa). This dream goes horribly wrong, however, and Kathie becomes one more casualty in a long list of young women who attract the killer’s attention. 126 Thomas W. Kniesche The novel starts with the end. In a secret court memo («Aktennotiz») dated 29 October 1939, an anonymous bureaucrat decrees that the culprit Josef Kalteis is to be executed without delay. In Nazi terminology, Kalteis falls under the category of «Volksschädlinge,» but he is also a German, an Aryan, and a member of the Nazi party. The circumstances of his crimes and all files and reports about the case have to be kept out of the public view. This is to insure that neither the reputation of his place of residence - Munich, «die Wiege der Bewegung» - nor the good name of the party or the Nazi movement as a whole be damaged. Since «Verbrechen dieser Art» could only thrive on the «maroden Nährboden» of the decadent Weimar Republic, this proves that «[d]ie Demokratie, ein Krebsgeschwür» was «eine Brutstätte asozialer Elemente.» In the new Germany, this cannot be tolerated: «Die deutsche Volksgemeinschaft ist gesund und soll auch weiterhin gesund bleiben» (Schenkel, Kalteis 5). Although we don’t even know at this point what crime or crimes the perpetrator was convicted of, the rhetoric of Nazi biopolitics reveals what is at stake. Whatever has happened must under no circumstances become known to the public because it would undermine the regime’s claim of building a better Germany. The first scene of the novel is a masterpiece of narrative discourse. While Kalteis is waiting in his cell for the executioners to collect him time seems to freeze, 7 although several hours go by on just a few pages. His thoughts, his fear and inner emptiness, are narrated in free indirect speech, thus revealing his consciousness during the last hours of his life while the third-person narration subtly indicates that he is the helpless object of the proceedings. After his execution by guillotine, a short and laconic passage states that it took only seventeen seconds to put him to death. The disparity between the timelessness of Kalteis’s last hours and the swiftness with which he is dispatched to his death demonstrates the stark contrast between the terrified individual’s last moments of life and the urgency with which the authorities want to get rid of him. This urgency is borne out by the nature of his crimes. He was a serial killer who raped, killed, and mutilated young women. 8 The existence of such an individual among the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft is a scandalon in the original sense of the word: that which cannot be acknowledged because it represents a stumbling block or, in biblical Greek, a temptation from which the community must be protected. What comes to the forefront here is once again how the crimes of an individual reflect the crimes of the society at large. A rapist and serial killer amongst their midst presents the Nazi authorities with a serious problem. Whereas such individuals were supposedly thriving in decadent democracies, they have no place in Nazi Germany. Reality was, Weimar and Nazi Germany 127 of course, quite different. What is important, though, is that the individual serial killer is just mirroring the true nature of the Nazi regime itself, thus the need for secrecy in dealing with the case. The fact that Josef Kalteis is a «true» German and a member of the Nazi party underlines the parallel. Kalteis, with his pleonastic name, embodies the essence of National Socialism as a death cult, its utterly cold disregard for human life and dignity. Kalteis is different from both Der nasse Fisch and Mann ohne Makel since the focus is not on the process of digging up the past, on teaching us about parts of German history that were either not known at all or not represented appropriately enough in collective memory. Notorious German serial killers of the 1920s and 30s are well represented in public discourse even today - from Fritz Haarmann to Peter Kürten and beyond. Just adding another case to the list could hardly have been the point of writing this novel (although it certainly profited from our fascination with the topic). If the novel does not subscribe to the rhetoric of deficiency, that is, if its main purpose does not consist in filling in gaps in our historical knowledge, what, then, does Kalteis contribute to our understanding of the past? Andrea Maria Schenkel attached a list of sources at the end of the novel, among them a doctoral dissertation on the case of a «Sittlichkeitsverbrecher» (published in 1942) and a historical study entitled Die Bestien des Boulevards: Die Deutschen und ihre Serienmörder. The fictional character of Kalteis is based on that of Josef Eichhorn, whose case is discussed in this book (Boa 356). Her main sources, however, are collections of police reports and interrogation records («Vernehmungsprotokolle») of the case featured in her novel or similar cases (Schenkel, Kalteis 187). The list of sources is a paratext showing that Kalteis is a semi-documentary novel in which the author combines authentic material with fictional accounts. The effects of this kind of literary structuring of previously available material are profound. The constantly changing points of view and the montage of historical material with fictional passages in first-person direct speech and third-person free indirect discourse produce a chilling account of violence against women and how it is covered up by a regime that is itself fundamentally violent. The main focus in Kalteis is on the process of remembering and reconstructing the past. By presenting a multitude of accounts in a non-chronological order, this process is shown as fragmented and discontinuous. The question is not what happened (this is told at the beginning of the novel), but how we can know about it. The justice system of the Nazi state is satisfied with platitudes that merely confirm its preconceived notions of democracy’s shortcomings and Nazi racial purity. Going beyond such dogmatism requires a fundamentally different approach. The structuring of the novel implies that only a textual ren- 128 Thomas W. Kniesche dering that mirrors the fragmented bodies of the serial killer’s victims can arrive at a meaningful alternative to dogmatic historical accounts. As a «metahistorischer Roman» (Ansgar Nünning 276-81), 9 Kalteis is not so much concerned with what happened but rather with how to narrate the past. The three novels discussed here offer a continuation of Alltagsgeschichte as historical crime fiction (as opposed to historical scholarship). While they have in common a view on history from below, they differ substantially in their underlying notions of the reliability of historical knowledge. Both Kutscher’s Der nasse Fisch and von Ditfurth’s Mann ohne Makel claim to fill in gaps in historiography and collective memory, but they do not doubt the viability of historical knowledge as such. Kutscher’s Der nasse Fisch is a historical police procedural that shows how a democratic institution that is charged with protecting the public and defending the civic order is attacked from outside and undermined from within. The novel is based on the premise that the official records (about corrupt police officers in late 1920s Berlin) were falsified; therefore, historiography lacks the sources it depends on. Christian von Ditfurth’s Mann ohne Makel tries to demonstrate that, since certain official records were lost or suppressed, only the writing of a historical novel can educate the public about an important aspect of the Nazi past. Andrea Maria Schenkel’s Kalteis, however, foregrounds the process of remembering and reconstructing the past itself. The structuring of the text and the literary techniques the author employs encourage readers to question the very concept of historical knowledge. Historiography itself becomes a casualty - just as the victims of the Nazi serial killer. Looking at the range of critical positions these three historical novels submit, it should have become clear that they make valuable contributions to our understanding of Weimar and Nazi Germany, not only by complementing our knowledge of these historical periods but also by reflecting on the methods and theoretical underpinnings of historiography. Historical crime fiction thus manifests a certain skepticism about historical truth and contributes to undermining a belief in the possibility of knowing «how it really was.» Notes 1 The series was expanded by six more «Bernie Gunther» novels, published between 2006 and 2013. The fact that the initial three novels were published at the time of German unification was probably no coincidence but this issue cannot be discussed in detail here. 2 These three criteria can also be used to discuss the quality of historical crime fiction representing the Weimar and Nazi past. Authors and texts to which only the first Weimar and Nazi Germany 129 point applies count on the mass appeal of crime fiction and the German history boom but do not provide any kind of critical reflection on this history and how we deal with it. Writers who include issues addressed by the other two criteria should be considered of a higher caliber and their novels of higher literary quality. This is an aspect of historical crime fiction that cannot be further examined here. 3 Although Alltagsgeschichte had been declared dead by the mid-1990s, it continues to provoke discussions among historians and has, at least according to some scholars, «entered the mainstream of historical writing» (Steege et al. 377). 4 The «continuum» or typology of historical fiction is described in Ansgar Nünning 256-91. I can only provide a very brief overview of this fascinating topic here. The question of how historical crime fiction relates to the various modes of historical fiction writing merits a much more detailed and in-depth study that cannot be undertaken within the limited space of this article. 5 In a review of Kutscher’s most recent Rath novel, Märzgefallene (2014), the function of the novel as a complement to historiography (here in the form of «Geschichtsunterricht») and the focus on «Alltag» are stressed: In this novel «bekommt man beiläufig etwas mit, das der Geschichtsunterricht selten vermittelt hat, ganz gleich, wie oft die NS-Zeit auf dem Lehrplan stand: ein Gefühl dafür, wie sich die Machtergreifung im Alltag vollzog und auf das Denken und Reden der Menschen auswirkte» (Schaaf 49). 6 Christian von Ditfurth was himself trained as a historian. 7 In a podcast interview from 2007, the author discussed this effect and claimed that she wrote the novel just because of the first scene (Schenkel, «Podcast-Interview»). 8 One is reminded of Fritz Lang’s famed movie M, eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931), but there are also important differences between the movie and the novel. 9 Ansgar Nünning discusses the structural similarities between the detective novel and the metahistorical novel. With its revelation of the identity of the perpetrator at the beginning, Kalteis does not strictly adhere to the pattern of the traditional detective story, but Schenkel’s novel does feature «mindestens zwei ausgestaltete Zeit- und Erzählungsebenen» (277), the decisive structural characteristics of both genres. Works Cited Boa, Elizabeth. «Warring Pleasures and their Price: Sex in the City in Irmgard Keun’s Das kunstseidene Mädchen and Andrea Maria Schenkel’s Kalteis.» German Life and Letters 62.3 (2009): 343-58. Campbell, Bruce B. «Justice and Genre: The Krimi as a Site of Memory in Contemporary Germany.» Detectives, Dystopias, and Poplit: Studies in Modern German Genre Fiction. Ed. Bruce B. Campbell, Alison Guenther-Pal and Vibeke Rützou Petersen. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014. 133-51. Crew, David F. «Alltagsgeschichte: A New Social History ‹From Below›? » Central European History 22.3/ 4 (1989): 394-407. Ditfurth, Christian von. Mann ohne Makel. Stachelmanns erster Fall. Cologne: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 2012. Eley, Geoff. «Foreword.» The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life. Ed. Alf Lüdkte. Trans. William Templer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1989. vii-xiii. 130 Thomas W. Kniesche Kaes, Anton. From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992. Kutscher, Volker. Der nasse Fisch. Gereon Raths erster Fall. Cologne: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 2011. -. Die Akte Vaterland. Gereon Raths vierter Fall. Cologne: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 2013. Nünning, Ansgar. Von historischer Fiktion zu historiographischer Metafiktion. Band 1: Theorie, Typologie und Poetik des historischen Romans. Trier: WTV Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 1995. Nünning, Vera. «Britische und amerikanische Kriminalromane: Genrekonventionen und neue Entwicklungstendenzen.» Der amerikanische und britische Kriminalroman. Genres, Entwicklungen, Modellinterpretationen. Ed. Vera Nünning. Trier: WTV Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2008. 1-26. Saupe, Achim. Der Historiker als Detektiv - der Detektiv als Historiker. Historik, Kriminalistik und der Nationalsozialismus als Kriminalroman. Bielefeld: transcript, 2009. Scaggs, John. Crime Fiction. New York: Routledge, 2005. Schaaf, Julia. «Moment mal, war das wirklich so? » Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 26 Oct. 2014. 49. Schenkel, Andrea Maria. Kalteis. Munich: btb-Verlag, 2009. -. «Podcast-Interview mit Andrea Maria Schenkel.» krimi-couch.de. Krimi-Couch. de, 6 Aug. 2007. Web. 26 Aug. 2014. Schulz-Buschhaus, Ulrich. Formen und Ideologien des Kriminalromans. Ein gattungsgeschichtlicher Essay. Frankfurt: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1975. Steege, Paul, Andrew Stuart Bergerson, Maureen Healy, and Pamela E. Swett. «The History of Everyday Life: A Second Chapter.» The Journal of Modern History 80.2 (2008): 358-78. Transnational Post-Shoah and Postwar Family Stories as Detective Fiction. Descendants as Detectives in Irene Dische, Jurek Becker, Clemens Eich, and Tanja Dückers DAGMA R C .G. LOR ENZ Univ ersity Of Illinois At Chicago In different ways German-language literature has become a part of transnational communication to such an extent that the term «transnational» applied to contemporary writing is almost a contradiction in terms. Likewise, the topics and techniques of crime and detective fiction, genres that traditionally were not considered serious, proliferated in international prose narratives and filmmaking. From the wealth of possible examples I have selected works by four authors of different generational and national affiliations. All of them are linked to the aftermath of the Third Reich through their family histories. Jurek Becker, born 1937 in Poland, was a child survivor of the ghetto Lodz and several concentration camps; Irene Dische, born in 1952 in New York, is the daughter of refugees from Nazi Germany and Poland; German- Austrian author Clemens Eich, born in 1954 in Germany and raised in Austria, was the son of the racially persecuted poet Ilse Aichinger and acclaimed German preand postwar author Günter Eich. The youngest author, Tanja Dückers, was born in Germany in 1968. Her career includes international experience in the US and other countries. Her fiction has been characterized as Enkelliteratur, grandchildren literature, by Mila Ganeva, or Third- Generation-literature from the vantage point of the Second World War or the Shoah. Becker and Dische focus on parent-child relationships that are overshadowed by a past of persecution, which the parents keep a secret. The grandchild-grandparent relationships in Eich and Dückers involve former Nazi supporters that did not reveal their stories and politics past and present - for good reason since they are situated in the Federal Republic and the Second Republic of Austria respectively. In other words, the prose narratives in question center on family histories. At some point the younger characters, descendants of the Nazi-era generations, become engaged in discovery projects to ascertain their forebear’s past and to establish their own identity. Beyond the mystery plot other common elements and motifs in these narratives come to the foreground. To 132 Dagmar C.G. Lorenz differentiate between the generational perspectives, Mila Ganeva assumes divergent impulses for the Nazi-era discoveries on the part of children and grandchildren, and generation-specific ways in the processing of these revelations (157). On the surface the fact-finding missions by Becker’s Hans Bronstein in Bronsteins Kinder (1986), Dische’s Charles Allen in «Eine Jüdin für Charles Allen» (1989), Eich’s Valentin in Das steinerne Meer (1991), and Dücker’s Freia in Himmelskörper (2003) involve detective work to establish «the truth» about older family members and friends, and to reconstruct their families’ cultural identity and place in history. Usually, a life-changing event precedes the discovery projects. The protagonist’s everyday routine is interrupted and his or her sense of self is severely challenged. The shock leads to the discovery of crimes - crimes committed by the respective family members or crimes perpetrated against them, or both. Personal transgressions relate back to the context of the criminal regime that was the Third Reich. In Becker, the father’s non-conformism is linked to his Jewish background, which was not welcome in the German Democratic Republic. German Jewish history was not a concern in the GDR. The topics of anti- Semitism and the Holocaust played no role in East German historiography. Here, the main issues were anti-fascism and the class struggle, and the Nazi regime was viewed as the ultimate expression of bourgeois and petty bourgeois society. Arno Bronstein’s Holocaust experience comes to light when his son Hans is confronted with the fact that Arno and his friends are holding a former KZ guard prisoner and torture him. The site of their private «camp» is the summer cottage where Hans conducts his love affair with his girlfriend, Martha Lepschitz, who, like himself, is the daughter of survivors. The discovery of the kidnapped man in his love nest ends the young man’s childhood and his illusion of being a GDR citizen like any other. In Dische, the death of his absent father Johannes Allerhand and the problematic inheritance he leaves behind sends the protagonist, young Charles Allen, on a quest that changes the way he sees himself and others. The inheritance, an antique shop in Berlin, turns out to be a front for smuggled and fenced goods and money laundering. In Allerhand’s German world, which Charles leaves in the end, nothing is real, neither the names people go by, nor the people themselves, nor the elder Allerhand’s ostensibly Jewish girl friend and business partner. In Eich, the boy protagonist Valentin learns about the East European origins and the Nazi affiliations of his grandfather Michael Hader from a manuscript containing the latter’s autobiography. Finally, he has to deal with a recent murder the old man has committed, leaving the body of a dead woman in the basement of his remote mountain cottage, where he has lived alone with Valentin since the disappearance of the boy’s parents. Transnational Post-Shoah and Postwar Family Stories 133 Like in Becker and Dische, his findings destroy any sense of security young Valentin had and propel him into an uncertain future. In Dückers the probe of the grandchild, Freia, into her family history is contextualized with several deaths that include the grandparents’ death and the mother’s suicide. Another factor in finding an existential anchor by way of her investigation is Freia’s pregnancy. Through documents and pictures Freia learns about the grandparents’ Nazi affiliation which was suggested to Dückers’ readers all along: the convictions held by the old people included racism, German supremacism, and Social Darwinism, ways of thinking that allowed them to live with their memory of supporting the Nazi regime and taking advantage of their privileged position, most notably to ensure their survival in 1945 by exchanging their guaranteed places on the ill-fated German refugee ship Gustloff for a transfer on a smaller, better equipped boat. Thus they sent another family to their deaths. As Freia and her twin brother Paul learn the truth about their grandparents’ positive relationship with the Third Reich, they abandon their bizarre guises - she had shaved herself bald, he colored his hair solid black - and come into their own. In Dische’s novella «Fromme Lügen» the hidden family history, exile and the Holocaust, took an emotional toll on the refugee family living in the United States. In Dückers, it is the unspoken Nazi past that has the power to drive Freia’s mother to suicide. In both cases the past only loses its grip on the descendants when the facts are articulated, explained, and accepted. In the four novels at hand the discovered crimes become the crucible to test the protagonists’ character. Will they side with the offenders or the victims? Will they break out of the cycle of violence or acquiesce and allow it to continue? Arguably the preoccupation with crime and criminals after World War II in German and Austrian literature is the product of the growing awareness of the criminal character of the Third Reich, confirmed in a long line of Nazi trials starting with the Nuremberg war crime tribunals of 1945/ 6 and followed by the trials of the 1960s to the 1990s - the Jerusalem Eichmann trial, the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, and the case of Cleveland auto worker John Demjanuk. Cultural and media events complemented the ever more sophisticated legal discourse on the Holocaust. In international debates the issue of German and Austrian criminality continued to be a red button issue. The Diary of Anne Frank and the following feature films, Peter Weiss’s documentary drama The Investigation, the TV miniseries Holocaust, Herman Wouk’s War and Remembrance, Claude Lanzmann’s documentary film Shoah, and Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, as well as the Wehrmachtsausstellung «War Crimes of the Wehrmacht» showcased Nazi German atrocities 134 Dagmar C.G. Lorenz but at the same time celebrated the heroism of the rare and exceptional individuals, survivors, non-conformists, or resisters. In the novels discussed here, such outstanding individuals are not in evidence. The gap separating right from wrong seems but small, a dilemma that presents the family detective with additional difficulties. The preoccupation with crime, law enforcement, and organized crime in US popular culture, film, and fiction, is likely to have been a contributing factor in the fascination with crime, also in German-language works, but this issue will not be examined here. The increasing body of literature on the topic of German crime and guilt reveals what Ganeva terms a veritable «obsession with the past» among the grandchildren generation. During the postwar era, according to Ganeva, a somewhat hesitant attitude towards the «recent past» prevailed. At that time the events seemed still accessible, and the persons involved were alive and active members of postwar society (Ganeva 160). Yet, the works discussed here do not bear out Ganeva’s assertion that a more optimistic outlook prevailed in the 1968 Father-and-Mother literature, based on the belief that making a clean break with the past was an option. For example, Hans Bronstein’s melancholy and Charles Allen’s return to the United States point to unmanageable difficulties with the past. More recent characters, Ganeva holds, «seem to be skeptical that they will ever find definite answers or any sense of closure» (160). At the same time, she notes, the grandchildren, who seemingly accept the burden of the past, enter their mission of discovery with abandon. This would not be surprising in light of the changed historical situation. The majority of the wartime generations are gone, as is the case in Eich and Dückers, where the grandparents pass away before their Nazi past riddled with opportunism and deception, including a recent murder committed by the grandfather in Eich’s novel, comes to light. Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox’s film Walk on Water, an Israeli-German co-production, provides a striking image for the situation: in a wheel-chair with an IV bag by his side, the halfdead Nazi grandfather is wheeled into his adult children’s festively decked out salon just to meet his death at the hands of his oh-so-gentle, gay grandson, whose entire existence appears like a protest against his Nazi-friendly parents. In Bronsteins Kinder and «Eine Jüdin für Charles Allen» the family detectives face similar situations. Shortly before the death of Aron Bronstein, a concentration camp survivor and currently the kidnapper of a former KZ guard, his son Hans comes to acknowledge the indestructible ties that bind him to his family’s Jewish past. These ties are immediately manifest on the level of language: the old men under the leadership of his father speak Yiddish, and Hans, who never studied the language, is able to follow their con- Transnational Post-Shoah and Postwar Family Stories 135 versation without difficulty. After Aron Bronstein’s death Hans no longer needs to make the difficult decision outlined by his sister Elle as follows: Dieser fremde Unmann oder unser Vater es gibt dabei Nichts Drittes da kann es dir Nicht schwer fallen zu entscheiden … Der Augenblick liegt erst noch vor dir in dem du tust was du tun must erst dann aber stellt sich heraus ob du ein Blauer bist oder ein Gelber (Becker 282). Hans’s isolation from his Jewish friends and position apart from the German mainstream society suggests that he is emotionally not up to the task of taking an unequivocal position. The same applies to his sister Elle, who lives in a mental institution on neutral ground so-to-speak. Before Dische’s Charles Allen, Catholic by faith, Jewish by descent, is called to Berlin to accept his paternal bequest, his father is already dead. The son is therefore at liberty to examine closely the legacy of his father, the small-time crook Johannes Allerhand who in Berlin went by his original German name. As is usually the case in fiction involving a parent-child conflict, the child becomes embroiled in a crime of his own: Hans Bronstein abets his father’s crime, failing to inform the GDR authorities to end the torture of a captured man, and he acts as the latter’s accomplice by letting him escape. Charles Allen commits rape after unmasking the false Jewess Esther Becker, who turns out to be the daughter of former Nazis and, in order to take advantage of Germany’s restitution policies, poses as a Jewish woman. Valentin in Eich’s novel conceals the murder committed by his grandfather even after the latter has died; he buries the victim in the basement of the old house, and, still a minor, takes off on what will likely turn out to be a suicide mission. Only in Dückers do alternatives emerge: for Freia motherhood arises as an option whose viability, to be sure, remains unexplored and Paul seems to have found partnership and a home with his gay lover in Paris. Still, Dückers’s twins break with tradition and seek emotional and geographic distance from their family and national legacy. Freia’s alternative involves a repositioning by way of her Polish ancestry. Her opting for the Other, the unknown, calls to mind the escape attempted by Eich’s Valentin, who departs for the Alpine plateaus near the German border. Readers are drawn into the role of detective as they trace the tribulations of the rather distinct fictional characters. All of the narratives discussed here raise questions about continuity and loyalty; they problematize the transmission of patterns from the older generations to the younger ones. Even in the works that do not thematize procreation as a possible path to libera- 136 Dagmar C.G. Lorenz tion, as is the case in Dückers’ Himmelskörper, the continuity of memory is thematized. Occupying a different plane than the fictional characters the readers receive clues from the behavior and appearance of the fictional characters. For example, in Becker there is the mistaken notion that Hans Bronstein is circumcised, while Hans denies his Jewish identity, his social life in Jewish circles, and tidbits from his father’s past serve to position him within the survivor collective despite his self-identification as a GDR citizen. In Dische, the traditionalist demeanor and conservative old world apparel of Charles Allen as well as his shyness and asceticism stand in contrast with the flamboyant performance of Jewishness by Esther Becker, whose real name is Margret. In Eich the sickliness of the awkward boy Valentin, and in Dückers the eye-catching gender bending by the unconventional twins suggest incongruence to the readers and point to an unprocessed past. Indeed, in Eich and Dückers the protagonists’ traits clash with the aspirations and convictions of the grandparents. Eich’s Michael Hader wants his grandson to become a skiing champion and tries to instill in him notions of discipline, victory, and triumph. In Dückers the grandmother tries to indoctrinate the children with Nazi gender role expectations and a beauty ideal associated with the Aryan stereotype, while the grandfather imparts to them his Social Darwinist tenets (Mattson 199). In general, the grandchildren characters of Third-Generation writers exhibit curiosity and detachment rather than the Betroffenheit and shame typical of the protagonists in the works of Bachmann, Bernhard, and Handke. In part this development reflects the progressing debates at the end of the twentieth century. By then it was an established fact that the vast majority of Central Europeans had been victimized under National Socialism and that there were perpetrators among their forebears, or both. Nazi-era family secrets had become unexceptional. The eagerness Ganeva observes in the grandchildren generation to disclose the past seems a product of the passing of time. The growing detachment from the past diminishes the compulsion to conceal it, thus allowing for a sense of normalcy to take hold among the descendants of the traumatic European past. Post-Shoah and post-WWII memory in writers of the third post-1945 generation is becoming increasingly diffuse, not surprisingly, considering the mounting layers of opaqueness. In the first generation the issue was deliberate deception in order to avoid exposing an unpalatable past. In the second generations the misconceptions created by the denial and lies of the first generation were either deliberately perpetuated or cast in a somewhat favorable light, while the following generations are faced with an unmanageable memory discourse that contradicts historical research and defies Transnational Post-Shoah and Postwar Family Stories 137 documentation, hence the preoccupation with «collective memory» rather than history. Second-Generation accounts reveal that the children of perpetrators as well as those of Holocaust survivors had received little, and often distorted information about the Nazi era and the fate of their families. Much like the «collector» in Liev Schreiber’s Everything is Illuminated (2005), who is a young American of East European Jewish background, the descendants of perpetrators and victims assume the role of history detectives to uncover their family’s past in order to discover themselves, as the identity issues dominating these works suggest. Often the uninformed descendants are faced with unwilling resource persons, they make uncomfortable discoveries, and are uncertain which ghosts they fight - and ghosts are conjured up, as is literally the case in Irene Dische’s story «Fromme Lügen». Not every protagonist goes around collecting evidence like Jonathan Safran Foer’s and Liev Schreiber’s protagonist, who carries plastic evidence bags with him at all times to piece together the mosaic of his lost history. German and Austrian narratives problematize the obstacles standing in the way of the missions of discovery. The obstacles include historical and social change, repression, forgetfulness, and deliberate deception. The latter may, as in Becker and Dische, involve the characters of former Nazis, whose postwar existence would be threatened if they were known, children of Nazis, who find the association with the victims troublesome, and survivors of Nazi persecution, who consider the humiliation they endured shameful and want to make a clean break with the past. In all cases, confusion is the result for the later born, who are unsure how to interpret their parents’ and grandparents’ silence and unable to make sense of the uncontextualized tales and anecdotes of their elders. Oftentimes the protagonist-detectives end up within an imaginary community of victims or within the perpetrator collective - often with disastrous consequences. Ganeva points to a seemingly self-destructive tendency in either case: «As darker moments are exposed from the family’s past, the grandchildren become even more strongly committed to their project of digging into their ancestors’ history and transmitting it to the generations to come,» she writes (160). The works discussed here and the tendencies they represent reveal that the Nazi past still looms large in the German and Austrian imaginary and that no end is in sight to the now decades-old literary tradition associated with it, ranging from Ingeborg Bachmann to Günter Grass, Thomas Bernhard, Robert and Eva Menasse, Doron Rabinovici, Robert Schindel, Anna Mitgutsch, Vladimir Vertlib, and Julia Franck. In each of the post-1945 generations the kind of affectedness and the motivation for delving into the past 138 Dagmar C.G. Lorenz differ as do the post-mortem relationships the protagonists are shown to forge with their victim or perpetrator ancestors. Likewise, the motives for finding out about ancestral crimes or victimhood may differ as the distance to the historical events increases, but in light of Germany and Austria’s association with the Third Reich in the global context these quests continue to play a significant role. Works Cited Becker, Jurek. Bronsteins Kinder. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1988. Dische, Irene. «Eine Jüdin für Charles Allen.» Fromme Lügen, Trans. Otto Bayer and Monika Elwenspoek. Reinbeck: Rowohlt, 1994. 7-74. Dückers, Tanja. Himmelskörper. Berlin: Aufbau, 2004. Eich, Clemens. Das steinerne Meer. Gesammelte Werke I. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 2008. 5-312. Ganeva, Mila. «From West-German Väterliteratur to Post-Wall Enkelliteratur: The End of the Generation Conflict in Marcel Beyer’s Spione and Tanja Dückers’s Himmelskörper.» Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 43.2 (2007): 149-62. Mattson, Michelle. «The Obligations of Memory? Gender and Historical Responsibility in Tanja Dückers’s Himmelskörper and Arno Geiger’s Es geht uns gut.» German Quarterly 86.2 (2013): 198-219. Walk on Water. Dir. Eytan Fox. Israel: Lama-Productions, 2004. The Second History of National Socialism in Contemporary Austrian Crime Fiction ANITA MCCHE SNEY Te x a s Tech Univ ersity As the production and consumption of crime fiction reach new heights worldwide so also have the number of texts that link the detection of fictional crimes to historical aspects of National Socialism. 1 The German-language texts alone cover themes from the Euthanasia, «Aryanization,» and forced labor programs of the Nazi Regime, to later struggles of first-, secondand third-generation German victims and perpetrators to come to terms with lingering repercussions of the past, the much-debated Vergangenheitsbewältigung. 2 Nazi crime fiction that focuses on the later generations typically uses the form of the novel of retrospective historical investigation (retrospektiver historischer Ermittlungsroman, in Achim Saupe’s terms). 3 Set in the present, these texts feature a contemporary detective whose investigations lead him or her into the shadowy recesses of the historical past. The dual time frame enables the novels to portray the effects of the past on the present and it also creates a metastructure to critically reflect on the processes of portraying a history such as that of National Socialism. While discussions on representing National Socialism often focus exclusively on Germany, an analysis of novels of retrospective historical investigation from Austria offers a contrasting perspective on Vergangenheitsbewältigung that reflects the unique development of the «second history» of National Socialism in Austrian discourse. 4 «Second history» as defined in Der Nationalsozialismus, die zweite Geschichte: Überwindung, Deutung, Erinnerung means that the focus lies on the post-history (Nachgeschichte) of National Socialism. This after story considers the events from the National Socialist era and how they are publicly remembered and thereby defined for later generations. (8) Crime novels by contemporary Austrian writers Eva Rossmann and Lilian Faschinger portray this second history in Austria as a generational concern. The novels’ protagonists are the children and grandchildren of participants in and victims of National Socialism who reveal the secrets of those previous generations as they investigate crimes. The two novelists frame the consequences of uncovering the past quite differently, yet both depict the silenced history of National Socialism as a cultural inheritance. In their texts this legacy manifests itself in the pathology of the chil- 140 Anita McChesney dren and of a society both of whom repeat destructive patterns from their family’s and nation’s unresolved past. This article examines the portrayal of National Socialism in Eva Rossmann’s Freudsche Verbrechen (2001) and Lilian Faschinger’s Stadt der Verlierer (2007). Particular focus is on how the history of National Socialism is positioned within the plot and how the structural elements and motifs address the legacy of National Socialism in contemporary Austria. Examining how the texts use the crime genre to frame the second history of National Socialism, I show how they critique the ways a responsible society has avoided confronting its own historic wrongdoing and how they emphasize the continuing effects of those choices on later generations and on society. Finally, I propose how the differing approaches taken in the two texts demonstrate both the possibilities and limitations for representing National Socialism in fiction. While both novelists use the detectives’ search to illustrate Austrian society’s ongoing desire to ignore and/ or revise uncomfortable aspects of its past, in Rossmann’s novel the successful resolution of the crime naively suggests the possibility of achieving closure to the historical past. By contrast, the untidy resolutions in Faschinger’s text point to the continuing adverse social effects of an unresolved past as well as the illusoriness of attaining a satisfying, linear resolution. A central challenge when discussing «Nazi» crime fiction is the seeming contradiction between events that can only be described as inarticulable and unrepresentable and a genre best known for providing answers. Crime novels characteristically satisfy readers with master detectives who investigate the past to solve its mysteries and thereby provide a complete understanding of the events, including their causes and effects. This dilemma is not only confined to the crime genre, however. As Helmut Schmitz notes in German Culture and the Uncomfortable Past, an inherent paradox with any discourse on National Socialism, particularly when presented as a type of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, is that it envisages a finality to the process. «Mastering the past» suggests a successful integration of something into a larger narrative that is supposed to achieve closure. (3) While the experiences of National Socialism and the Holocaust demand an adequate response, Schmitz aptly notes that to approach these events is «to encounter the limits of feeling, reason, and representation» (3). National Socialism has been a particularly problematic issue in Austrian discourse due to the country’s relatively late official acknowledgment of culpability in the movement. The Allied designation of Austria as a victim nation, «the first free country to fall a victim to Hitlerite aggression» as stated in the Moscow Doctrine from 1943, served as the official historical explanation of the country’s role in the The Second History of National Socialism 141 war after it was adopted into Austria’s state treaty in 1955. 5 This so-called Opfermythos went largely unchallenged until the Waldheim affair of 1986 finally forced public discussions that then lead the Austrian government in the 1990s to revise its «hegemonic post-war memory regime,» as historian Günter Bischof calls Austria’s disavowal of its past, and in the years 2000 and 2001 to finally instate restitution programs for possessions seized during the era. (17) The differences in German and Austrian literary representations of their respective country’s Fascist past reflect Austria’s delayed official acknowledgement. According to Mila Ganeva, post-1945 German generational novels have evolved in three stages from the first to third generations of writers. Whereas the first generation (the authors of post-war literature) was hesitant to address the recent past, the second generation attempted to come to terms with that past by confronting their parents and penetrating the silence that cloaked guilt and responsibility. The third generation, Ganeva notes, now moves away from «such grandiose gestures of coming to terms with the past (‹die große Vergangenheitsbewältigung›)» and the texts consist largely of testimonies «to some private obsessions with history» (150). Distancing themselves from political programs or ideological agendas, the protagonists are more interested in personal stories that can heal and reestablish emotional ties with previous generations than rupture them. They investigate the past to better understand and accept their predecessors rather than to confront and disagree with them. (150) Contemporary Austrian generational novels show little evidence of a similar movement from confrontation to reconciliation as their German counterparts. Juliet Wigmore sees a direct link between the literary and historical developments in the two countries. She claims that Austrian authors often adopt a more provocative stance due to the country’s late dealing with the past. She suggests that the texts do not offer freedom to the younger generations who have inherited the pre-1945 history as part of their national identity and that the past «haunts them and conditions the way they behave» (106). Contemporary Austrian crime fiction highlights the burden of these ghosts with narratives in which the protagonists seek to understand if not overcome the sway of the unresolved past. Indeed, due to its inherent structure the crime genre provides a singular approach to portraying National Socialism. The emphasis on exploring and reconstructing the past in the crime plot makes crime fiction by definition a type of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, as solving the crime is contingent on understanding the past. The novel of retrospective historical investigation, in particular, emphasizes the ties between past and present since its historical plot sends the contempo- 142 Anita McChesney rary protagonist into the historical past to understand contemporary events. The historical plot thereby echoes and accentuates the dual timeframe of the crime narrative. By doubling the characteristic narrative structure of crime fiction in the crime and historical plots, historical investigation novels create the unique potential to reflect both on past events in connection with their current effects as well as on the possibilities and limits of their representation. 6 The genre’s potential and its barriers can be elucidated through analyses of Eva Rossmann’s and Lillian Faschinger’s differing approaches to portraying Austria’s past in their crime novels. Eva Rossmann’s work closely follows the familiar conventions of crime fiction. Her 2001 Freudsche Verbrechen maintains the genre’s traditional triad structure (crime, detection, resolution) 7 and also offers an unambiguous depiction of National Socialism’s heritage in contemporary Austria as a failure to deal with the past. Stylistically and thematically, Rossmann’s approach to Nazi crime fiction reflects the author’s background and writing career. After earning a degree in law from the University of Vienna, the author worked extensively as a constitutional lawyer, political journalist, political campaign manager, journalist, and news editor. She also published several non-fiction books on women, politics, and the media, before turning to crime fiction in 1998. As of 2014 Rossmann has written 16 novels featuring Mira Valensky. The female detective in the series mirrors the author in many respects. A lawyer by training, Valensky works as a journalist in Vienna where she is drawn into criminal cases involving financial, legal, and political corruption and which reveal a contemporary Austrian society whose members and media are predisposed to concealing those crimes and scandals. 8 Freudsche Verbrechen, Rossmann’s second Valensky novel, begins when Mira receives a phone call from a former school friend, Ulrike, who has just found a strangled 22-year-old New Yorker, Jane Cooper, in the Freud museum in Vienna where she works. The protagonist is catapulted into the role of amateur detective when Ulrike is subsequently charged with the crime. The police’s case against Mira’s friend intensifies after the murder of Ulrike’s boyfriend, a prominent Viennese psychiatrist and one of the few people Jane had become acquainted with during her visit to Vienna. Mira’s subsequent investigation leads through multiple layers of Austrian family history that begins with the Nazi «Aryanization» program in Austria in the 1930s. The amateur detective discovers that Jane came to Vienna to reclaim her greatgrandparents’ family home, which had been appropriated and auctioned off to the Bernkopf family by the state under the Nazi «Aryanization» program. Jane’s family had been deported to Auschwitz, where everyone died The Second History of National Socialism 143 except Jane’s grandmother, who had previously moved to New York with an American boyfriend. Mira eventually discovers that Jane’s murderer is Bernkopf junior, the grandson of the first buyer, who feared that a battle over the family home would devalue his stake in the house, which he had mortgaged to fund his entrepreneurial schemes. Rossmann’s text exemplifies how the novel of retrospective historical investigation uses its dual time structure to explore a fictional crime as well as actual history. Set in present-day Vienna, Mira investigates crimes that are rooted in Nazi programs in Austria in the late 1930s. Her investigations in New York and Vienna reveal both past memories and current attitudes about that past by later generations. Linking the past and present in the crime and historical plots, the novel reaffirms a staunch continuity in two attitudes towards National Socialism over the past 70 years. These attitudes are a pervasive lack of knowledge of the past and an unwillingness to confront and take responsibility for the events. Rossmann depicts the first aspect primarily by linking the lack of historical knowledge about National Socialism in Austria to the characters’ ignorance about the house’s history. Frau Bernkopf, wife of the current owner, tells Mira she and her husband are too young to know about the history of the house or the «Aryanization» program and the fate of the Jewish inhabitants: «Die armen Leute […] aber wir haben daran wirklich keine Schuld gehabt. Unseren Eltern ist es im Krieg auch nicht gut gegangen […] aber wir haben jedenfalls mit der ganzen Sache nichts zu tun. […] wir waren doch gar nicht geboren» (288-89). Frau Bernkopf thereby voices the familiar argument of the «Gnade der späten Geburt» («luck of being born late») generation, namely that because they were born after 1930, they can neither know about nor be held responsible for events during the Nazi era. 9 In Rossmann’s novel not only the perpetrator’s but also the victim’s family knows and wants to know nothing about the past. Jane’s father tells Mira he was unaware of his daughter’s trip to Vienna, unaware of the family house, indeed that he knew nothing about his mother’s past. Although he wants Mira to help him regain the property, he declines any additional information about his mother’s origins or her family’s fate under the National Socialists. As he resolutely states: ‹«Man muss in die Zukunft denken, das hat auch meine Mutter immer gesagt›» (157) and «‹Ich will es nicht wissen, mir reicht, was ich weiß›» (291-92). In Freudsche Verbrechen Rossmann connects the lack of knowledge about the past to a second problem: the choice of previous generations to repress or at the very least to selectively remember the events. Mira points out that she herself was ignorant about the «Aryanization» program prior to this case due to the Austrian school system and the unwillingness of the parents’ 144 Anita McChesney generation to discuss their role in National Socialism. 10 This aversion to facing the past continues to manifest itself in contemporary attitudes. When Mira wants to highlight the fate of Jane’s relatives and their property in a final news article on the murders, her editor instructs her to focus on the love story between Jane’s grandparents rather than the injustices suffered by the family in order to appeal to readers: «Es können viele Leute eben nicht verstehen, warum sie etwas zurückgeben sollen, das irgendjemand vor Jahrzehnten den Juden weggenommen hat. Zu unrecht natürlich. Aber es ist besser, in die Zukunft zu schauen. Wir stellen die Liebesgeschichte in den Mittelpunkt. Die zeigt auch, wie fürchterlich die Nazizeit war, aber anders. Irgendwie menschlicher» (165). The character Dora Messerschmidt, a historian whom Mira consults for information about «Aryanization» programs in Austria, underscores Rossmann’s final commentary on Austria’s current relationship to its historical past. Her simple statement «Österreich will seine Ruhe» (219) emphasizes how contemporary society still chooses the path of silent ignorance. Framing Freudsche Verbrechen as a retrospective historical investigation underlines Austria’s persisting aversion to confronting its own historic wrongdoing. The narrative form also emphasizes the continuing disastrous effects of those choices on later generations and society. As Mira pieces together the missing information about the current and past crimes, Rossmann suggests that the ubiquitous ignorance is a willing amnesia passed on through the generations. One of the most poignant testaments to this condition comes from Frau Bernkopf when her son confesses to Jane’s murder. «‹Das ist alles nicht wahr,› schrie seine Mutter weiter, ‹er weiß nicht, was er sagt […] oh Gott, mein armer Sohn, ich weiß von nichts. Gar nichts. Ich habe keine Ahnung›» (328). Her impassioned disavowal of knowledge, and thereby guilt, hold true of Jane’s murder and the entire context of the «Aryanization» program. She has no clue. Frau Bernkopf bequeaths this willful silence to her son. In his confession of Jane’s murder to Mira, Bernkopf junior explains that he strangled the New Yorker to silence her claims to the house: «Sie wollte hinausschreien, dass es sich um arisiertes Vermögen handelt» (323). The wording of his statement underscores that Bernkopf junior perpetuates his parents’ passive silence by actively silencing those who would scream out about the past. 11 The end of Rossmann’s Nazi crime novel adheres to the genre’s traditional model. The mysteries are solved, Bernkopf junior confesses and is arrested, and Mira’s detective skills proven. Similarly, Mira’s new, expanded understanding of the past suggests that readers will also be enlightened about the «Aryanization» program and, like Mira, appropriately dismayed that not The Second History of National Socialism 145 everyone has grasped the horrors of the past. And yet the clear resolution to the crime plot leaves readers with the uneasy feeling that the historical past has been wrapped up a little too neatly. Ultimately, this so-called enlightenment can be reduced to a few historical lectures on «Aryanization» and restitution in Austria and laments concerning the general lack of understanding. Even Mira’s comments that are designed to exemplify understanding and mastery of the past, ultimately consist of a series of clichéd assertions, such as her claim that through the case «war diese Tatsache für mich nicht länger abstrakt, sondern ganz konkret» (148). 