Colloquia Germanica
cg
0010-1338
Francke Verlag Tübingen
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel, der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/61
2013
462
Introduction Revolutionizing German-Language Crime Fiction
61
2013
Anita McChesney
Joseph W. Moser
cg4620109
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.