12 As Schmitz notes in German Culture and the Uncomfortable Past, the very declaration of successful empathy and understanding about an event located at the «limits of feeling, reason, and representation» must be suspect, suspicions that Rossmann’s novel affirms. Proclamations on resolving the past do not equal understanding; neither does solving a contemporary crime that is rooted in the past mean that both have been sufficiently resolved and the past «mastered,» to use the language of Vergangenheitsbewältigung discourse. My skepticism about the novel’s efficacy stands in contrast to other readings of Rossmann’s text. Traci S. O’Brien, for example, concludes that the novel demonstrates how imagination can provide an ethical means to confront the past and to institute a type of belated justice. My reading however suggests that the superficial treatment of Vergangenheitsbewältigung does less to promote constructive imagination than to discourage a deeper engagement with the past. Freudsche Verbrechen thereby demonstrates the difficulties, rather than the successes, of using traditional, linear narrative forms to address complex historical events. The novel underscores the contradictions between an ordered crime schema that can resolve past crimes by making unequivocal statements on crime and society past and present, and a historical past that resists such structures. While the novel does not escape the traps inherent in narratives that marry crime fiction and discourses on National Socialism, it provides a useful template to examine contemporaneous Austrian crime novels that use themes and structures similar to Rossmann’s, but deliver a more nuanced image of the past and the problems of representation. Crime stories by Elfriede Jelinek, Gerhard Roth, and Lilian Faschinger, for example, similarly represent the «second history» of National Socialism as an inherited, psychological disease in present-day Austria. Yet, their experimental novels modify the linear structures of the retrospective investigation novel to emphasize the cyclical nature of an unresolvable past that manifests itself in perceptible and imperceptible ways in contemporary society. Lillian Faschinger’s Stadt der Verlierer is a less traditionally structured crime narrative and understated 146 Anita McChesney depiction of Nazism; it provides an informative contrasting approach to Rossmann’s novel. These modifications provide an example of the narrative possibilities for the novel of retrospective historical investigation to deliver impactful depictions of the past. Some of the differences between Rossmann’s and Faschinger’s approach can be attributed to the authors’ contrasting backgrounds. Lilian Faschinger holds a degree in English studies and history and her novel is part of a rich literary oeuvre. The themes in this author’s novels also mirror her childhood experiences in post-war Carinthia. Faschinger grew up in a rural area plagued by poverty, parochialism, and the devastating effect of Nazi ideologies and their aftermath. She also witnessed widespread social dysfunction, such as misogyny and child abuse, much of which she attributes to the corrupt policies of the Catholic Church. Faschinger’s literary work echoes her early experiences; her novels repeatedly portray aspects of a dysfunctional society in rural and urban Austria. 13 In Wiener Passion, to name just one example, the experiences of Magnolia Brown and her great-grandmother Rosa Tichy Havelka in the Vienna of the 1990s and 1890s, respectively, suggest how patterns of misogyny, racism, and social inequality in Austrian society have remained unchanged over the course of the past century. Faschinger’s work often draws on elements of crime fiction to portray Austria’s social problems. Yet, in contrast to Rossmann’s conventional sixteen-part Krimi series, only four of her eleven published novels (as of 2007) 14 could be considered part of the genre of retrospective historical investigations. The latest, Die Unzertrennlichen (2012) exhibits the more traditional narrative structure of crime fiction. These four novels play with aspects of the traditional generic form. In Stadt der Verlierer, in particular, Faschinger uses innovative modifications of the crime schema to portray the social dysfunction in an Austria that, for her, persists under the cloak of silence and denial. Much like the postmodern crime novel as defined by Brian McHale and Michael Holquist, 15 Stadt der Verlierer stretches the genre’s narrative boundaries. The text includes, but also plays with, the structures of conventional crime fiction. Stadt der Verlierer, for example, is set in an urban environment (Vienna), it features the murder of a beautiful young woman, and it builds suspense with the detective’s efforts to solve several cases. Despite these familiar traits, Faschinger breaks up the narrative structure with two alternating narrators: the first person account of subsequent murderer Matthias Karner and the third person account of detective Emma Novak. This narrative structure inverts the traditional hierarchical relationship between detective and criminal and strips away suspense about the murderer’s identity. The split narrative voices also signal the impossibility of achieving order, The Second History of National Socialism 147 a concept that is reinforced by the novel’s themes and conclusion. A second modification is the position of the murder, which Faschinger’s text downplays by placing it in the twelfth of 19 chapters. Finally, although Matthias is caught, social order is not restored at the end. Instead, the crime and process of investigation reveal greater, unsolvable social psychoses passed on by the shortcomings of previous generations. Unlike Rossmann’s novel, Faschinger’s Stadt der Verlierer portrays National Socialism alongside other inherited elements that have shaped the present social dysfunction in Vienna. The «city of losers,» as the title already calls it, is rampant with misogyny, bigotry, racism, dysfunctional families, and hypocrisy. These attributes become most evident through the first person account of the social misfit and murderer Matthias Karner. A 30-year-old unemployed resident of Vienna, he supports himself through sexual relationships with wealthy women. Matthias’s thoughts and actions paint a disturbing image of an abusive misogynist, whose numerous social dysfunctions stem from his upbringing by abusive foster parents and an early sexual relationship with his foster sister. Another skeleton in his family’s past emerges when the wealthy Viennese restaurateur, Greta Mautner, hires detective Emma Novak to find the second of her twin sons whom she gave up for adoption while keeping his brother. This missing son is, of course, Matthias. Reuniting Matthias and his wealthy mother might explain his past but does not redirect his future. His hatred of women deepens as does his inability to come to terms with the past. He refuses to forgive the mother who abandoned him to a cruel foster family and is determined to take advantage of her wealth. His hate intensifies when he compares his life to that of his twin brother Nikki, now a leading European architect with a beautiful wife, Vera, coincidently also Matthias’s current lover. Driven by rage against his brother, the wife, his mother, and all women, Matthias strangles Vera’s cat and then Vera in a violent rape scene. He finally attempts to strangle his mother, who, however, outsmarts him. In Faschinger’s novel the brutal crimes seem to be inevitably interconnected with heredity, family history, and the oppressive environment of Vienna. The second narrator in Stadt der Verlierer, detective Emma Novak, reinforces the image of Vienna’s disturbed populace. Novak is a mediocre detective with a family life that is only marginally better than that of the criminal, Matthias. A divorcée, Emma has constant friction with her mother and her teenage son, who lives with his grandmother. Emma’s mother maintains a steady supply of young lovers at her home, disregarding her husband, a World War II veteran, who suffers from dementia and mainly spends his time in the attic reenacting war scenarios with his model submarines. 148 Anita McChesney National Socialist history plays an understated, but crucial role in Faschinger’s larger image of a city filled with «losers.» The few select references to that past suggest that the deep-seated misogyny, bigotry, and hypocrisy are part and parcel of the same neuroses that inform the uncomfortable, distorted perception of the National Socialist past. Matthias, for example, describes the six anti-aircraft towers from the Third Reich as the only positive to living in Vienna, «Die sechs Flaktürme sind das Beste an Wien. Eindeutig. Ein Grund, in dieser Stadt zu leben. Der einzige, wenn man es genau nimmt» (187). The imagined grandeur of the historical towers lacks any grounding in reality for the 30-year-old, who is too young to have any personal experience with the war. Thus, his view that surviving remnants from the National Socialist past are the best of Vienna derives only from the picture he has constructed of the past and not from reality. Indeed, he continually comments on his lack of knowledge and interest in anything to do with National Socialism. As he puts it when Vera tells him the tragic history of a famed photographer and student killed by the Nazis, «Sie interessierten mich nicht. […] Was ging mich das an? » (210). The context of the comments reinforces connections between Austria’s past and present dysfunctions. Matthias voices his disinterest in Austria’s past in an intimate conversation with his lover Vera, his twin brother’s wife, and in a chapter that will end with him spying on the couple outside their house and killing their cat, an act that foreshadows Vera’s murder. Uttered in the context of a dysfunctional and soon-to-be deadly relationship, this attitude about the country’s past reinforces the fact that the failure to deal with all aspects of past history will inevitably continue to manifest itself adversely. A subplot with Emma’s father, Engelbert Novak, reinforces the links between Austrians’ present-day neuroses and their proclivity to reconstruct their own version of the past. Presumably due to his dementia, the World War II veteran spends his time constructing model submarines from the war. He reenacts heroic, but inaccurate, scenes of his past service to Austria and the National Socialists. Novak falsely believes that his submarine unit sank a British submarine in WWII for which he was awarded the Iron Cross. «So war es […] so und nicht anders,» he continually insists when Emma tries to correct him. «Wir waren Helden. Hitler ließ die gesamte Mannschaft in seinem Flugzeug nach Berlin einfliegen. Die Bevölkerung bereitete uns einen triumphalen Empfang […]. Wir waren Helden […] Admiral Dönitz hat mir persönlich sein Lob ausgesprochen» (69; 71). The father plays out his fabricated memories of the war with a handcrafted model of his supposed submarine. Novak’s seemingly harmless private fantasies about the past become The Second History of National Socialism 149 potentially dangerous when he launches the model submarine replete with swastika flag on the New Danube with Emma and his grandson. Passers-by quickly notice the swastika, a small group of people forms and they loudly voice their objections: «[E]s ist eindeutig ein Hakenkreuz»; «Das ist doch verboten»; «Ein alter Nazi-… Das ist der Gipfel»; «So etwas können Sie nicht machen-… Das fällt unter das Wiederbetätigungsgesetz»; «Genau, nationalsozialistische Symbole dürfen in der Öffentlichkeit nicht gezeigt werden»; «Unglaublich, die Dreistigkeit dieser ewig Gestrigen»; «Dem gehört der Prozess gemacht, ganz einfach» (204-5). Spurring each other on, the crowd becomes increasingly agitated until someone calls the police and the Novak family flees, abandoning the sinking model submarine. The story with the public outcry doesn’t end there. An official complaint is filed with the charge «In aller Öffentlichkeit nationalsozialistische Symbole zu verherrlichen» (237), which the father is determined to fight with the help of a fellow war veteran. As the friend proudly tells Emma, he found a legal precedent in Ingolstadt, whereby a fine was reversed for flying a model airplane with a swastika in public. The legal argument in that case was that mounting a swastika on a model that is an exact replica of an actual aircraft cannot be equated with a political sentiment. 16 This legal precedent immediately rings false in the Novak case, however. The friend follows his explanation of the Ingolstadt case by outlining the men’s plans to win the war by developing a new marine code to confound the enemy. He then punctuates his words with the battle cry: «Noch ist der Krieg nicht verloren. Man darf niemals aufgeben. Niemals! » (271-73). His comments underscore that he is in fact motivated by political ideology. Also of note is that the legal ruling specifies that the only exceptions to the ban on National Socialist symbols are models that replicate historical reality exactly. This wording thus precludes the submarine built by Emma’s father that is based on his imagined memories of the past and not on historical fact. While the story with Emma’s father might appear to be a minor subplot in Stadt der Verlierer, the parallels between the strained familial relationships of criminal, Matthias, and detective, Emma, within Faschinger’s portrait of the Austrian capital not only suggest associations between familial and national history, but also between the problems of the past and present-day «Verlierer» in Vienna. Emma and Matthias provide a microcosmic look into the larger, troubled macrocosm, Austria. Laura McLary similarly identifies a close parallel between family history and Austrian history in Stadt der Verlierer. She suggests that much like Austrian history, all of the family units contain holes ready to be filled with illusions 150 Anita McChesney or even lies. For both characters, however, the continual attempts to fill the gaps with a reconstructed history result in incomplete, even duplicitous identities. These attempts precipitate Matthias’s as well as society’s dysfunctions. (260-61) The parallels between familial and national history that McLary identifies highlight how Faschinger’s novel like Rossmann’s suggests that the pathology of the children and society stem from crimes of the past and the attempts to either silence or modify them. At the end of Faschinger’s text Emma solves the case and Matthias is arrested. However unlike Rossmann’s text, resolving the crime plot does not come with the satisfaction of having mastered the past or present. There is no sense of a better understanding of past history or any prospect of resolving its toxic bequest. Interweaving the portrayal of historical and present-day crimes with that of ongoing social dysfunction, Faschinger’s novel of retrospective historical investigation replaces a satisfying resolution that restores order and understanding with one that shows the impossibility of achieving that goal. Reflecting on the paradoxes inherent in the discourses on National Socialism, Helmut Schmitz suggests that literature even more so than other narrative forms has the potential to construct alternative representations to the closed narratives that suggest a successful «mastery of the past.» For Schmitz the solution must be sought in a form of cultural representation that avoids constructing meaning and reflects on the limits of representation with a metanarrative. Novels of retrospective historical investigation are one such metaform. As demonstrated by Lilian Faschinger’s text, the dual temporal structure creates the possibility to connect the effects of the past on the present as well as to reflect on how these connections are represented. While Faschinger’s crime novel should not be seen as the unequivocal fulfillment of Schmitz’s vision, I would suggest that Stadt der Verlierer does offer an alternative model that suggests a more productive use of crime fiction to treat the history of National Socialism. In its subtle portrayal of the interconnectedness of crimes and social ills, Faschinger’s novel more effectively depicts National Socialism as the cultural inheritance of the second and third generations and as a permanent part of the fabric of Austrian society. By avoiding tidy endings and explicit statements on understanding the past such as are to be found in Freudsche Verbrechen, Faschinger’s text underscores that there is no coming to terms with the past. There is no Gnade der späten Geburt for later generations; Austria’s past haunts the characters and conditions the way they behave. Faschinger’s crime novel thereby shows a productive shift away from narratives with foregone conclusions about the past to an open discourse that no longer seeks to «master» the past and to return to a broken The Second History of National Socialism 151 system of order but that instead indicates the need for ongoing engagement with the conditions that shape the past, present, and future. Notes 1 Katharina Hall provides the most comprehensive list of National Socialism in international crime fiction in her database «‹Detecting the Past.› Nazi-Themed Crime Fiction Database.» 2 Examples include: Bernhard Schlink’s Selb trilogy Selbs Justiz, (1987), Selbs Betrug (1994), and Selbs Mord (2003), which most famously thematize first-generation guilt and questions of culpability against the backdrop of the Nazi’s forced labor programs. More recent examples include: Rainer Gross’s Grafeneck (2007) and Ketenacker (2011) and Ulrich Ritzel, Der Schatten des Schwans (1999), which deal with medical experiments and Nazi euthanasia programs; Christian v. Ditfurth’s Mann Ohne Makel (2002), which addresses revenge and the restitution of property; and Wolfgang Schorlau’s Das dunkle Schweigen (2005), which deals with cases of lynch justice carried out against Allied soldiers in 1945. 3 Saupe terms the two types of fiction the «retrospektiver historischer Ermittlungsroman» and «historischer Kriminalroman» (267-70.) These terms correspond to John Scaggs’s distinction between the two types of historical crime fiction as «trans-historical crime fiction» in which «a contemporary detective [is] investigating an incident in the more or less remote, rather than very recent, past» (15) vs. «straight» historical crime fiction; «crime fiction that is set entirely in some particular historical period, but which was not written during that period» (125). 4 Space does not permit an extensive discussion of differences between the forms of Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Austrian and German discourse. For an informative overview of changing views of Nationalsocialism in Austria see Uhl, «Vom Opfermythos zur Mitverantwortungsthese,» and Rathkolb (in particular 237-66). For a comparative look at Austrian restitution policies see Uhl, «Recovering Austrian Memory: Stratifying Restitution Debates.» 5 Quoted in Thaler 47. 6 Indeed Peter Brooks maintains that Todorov marks detective fiction as the «narrative of narratives» (25). 7 More in-depth discussions of this triadic narrative structure can be found in essays by Richard Alewyn («The Origin of the Detective Novel»), Roger Caillois («The Detective Novel as Game») and Frank Kermode («Novel and Narrative») in Most and Stowe’s anthology The Poetics of Murder: Detective Fiction and Literary Theory. 8 Rossmann’s experience in politics is evident, for example, in Wahlkampf, the first Valensky novel, where the journalist/ detective investigates crimes during a political campaign. Her interest in social inequality can be seen in the character Vesna Krajner, Mira’s «sidekick» who is a Bosnian immigrant and her cleaning lady, and as such repeatedly encounters racial and social prejudice. 9 The much-quoted phrase «Gnade der späten Geburt» («luck of being born late») was popularized by German Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl in a 1984 speech in Israel, but was originally coined by journalist Günter Gaus, who one year earlier had referred to «Gnade der späten Geburt» in his book Wo Deutschland liegt. Eine Ortsbestimmung (1983). According to Margit Reiter, this claim has also outlived its day and has 152 Anita McChesney been replaced by a broader acknowledgement of Betroffenheit in German discourse. I see this general recognition of indebtedness to the past in subsequent generations also in contemporary Austrian crime texts. 10 High school education in Austria, she says, ended with the end of WWI, whereby the teachers told them, «der Rest sei zu neu, um schon als Geschichte gelten zu können-… Davon könnten uns die Eltern und Großeltern aus eigenem Erleben erzählen. Die wenigstens allerdings hatten das getan. Und wenn, hatten sie allzu sehr aus ihrem persönlichen Blickwinkel berichtet. Aber auch in meiner Familie war wenig über die Nazizeit gesprochen worden. Mehr hatte ich da schon über die Untaten der russischen Besatzung nach dem Krieg erfahren […]» (Rossmann 143). 11 While this analysis focuses on generational issues in the novel, Rossmann also links past and current Austrian attitudes on National Socialism to psychology. The novel’s title (Freudsche Verbrechen) insinuates that the crimes of the present and past have psychological underpinnings, which is intensified by situating the two murders in the Freud house in Vienna. Dora Messerschmied underscores this connection when she explains the concept of repression to Mira and suggests that repressing the past is responsible for the upsurge of extreme right politicians and neo-Nazi attacks in Austria today. See O’Brien for more on the role of psychology and repression on multiple levels in Freudsche Verbrechen. 12 Mira’s statements in the novel echo the author’s comments in the acknowledgements. Her goal in writing this novel, she states, is «die Mechanismen der Nazizeit zu begreifen» and «Indifferenz für nicht zulässig zu erklären» (331). Rossmann specifically thanks historians for helping her to finally understand the era through the «Aryanization» program, by giving her «entscheidende Einblicke in die ganz realen Auswirkungen so gennanter ‹Arisierungen›» (331). I would suggest, however, that the novel contradicts such statements and demonstrates instead the impossibility of reaching a point of understanding. 13 McLary, Winning Back Lost Territory 1-8. 14 Here I’m referring to the novels Magdalena Sünderin (1995), Wiener Passion (1999), and Stadt der Verlierer (2007). 15 Brian McHale, Postmodernist Fiction (1987), or Michael Holquist in «Whodunnit and Other questions: Metaphysical Crime Fiction in Postwar Fiction» 1983. 16 «Das Urteil wurde mit dem Argument begründet, dass das Anbringen eines Hakenkreuzes an einem vorbildgetreuen Flugmodell nicht mit einer politischen Gesinnung gleichsetzt werden kann» (Faschinger 273). Works Cited Bischof, Günter. «Victims? Perpetrators? ‹Punching Bags› of European Historical Memory? The Austrians and Their World War II Legacies.» German Studies Review 27.1 (February 2004): 17-32. Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. New York: Knopf, 1984. Faschinger, Lilian. Stadt der Verlierer. Munich: Hanser, 2007. Ganeva, Mila. «From West-German Väterliteratur to Post-Wall Enkelliteratur: The End of the Generation Conflict in Marcel Beyer’s Spione and Tanja Dückers’s Himmelskörper.» Seminar: Journal of Germanic Studies 43.2 (May 2007): 149-62. The Second History of National Socialism 153 Hall, Katharina. ‹Detecting the Past› Nazi-themed crime fiction database. http: / / www.academia.edu/ 1763356/ Detecting_the_Past_Nazi-themed_crime_fiction_ database, June 2013. Web 9 Mar. 2015. Holquist, Michael. «Whodunnit and Other Questions: Metaphysical Crime Fiction in Postwar Fiction.» The Poetics of Murder: Detective Fiction & Literary Theory. Ed. Glenn W. Most and William W. Stowe. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. 149-74 accessed 9 March, 2015. 149-74. McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. New York: Methuen, 1987. McLary, Laura. «‹What Lies Beneath the Surface›: Hiddden Histories, Broken Families, and Other Crimes in Lilian Faschinger’s Stadt der Verlierer [Town Full of Losers].» Winning Back Lost Territory. The Writing of Lilian Faschinger. Ed. Vincent Kling and Laura McLary. Riverside, CA: Ariadne, 2014. 260-61. Most, Glenn W., and William W. Stowe, eds. The Poetics of Murder. Detective Fiction and Literary Theory. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. O’Brien, Traci S. «What’s in Your Bag? ‹Freudian Crimes› and Austria’s Nazi Past in Eva Rossmann’s Freudsche Verbrechen.» Tatort Germany. The Curious Case of German-Language Crime Fiction. Ed. Lynn M. Kutch and Todd Herzog. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014. 155-74. Rathkolb, Oliver. The Paradoxical Republic. Austria 1945-2005. New York: Berghahn Books, 2010. Reichel, Peter, Harald Schmid, and Peter Steinbach, eds. Der Nationalsozialismus, die zweite Geschichte: Überwindung, Deutung, Erinnerung. Munich: Beck, 2009. Reiter, Margit. Die Generation danach. Der Nationalsozialismus im Familiengedächtnis. Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2006. Rossmann, Eva. Freudsche Verbrechen. Vienna: Folio, 2001. Saupe, Achim. Der Historiker als Detektiv - der Detektiv als Historiker: Historik, Kriminalistik und der Nationalsozialismus als Kriminalroman. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009. Scaggs, John. Crime Fiction. London: Routledge, 2005. Schmitz, Helmut, ed. German Culture and the Uncomfortable Past: Representations of National Socialism in Contemporary Germanic Literature. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001. Thaler, Peter. The Ambivalence of Identity: The Austrian Experience of Nationbuilding in a Modern Society. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 2001. Uhl, Heidemarie. «Recovering Austrian Memory: Stratifying Restitution Debates.» Restitution and Memory: Material Restoration in Europe. Ed. Dan Dinermari and Gotthard Wunberg. New York: Berghahn Books, 2007. 233-54. -. «Vom Opfermythos zur Mitverantwortungsthese: NS-Herrschaft, Krieg und Holocaust im ‹österreichischen Gedächtnis.›» Transformationen gesellschaftlicher Erinnerung. Studien zur ‹Gedächtnisgeschichte› der Zweiten Republik. Ed. Christian Gerbel et al. Vienna: Turia and Kang, 2005. 50-85. Wigmore, Juliet. «Elisabeth Reichart’s Nachtmär - the Enduring Nightmare of Austria in the 1990s.» German Culture and the Uncomfortable Past: Representations of National Socialism in Contemporary Gemanic Literatur. Ed. Helmut Schmitz. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001. 103-18. Detectives in a Criminal Regime: Krimis in Nazi Comedy Film JOSEPH W. MOSER We st Che ster Univ ersity While detectives were less common in Nazi-era entertainment film than in the time before and after the Nazi period, there were still a few detective plots in comedy films of that time. The comedies featured some of the main stars of the day: Hans Albers, Heinz Rühmann, Hans Moser, and Theo Lingen. Nazi-era entertainment film sought to provide evasion from daily life in what was a criminal, very stressful and demanding regime, therefore the depiction of crime was less common even in dramatic film which focused more on melodramatic plots. The majority of plots in Nazi comedy film were comedies of error, often involving a romantic plot as well, or a family problem that was resolved with a happy ending. Musical comedy was also very popular at the time. Slapstick humor replaced wit, and actors like Hans Moser and Theo Lingen used physical comedy to distract moviegoers from the hardships of the time. Primary examples of such comedies are E.W. Emo’s Dreizehn Stühle (1938) and Willy Forst’s Wiener Blut (1942). In Dreizehn Stühle Heinz Rühmann and Hans Moser chase after a hidden and elusive inheritance, which was tucked away in one of thirteen chairs, which in turn had been hastily sold by the inheritor. This comedy of errors had its origins in Soviet Russia and is based on Ilya Ilf’s novel Twelve Chairs (1928). Mel Brooks made an American film adaptation of the book in 1970. This film is mostly apolitical, though it is in line with National Socialist and Communist ideology by placing the common good over the individual: when the inheritance is discovered, it falls into the hands of an orphanage. Wiener Blut, the title of which is derived from a Strauss waltz, deals with the Vienna Congress of 1815 and incorporates musical and romantic comedy as well as Theo Lingen’s and Hans Moser’s physical comedy while they play clumsy servants of the aristocrats convening in Vienna. In this film, the political ideology is embedded within the idea of reorganizing Europe, drawing parallels between 1815 and 1942. A lack of ethnic diversity - there are no English, French, or Russian aristocrats in the film - also reminds viewers of the historic context, in which the film was produced. While the German film industry was still large and prolific during the Nazi era, even in comparison with Hollywood, the range of plots and possi- Detectives in a Criminal Regime 155 bilities for content were heavily reduced by the restrictions and mandates of the regime. Both Dreizehn Stühle and Wiener Blut exemplify how comedic films under the Nazis simultaneously avoided current political issues on the surface of the film, while embedding ideological messages within the film. This article examines three films from the Nazi era that incorporate detectives and the idea of solving crimes into a comedy: Karl Hartl’s Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war (1937), Ernst Marischka’s Sieben Jahre Glück (1942), and E.W. Emo’s Reisebekanntschaft (1943). The crimes, as well as the detective techniques employed in these three films, are over the top, unrealistic, and meant to be amusing. The totalitarian regime did not like the idea of private detectives within their police state, and the film censors did not want to scare moviegoers with frightening depictions of crime, especially if they were not going to be exploited for propaganda purposes; yet there seemed to be a desire to still cover some detective plots, which were popular with German moviegoers. Consequently, detective plots were incorporated into comedies instead of dramas in order to ridicule the need for detectives in a state in which the police was supposed to be in complete control. American gangster films with James Cagney had been very popular with German film audiences, and the image of Chicago as a frightening urban center lingered in the German-speaking imagination for decades, but the regime would have not tolerated such plots from a German film unless they were set in a foreign context. Uncontrolled criminal activity - no matter how large or small - had to remain in a foreign context on the screen, as the following film examples will show. By showing crime plots, which had already been popular with moviegoers, these films subtly undermined the regime’s desire to keep such plots away from the cinema. 1 Reminiscent of Gottfried Keller’s novella Kleider Machen Leute (1874), Karl Hartl’s UFA film Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war, which premiered on July 15, 1937 in the UFA-Palast in Berlin, is a comedy of errors. In the film, people make assumptions based on a man’s clothes without the protagonist actually saying the name of the person for whom people are mistaking him. 2 Hans Albers plays the unsuccessful detective Morris Flynn and Heinz Rühmann plays his assistant Macky McPherson. The two men are mistaken for being Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson because they are dressed like these two fictional characters; they were particularly recognizable as such given Hans Albers’ checkered hat and jacket and his constant smoking of a pipe. Due to a lack of customers, the two men disguise themselves as the two famous detectives in order to be hired to solve cases. They board the night train to Brussels, whereupon criminals, who immediately mistake them for Sherlock Holmes and his assistant, flee the train. 156 Joseph W. Moser The train conductors also immediately jump to the wrong conclusions and treat the two gentlemen with the highest respect, providing them a sleeping compartment free of charge. In this sense, the plot is also similar to Kleider machen Leute, where the innkeeper jumps to an erroneous conclusion when the elegantly dressed tailor alights from a luxurious carriage on a rainy night. This is significant because there were numerous film adaptations of Romantic texts, including Kleider machen Leute which Helmut Käutner adapted for the screen in 1940, and in which Heinz Rühmann played the tailor. When Morris Flynn and Macky McPherson check in at the Hotel Palace, the hotel staff jumps to similar conclusions. Word reaches the city fathers and the fake Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are immediately commissioned to solve the mystery of who had stolen the «Blaue Mauritius» stamps from the world expo and replaced them with forgeries. The city fathers in the film are depicted as foolish old men, who are embarrassed to ask the police and government authorities for help for fear of a public scandal. It is implied in the film that Flynn and McPherson lack the wit and criminal investigation skills as well as resources to resolve the mystery. This provides some of the humor in the film as well as their constant fear of being discovered, which however redeems them as having some sense of propriety. A hotel detective can neither recognize the real Sherlock Holmes nor identify the criminals involved with the forgeries, who are also staying at the hotel. The real criminals, however, immediately become aware of the fake Sherlock Holmes and his assistant, a situation which puts both imposters in danger for their lives. Both sleuths finally end up in a cellar of the Schloss where the forgeries were made and they are in mortal danger from a gang of forgers who try to kill them, before the police - the proper authority to deal with the issue in the film - comes to save them. Another comedic moment in the film is that there is a character in the film, Arthur Conan Doyle, played by Paul Bildt, who is seen multiple times running through the hotel lobby laughing vigorously over the follies of his contemporaries who believe that his literary figure of Sherlock Holmes has come to life. At the end of the film, the two imposters are put on trial for Hochstapelei. The prosecutor does not want to forgive them for impersonating someone they are not. Morris Flynn claims that only the real Sherlock Holmes could feel aggrieved by this, at which point Conan Doyle steps forward and speaks for Holmes as he is his invention. Conan Doyle thanks the two men for bringing his fictional literary figures to life and the court acquits both men, a happy legal resolution in a final court scene quite common in Nazi-era entertainment film. The intended propaganda message here is that the state and its justice system are on the citizens’ side. The film actually ends with the Vorsitzende Rat ringing a bell Detectives in a Criminal Regime 157 «Die Sitzung ist geschlossen» and the camera panning to Sherlock Holmes’s clothes folded on a bed, symbolic of the German saying «Kleider machen Leute.» The film has a happy ending: the charade by the two imposters has been uncovered and they are flanked by two attractive ladies in the final court scenes, ladies who presumably will help the two men to settle down. On the surface, the film seeks to prove that there is no need for private detectives, and the two likeable imposters, played by Albers and Rühmann, are not completely innocent because they encourage people to believe that they are someone they are not. The film also criticizes the city officials who send for the presumed Sherlock Holmes instead of contacting the police. Their justification is that they were ashamed of the valuable stamp being swapped out. This becomes even more embarrassing for them since a German boy from Berlin uncovers the forgery. Much like many other entertainment films from this era, the film featured a Schlager song «Jawohl meine Herren» that Albers and Rühmann sang and that made the film even more popular and successful. 3 They intone: «Jawohl meine Herren, so haben wir es gern, denn von heute an gehört uns die Welt. Jawohl meine Herren die Sorgen sind fern, wir tun was uns gefällt.« These lyrics represent the mischievous behavior of the two want-to-be detectives in the film, but ironically they also represent the Nazi leadership’s behavior, particularly the line «Und wer uns stört, ist eh er es noch begreift, längst schon von uns eingeseift.« Although this line was certainly in line with the rhetoric of the time, when taken out of context it could sound much like a threat. Beneath the surface-level propaganda, the song criticizes contemporaneous politics. The two characters’ individual desires to deviate from the collective norm by pretending to be detectives subtly challenge the regime’s desire for every citizen to conform. Ernst Marischka’s Sieben Jahre Glück premiered in Berlin on October 9, 1942. It was the sequel to the 1940 film Sieben Jahre Pech. This Bavaria Filmkunst production was filmed entirely at the Cinecittà Studios in Rome, Italy, and thus there are no reminders of contemporary Germany. 4 In fact, the outside shots featuring palm trees are remarkably exotic for German film in 1942. The plot of this film is very weak compared to its prequel; however, it features a bank robbery reminiscent of 1930s-era American gangster films. Paul (played by Theo Lingen) runs into veterinarian Dr. Teisinger (played by Hans Moser) who is fishing on vacation. Paul and Dr. Teisinger wind up getting into the middle of a bank robbery at a large bank that is being committed by «eine internationale Verbrecherbande.» The word ‹international› alone had a negative connotation in National Socialism. Paul had temporarily lost his hearing and he goes into the bank lobby to deposit money where he manages to get in the middle of the crossfire without being shot. Dr. Tei- 158 Joseph W. Moser singer tries to get Paul out of this situation, but since he is hard of hearing this becomes very difficult and the two actors give a stunning slapstick performance dodging and avoiding flying bullets. The Italian police arrive, but the chaos continues. They handcuff Paul to one of the gangsters, who drags him up on the roof of the bank where they wrestle and Paul winds up handcuffed to Dr. Teisinger. Both men are apprehended by the police but eventually released. The Italian police tells them that it was Paul’s fault that he lost his money at the bank. The explicit message of the film here is that nothing works in Italy and that the police are not in control. Two other memorable scenes in this film include Paul as a torero in a Stierkampf and Dr. Teisinger being lowered down a chimney pretending to be a chimney sweep. Also, Moser sings a Viennese wine song «Einmal in der Woche fall i um.» Moser’s Viennese songs were usually one of the highlights of his film comedies, but this song much like this film was less successful with audiences. It is unclear at times whether the characters are in Italy or Spain, both allied Fascist countries, though it is clear from this film that the Nazis in 1942 did not think too highly of either country. The theme of an international gang of criminals was certainly in line with the Nazis’ xenophobia as was the opposition to the idea of anything international. But the same plot could have easily been filmed before or after the Nazi era as well. While there is no detective who solves the robbery, the film and the bank robbery scene deserve to be mentioned in this article, because it points out how rare it was to see a large scale robbery and shooting scene with gangsters in German film from the Nazi era. It was only possible here because this depiction of criminal activity was set within a foreign country, where the police are depicted as not having full control over their jurisdiction. Depictions of crime were so rare in Nazi film because the regime wanted its citizens to believe that the state was in complete control. By depicting crime in a foreign country, however, the film delivers an implicit critique. Sieben Jahre Glück circumvents the censors and can be shown even in the general absence of such scenes in Nazi cinema. At the same time it provides viewers with crime plots that were popular on the screen. In E.W. Emo’s Wien-Film production Reisebekanntschaft, which premiered in Vienna on October 7, 1943, Hans Moser plays the unusual character of private detective Fridolin Specht. This casting is immediately funny because Moser’s characters are too clumsy to be successful sleuths, and unlike Hans Albers in Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war, his characters generally lack the self-confidence and steadfast demeanor one might expect from a detective. On the train on his way to the Semmering mountain resort outside of Vienna, Specht demonstrates to a fellow traveler how he can oper- Detectives in a Criminal Regime 159 ate incognito by putting on a fake full beard, which is the silly introduction to his ineffective detective work. In fact, it is the first instance of mocking his effectiveness as a detective and sets the tone for the film. At the mountain resort, he receives notice from the lottery that he has won 10,000 Reichsmark and he exasperatedly phones home where an equally panic stricken Annie Rosar, playing his neighbor Frau Niederleitner, is ordered to deliver his lottery ticket to the lottery administration. This phone scene is a staple of Moser’s comedy act, and his hilarious ineptitudes with modern technology such as the telephone once again point to the implausibility of him being a great detective. At the lottery - in an unusually customer friendly gesture - they decide to send one of their secretaries to Specht at the Semmering so he may have his cash immediately. This should make any viewer apprehensive about the dangers of transporting a large sum of cash over a long distance. What follows is the typical comedy of errors involving swapped suitcases, as the secretary’s suitcase with the cash is swapped accidentally, and Specht turns this into an elaborate detective investigation in which he tries to resolve the mystery of the presumably stolen money. Specht winds up being arrested because he did not pay the bill at the hotel at the Semmering for the party that was thrown in his honor after he realized that he had won the money. Richard Eybner plays an irate Reisebekanntschaft who is falsely accused of having taken the suitcase. Specht analyzes the suspect by looking at his clothing in a suitcase, a scene in which he merely ridiculously points out the size of the suspect’s feet by looking at his slippers and comments on his teeth after examining his toothbrush. Then he confronts the suspect with a witness who simply says that she has never seen the man and Specht says nonchalantly «Na, dann war er es nicht,» which again shows how he is not able to conduct an investigation. This scene also shows how ineffectively Specht jumps to conclusions that make no sense. His exasperation is typical of Moser’s act and was very popular with film audiences but clearly shows he cannot play a detective. Eventually, it turns out that the secretary’s boss at the lottery, played by Wolf Albach-Retty, had mixed up everything quite innocently. The error is corrected without the detective’s help and it seems clear that he would never have solved the problem. However, as he receives the recovered money, he exclaims «10.000 Mark! Das sind 20.000 Palatschinken! » 5 Here we see the Austrians’ love for food, but at the same time what else might one have been able to buy with that many Reichsmark in 1943 - as even Palatschinken were probably rationed. The final scene shows Albach-Retty kissing the Fräulein, played by Elfriede Datzig, with Hans Moser under the table with a bottle of wine. The final screen shot has the happy ending typical of a Moser film. In 160 Joseph W. Moser subsequent films, Moser would be featured in the final scene both because he was extremely popular, but also because it reassured audiences to see him happy at the end of a film. This film, unlike Sieben Jahre Glück, is set in Nazi Germany. The setting is clearly recognizable by the letter carrier’s uniform and the insignia of the Reichsbahn bearing the eagle with the Swastika. Another indication is the frequent mention of the currency, which was important to help viewers relate to how much money was at stake and roughly amounted to a worker’s annual salary. However, there is no indication of the war going on in the film and there are no discernible ideological goals, except for the usual disdain for private detectives. The idea of winning 10,000 RM in 1943 must have seemed very distracting to viewers in the midst of the realities of the war. Casting Moser in the role of private detective Specht made for another convincing comedy of errors, where the detective is portrayed as an unnecessary character, in that there was no crime, just an innocent error corrected by the end of the film. Depictions of crime and detectives were not common in Nazi-era film. In the case of Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war and in Sieben Jahre Glück the films are even set in foreign contexts because the topic was not supposed to be featured in Nazi Germany. Casting Hans Moser, whose comedic act revolved around the figure of a clumsy exasperated older gentleman, as a detective in Reisebekanntschaften was a way to ridicule the idea of detectives overall. Nonetheless, the film points to the interesting fact that detectives were not completely banned from the screen as long as they remained in comedies. Nazi entertainment film was prolific between 1933 and 1945, but the many restrictions and mandates set on film producers limited the available number of possible plots and genres. Thus detectives were relegated to highly irregular appearances in comedy film. Yet, as irregular as they may have been, their presence in these films exercises a subtle political critique in that the detectives undermine the regime’s rejection of these plots, and thereby their overall ideology. Notes 1 After the war, the three films examined in this article - much like the majority of German entertainment film produced under Nazi - were considered apolitical and aired on television from the 1970s to around 2000 for a generation of TV viewers who had seen these films when they premiered in theaters. Today they are available on DVD and even YouTube. Despite some ideological underpinnings, these films are overshadowed by large scale propaganda features from the Nazi era ranging from Leni Riefen- Detectives in a Criminal Regime 161 stahl’s Triumph des Willens (1935), and Fritz Hippler’s anti-Semitic documentary Der Ewige Jude (1940) to Veit Harlan’s «Durchhaltefilm» Kolberg (1945), among many other propaganda features, all of which were initially banned in Germany by the Allies after the war. John F. Kelsen drafted a «Catalogue of Forbidden German Feature and Short Film Productions held in Zonal Film Archives of Film Section, Information Services Division, Control Commission for Germany» in 1951, which was first published by Greenwood Press with a new introduction by KRM Short in 1996. 2 There was also a 1940 Terra Film adaptation of Keller’s Kleider Machen Leute, directed by Helmut Käutner, which featured Heinz Rühmann in the role of the Schneidergeselle Wenzel. 3 The popular Schlager «Jawohl meine Herren» was composed by Hans Sommer with lyrics by Richard Busch. 4 Film productions in Italy were very popular with the actors as they provided respite from the war and more restricted food rations in Nazi Germany. 5 Palatschinken are Austrian crepes. Works Cited Dreizehn Stühle. Dir. E.W. Emo. Perf. Heinz Rühmann, Hans Moser, Annie Rosar, and Inge List. Emo-Film Gmbh, 1938. Der ewige Jude. Dir. Fritz Hippler. Deutsche Filmherstellungs- und -verwertungs GmbH, 1940. Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war. Dir. Karl Hartl. Perf. Hans Albers and Heinz Rühmann. Universum Film AG (UFA), 1937. Ilf, Ilya and Evgeny Petrov. Twelve Chairs. Trans. Anne O. Fisher. Evanston, IL: Nortwestern UP, 2011. Keller, Gottfried. Kleider machen Leute. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1969. Kolberg. Dir. Veit Harlan. Perf. Heinrich George and Kristina Söderbaum. UFA, 1945. Reisebekanntschaft. Dir. E.W. Emo. Perf. Hans Moser, Wolf Albach-Retty, and Annie Rosar. Wien Film, 1943. Sieben Jahre Glück. Dir. Ernst Marischka. Perf. Wolf Albach-Retty, Theo Lingen, and Hans Moser. Bavaria-Filmkunst, 1943. Sieben Jahre Pech. Dir. Ernst Marischka. Perf. Wolf Albach-Retty, Theo Lingen, and Hans Moser. Styria-Film, 1940. Triumph des Willens. Dir. Leni Riefenstahl. Leni-Riefenstahl-Produktion, 1935. Wiener Blut. Dir. Willi Forst. Perf. Theo Lingen and Hans Moser. Wien Film, 1942. To Know or Not to Know: Oedipal Patterns in Wolf Haas’s Detective Novel Das ewige Leben (2004) HELGA SCHR ECK EN BERGER Univ ersity of Ver mont Ah! What a burden knowledge is, when knowledge Can be of no avail. (Sophocles, Oedipus the King 58) Wolf Haas’s novels featuring Simon Brenner, former police detective turned private eye, rank among the most successful and popular of the contemporary Austrian detective stories. 1 Much of their appeal results from Haas’s playful use of language and his direct or indirect referencing of well-known literary texts. Examples of this intertextuality can be found in the first pages of Silentium! which parody Patrick Süskind’s postmodern novel Parfum 2 or in Komm, süßer Tod where Rilke’s poem «Schlussstück» appears in its entirety without any reference to the author. Even the titles of the novels establish intertextual references. For example, the title of the sixth novel Das ewige Leben refers both to the first of the Brenner-novels entitled Auferstehung der Toten and the Apostles’ Creed which ends with the words «ich glaube an die Auferstehung der Toten und das ewige Leben.» 3 Overall, Haas uses intertextuality in the manner of parody eliciting appreciative recognition on the part of the reader. His style contributes to the high level of entertainment the novels afford the reader which, according to the author, is their main purpose: «Die meisten Krimis sind Trivialliteratur im besten Sinn. Sie haben ihre Berechtigung, weil es verständlich ist, dass Leute, wenn sie von der Arbeit heimkommen, sowas lieber lesen als einen anstrengenden Experimentalroman» (Haas’s interview with Susanne Rössler). Undoubtedly highly entertaining, the sixth novel of the Brenner-series, Das ewige Leben, goes beyond the scope of what is considered «Trivialliteratur» as it is fundamentally shaped by its intertext, the Oedipus myth. First, the novel foregrounds the specific narrative structure of detective fiction as a process of discovering a hidden transgression and second, it reflects the conflict between seeking knowledge and the burden of knowing. The link between detective fiction and the Oedipus mythos, and consequently psychoanalysis, was first pointed out by Ernst Bloch in his 1965 es- To Know or Not to Know 163 say «A Philosophical View of the Detective Novel.» Bloch identifies the «prenarrative event» as the distinguishing element between detective fiction and other narrative forms: «In the detective novel the crime has already occurred, outside the narrative; the story arrives on the scene with the corpse. It does not develop its cause during the narrative or alongside it, but its sole theme is the discovery of something that happened ante rem» (255). The fact that the omnipresent reader has not witnessed what Bloch calls «the darkness at the beginning» renders the un-narrated and its reconstruction especially interesting. Bloch points to Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex as the earliest example of this narrative structure. Oedipus engages in detective work in his effort to find the person responsible for the crime which brought the plague down on Thebes only to discover that the crime was his own. Thus, the Oedipus theme constitutes the archetype of all detective fiction according to Bloch: «Multifariously disguised, the theme of Oedipus, this primordial detective theme per se, continued to have an effect, always criminalistic to be sure, and with the hidden antecedent» (257). This identification of the detective-figure is echoed in numerous interpretations of Anglo-American detective stories and Oedipus has come to be understood as the detective «who is really in search of the truth about himself and his own origins in a process of discovery that eventually points to his own blinding guilt» (Charney 238). Wolf Haas’s Das ewige Leben fits this archetypal narrative structure. The novel starts with Brenner’s miraculous awakening from a coma induced by a gunshot to the head. He is told that the injury is the result of a suicide attempt. Rejecting this possibility and convinced that he is dealing with attempted murder, Brenner starts to investigate. He has recently returned to his hometown, Graz, where memories of a failed bank robbery he committed as a young police cadet together with his three colleagues Saarinen, Aschenbrenner, and Köck surface. Brenner’s best friend, nicknamed after his hero, the Finnish motorcycle road racer Jarno Saarinen, was killed when he crashed his motorcycle during the getaway. 4 Convinced that Aschenbrenner, who is now the head of criminal investigation in Graz, attempted to kill him in order to silence him, Brenner leaves the hospital to warn Köck, only to find him murdered. Two potential witnesses of that crime also turn up dead. In the course of investigating the murders, Brenner comes to realize that he shot himself after all and that Saarinen’s daughter, Soili who is married to Aschenbrenner, killed Köck. The two witnesses were murdered by the police officer Heinz, Soili’s lover and her husband’s deputy, in order to cover up her crime. As is evident from this plot summary, the two main elements Bloch identifies as common to both the Oedipus myth and the detective novel are present 164 Helga Schreckenberger in Haas’s novel. The crime - Brenner’s having been shot in the head - has happened before the beginning of the novel and the investigation reveals that the detective himself is the perpetrator. However, Haas incorporates many additional elements of the Oedipus myth in his novel that suggest an even stronger identification of Brenner with Oedipus. Like Oedipus, Brenner was abandoned by his parents - his father had committed suicide and his mother had left Graz without him to start a new life. Brenner now returns to his original home, Graz, only to set a series of murders into motion, events comparable to Oedipus bringing the plague down on Thebes. The role of the seer Teiresias is accorded to the attending psychiatrist Bonati, who has told Brenner the truth from the beginning: his injury is the result of a suicide attempt. Like Oedipus who ignores Teiresias and accuses his brother-in-law, Creon, of the king’s murder, Brenner disbelieves Bonati and instead suspects his former accomplice Aschenbrenner of having shot him. Even the oracle is present in the form of a gypsy fortuneteller whom Brenner consults during his investigation. In addition, Brenner’s eyesight is afflicted by the gunshot wound to his head, alluding to Oedipus’s blinding himself after realizing his guilt. Likewise, Brenner’s withdrawal from society at the end of the novel evokes Oedipus’s decision to go into exile. Even the patricideand incestmotives are at least indirectly present, although they are attributed to another protagonist. 5 It turns out that Soili’s murder of Köck was triggered by his insinuation that he or her husband actually could be her father. The references to the Oedipus story together with the recurring theme of repressed knowledge and past guilt invite a psychoanalytical reading of the novel. Many scholars, including Freud who compared himself to Sherlock Holmes (114), have pointed to the similarities between Oedipus, the detective story, and psychoanalysis. 6 Analyzing Sophocles’s play in his Traumdeutung, Freud writes: «Die Handlung des Stückes besteht nun in nichts anderem als in der schrittweise gesteigerten und kunstvoll verzögerten Enthüllung - der Arbeit einer Psychoanalyse vergleichbar -, daß Ödipus selbst der Mörder des Laïos, aber auch der Sohn des Ermordeten und der Jokaste ist« (269). Here, Freud puts the emphasis on the process of discovery rather than on the Oedipal complex, the child’s sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex. In both psychoanalysis and detective fiction, the past comes under careful scrutiny and is rendered accessible. 7 Referencing Freud’s interpretation, Shoshana Felman identifies the knowledge of the criminal with the unconscious which he seeks to hide from the detective. The detective’s triumph over the criminal is then the triumph of consciousness (39). Following this line of interpretation, John Belton concludes in his article «Language, Oedipus, and Chinatown» that in the To Know or Not to Know 165 modern detective story «(t)he pure reason of the detective confronts the irrationality of the criminal, the forces of the Superego struggle with those of the ID, and out of these oppositions emerges a tenuous compromise between that which can be known and understood and that which cannot» (936). 8 Belton points out that in most works of detective fiction this conflict between obtaining knowledge and its repression is externalized. In the analytic detective novels of Edgar Alan Poe or Arthur Conan Doyle, for example, the rational detective is pitted against an irrational opponent, an example being Poe’s ape in the Murders of the Rue Morgue. The binary of the rational detective and the irrational criminal is less firmly drawn in American hardboiled detective fiction in which the detective is more intuitive and less analytical and often part of the irrational universe of the crime as, for example, in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. This is also the case in Haas’s earlier novels where Brenner repeatedly crosses the boundaries between detective and criminal. In several cases, he covers for perpetrators whose crimes he considers justified or insignificant in face of the wrongs done to them. 9 However, in all these cases the story of the crime and the story of its investigation remain distinct. Not so in Das ewige Leben. Here Brenner investigates a crime that he himself has committed. This brings Das ewige Leben in line with the original Oedipus story where detective and criminal also turn out to be one and the same. Referring to Sophocles’s play Oedipus Tyrannus, Belton states: «Sophocles construes the epistemological dilemma which characterizes the (detective) genre’s interplay between the rational desire to know and the irrational repression of knowledge as an internal one, situating it within his detective hero who is also the criminal he seeks» (936). This means that in the Oedipus story, the detective story’s essential binary between the detective who brings knowledge to the surface and the criminal who aims to keep it hidden is dissolved. It is now the detective who at once seeks to produce and suppress knowledge. This, according to Shoshana Felman, leads to a blurring of the borders that separate consciousness from the unconscious or using Belton’s terms, the rational from the irrational (39). In Das ewige Leben, the internalization of the conflict is emphasized by the fact that from the beginning Brenner possesses all the information to solve the crime he is investigating but represses it, as he is unable to deal with the implication that he had tried to commit suicide. The narrator suggests that Brenner has a motive for rejecting the possibility of suicide: «Ich kann die Verbitterung vom Brenner über diese Unterstellung schon verstehen, Selbstmordversuch, das schaut nicht gut aus im Lebenslauf. […] Da kann ich schon verstehen, dass der Brenner sich das nicht anhängen lassen wollte« (16). Brenner’s self-interest and embarrassment prevent him from admitting 166 Helga Schreckenberger that, as it turns out, a combination of drinking and old memories has caused him to shoot himself in the head. The theme of repression is already introduced in the second paragraph of the novel when its omniscient narrator reports the miraculous recovery of «ein hoffnungsloser Fall» at the intensive care unit of the Landesnervenklinik Sigmund Freud. 10 In his landmark digressive style, the narrator does not reveal the identity of the patient but muses about the atmosphere at an intensive care unit: Auf einer Intensive passiert natürlich rund um die Uhr so viel, dass normalerweise niemand vom Personal viele Worte über irgendwas verliert. Und wenn du müde von der Intensive nach Hause kommst, hast du die meisten Vorfälle wieder vergessen, weil eines verdrängt das andere, und wo die Ereignisse sich überschlagen, kommt schnell der Punkt, wo man sagt, alles ganz normal. (5) Readers of Haas’s Brenner-novels are familiar with the narrator’s verboseness which serves both to entertain and to build suspense by interrupting the denouement of the detective plot. Moreover, the narrator’s digressions (much like the intertextual references) often provide clues for solving the case. In Das ewige Leben, the solution comes with Brenner’s recovery of his lost or repressed memory. Indeed, repression of knowledge is a recurring theme throughout the novel. When Brenner refuses to take medication to alleviate his pain, Dr. Bonati accuses him of «Schmerzverdrängung» (pain repression) and interprets this as another sign that Brenner represses other things, namely the memory of his suicide attempt (126). Bonati is proven right since it is the experience of extreme pain caused by the flash of a camera that brings back his memory of the true events preceding his headshot: «Dem Brenner ist jetzt noch etwas anderes in sein Hirn gefahren. Weil mit dem Schmerz ist die Erinnerung an den zweiten Adventsamstag in sein Hirn gefahren» (127). By repressing the pain, Brenner successfully represses his memory which, as the quotation indicates, is also painful. It is interesting that Brenner’s recovery of the truth is not the result of his skill as a detective but comes about accidentally through a blinding that turns out to be enlightening. On the other hand, he reinjures his eye shortly before he is able to solve the puzzle of Köck’s murder, this time with the help of a photograph identifying the murderer of the Roma. Haas’s satirical intention is obvious here as it is in his reversal of the blinding-motif. While Oedipus reacts to the revelation of the truth by blinding himself, Haas has his detective stumble half-blind through his investigation. Yet, since the diminished eyesight is self-inflicted as the result of his suicide attempt, it also suggests Brenner’s reluctance to look the truth in the eye. To Know or Not to Know 167 Brenner is not the only character in the novel guilty of hiding unpleasant truths and old memories. Köck, Aschenbrenner, and Soili’s mother repress the memory and the true events of the failed bank robbery. The motive for murdering the two Roma witnesses is to keep them from revealing the knowledge of Soili’s crime. By the same token, the Roma themselves are a symbol of the repressed Austrian past which threatens to surface in the action of the right-wing organization «Wehr Initiative Grazer Sicherheit» whose members want to purge the city of beggars and other foreign elements, including the Roma. It seems that everyone in the novel is interested in keeping knowledge from surfacing. This pertains in particular to Brenner who supposedly is trying to find the truth but at the same time seems to be working against this goal. Readers of the previous novels are already familiar with the detective’s most distinctive characteristic - his intuition. In each novel, Brenner intuitively knows the solution already early on; it presents itself in the form of a song that he can’t get out of his mind. This also happens in Das ewige Leben. The narrator identifies Brenner’s subconscious as the source of this knowledge. He states: «Das war so ein Tick von seinem Unbewussten, das hat ihm öfter mal über einen Ohrwurm einen guten Tipp gegeben« (32). While in the previous novels it is Brenner’s faulty memory that prevents him from divining the meaning of the clues, in Das ewige Leben it is memory loss resulting from his self-inflicted head injury suggesting a voluntary erasing of memory. Moreover, Brenner chooses to misinterpret the clues that his subconscious offers him. One of these clues is the advertising slogan for the Grazer brewery Puntigamer, «Lustig samma, Puntigamer,» that equates drinking beer with being happy. The slogan is Brenner’s first utterance upon awakening from his coma. He connects the slogan with visiting Köck the night of being shot. Köck had repeated it constantly as the two men drank Puntigamer beer and reminisced about their days at the police academy including their so-called «Lausbubenstreich,» the failed bank robbery. The memory of this conversation leads Brenner to convince himself that Aschenbrenner attempted to kill him so that the story about the bank robbery does not become public knowledge. Placing the guilt on Aschenbrenner allows Brenner to disregard the fact that he might have shot himself despite the fact that all evidence points to it. John Belton emphasizes the importance of language for the detective’s investigation which not only is carried out through the agency of language but also takes language as its object of investigation. Testimonies of witnesses and suspects constitute texts that must be deciphered. In the case of this mystery, the clues are texts as in «Lustig samma, Puntigamer.» However, 168 Helga Schreckenberger Brenner has lost the ability to decipher these texts as he has blinded himself against the truth they would reveal. Another example of Brenner’s inability to decode textual clues is his failure to understand a fortuneteller’s hint that his head wound was self-inflicted. Reading his hand, the fortuneteller sings a song in Romanes, whose meaning she translates as «Wenn ich mir betrinken tu, ich viel traurig» which Brenner in turn reduces to «Traurig samma, Puntigamer» thus the opposite of «Lustig samma, Puntigamer» (89). The narrator reveals the meaning of this cryptic reading after Brenner remembers the real events that caused his head wound: «Er hat beim Köck zuviel Puntigamer getrunken, und der Alkohol hat den Brenner gern ein bisschen nachdenklich gemacht, das hat ihm die Handleserin wahrscheinlich durch die Blume sagen wollen, sprich durch die Melodie« (130). However, since Brenner is not willing to accept the possibility of having attempted suicide, he is unable to interpret the fortune teller’s clue correctly. Brenner’s additional misreading of the second clue provided by the fortune teller humorously reflects the central theme of the novel, the conflict between wanting to know and repressing unwelcome or unbearable knowledge. Again, reading his future, the Roma woman utters: «Brena abgraz ibermorgen» (92). Brenner, interpreting «abgraz» as «abkratzen,» a slang term for to die, understands this as a prediction of his imminent death: he will die the day after tomorrow. The narrator expands: Komischerweise hat ihn für den Moment fast weniger erschreckt, dass ihm der Tod vorausgesagt wird. Aber das Pedantische, dass sie es ihm genau vorausgesagt hat, das ist ihm irgendwie gegen den Strich gegangen. So wie betrogene Eheleute gern sagen, wenn er es mir wenigstens anders gesagt hätte. Da klammert man sich oft an den Nebenhorror, wenn man den Haupthorror nicht aushält, und ich sage, warum auch nicht, wenn es wem hilft. (93) Brenner deflects the knowledge that he will have to die by objecting to being told precisely when this might happen. Locating the moment of death in an unspecified future renders the knowledge of human transience more bearable and can be seen as an example of the «tenuous compromise between that which can be known and understood and that which cannot» (936), which modern detective fiction represents for Belton. Brenner’s inability to decode clues correctly extends to his investigation of Köck’s murder as well. Similar to the case of the suicide attempt, the investigation of this murder unearths knowledge that Brenner does not want to face. First, it was his return that caused the memories of the bank robbery to surface again; second, it was committed by someone to whom Brenner is attracted. Thus, he fails to recognize in Marie Maric, Soili Aschenbrenner’s To Know or Not to Know 169 mother, the girlfriend of his friend Saarinen, although the name of her bar «Pasolini» and the name of her daughter should give this away. Brenner, however, associates the name «Pasolini» with the Italian film director and not with the motorcycle road racer Renzo Pasolini who died together with his friend’s idol Jarno Saarinen during a motorcycle race. Soili is named for Jarno Saarinen’s widow. Here, too, the slogan «Lustig samma, Puntigamer» comes into play as Marie Maric used to be a waitress at the Puntigamer Brauhaus. When Brenner finally understands the meaning of the clues, he reacts, as the narrator explains, with his customary wish of not wanting to know: Ein gewisses Nicht-wissen-Wollen. Und natürlich kein Zufall, dass ihn die alte Gewohnheit gerade in dem Moment überfällt, wo er kapiert, warum ihn der alte Ohrwurm schon so lange quält. Weil er hat es jetzt auch nicht wissen wollen. Aber es hat natürlich kein Zurück mehr gegeben. (190) A reason for Brenner’s rejection of the truth is certainly his realization of what his return to Graz set in motion. It brought back the repressed memories of the bank robbery and it caused Frau Maric to break her silence and tell her daughter what really happened on that day. Köck, the instigator of the plan, and not Saarinen fired the shots in the bank which caused the chaotic flight and ultimately Saarinen’s death. Frau Maric had known this all along since she had taken the gun away from Saarinen. This information leads Saarinen’s daughter to confront and kill Köck, which in turn causes her policeman lover to kill the Roma witnesses. The two seemingly separate murder plots - Brenner’s shot to the head on one hand and the murders of Köck and the potential witnesses on the other hand - are connected after all, namely, through Brenner’s indirect, but still culpable, involvement in all of them. As in the case of his suicide attempt, Brenner must admit to his blindness both with regard to the events during the bank robbery and the reasons behind Köck’s murder. Brenner closely matches Bloch’s characterization of Oedipus: «The hunter who is himself the prey and fails in this quest of self, plies his monstrous trade until he belatedly recognizes the truth and does penitence for the perpetration of crimes in which he participated, neither consciously nor morally, but with a highly classical and highly modern ego-identity» (257). Brenner’s return to his hometown and childhood home and his acknowledgement of personal and professional failure suggest a search for self, while his dogged and single-minded investigation of the crime reveal his delusion about himself and about what really happened during the ill-fated bank robbery. As in Sophocles’s play, the quest for (self)knowledge reveals the truth as well as the essential irrationality that governs human existence. Oedipus learns that he 170 Helga Schreckenberger murdered the king and at the same time that the king was his father and that he is married to his mother. Brenner learns about the true events that led to his best friend’s death, but also that Soili is Saarinen’s daughter and Köck’s murderess. Brenner’s cover-up of Soili’s crime suggests his willingness to accept the irrational. 11 In her article «De Sophocle à Japrisot (via Freud), ou pourquoi le policier? » Shoshana Felman calls attention to the subversiveness of Sophocles’s play; not only does it set a trap for the criminal but also for the detective. By this, she does not mean simply that the detective himself is the criminal and thus guilty, but that he is dwarfed in his desire to find the absolute truth. Sophocles’s play ends, according to Felman’s reading, not with the certainty of the absolute truth but with a verdict that does not correspond to the facts. 12 For Felman, this entrapment of the detective symbolizes «rien d’autre que la subversion même de la conscience» (39). These observations are also true in the case of Haas’s novel. Brenner’s solution of the crime does not lead to a resolution. Although Soili is not innocent of murder, her crime seems less reprehensible than her lover’s cold-blooded murder of the Roma witnesses and his consequent attempts to kill both Soili and Brenner. Thus Brenner is trapped by the knowledge he has gained from his investigation - just like the criminal. It is the kind of knowledge that Sophocles’s blind seer Theiresias laments as a burden since it does not solve the problem at hand. Moreover, Brenner’s protection of Soili and his framing of Heinz for all the murders indicates his siding with the irrational, or as Felman called it the subversion of consciousness by the unconscious. The solution at the end of the novel that sees Soili’s lover blamed for all the murders is both satisfactory and conflicting as it compromises justice, at least in the legal sense. Brenner’s withdrawal from society (like Oedipus’s self-exile) can be read as an acknowledgement of guilt. Considering the outcome of modern detective stories, John Belton states that while Oedipus blinds himself and casts himself into exile, the detective «turns to the reassuring logic of language - the rationalization of events in a summary speech which ‹explains away› the mystery. Through language, the disturbing threat of the irrational (represented by the crime) is ‹contained› or held in check» (937). Again, Haas’s novel remains truer to the Oedipus story. While Brenner does not blind himself (just the opposite, his eyesight which was compromised throughout his investigation due to the shot to the head returns), he does withdraw from society. More importantly, Haas deprives the reader of the summary speech by killing off the narrator, who for the first time in the series changes from an extradiegetic to an intradiegectic narrator by intervening in the action to save Brenner’s life. However, in all prior Brenner-novels, the narrator has been the sole source of information To Know or Not to Know 171 for the reader. He has been telling Brenner’s stories, explaining the reasons behind Brenner’s actions, as well as entertaining the reader with his view of them. Even Brenner’s words are mediated through the narrator. It is thus the narrator who occupies the place of reason in Haas’s detective series. In Das ewige Leben, his death preempts that space. The rationalization of the events occurs in the form of a newspaper report full of falsities. Although justice is done to a certain extent (the newspaper article reports the death of the murderer of the Roma and the narrator - the reader can presume that he was shot by Brenner), the true course of events and the real motive for the murders remain hidden from the public. It is also not revealed who is responsible for this cover-up - Brenner, the police, the city government? Thus, the report represents a compromise of what is allowed to be known and what must remain hidden because the knowledge would prove too burdensome and of no avail. The reader who knows at least some of the truth is both implicated in the cover-up and deprived of the reassuring restoration of order and rationality at the end of the novel. Thus, Haas subverts the usual psychological function of the detective story: to provide the readers a safe way to live out their desires. As Charles Rycroft argues, the detective story writer connives with the readers’ need to deny their guilt by providing them with the ready-made fantasies in which the compulsive question «‹Whodunit› is always answered by a self-exonerating, ‹Not I›» (114f.). By causing the readers to identify with the Oedipus-like detective and by implicating them in the cover-up of the criminal events, Haas denies his readers the reassuring self-exoneration. Notes 1 Haas received the «Deutsche Krimi-Preis» (German Detective Novel Award) in 1997 (Auferstehung der Toten), in 1999 (Der Knochenmann), and in 2000 (Silentium! ). 2 Like Süskind’s Das Parfüm, Haas’s novel starts with a discussion of all kinds of smells. Compare Süskind, Das Parfüm 5-7 and Haas, Silentium! 5-7. 3 In many cases, the intertextual references contain clues to the solution of the crime Brenner is attempting to solve such as the title of the fourth Brenner-novel, «Komm, süßer Tod.» This inaccurate reference to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Matthäus Passion - the correct wording is «Komm, süßes Kreuz» - points to the perpetrators, the ambulance drivers of the «Kreuzrettung» who cause the «sweet death» of their diabetic patients by injecting them with sugar solutions 4 Jarno Saarinen together with fellow racer Renzo Pasolini died in a motorcycle crash during a race in Monza in 1973. 5 In her article «Oedipal Patterns in the Detective novel,» Hanna Charney shows that it is not uncommon in detective novels to redistribute elements of the Oedipus story among the characters (243). 172 Helga Schreckenberger 6 Wolf Haas also repeatedly, albeit satirically, refers to this similarity by calling Brenner «immer ein bißchen Psychologe» (Komm, süßer Tod 153) and by emphasizing his psychological competency which is the result of «eine Reihe von psychologischen Schulungen bei der Kripo» (Auferstehung der Toten 16). In Silentium! , Haas refers to Brenner as «Detektiv» while he calls a psychotherapist «Seelendetektiv» (28). 7 Both Shoshana Felman («De Sophocle à Japrisot (via Freud), ou pourquoi le policier? » 39) and Albert D. Hutter («Dreams, Transformations, and Literature: The Implications of Detective Fiction» 207) stress this shift in emphasis in Freud’s analysis of Sophocles’s play in his Traumdeutung. 8 Belton points to the fascination with rational investigation that psychoanalysis and detective fiction share and which he links to their emergence in the late nineteenth century. 9 Brenner repeatedly covers for perpetrators whose crimes he considers justified or insignificant in face of the wrongs done to them. In Auferstehung der Toten, Brenner neglects to report a young girl’s involvement in the murder because he considers her more a victim than a perpetrator. In Silentium! Brenner fails to prevent the killing of the perpetrator who has not only murdered four people, but is also responsible for the forced prostitution of young Filipinas and had attempted to boil Brenner to death. Here, too, Brenner follows the code of protecting the innocent from suffering unduly. He acts out of concern for the wife and five children of the perpetrator who would be destitute if the man were imprisoned. Since he is dead, they have the right to a pension. 10 The theme of repression reappears in the novel in different guises, for example in the form of drug use or the compensating functions of soccer and television in modern life. 11 Brenner is the opposite of Sam Spade who in The Maltese Falcon hands his love interest and murderess of his partner over to the authorities, which according to Belton «places Spade solidly in the camp of romantic cynicism where rationalism can unmask human folly» (941). 12 Felman writes: «ce n’est pas simplement en tant que le détective est peut-être lui-même le criminel - que l’interprète est lui-même un coupable -, mais en tant que le détective est plus radicalement subverti en son désir même de détective, voire en son désir d’interprète: le désir de produire la fin de la quête, c’est-à-dire, la vérité, la certitude du savoir absolu. Or, ce qui tranche le dénouement, ce qui arrête l’enquête, chez Sophocle comme chez Japrisot, ce n’est pas la complétude cognitive du savoir ou de la vérité, mais la décision performative d’un jugement non fondé, le décret d’un verdict non adéquat aux faits-» (37). Works Cited Belton, John. «Language, Oedipus, and Chinatown.» Modern Language Notes 106.5 (1991): 933-50. Bloch, Ernst. «A Philosophical View of the Detective Story.» The Utopian Function of Art and Literature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988. 245-64. Charney, Hanna «Oedipal Patterns in the Detective Novel.» Psychoanalytic Approaches to Literature and Film. Ed. M. Charney and J. Reppen. Hillsdale, N.J.: Analytic Press, 1985. 238-47. To Know or Not to Know 173 Felman, Shoshana. «De Sophocle à Japrisot (via Freud), ou pourquoi le policier? » Littérature 49 (1983): 23-42. Freud, Sigmund. Die Traumdeutung. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1996. Freud, Sigmund/ Carl Gustav Jung. Briefwechsel. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1991. Haas, Wolf. Die Auferstehung der Toten. Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1996. -. Komm süßer Tod. Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1998 -. Silentium! Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1999. -. Das ewige Leben. München: Piper, 2004. Hutter, Albert D. «Dreams, Transformations, and Literature: The Implications of Detective Fiction.» Victorian Studies 19.2 (1975): 181-209. Rössler, Susanne. «Ich spinne so vor mich hin, und irgendwann ist das Buch fertig.» Volltext - Zeitung für Literatur 2 (2002). www.volltext.net. Rycroft, Charles. Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books, 1968. Süskind, Patrick. Das Parfum - Die Geschichte eines Mörders. Zürich: Diogenes, 1994. Krimi und Klamauk: Trivializing Murder in the Eberhofer and Kluftinger Series SA SCHA ANDR EA S GER HA R DS Mia mi Univ ersity In the opening sequence of Milchgeld (2012), a recent German crime film, the audience is shown a picturesque intersection of rural streets in the German Allgäu region. Sedate Blasmusik typical for Southern Germany increases in volume from pickup notes to a solid melody as a car approaches the intersection. The camera zooms into the interior of the car, presenting the viewer with a close-up of a musician dressed in Tracht, and another closeup of an empty milk bottle rolling across a bass drum in the back of the car. The driver approaches four other musicians dressed in Tracht waiting in a town square, followed by a bizarre group effort to fit five people and their instruments into the car. The background music, the awkward demeanor of the musicians, the camera angles used and the dialect spoken contribute to the comic impression the scene imposes on the viewer. When, after several Tetris © -like attempts, they have finally managed to fit everyone into the car, the driver’s phone rings. A brief moment of listening to the caller goes by until the driver utters in broad dialect: «I hoab a Leichesach» (I have a murder case). This statement by police detective Kluftinger in the first scene of Milchgeld has one anticipate the plot of a traditional Krimi as defined by Richard Alewyn: the Krimi starts with a murder, followed by the investigation process that eventually leads to the solving of the case. 1 As the scene reveals, however, the film also contains elements of a genre that is not usually associated with the Krimi, namely the genre of comedy. In fact, Milchgeld is but one example of recent German Krimis that are full of humorous and comedic stylistic devices. In this article, I will analyze the use of comic elements in recent German crime fiction and film, in particular Rita Falk’s Eberhofer series and Volker Klüpfel and Michael Kobr’s Kluftinger novels, as well as their respective adaptations for the cinema and television screen. 2 Rita Falk introduced police detective Franz Eberhofer in her debut novel Winterkartoffelknödel in 2010. Eberhofer has been transferred from Munich to his hometown, the fictional Bavarian town of Niederkaltenkirchen, as a disciplinary measure after violating police procedure. Shortly after his Krimi und Klamauk 175 arrival, he finds himself confronted with a quadruple murder. All four members of the Neuhofer family are killed in a series of grotesque murders, and Eberhofer decides to solve the case rather than fulfill his assigned duty of handling traffic violations and minor offenses. In the second novel of the series entitled Dampfnudelblues (2011), Eberhofer has to investigate the murder of the school principal of Niederkaltenkirchen, Höpfl. Volker Klüpfel and Michael Kobr introduced police commissioner Kluftinger in their debut novel Milchgeld (2003). In Milchgeld, Kluftinger faces several murders, all of which are connected with the milk and cheese factory in Altusried, a town in the picturesque Allgäu region of Bavaria. In their second novel, Erntedank (2004), Kluftinger once again investigates a series of murders which begins with a bizarrely decorated first victim: a man is found dead with a slit throat and a missing eye, the body covered with a dead crow. The Eberhofer and Kluftinger series share several characteristics that have become a staple in the German Krimi: they place a strong emphasis on regionalism and character development with respect to the main investigator. Contrary to the established Krimi, however, the Kluftinger and Eberhofer series trivialize the investigator and, in doing so, trivialize the entire murder case. The opening sequence described in the introduction depicts commissioner Kluftinger as a clumsy, overweight, and uncoordinated person who, in his traditional Bavarian Tracht, entirely lacks the authority we would expect from a successful and determined investigator. Like the other customs and traditions that have become typical for the German Krimi since the early 1970s, humor is closely connected to regional and cultural idiosyncrasies. Occurrences of humor «always depend on temporally and spatially related communication situations,» as Ralph Müller has shown; consequently, «‹humorous› can only be defined within its social and historical background» (231). The use of comedic elements in the recent German Krimi clearly accounts for its commercial success, but also raises several questions: How do comic elements fit into a genre that typically revolves around murder? What does the commercial success of Krimis containing comic elements imply? Is comedy in any way connected to death and dying? Can one deduce social discourses from analyzing fictional texts? These questions form the core of the subtexts of the Eberhofer and Kluftinger series, especially when one considers that their wit is not particularly profound. German has a fitting expression for this kind of humor: krachledern. Etymologically, krachledern implies a Bavarian Tracht, or Lederhosen to be more precise, while the noun der Krach means noise in German. 3 Especially associated with Bavaria, the locus of the two series under discussion, the Duden defines krachledern as ribald and boisterous. 4 As it turns 176 Sascha Andreas Gerhards out, exactly this kind of humor characterizes not only the previously discussed opening sequence of the filmic adaptation of Milchgeld, but also the first scene of another filmic adaptation, this time of Dampfnudelblues. Dampfnudelblues opens with a close-up of a whitewashed wall. In bright, big red lettering, we read: «STIRB DU SAU.» After the camera zooms out, two people can be seen facing the wall: police detective Eberhofer, and school principal Höpfl. The following dialogue establishes Eberhofer as a rather careless, slouching police officer, someone who avoids work and effort in favor of leisure time: Eberhofer: Vielleicht sind ja gar nicht Sie gemeint? Höpfl: Nicht ich gemeint! Das ist mein Haus, das ist meine Hauswand, auf der das steht. Wen sollen die denn sonst gemeint haben, häh? Eberhofer: Haben Sie schon einen Verdacht, wer das war? Vielleicht einer von Ihren Schülern? Weil, sagen wir es einmal so, Rektor ist jetzt nicht gerade der beliebteste Job, gerade bei so Schülern. Höpfl: Ja, aber als Polizist wird man ja auch nicht nur Freunde haben, häh? Eberhofer: Ja, aber an meiner Hauswand steht halt jetzt auch nicht: STIRB DU SAU! The use of broad Bavarian dialect in this filmic adaptation further intensifies the dialogue’s absurd, ludicrous impression. Much to Eberhofer’s discomfort, principal Höpfl is found dead only a few days later, his body parts scattered all over the tracks of the local train line. Throughout the plot of Dampfnudelblues, Eberhofer’s apathetic work ethic and his private life play a much bigger role than audiences would anticipate in a traditional Krimi, where the detection process remains the center of attention. In Falk’s Eberhofer series, and the Kluftinger series by Klüpfel and Kobr, character development shifts from the people involved in the murder case - victims, suspects, and police at work - to the private life of the investigators. Combined with the amount of comedic elements in both series, this focus on the characteristics - usually flaws - of the investigator, trivializes the murder case. For instance, Eberhofer’s Oma dictates his life and free time, when, at every opportunity, she expects Eberhofer to drive her around town to pick up the best sale offers - even when Eberhofer is on duty. In addition, his father illegally grows marijuana in the backyard of the family-owned farm. Father Eberhofer uses his drugs frequently throughout the series, while further annoying his son by blasting Beatles songs from his home stereo. Eberhofer’s brother Leopold - a bookseller depicted as a loser who has been married and divorced several times and who is now dating Panida, a Thai woman - does not miss a single opportunity to make Eberhofer look even worse than himself. Eberhofer has no choice but to accept his brother’s demands to babysit Krimi und Klamauk 177 their newborn daughter Uschi. Eberhofer can only find one way to respond, which is rather racist: to provoke his brother, he insists on calling the baby girl Sushi. Especially in situations that revolve around a murder, the use of humor is bold and appears out of place. When Eberhofer arrives on the scene of Höpfl’s supposed suicide, a colleague approaches him: «Da, halt mal.» Without thinking, Eberhofer reaches out, and when looking down realizes that he is holding a human head. «Bah, spinnst Du,» exclaims Eberhofer, only to add in awe: «Das ist ja der Kopf vom Höpfl.» To this, his colleague responds, «Dem Höpfl sein Köpfl also,» and bursts out laughing. These examples demonstrate the trivialization of a murder case via humor, irony, and sarcasm. By playfully intertwining elements of humor and death, this recent Krimi recontextualizes a particularly sensitive cultural discourse: the taboo of death and dying established in post-World War II German society about which Germans have particularly avoided laughing. In her analysis of the utilization of humor as a stylistic device in German Hochliteratur, Dagmar C.G. Lorenz emphasizes one of the crucial functions of humor: «Er erlaubt, vieles zu sagen, ohne Stellung zu nehmen, es also gleichzeitig nicht zu sagen» (28). Analogously, the recent Krimi deploys humor as a means of circumventing the problem of talking about death. According to Sigmund Freud, humor includes satire, parody, irony, and jokes, all of which share the function of expressing the forbidden or inexpressible (116). A well-known German vernacular - «Humor ist, wenn man trotzdem lacht» - emphasizes the function of humor as a placeholder: «Das setzt voraus, daß zum Lachen kein Grund vorliegt […],» concludes Lorenz in her definition of humor (29). By its traditional definition, the Krimi also does not contain room for laughter. After all, a murder is committed, a family is torn apart, and innocent victims are affected. In short, the crime has disrupted the social order. The recent commercial success of Krimis that include the antithesis of death and humor raises the question of why audiences and readers are so attracted to this unusual genre mix. «Der Tod kehrt ins Leben zurück,» a recent article in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, suggests that German society is currently undergoing a transformation with respect to coping with death and dying. In this article, Christian Schüle examines the current social and ethical changes in Germany, claiming that «kulturhistorisch betrachtet, ist in Deutschland eine kleine Revolution im Gange» (Schüle). Death and dying, he observes, had long been a cultural taboo in Germany, especially since and because of World War II. Millions of victims, especially those of the industrialized and coordinated genocide in the concentration 178 Sascha Andreas Gerhards camps of the Nazi regime, and a deficient mechanism for coping with the responsibility for these casualties, were essential aspects of this taboo. According to philosopher and health care law specialist Michael Anderheiden, the hedonism of the 1980s and the Schönheits- und Jugendkult of the 1990s (key word: «Generation Golf») had further intensified the collective denial in Germany (Schüle). Several developments in recent years, however, suggest that change is afoot in Germany. Most importantly, the influence of the churches is decreasing, a development affecting not only moral standards but also the tangible intersection of life and death. Graveyards are undergoing a sociocultural change from religious sites to parks with areas that suggest worldly rather than religious references. For instance, one might find an area in a burial park for fans of the immensely successful soccer clubs Borussia Dortmund or Bayern München next to a corner for the local bowling club and Rolling Stones aficionados. «Er ist kein Friedhof im klassischen Sinn, kein christlich umflorter Gottesacker. Er ist ein Parkfriedhof, der nun der Pluralisierung und Partikulasierung der Gesellschaft Rechnung trägt» (Schüle). With respect to the process of dying, the discussion about palliative care and medically-assisted suicide is driving a discourse on dying with dignity. Hospice care relocates death and dying into the midst of society. This change from a cultural taboo to one of the predominant discourses in German society also affects the media: «In mehreren Genres […] ist Alter und Vergänglichkeit mittlerweile auch im Wahrnehmungsraum der Massenmedien angekommen - eine ganz neue Botschaft an die werberelevante Zielgruppe bis 49» (Schüle). This development parallels a social discourse that started in the United States in the late 1960s. Initiated by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the so-called death awareness movement has been advocating for awareness of death as a social taboo. In On Death and Dying (1969), Kübler-Ross coins the term «death with dignity» and «zealously advocates the proposition that dying need not be something terrible and tragic, but could become a springboard for courage, growth, enrichment and even joy» (Moller 82). In the following years, sociologists approached the topic from a variety of perspectives, for instance with respect to a growing number of people dying at a hospital rather than at home but also addressing the emerging fields of hospice care, palliative care, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. 5 One could argue, then, as Schüle and Kübler-Ross have done among others, that the debate on death with dignity has shifted death and dying from a cultural taboo to the midst of society. The individual, however, is still left alone with its fear of death and dying. It seems that one must clearly distinguish between the way a topic is addressed in society as a whole, including Krimi und Klamauk 179 a debate predominantly driven by sociologists, doctors, and politicians (as is currently the case in Germany), and the waning support for the individual, be it the dying person or the bereaved. Norbert Fischer emphasizes in «Tod in der Mediengesellschaft: Der flüchtige Tod und Bestattungsrituale im Übergang» that the abandonment of the Friedhofszwang 6 and the decreasing significance of funeral rites leads to a spiritual void for the dying and the bereaved individual. Although Fischer acknowledges the existence of a social discourse on death and dying, he also observes a growing medical and legal bureaucratization of death. This void, he argues, is partially filled with the depiction of death in the media: «Ist der Tod […] im privaten Alltagsleben faktisch abwesend, so erscheint uns seine Präsenz in den Medien fast aufdringlich. Dem Rückgang des primären Todeserlebnis steht die Allgegenwart des über die Medien vermittelten Todes gegenüber» (Fischer). Death in the media, according to Fischer, is usually a violent one, and, more importantly, is typically depicted as the death of the Other: «Der Tod erscheint uns daher als der Tod des Anderen - wir goutieren ihn - beruhigend zu wissen, dass die, die in Film und Fernsehen sterben, weit entfernt von uns selbst sind.» This emotional distance allows us - as the audience of a film or television series - to appreciate crime shows, and yet it signifies a growing rather than a decreasing taboo. The addition of humor, then, plays a crucial role as a mediator between life and death, discourse and taboo: it allows us to approach an unpleasant topic and even laugh about it, although at first glance death and laughter do not seem to be affiliated. This interplay of death and laughter is a recurring element in the Eberhofer and Kluftinger series in general, and Dampfnudelblues in particular. After principal Höpfl’s remains have been found on the train tracks, Eberhofer’s supervisor is convinced that the principal committed suicide. Eberhofer receives the order to inform Höpfl’s relatives and close the case. Eberhofer, however, believes that Höpfl was murdered and continues his search for clues. The filmic adaptation of Dampfnudelblues in particular leaves a lot of room for comedic stylistic devices as the investigation continues. On his way to inform Höpfl’s sister about the principal’s death, Eberhofer drives his BMW police car through the picturesque Bavarian landscape, blasting Judas Priest’s song Breaking the Law from the car stereo. The cold-hearted reaction of Höpfl’s sister sparks Eberhofer’s curiosity, and in the course of the investigation the coroner informs Eberhofer in a phone call about having found Höpfl’s sperm in a deceased body during a forensic examination. When Eberhofer requests the personal information of «the woman,» the Coroner succinctly responds that he has never mentioned a female victim, yet he cynically refuses to confirm that Höpfl was homosexual: 180 Sascha Andreas Gerhards «Ich würde mich hüten, da irgendwelche Verdächtigungen anzustellen, oder sowas. Ich sag nur, ich hab’ da eine männliche Leiche liegen mit Höpfl seinem Sperma im Arsch.» The coroner’s crude humor, krachledern once again, combined with the Bavarian dialect and the doctor’s facial expression, as well as the use of sound effects reminiscent of animated movies, makes the scene as bizarre as it is unrealistic and, in doing so, lifts the weight of the unspeakable off of the audience. Apart from the investigation process, Dampfnudelblues offers a myriad of funny episodes that further trivialize the murder case. This trivialization, in turn, characterizes the Eberhofer series in general. In Winterkartoffelknödel (2010), the first novel of the Eberhofer series, humor is used as a recurring element, especially after the discussion of murders. 7 Shortly after Eberhofer realizes that three deaths in the Neuhofer family within a few weeks cannot possibly be a coincidence, he starts investigating. Brooding over clues - the Neuhofers refused to sell their property to a real estate agent - Falk has Eberhofer reflect on his process of investigation. Eberhofer’s Oma crudely interrupts this rather serious thought process, stating that the Schwammerlsuppe is ready. Rather than attending to the serious subject matter of a potential serial murder, Falk trivializes the case by shifting the readers’ attention to something rather comical, the recurring inappropriate behavior of Eberhofer’s Oma. After the last surviving family member, Hans Neuhofer, is also reported dead, Eberhofer visits the scene of the supposed accident. But rather than focusing on the seriousness of the fourth death in a row and the circumstances that led to the «accident,» Falk has Eberhofer report on his dog Ludwig’s behavior: «Wie ich hinkomm, pinkelt der Ludwig gleich einmal auf dem Neuhofer seinen Fuß. Markiert sozusagen. Aber das ist jetzt auch schon Wurst: keine Atmung, kein Puls, kein Gar-Nix» (Winterkartoffelknödel 92). Once again, the recurring krachledern humor is apparent here. Rather than having the investigator showcase an appropriate demeanor, Falk disrupts the horror of yet another murder by the use of humor. In a recent clinical study on humor, researchers Christopher R. Long and Dara Greenwood confronted test subjects with assignments revolving around pain and death, asking participants to invent headings for comic strips. Their study led to two interesting findings: Those subjects who were unconsciously confronted with death composed the funniest headings. The headings by subjects who were confronted with their own death, however, were the least humorous. The researchers concluded that humor can be helpful to deal with preexisting, unconscious fears, such as the fear of death and dying. 8 The findings by Long and Greenwood parallel Fischer’s observation of the way we deal with the fear of death and dying in a postmodern media- Krimi und Klamauk 181 driven society: death is removed from the personal sphere, the individual is alienated from his deepest fears. But what if we are personally affected? Jean- Jacques Rousseau claimed that «he who pretends to look on death without fear lies. All men are afraid of dying, this is the great law of sentient beings, without which the entire species would soon be destroyed» (128). Rousseau’s claim counters today’s notion that by way of social discourses on palliative care, death with dignity, and assisted suicide, death loses its terror and role as the last social taboo. «The uncertainties associated with death are not necessarily confined to contemporary times. However […] the pre-modern world was characterised [sic] by a widespread acceptance of notions of fate and fortune» (McNamara 15). In today’s postmodern, media-centered world, the notion of fate and fortune has given way to the idea of human beings as a flawless, always-functioning commodity. Death only signifies the point in time where we are not functioning anymore; the commodity is broken. «Death is therefore always a problem for all societies, since every social system must in some ways accept death, because human beings inevitably die, but at the same time social systems must to a certain extent deny death to allow people to go on in day-to-day life with some sense of commitment» (Mellor 13). Death, in other words, is understood as a limitation, a challenge to the individual that at the same time presents a problem of meaning and modernity to society. In a second article in Die Zeit entitled «Der optimierte Tod,» Christian Schüle called this phenomenon «die Imperative der Ökonomisierung des Humanen.» In postmodern society, human beings are faced with the expectation to be a functioning member of society. Despite new political, sociological, and medical approaches to death and dying, the individual has lost the moral and spiritual support churches and communities used to provide, be it through burial rites, community mourning, or assistance by pastors or priests: he is left alone with death. A possible explanation for the commercial success of humoristic Krimis, then, is the way they approach death vis-à-vis this spiritual void of the postmodern individual. Although humor in Volker Klüpfel and Michael Kobr’s Kluftinger series is not as krachledern as in Rita Falk’s Eberhofer books, the authors use a very similar stylistic device to attenuate the magnitude of murder. As the opening sequence of Milchgeld demonstrates, the Kluftinger character, much like Rita Falk’s Eberhofer, does not represent a traditional Krimi investigator. 9 He is lazy, overweight, and clumsy, and as is the case with Eberhofer, several other characters in the series diminish him, even his own wife. His neighbor, Doktor Langhammer, also takes every opportunity to show Kluftinger his culturally sophisticated superiority. 10 Langhammer’s «cooking class» for Kluftinger is one of many scenes in Milchgeld that depict the investigator as 182 Sascha Andreas Gerhards uneducated and naive. 11 When the first of two murders in Milchgeld is being investigated, Kluftinger decides to cancel a planned vacation with his wife, who responds cold-heartedly by taking the trip with Langhammer’s wife instead. One night Kluftinger, left home alone with an array of precooked dishes frozen in Tupperware containers, attempts to call his wife in Spain. The scene opens with a close-up of the investigator copying words from a dictionary into his private notebook. He then dials an international phone number. When the hotel receptionist picks up the phone, Kluftinger displays an utter inability to converse in a foreign language, awkwardly spelling his name in a mix of German, English, and gibberish. Although Kluftinger finally manages to get through to his wife, the phone conversation does not significantly improve. Apparently, Erika is at the pool bar, male voices speaking Spanish can be heard in the background whispering compliments about Erika just loud enough to be picked up over the phone. Kluftinger is completely inept during the brief conversation, and eventually, Erika simply hangs up on him. The murder investigation in Milchgeld turns out to be as unsuccessful as Kluftinger’s phone call to Spain. First, Kluftinger impiously chases a potential suspect across the graveyard during the funeral of the first murder victim. Shortly thereafter, another suspect manages to escape from Kluftinger who has no choice but to sedately run after the suspect’s car. In the course of the investigation, Kluftinger’s overambitious deputy Richie complicates the case indefinitely by reexamining a cold case instead of focusing on clues. Finally, Kluftinger and Richie are unable to prevent a second murder, and Richie, rather than keeping calm, panics, trips over the deceased, and falls backwards into a pit. These examples from Milchgeld once again showcase a trivialization of murder in the recent German Krimi. «Humor, so Freud, erspart Gefühlsaufwand […], so daß [sic] vom Schaden, Schmerz, usf. ‹humoristische Lust› gewonnen werden kann, die auch Unbeteiligte animiert» (Lorenz 30). Pain and damage especially occur whenever a murder is committed. In addition to countering the serious moment of a recently discovered murder with trivial, funny scenes like the ones described above, the Kluftinger novels and films use the same strategy as the Eberhofer series when it comes to the actual murder. In Erntedank (2004), the second novel of the Kluftinger series, tension is decreased via humor after detailed descriptions of a murder or the discovery of the victim. For instance, when the investigator informs the wife of the first murder victim about her husband’s death, the uncomfortable meeting is described in great detail, but the authors add a moment of relief - and quite literally so: earlier in the day, Kluftinger had discovered water damage in his bathroom. The situation in the murder victim’s Krimi und Klamauk 183 living room shortly after the delivery of the sad news showcases Kluftinger’s deficient tactfulness and trivializes the entire scene. While the victim’s wife is mourning the death of her husband, Kluftinger reflects on the urgency of finding a bathroom: «Wenn er nicht sofort auf die Toilette käme, würde es einen weiteren Wasserschaden an diesem Tag geben« (Erntedank 32). Throughout the novel, whenever situations that revolve around death occur - the examination of the crime scene, a visit to the coroner’s, or the moment after the discovery of the second murder victim - Klüpfel and Kobr release the reader by use of a humoristic stylistic device. Much like the Eberhofer series, comic elements are used to break up tension and to divert the readers’ or viewers’ attention away from the seriousness of the subject matter, death and dying. This process of removing oneself has a cathartic effect on the investigator and, at the same time, on readers and viewers because it creates an emotional distance, diminishing the emotional impact of death. The discussion of select works from the Kluftinger and Eberhofer series with respect to their use of humor has shown that despite a changing societal awareness of death and dying such as the death with dignity movement, the subject matter remains a delicate and emotional topic for individuals. The appearance of comic elements in the Krimi parallels a societal development in which death is negotiated socially but not individually. Death is now negotiated in the media - both in literary and filmic form - in such a way that the distance between our own personal experience and the mediated experience is big enough to not be emotionally harmful. Even in the Krimi, humor induces laughter. Laughter allows us to face our fear of the last social taboo: our own death. One could even go so far as to argue that both Eberhofer and Kluftinger represent us, the readers or viewers, in their humorous way of dealing with situations in which they are confronted with death and dying. After all, the two investigators do not live in a secularized metropolis like Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, or Cologne, but in one of Germany’s most rural regions where religion and traditional burial rites are still part of cultural values. The humoristic approach to death, in other words, might represent a way of mocking those people who take such traditions as a means of coping or bereavement. At the same time, one could also laugh at the trendy, worldly burial rites discussed by Schüle, for instance the Borussia Dortmund fan. This and other unconventional burial strategies can be identified as yet another way of avoiding the essence of the problem: the undeniable inconceivability of mortality. The death with dignity movement, from this perspective, represents a removal of taboos when it comes to the process of dying but not from death itself. Human beings do not establish a closer relationship with death simply because they can plan their own process of dying more in- 184 Sascha Andreas Gerhards dependently, with the sole responsibility for their own decisions. To the contrary, the absence of established authorities, and their religious or communal rites, makes understanding the phenomenon of death even less manageable from an emotional standpoint. There is a discrepancy between public absence and private presence when it comes to dealing with death (Melor 28). But dealing with death, as Jane Littlewood suggests, eventually becomes a psychological inevitability (73). It seems that laughing, as argued by Freud, remains the only way to deal with the unspeakable. In the recent German Krimi, whether in fiction or in film, humor - as a way of negotiating the unspeakable and inevitable and thereby diminishing the emotional impact of death - lies at the heart of the genre’s commercial success. Notes 1 Alewyn 6-15. Alewyn’s definition is undisputed although there have been many crime novels and films that do not follow the traditional Krimi recipe anymore. 2 Throughout my article, I use the term Krimi to refer to both literary as well as filmic forms of the genre. Although not entirely undisputed in its applicability, I have shown elsewhere how uniquely intertwined the literary and filmic crime subgenres are in Germany. An interdependence exists here for which the aforementioned crime series are another prime example. For details see Gerhards. 3 Lederhosen are also referred to as die Krachlederne in Bavarian. 4 Duden: «krachledern: Adjektiv, eine derb-heftige Art aufweisend.» 5 «The commonly used term euthanasia, originally derived from the Greek word meaning ‹good death,› now is used to refer to any action or purposeful inaction by an individual that is intended to encourage the death of another» (Kapp 55). 6 Friedhofszwang was a law in Germany that forbade funerals outside of cemeteries, with the exception of burial at sea. 7 The Eberhofer series is not discussed in chronological order here because Dampfnudelblues, although being the second novel of the series, preceded Winterkartoffelknödel on the cinema screen. The film Winterkartoffelknödel premiered after research for this essay had been completed. 8 See Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung «Gedanken an den Tod fördern den Humor.» 9 The authors of the Kluftinger series, Volker Klüpfel and Michael Kobr, actively contributed to the screenplay and filming of Milchgeld. Volker Klüpfel even played the role of coroner Georg Böhm. 10 Throughout the Kluftinger series, one can find references to Dr. Langhammer’s descriptive name, implying that he always has the upper hand («am längeren Hebel sitzen»). 11 Another prime example for Langhammer’s superiority is a scene from the novel Erntedank, in which the Langhammers and Kluftingers play Trivial Pursuit. In this scene, Kluftinger displays an utter ignorance toward culture, education, and general knowledge (75-86). Krimi und Klamauk 185 Works Cited Alewyn, Richard. «Ursprung des Detektivromans.» Jahrbuch für finnisch-deutsche Literaturbeziehungen 28 (1996): 6-15. Dampfnudelblues. Dir. Ed Herzog. Constantin Filmverleih GmbH, 2013. Falk, Rita. Winterkartoffelknödel. Munich: dtv, 2010. -. Dampfnudelblues. München: dtv, 2011. Fischer, Norbert. «Tod in der Mediengesellschaft: Der flüchtige Tod und Bestattungsrituale im Übergang.» postmortal.de. Postmortal-Blog. n.d. Web. 1 Sept. 2014. Freud, Sigmund. «Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten.» 1905. Gesammelte Werke. Vol. 6. London: Imago, 1940. «Gedanken an den Tod fördern den Humor.» faz.net. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 3 July 2013. Web. 1 Sept. 2014. Gerhards, Sascha. Zeitgeist of Murder: The Krimi and Social Transformation in post-1945 Germany. Diss. U of California, Davis, 2013. Howarth, Glennys. «The Rebirth of Death - Continuing Relationships With the Dead.» Remember Me - Constructing Immortality - Beliefs on Immortality, Life, and Death. Ed. Margarget Mitchell. New York: Routledge, 2007. 19-34. Kapp, Marshall B. «Ethical Considerations and Court Involvement in End-of-Life Decision Making.» Cultural Issues in End-of-Life Decision Making. Ed. Kathryn L. Braun, James H. Pietsch and Patricia L. Blanchette. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc., 2000. 55-68. Klüpfel, Volker, and Michael Kobr. Milchgeld. Munich: Piper, 2003. -. Erntedank. München: Piper, 2004. Littlewood, Jane. «The denial of death and rites of passage in contemporary societies.» The Sociology of Death. Ed. David Clark. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers/ The Sociological Review, 1993. 69-86. Lorenz, Dagmar C.G. «Humor bei zeitgenössischen Autorinnen.» The Germanic Review 62.1 (1987): 28-36. McNamara, Beverley. Fragile Lives - Death, Dying and Care. Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001. Mellor, Philip. «Death in high modernity: the contemporary presence and absence of death.» The Sociology of Death. Ed. David Clark. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers/ The Sociological Review, 1993. 11-30. Milchgeld. Ein Kluftingerkrimi. Dir. Rainer Kaufmann. ARD Degeto Film, 2012. Moller, David Wendell. Life’s End - Technocratic Dying in an Age of Spiritual Yearning. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Co. Inc., 2000. Nassehi, Armin, and Georg Weber. «Verdrängung des Todes - Kulturkritisches Vorurteil oder Strukturmerkmal moderner Gesellschaften? Systemtheoretische und wissenssoziologische Überlegungen.» Soziale Welt 39.4 (1988): 377-96. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Julie or the New Heloise: Letters of Two Lovers Who Live in a Small Town at the Foot of the Alps. Hanover, NH: UP of New England, 1997. Rowell, Mary. «Christian Perspectives on End-of-Life Decision Making: Faith in a Community.» Cultural Issues in End-of-Life Decision Making. Ed. Kathryn L. Braun, James H. Pietsch and Patricia L. Blanchette. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc., 2000. 147-63. 186 Sascha Andreas Gerhards Schüle, Christian. «Der optimierte Tod.» zeit.de. Zeit Online, 2 Oct. 2013. Web. 1 July 2014. -. «Der Tod kehrt ins Leben zurück.» zeit.de. Zeit Online, 16 Nov. 2012. Web. 1 July 2014. Knotty Plot and Dense Text: Crime, Detection, and Epigraphs in Wolfgang Herrndorf’s Sand OLIVIA ALBIERO Univ ersity of Wa shington Welcomed as «de[r] größte[.], grausigste[.], komischste[.] und klügste[.] Roman der letzten Dekade» (Maar 340), Wolfgang Herrndorf’s 2011 novel Sand mingles the features of detective story and spy thriller in a narrative of crime, amnesia, and mystery. 1 Clashing with Herrndorf’s first bestseller Tschick in form, content, and tone, the knotty plot and dense text of Sand combine in a work of crime fiction that defies any claim of being «too local, too regional, too German.» 2 The novel consists of five individually titled books and is divided into sixty-eight chapters, each of which is introduced by an intertitle and an epigraph. Set in the summer of 1972 in the fictional North African city of Targat, Sand opens on the day of a murderous attack that unsettles a Western hippie commune in the oasis of Tindirma. 3 The unfit police officer Polidorio, a Frenchman of Arabian descent, sets off to reach the crime scene. However, he disappears from the narrative, never to return again - at least not under this name. Indeed, a nameless character, who does not remember who he is or where he came from, suddenly turns up, confused and injured, in the second book. Helen Gliese, an undercover CIA agent hunting for a hazardous «mine,» rescues him in the desert and names him Carl. 4 From this moment on, Carl’s real identity and the mysterious «mine» constitute the two crucial enigmas of the novel. Carl is tormented by the doubt of being a terrible criminal, while his amnesia hinders any coherent memory recollection. The «mine» is likewise wrapped in a mystery: everybody searches for it, nobody knows where it is, and the novel plays with the ambiguity of the word to thicken the mystery. Does the «mine» ultimately stand for a quarry, an explosive weapon, or the lead of a pencil? 5 Due to a series of accidents, Carl becomes the prime suspect of an international intrigue, and both a group of criminals and the CIA start hunting him. After he manages to escape from his underground confinement where the CIA agents have imprisoned him, the «King of Africa,» a drunkard who lives in the desert, kills him. The novel ends as the «mine» is swept away during a cleanup of the city, while the reader is left piecing together all the elements of this story. 6 This summary only partially reveals the intricacy of Sand, in which narrative and textual complexity draw the reader into a labyrinthine story. 7 The 188 Olivia Albiero «perfideste Art» (Maar 337) in which the plot comes together makes this novel particularly enthralling: the intricate plot of Sand forces the reader to continuously reassess the information at her disposal and to reconsider the significance of and the relations among events and characters - with the risk of failing. 8 While this may be true of many works of detective fiction, Sand challenges the rule of fair play of detective novels and engages the reader in a constant search for new details and clues. 9 The use of paratexts which introduce every chapter in the novel further complicates this task and adds another layer of interpretation to this convoluted crime story. In the following analysis, I reflect on how crime, narrative, and paratexts intertwine in Herrndorf’s novel and how the play among these elements complicates the plot on the one hand, and the reader’s work of detection on the other. I argue that while paratexts risk steering the reader’s attention away from crime detection towards textual investigation, that is, towards the attempt to make sense of the intertextual references, they also may provide some guidance through this labyrinthine crime story. My investigation develops in three steps. I first discuss how the novel uses and combines different elements of multiple genres of crime fiction; second, I take into consideration the form and function of paratexts, in particular epigraphs; finally, I reflect on their significance in relation to the processes of narrating, investigating, and interpreting. In other words, I ask: What makes the plot of Sand so knotty and intriguing? How do paratexts affect the narrative development, that is, how do they aid, delay, or complement the narration of the events? And, in which ways do paratexts help orient (or disorient) the reader in her search for the crime explanation? Reviewers and scholars frequently note the use of paratexts, in particular epigraphs, in Sand, but their readings do not primarily focus on the significance of these elements in relation to questions of plot and genres of crime fiction. Sonja Arnold, for example, points to a few epigraphs in a reading that investigates «the errors, accidents, and the logic of the absurd» in the novel (25). Maximilian Burk and Christof Hamann refer to Herodotus’s quotes in their analysis of the topology and topography of the novel to set up their postcolonial reading, and they show how the binary structures associated with North African and Western culture are constructed and deconstructed through the articulation of narrative space, perspective, and voice (332, 346). Magdalena Drywa discusses the relation between Sand and Herrndorf’s online blog and addresses some aspects of the genre contamination (40-41) and the use of epigraphs in Sand (44-45). And yet while she acknowledges that «Sand überbietet und unterläuft einige gängige Muster der Kriminalliteratur, während er in postmoderner Manier diverse Variationen zitiert» (40), Knotty Plot and Dense Text 189 the focus of her reading does not lie on crime fiction. Thus, the form and function of paratexts in relation to the genres of the novel, its crime scheme, and the reader’s activity of detection still remain to be investigated. At its outset, Sand narrates the police investigation of Polidorio and Canisades, who are appointed to clarify the puzzling circumstances of a violent crime. The novel presents all the elements of a traditional detective story: a murder, in which four people are killed under mysterious circumstances; a suspect, Amadou Amadou, whom the police have in custody; and an investigation, which includes interrogations and the testimony of thirty-one eyewitnesses. The description of the murder, committed right at the outset of the novel, however, is omitted. Thus, the misdeed is first mentioned in the story during the investigation, and the reader is ready to be guided through a story of detection and resolution by Polidorio. And yet, this detective storylike opening soon becomes part of a larger, suspenseful, plot-driven thriller, in which action takes over investigation. 10 The plot thickens with multiple quests and mysteries that run parallel to each other and reveal the conspiratorial nature of this story, which, in the first chapters, reads as an unprofessional investigation in an African community. Sociopolitical obstacles suddenly hinder the chase of the culprit of the initial massacre; the hunt for the unidentified «mine» introduces new groups of people into the story; and the enigma of Polidorio/ Carl’s identity becomes more complex, but is nonetheless withheld until the very end of the narrative, through the use of amnesia. By slowly leaving behind the first police investigation, the novel shifts its focus to the thriller-like elements of chase and action, complicated by the mystery, which surrounds events and characters. This opening towards the thriller genre is paralleled by a complication in events. The second book of Sand opens with a new setting, new characters, and an inexplicable situation, all of which suggest a twist in the plot and a new beginning. «Der Dicke,» «der Kleine,» «der Unscheinbare,» and «der Vierte» (89) are having an animated discussion in a barn, while the nameless character is slowly regaining consciousness in the attic of the same building, feeling completely disoriented - and the reader with him. In the course of the book, the detective Polidorio, now a nameless amnesiac soon to be named Carl, turns into both the victim and the suspected criminal, causing a conflation of detective, victim, and villain, the three key figures of traditional detective novels. At this point, the reader still does not have all the information to understand that Carl is in reality Polidorio, but this becomes clearer by the end of the novel, when flashbacks and little details work together to reveal the correspondences between the two characters. Later, Polidorio’s colleague, Canisades, dies at the hands of the initial suspect, who has es- 190 Olivia Albiero caped and is wandering undisturbed in the desert. Ultimately, the massacre in the commune moves to the background and leaves room for the international chase for the mysterious «mine,» which everybody wants but nobody seems to find. Other violent deeds follow the opening massacre and build up the tension until the tragic events of the last chapters occur, precipitating the action into a new spiral of deaths. New figures enter the story and complicate the character constellation typical of the detective novel: the CIA agents, the Swedish spy Lundgren who accidentally passes the «mine» on to Polidorio before being killed, and the master criminal and his henchmen. But what makes this group of figures even more complex is the play with identities and roles that characterizes Sand. The whole novel thematizes role-playing, false identities, and the search for a forgotten past. Several characters take up identities and roles at different stages in the plot. Helen, for example, passes herself off as a cosmetic agent; Lundgren also uses the name Herrlichkoffer; Dr. Cockcroft plays the role of the psychologist; and a mistake in identities causes the escalating action and Polidorio/ Carl’s death. Sand also complicates the figure of the hero typical of thrillers, leaving the reader wondering whether there is one in this narrative. 11 In fact, Sand reads more as a story of accidental victims - victims of delusions and events - rather than as the triumph of a capable hero. While the narration focuses on Polidorio/ Carl, which suggests his central role in the narrative, his lack of dynamism and his final demise question his function as hero of the novel who manages to bring back order, and rather shows how he becomes a tragic figure who succumbs to the events. The boundaries between genres become more fluid also in narrative terms, which is particularly discernible in the recapitulative moment of the novel. With a sort of Brechtian move, the narrator intervenes, taking the reader by surprise. In thrillers, a recapitulative moment is not common since the reader can follow the action. But in Sand, the knotty plot, the multiple narrative threads, and the number of characters seem to require the narrator to intervene and clarify, revealing not only how things went at the time of the events but also after the year 1972, the year of the story. Almost to counter the emotionality caused by the death of the main figure, by using the «wir,» the narrator takes a whole chapter to explain «das weitere Geschehen» - the title of chapter 65 - drawing the reader into his reflections. Once again, the borders between genres are overcome in favor of a work that plays with convention and achieves its effects by adhering to patterns while adding unexpected turns. At the same time, even in this dénouement, the narrator manages to withhold the information about Carl’s identity, never revealing his Knotty Plot and Dense Text 191 real name. What seems at first a gesture to help and guide the reader turns out to be one more detour in the resolution of this crime story. Sand is a novel that challenges the reader on many levels, including the level of paratexts. While the reader is busy piecing together the elements of this story, the rich paratextual apparatus of the novel intervenes to complicate her task. Paratexts in Sand not only highlight the articulated structure of the novel, but also add formal and textual complexity to the already knotty plot. The attentive reader is invited to both understand the text that contains the story and to read the paratexts, which constitute a second textual framework rich in intertextual innuendos and cross-references. While paratexts are not completely foreign to the genre of crime fiction (recent examples include Thomas Pynchon’s and Stieg Larsson’s use of epigraphs in their novels), they are mainly used in historical crime stories, in which «writers use epigraphs and/ or footnotes or offer forewords, afterwords, glossaries and appendices which enhance, explain or simply demonstrate the historical accuracy of the backgrounds they have selected for their narratives» (Worthington 132-33). In a similar pursuit of accuracy, Golden Age detective novelists made use of paratexts «to indicate extratextual authority for their clues in their novels, even though detective novels are not generally known for using paratexts» (Effron 200). With their reference to an external authority, paratexts counterbalance the uncertainty that detective fiction usually builds and maintains as part of the genre features. In the title of his volume dedicated to paratexts, Gérard Genette labels paratexts «Thresholds of Interpretation,» hinting at their role as mediators between the processes of writing and reading. In his discussion of the term, Genette provides the following definition of the paratext: [A] zone between text and off-text, a zone not only of transition but also of transaction: a privileged place of a pragmatics and a strategy, of an influence on the public, an influence that - whether well or poorly understood and achieved - is at the service of a better reception for the text and a more pertinent reading of it (more pertinent, of course, in the eyes of the author and his allies). (2) Due to the mediation of paratexts, the reader interacts with the author in the process of reading and interpreting. According to Genette, paratexts include «a heterogeneous group of practices and discourses of all kinds» (2), ranging from the publisher’s peritext to prefaces, epigraphs, and notes. In the case of Sand, this work of mediation happens at different stages and is not limited to the novel title, book titles, and chapter intertitles - which my analysis will discuss first - but also includes the rich system of epigraphs that frame the novel. Titles have the function of naming and labeling the novel and represent the reader’s first introduction to the story. Due to their position, «regularly 192 Olivia Albiero at the head of the section» (Genette 149) and just below the title, epigraphs constitute the next threshold between the title and the text of the chapter. They function as a place where layers of meaning and interpretation are constructed and negotiated. Epigraphs like levers - «Brechstange[n]» is the word Herrndorf uses to label them - help transition into the narration. 12 At the same time, the choice of the word «Brechstange» suggests the «violence» of these paratextual elements, which intervene to complicate and modify the main text. In Sand, epigraphs arrest, to some extent, the flow of the text and the speed the plot-driven thriller demands from the reader. When the reader encounters the epigraph on the page, her investigation and interpretation of the main text comes to a pause. The space between the end of the chapter and the new chapter number and title already creates a separation between the two, but the epigraph creates a further threshold, which, on the one hand, separates the previous chapter from the next, and, on the other, facilitates the movement into the new section. Yet, the interpretation of the epigraph and its relation to the text can become a challenge for the reader, «whose hermeneutic capacity is often put to the test,» as Genette notes (158). 13 Of course, the meaning the epigraphs convey and the function they carry out depend on the ability of the reader to understand and make sense of them, and, at least in part, on her familiarity with the quoted text. If the reader knows the context of the quoted text, it may be easier for her to interpret the author’s decision to insert the epigraph at that specific point in the story and, consequently, to read it in connection to the events. In an entry published on the «books blog» of The Guardian, Toby Lichtig reflects specifically on the function of epigraphs and sees them «as a lens - or a sucker punch. […] Playful or authoritative, omnipotent or throwaway, it acts as a kind of shadowy third figure, somewhere between the author and the audience» (n. pag.). If one reads epigraphs in Sand as a lens, what kind of view do they enable? And, if paratexts invite a dialogue not only with the reader but also with the text, what kind of commentary do they incite? Most of the information about the paratexts in Sand is contained in Arbeit und Struktur, Herrndorf’s blog, which was also published as a book. In his autobiographical blog, Herrndorf reflects on some of his paratextual choices, in particular the title of the novel. He includes a list of more than sixty titles that he considered at different stages, ranging from «Nüchterne, Supermarktkassenbestseller, Hochkultur, Parodien, Seventies, mit Gewalt und Too much» (185). The title «Sand» strikes one as a rather unspectacular choice compared to some of the discarded options, such as «Geheimsache Sand,» «Das wüste Denken,» and «Todestango im Treibsand» (185-87). At the same time, it renounces the kitschiness and sensationalism of some other Knotty Plot and Dense Text 193 options. As a title, «Sand» discloses neither the genre nor its topic. Albeit in very general terms, it hints at what could be the location or even the protagonist of the novel, preserving the mystery of what is to come. Considered in the light of its plotting, «Sand» may even be read as an allusion to the structure of the novel, in which every figure and event constitute one of the grains of this composite desert story. All the grains come together in what reads as a novel with a strong closure. Actions come to a halt and mysteries are, at least in part, explained. The title is only the first of a series of paratexts that complicates the novel, in which book titles and chapter intertitles regularly introduce the events. In his review «Tod in der Wüste: Zu Wolfgang Herrndorfs Roman Sand,» Peter Koch points out that the titles of the five books do not show any stringent logic and fail to clearly demarcate the boundaries between the books. In opposition to Koch’s reading, I argue that the book titles provide some spatiotemporal orientation to the reader, albeit in vague terms. In particular, the first four titles refer to the different spaces that play an important role in the story, «Das Meer,» «Die Wüste,» «Die Berge,» and «Die Oase,» even if no geographical specification is added to these general topographic denominations. Each of these four settings constitutes a part of the spatial frame for the narration: characters land in Targat via the sea and spend the rest of the narrated time moving through the desert, its mountains, and oasis. «Die Nacht,» the title of the last book, seems to build a contrast to the other titles. However, it can be linked back to them if one reads night metonymically, to signify the darkness of the underground tunnel where the amnesiac character is trapped. At the same time, this last title carries narrative significance in anticipating the «dark» conclusion of the novel, which closes with a new series of deaths. Sixty-eight intertitles frame the chapters within the five books. The titles are collected in the table of contents at the end of the novel, which provides an overview of book and chapter titles. By scrolling the list, the heterogeneity of the intertitles is immediately conspicuous. The intertitles are mostly nominal, consist of few words, and the majority are written in German, while a small portion is in English or French. Only a few titles make explicit reference to the crime events and the spy-like nature of the novel. One function they share is to follow the thematic development of the plot and highlight the significance of some details that may not be immediately grasped when the title is first read. Chapter intertitles carry the names of characters (e.g., «Lundgren,» «Spasski und Moleskine,» «Hakim von den Bergen»), places (e.g., «Targat am Meer,» «Das Zentralkommissariat,» «Die Madrasa des Salzviertels»), or themes (e.g., «Die Zentrifuge,» «Dissoziation,» «Ein 194 Olivia Albiero wenig Stochastik») that play a role in the novel. At the same time, these intertitles give a sense of the high-speed pace of the story, emphasized by the rapid succession of the sixty-eight chapters within the books. A group of chapter titles does more than simply emphasize plot elements, highlighting also the tragicomic undertone that distinguishes the novel. «Shakespeare,» for example, is the title of a chapter that describes Helen’s painful theatrical experience at Princeton. The distress of hearing her recorded voice combines with the disgust of seeing herself performing on the stage (34-36). This traumatic memory haunts the character until the end of the novel, when she hears the echo of her voice in the underground cave, and, instead of liberating Carl, she can only think of how much that sound used to repulse her (448). Later in the novel, «Die Banane» is the title of a chapter in which Carl proves his naivety. The banana refers to the shape of the gun case, which Carl finds among Helen’s things. Instead of seeing any danger in that, he refuses to believe she may carry a gun with her and the chapter ends with Helen pointing a banana at Carl (223), anticipating the threats he will receive later in the novel. The comic tone of this title is highlighted also by its position in the novel, which follows the encounter between Carl and Dr. Cockcroft, the charlatan psychiatrist and later CIA agent, who is one of the most comic characters in the novel. Dr. Cockcroft’s extravagant diagnoses, his play with words, and the theatricality of his interaction with Carl provide all the ingredients for a good laugh. Each chapter is further introduced by an epigraph, which frames and prepares the events or comments on the narrative. 14 Herrndorf justifies his choice to use epigraphs in Arbeit und Struktur through his fascination with Stendahl’s work: «[…] seit ich zum ersten Mal Rot und Schwarz gelesen hab, war das immer mein Traum, auch mal so was zu machen» (208). However, the use of paratexts extends its function beyond the aesthetic level. Indeed, the result of this artistic whim is a collection of epigraphs, which Maar describes as «eine geniale Sammlung für sich» (338). But, why are these epigraphs so peculiar that they are labeled «genial» and deserve so much attention in this enthralling work of crime fiction? Multiplicity, in terms of form, type, and language, characterizes the epigraphs, which Herrndorf researched meticulously. 15 All epigraphs are quotes that bring a polyphony of voices into the novel and establish a dialogue with various sources, authors, and disciplines. For every quote, Herrndorf provides the author’s name, or the title of the work, and sometimes both pieces of information, allowing the reader to trace the quotations back to their sources. The epigraphs range from literary quotations (e.g., Conrad, Stendhal, Salinger), to excerpts taken from physics, psychology, coaching, Knotty Plot and Dense Text 195 popular culture, cartoons (Dagobert Duck), and movies (e.g., Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! ; Enter the Dragon; Notorious). They also belong to different genres: some of them are taken from speeches, others from novels, movies, and other kinds of texts. As a consequence, the epigraphs in Sand expand and transgress both textual and media boundaries, realizing that movement of «Expansion und Transgression» discussed in Sabine Mainberger’s study on paratexts (126). This transgression becomes even more obvious when the author quotes the epigraphs in different languages, ranging from German and English to French. Not surprisingly, a significant number of quotations belongs to theoretical and literary works of crime fiction. 16 Through these references, the novel enters a dialogue with works that belong to or address a similar genre, thus making a self-referential move. A case in point is the epigraph at the beginning of chapter 7, which quotes the Ten Commandment List for Detective Novelists by Ronald Knox: «No Chinaman must figure in the story» (42). The use of the Chinaman in detective fiction, which Ronald Knox considers a cliché, is referenced here at the beginning of a chapter in which a «foreign» character enters the novel. However, it is not a Chinaman, but rather a Scandinavian spy, as his name Lundgren reveals. The identity of this man remains dubious as he tells some people that he is Herrlichkoffer and others Lundgren. Even though his role remains concealed until much later in the narrative, it is nonetheless interesting that a quote about detective fiction is used in this chapter, in which an important character for the development of the plot is introduced. The self-referential gesture contained in the epigraph highlights the significance of the chapter in the context of the overall story. Expanding on the self-referentiality of Sand, a quote by Marek Hahn offers a comic and powerful commentary on the work: «‹Anspielungen, in dem Buch sind Anspielungen›, dachte ich, ‹ich will sofort mein Geld zurück›» (258). This quote, which received particular attention in articles and reviews, functions as a metacommentary on the narrative and is authored by a friend of Herrndorf, who is also mentioned in the acknowledgements at the end of the novel. By mixing historical figures, fictional characters, and real-life acquaintances, the novel merges fictional world and reality through the mediation of paratexts. Separate from the context in which it was uttered, this quote can only be read as a reference to the many allusions that form Sand, which constantly plays with cross-references both on the level of diegesis and intertextual references through the epigraphs. Every chapter contains one epigraphic allusion, which in turn may create connections to other sections of the novel. Peter Koch reflects on the structure of the novel in a subsection of his review which he entitles «Chaos und Struktur.» Here, 196 Olivia Albiero he comments on Herrndorf’s use of quotes and their effect on his own - and in general on the reader’s - understanding of the novel: «Die Anspielungen erweitern dabei permanent den Horizont, führen aber teilweise auch in die Irre und laufen dadurch Risiko, den Leser abzuschrecken: soll hier etwa mein Bildungsfundus getestet werden? Eins der Zitate (über Buch 38) zeigt deutlich, wie bewusst Herrndorf damit spielt» (n. pag.). Epigraphs expand the horizon of the plot and, at the same time, seem to test the reader’s ability to make sense of these quotations, which are incredibly diverse. In her study of Herrndorf’s work, Magdalena Drywa also points out the playful nature of some quotations: «Da Marek Hahn in einer Reihe mit Herodot, Nabokov aber auch Luke Skywalker als Zitatquelle genannt wird, zeigt sich der spielerische Effekt dieser Motti, die zumeist nachprüfbar oder sogar überaus bekannt sind, umso deutlicher» (44). What Drywa calls «der spielerische Effekt» reveals, I contend, the tragicomic tone of this whole work, which alternates moments of violence and torture with lighthearted episodes. And indeed, the epigraphs surprise the reader not only with their variety but also with their eclectic combination: a quote from Dostoyevsky is followed in subsequent chapters by the words of Dagobert Duck and Kafka. As some blog entries suggest, Herrndorf invested time in finding appropriate epigraphs for his «Wüstenroman,» but he mentions nothing about the decisions that guided his allocation of specific epigraphs at the beginning of a certain chapter. Most epigraphs are thematically related to the chapter that they introduce but, in their proleptic nature, they can best be understood after reading the whole chapter. Indeed, what may strike the reader as an arbitrary choice at first reveals its significance in the light of the events in the chapter. This necessary «reconstruction» of the function of the paratexts creates a parallel between the process of investigation on a narrative and textual level. As the characters in Sand continuously go back to previous events and try to make sense of them, so the reader can try to interpret the paratexts that open the chapters. In so doing, the reader’s function as detective becomes doubled: she is asked not only to engage in the solution of the mysteries in Sand, but also to take into consideration its paratexts. A telling example of how paratexts work in Sand is a quotation of Helmholtz’s law, which explains the formation of sand dunes and introduces chapter 12: «Strömen zwei Medien unterschiedlicher Dichte aneinander vorbei, ergibt sich eine wellenförmige Begrenzungsfläche» (73). At first, the scientific language of the epigraph sounds enigmatic and out of place. The previous chapter ends with Polidorio taking a two-day break from work to spend some time with his family. The title of the twelfth chapter, «Chamsin,» Knotty Plot and Dense Text 197 already situates the events in the context of the hot wind coming from the Sahara. But the quotation from Helmholtz’s law is still puzzling for the reader. What are these two media with different densities? Upon reading that Carl is driving through the desert and remains trapped in a sand wind and stuck in newly-formed sand dunes, the reader can draw a thematic connection between epigraph and text. If the reader decides to ignore the quote, she will still be able to follow the events. But, if she tries to make sense of the paratext, the scientific explanation of what is narrated accompanies her reading experience and provides a background to the fictional events of the novel. Such a clean scientific explanation contrasts with the description of how Polidorio’s car is stuck in a sand dune, from which only a sign depicting the number 102, Polidorio’s IQ, emerges (76). This juxtaposition of different language registers gives the events a comic twist. In the case of the previous quotation, the relation to the chapter becomes ultimately clear; in other cases, it may remain obscure. This is the case, for example, in chapter 2, which opens with a disturbing quote by former U.S. president Richard Nixon. Pronounced in 1971 in a conversation with H.R.- Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, the offensive commentary reveals Nixon’s irritation with the introduction of a gay character in the TV show All in the Family: «You know what happened to the Greeks? Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo, we all know that, so was Socrates. Do you know what happened to the Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags» (9). While a thematic connection with the chapter may not be at hand here, the quote can be read as a historical and sociopolitical reference to the time period in which the novel and the events take place. From this perspective, which is the only one that might clarify the use of the quotation, the narrative of Sand enters a dialogue with contemporary documents, expanding the context of the events recounted. In this regard, the epigraphs seem to add historical accuracy to the events, in line with the function of paratexts used in crime fiction during the Golden Age mentioned earlier. This is the second epigraph in the novel, which serves to establish a connection to the historical time in which the events are set. 1972 is also the year when the Watergate scandal begins, in which Nixon was involved and for which he was later impeached. Through this quote by Nixon, the novel sets the tone for the events and also creates a connection to several American characters that populate the novel, be it the group of artists that Canisades knows or Helen Gliese and the other CIA agents. A striking feature of the epigraphs in Sand is the repeated use of Herodotus’s Histories at the beginning of each of the five books. With this gesture, the author points to the Greek historian and master storyteller, thus creating 198 Olivia Albiero a very strong allusion to the act of narrating in the novel. 17 Herodotus’s epigraphs mostly show a thematic connection with the chapter they introduce and hint at topics that will play a role throughout the novel. The epigraphs opening the first and last book respectively can serve as examples of how these paratexts also work in other sections of the novel. The opening quote of the first book, for instance, describes the frustration of a «wir» that tries to begin a dialogue with an African «ihr» that never reacts to the inquiries: «Wir schicken jedes Jahr - und scheuen dabei weder Leben noch Geld - ein Schiff nach Afrika, um Antwort auf die Fragen zu finden: Wer seid ihr? Wie lauten eure Gesetze? Welche Sprache sprecht ihr? Sie aber schicken nie ein Schiff zu uns» (7). By articulating the opposition between the Western «we» and the foreign «you,» the epigraph sets the stage for the events. As Burk and Hamann show in their reading of the novel, «Das dichotomische Verhältnis von Eigenem und Fremdem wird bereits im ersten Motto des Romans […] angedeutet» (332). 18 The quote can be read in connection with the African setting of the first chapter, which introduces the temporal and spatial coordinates of the story in Sand. At the same time, it hints at a topic that will run throughout the novel, that is, the contrast between the local people and the foreigners that arrive here, in primis Polidorio, and his difficulty to adapt to the country in which he is now living. The quote that opens the fifth book sets a much more sombre tone and describes how the pastoral tribes used to bury their dead: Ihre Toten begraben die Hirtenvölker wie die Hellenen, außer den Nasamonern; diese begraben sie im Sitzen und geben genau acht, wenn er das Leben aushaucht, dass sie ihn aufrichten und er nicht auf dem Rücken liegend stirbt. Ihre Häuser sind zusammengefügt aus Asphodilstängeln mit Binsen durchflochten, und können sie mit sich umhertragen. Das sind so die Sitten und Gebräuche dieser Völker. (383) This quotation creates a thematic reference to the chair to which Carl is tied in the underground tunnel in the last book, where he is tortured because he cannot provide the information that the CIA expect from him. At the same time, due to its position at the beginning of the fifth book, the epigraph also hints at how the events are going to end. The talk about death and how dead people are usually buried already sets a grave tone for the last book of the narrative. Thus, the choice to talk about death already evokes certain expectations in the mind of the reader. The last chapter of the novel contains a very abrupt, unexpected ending, whose force is highlighted by the use of a section of La Marseillaise as epigraph. The stanza, quoted directly in French, threatens the tyrants and traitors to tremble, and seems to hint that, after Carl’s death, things are not go- Knotty Plot and Dense Text 199 ing to ease. The tone of the stanza encourages battling and fighting, with young people («nos jeunes héros») dying to defeat the tyrants (464). At the same time, this stanza reads as a very dark commentary on the events narrated in the last pages. Not only has Carl died in the previous chapter while the criminals looking for the mine are still at large, but the novel also closes with the death of an innocent child, who gets run over by a bulldozer together with the mine that has become the support for her doll. 19 Once again, the reader is left wondering about the connection between the opening epigraph and the events portrayed in the chapter. And once again, the paratexts reveal how they are not only there to complement the plot, but also to encourage the reader’s work of detection of this very knotty and dense novel. Epigraphs become multiplying clues that connect the narrative and textual levels. At times, the reader suspects that epigraphs just add to the confusion of this crime story, which already contains several puzzling and mysterious elements. Adding to the play with different genres, the game of identity and role-playing, the epigraphs also risk overwhelming and disorienting the reader. And yet, upon further investigation, the paratexts reveal another function as they become elements that can redirect the reader in her investigation. If she decides to pursue and analyze the epigraphs, the author provides enough clues for her to do so, turning the interpretation into a detective game. Further, while the epigraphs are striking due to their multiplicity on many levels, the choice of using an epigraph for each chapter creates a strong sense of form and symmetry throughout the novel. In a book in which narrative and thematic turns become the rule, the reader can count on the fact that each chapter will open with a title and an epigraph. And some of these may even serve as a guide in the reading process. Every title represents a further complication but also a step towards the resolution of this complex crime novel. Epigraphs, likewise, receive a new function in reorienting and redirecting the interpretative efforts of the reader. As Herrndorf notes, every epigraph is a «Brechstange.» While on the one hand it forces itself into the text, on the other it becomes a «lever,» which the reader can use to open new interpretative routes in the attempt to access and grasp the mysteries of this work. Notes 1 Maar’s review of the novel is just one of the many enthusiastic reactions to Herrndorf’s work. In particular, the jury’s verdict for the Leipziger Buchpreis, which Herrndorf received in 2012, highlights his mastery in thickening the plot and leading the reader through narrative detours: «Man folgt diesem Erzähler gerne und in blindem 200 Olivia Albiero Vertrauen in die abstrusesten Situationen. Lässt sich von ihm auf verwirrende, immer aber schillernde Abwege führen. Tappt mit seinem Helden zusammen im Dunkel von dessen Identität und brennt darauf, alle Puzzleteile endlich zusammenzufügen, von denen lange nicht klar ist, ob und wie sie sich zusammenfügen lassen. Was das Vergnügen umso größer macht, wenn sie es letztlich tun.» («Nominierungen und Preisträger 2012»). 2 I am quoting the formulation included in the Call for Papers for the panel in which this paper was originally presented. 3 1972 is the year of the attack at the Summer Olympics in Munich, and this tragic event is likely to resonate in the mind of the reader when she finds out that the murders in Sand take place on 23 August 1972. 4 Helen chooses the name from the brand of Carl’s clothing, «Carl Gross» (166). 5 The mystery around the mine is thickened through the different languages used in the novel - French, German, and possibly English - in which different meanings are attributed to the word «mine.» The meanings of «La mine» (162) and «die Mine» (217- 18) are extensively discussed in the novel. In her reading, Sonja Arnold also points out the linguistic ambivalence that characterizes the «mine.» See in particular 39-44 in the section «Homonyme und Homophone: die Mi(e)ne.» 6 Quotations from Sand are taken from Herrndorf, Sand (2011). Quotations from Arbeit und Struktur, Herrndorf’s blog published posthumously as a book, refer to the book edition: Herrndorf, Arbeit und Struktur (2013). 7 The complexity of the story is confirmed by the reactions of the first proofreaders of Sand. Not only does the genre of the novel confuse the readers - «Was ist denn das nun eigentlich? » (Arbeit und Struktur 252) one of them asks -, but the complexity of the plot also risks to compromise its understanding: «dass die Handlung keiner kapiert. Drei von den fünf Lesern konnten den Amnestiker bisher nicht identifizieren, was etwa so ist, als verriete ein Krimi den Mörder nicht« (256-57). 8 Michael Maar exalts Herrndorf’s plotting mastery as follows: «Wer ein Faible für raffiniert gebaute Plots hat, erlebt hier ein Fest. Hier geht alles auf, und alles rundet sich, wenn auch auf perfideste Art» (337, my emphasis). 9 The rule of fair play «stipulates that the final solution will not look ‹arbitrary,› meaning that it should not be sprung on the reader without any prior clues» (Segal 172). 10 Peter Nusser provides a detailed description of the elements characteristic of detective novels (26-33) and thrillers (52-56). The phase of interrogation is usually replaced in thrillers by the chase (54). 11 In his contribution, Maar uses the term «Held» to talk about Carl/ Polidorio (334). 12 In Arbeit und Struktur, the author describes his epigraphs as follows: «Über jedem Kapitel ein Zitat. Manche Kapitel nur zwei Seiten lang, und dann oben diese Brechstange» (208). 13 Genette further explains the hermeneutic challenge when he defines the epigraph as «a signal (intended as a sign) of culture, a password of intellectuality» (160). The author chooses epigraphs that may be challenging to the reader but contribute to «his [own] consecration. With it, he chooses his peers and thus his place in the pantheon» (160). 14 This indirect comment on the text that specifies and emphasizes its meaning is the «most canonical» function of epigraphs according to Genette (157). 15 The blog entry from 16 March 2010 reads: «Bei Recherche zum Wüstenroman immerhin gefunden: ‹Wenn ein Hase, eine Ziege oder ein anderes Tier sich vor einem Betenden bewegen, bleibt das Gebet gültig. Die Rechtsgelehrten sind sich darüber einig, Knotty Plot and Dense Text 201 dass nur drei Wesen das Gebet ungültig machen: Eine erwachsene Frau, ein schwarzer Hund und ein Esel› (Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz)» (Arbeit und Struktur 27). 16 Examples include Andrew Hunt’s City of Saints, a quotation by Dashiell Hammett and Ronald Knox’s Ten Commandment List for Detective Novelists. The original title of Knox’s rules for crime fiction is The Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction, but Herrndorf refers to it with a different title formulation in his novel. 17 In chapter 65, the narrator calls his story «Chronik der unerfreulichen Ereignisse» (449). The choice of the word «Chronik» seems to reiterate the gesture towards Herodotus. 18 Sonja Arnold explains the significance of Herodotus as the poet «der mit seinen Beschreibungen der Wüste die Tradition des Anderen und Bedrohlichen einleitete» (26). 19 Arnold also points out how the stanza of the Marseillaise quoted in the last chapter captures the final tone of the novel (38). Works Cited Arnold, Sonja. «‹Der Aufbewahrungsort des Falschen› - Fehler und Zufälle in Wolfgang Herrndorfs Roman Sand am Beispiel des Homonyms Mine.» Pandaemonium Germanicum 16.21 (2013): 25-47. Burk, Maximilian, Christof Hamann. «‹There is no conflict›? : Zur Konstruktion und Irritation binärer Strukturen in Wolfgang Herrndorfs Sand.» Postkoloniale Germanistik: Bestandaufnahme, theoretische Perspektiven, Lektüren. Ed. Gabriele Dürbeck and Axel Dunker. Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2014. 329-54. Drywa, Magdalena. «‹Das Feuilleton wird es lieben› - Ein vorprogrammierter Erfolg? Wolfgang Herrndorfs Sand (2011) und die Interaktion des WWW mit der Literaturdiskussion.» Neuer Ernst in der Literatur? Schreibpraktiken in deutschsprachigen Romanen der Gegenwart. Ed. Kristin Eichhorn. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2014. 33-49. Effron, Malcah. «On the Borders of the Page, on the Borders of Genre: Artificial Paratexts in Golden Age Detective Fiction.» Narrative 18.2 (2010): 199-219. Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Herrndorf, Wolfgang. Arbeit und Struktur. Berlin: Rowohlt, 2013. - Sand. Berlin: Rowohlt, 2011. Koch, Peter. «Tod in der Wüste. Zu Wolfgang Herrndorfs Roman Sand.» www. literaturkritik.de. literaturkritik.de rezensionsforum, 6 June 2012. Web. 22 Mar. 2015. Lichtig, Toby. «Epigraphs: Opening Possibilities.» www.theguardian.com. The Guardian, 30 Mar. 2010. Web. 22 March 2015. Maar, Michael. «‹Er hat’s mir gestanden.› Überlegungen zu Wolfgang Herrndorfs Sand.» Merkur: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Europäisches Denken 755.4 (2012): 333- 40. Mainberger, Sabine. Die Kunst des Aufzählens: Elemente zu einer Poetik des Enumerativen. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003. «Nominierungen und Preisträger 2012.» www.preis-der-leipziger-buchmesse.de. Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse, 2012. Web. 22 Mar. 2015. 202 Olivia Albiero Nusser, Peter. Der Kriminalroman. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992. Segal, Eyal. «Closure in Detective Fiction.» Poetics Today 31.2 (2010): 153-215. Worthington, Heather. Key Concepts in Crime Fiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.