Bernhard Schlink

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Bernhard Schlink, 2018
Bernhard Schlink (2012)

Bernhard Schlink (born July 6, 1944 in Großdornberg , today in Bielefeld ) is a German lawyer and writer . His novel Der Vorleser became an international bestseller.

Life

Bernhard Schlink's father Edmund Schlink was a theology professor in Heidelberg , his mother Irmgard Oswald was also a theologian and came from Küsnacht, Switzerland . His paternal uncle was the manager Heinrich Oswald , his paternal aunt was the Protestant founder of the order Basilea Schlink , and his grandfather Wilhelm Schlink was a professor of mechanics. Bernhard Schlink's brother Wilhelm Schlink (1939–2018) became professor of art history at the University of Freiburg. His sister Dorothea (1935–2019) married Klaus Engelhardt , the former regional bishop of Baden.

Shortly after his birth, Schlink's family moved to Heidelberg; there he spent his childhood and attended the Kurfürst-Friedrich-Gymnasium . He has a son who is a dentist. Today Schlink lives in New York and Berlin .

Bernhard Schlink is a member of the SPD .

Schlink as a lawyer

Schlink studied law at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and at the Free University of Berlin . He worked as a research assistant at the universities in Darmstadt , Bielefeld and Freiburg . In 1974 Schlink received an annual scholarship from Stanford University in California. He was awarded a Dr. jur. doctorate (title of the dissertation: Weighing in Constitutional Law , published 1976) and habilitation in 1981 with Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde in Freiburg im Breisgau (with a thesis on administrative assistance. A contribution to a doctrine of the separation of powers in administration , published in 1982 ). Before the Association of German Constitutional Law Teachers , Schlink reported at the 1989 conference in Hanover on the management of scientific and technical developments through administrative law .

From 1982 to 1991 Schlink was Professor of Public Law at the University of Bonn and from 1991 to 1992 Professor of Public Law, Social Law and Legal Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt am Main . From 1992 until his retirement in 2009, he held a chair in public law and legal philosophy at the Humboldt University in Berlin . His successor was Christoph Möllers .

Ralf Poscher is one of Schlink's students . From 1987 to 2006, Bernhard Schlink was a judge at the Constitutional Court for the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in Münster . Between December 1989 and April 1990 he worked as an advisor on the draft constitution of the Central Round Table of the GDR.

In August 2005 he represented the Federal Government in the proceedings before the Federal Constitutional Court regarding the complaints by two members of the Bundestag against the decision of Federal President Köhler to dissolve the Bundestag and to fix new elections .

Bernhard Schlink is a member of the board of trustees of the first German legal internet journal, Humboldt Forum Recht .

Schlink as a writer

Bernhard Schlink signing

In 1987 Bernhard Schlink received an invitation to the University of Aix-en-Provence . He lived for three months with his friend Walter Popp, who lived there . Both were avid detective novel readers and decided to write one of their own. Their joint novel Selbs Justiz is about the 68-year-old private detective Gerhard Selb, whom an assignment leads back to his own past as a public prosecutor during the National Socialist era .

After the success of the first book, Schlink's next books followed without co-authors, such as the crime novel The Gordian Loop , which received the Friedrich Glauser Prize in 1989 . Here, too, the protagonist is a former lawyer, Georg Polger, who gets out as a translator for the south of France and, through the translation of construction plans for combat helicopters, falls into the sights of a spy ring. Schlink concluded the trilogy about the private detective Gerhard Selb with Selbs Fraud , awarded the German Crime Prize , and Selbs Mord .

Dorothee Nolte judged Schlink's Selb novels: “They are lively, often witty novels that - those familiar with the area will recognize streets and buildings - are set in Mannheim and the surrounding area; cleverly constructed stories in which the political topicality and the German past are present. ”Schlink sees the writing of detective novels as an opportunity to solve self-designed puzzles, which is comparable to his work as a lawyer. In addition, social criticism can be packaged in the plot.

Schlinks' first non-detective novel, Der Vorleser , was published in 1995 and became a highly regarded international bestseller. The novel has been translated into over 50 languages ​​and the American edition reached number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list . The reader received the Hans Fallada Prize (1998), the Italian Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature (1997) and the Prix Laure Bataillon (best-endowed French prize for translated literature) (1997). In 2008 the novel was filmed as The Reader , directed by Stephen Daldry .

The love escapes story collection also became a bestseller in 2000; In 2008 Richard Eyre filmed the story The Other with Liam Neeson , Antonio Banderas and Laura Linney . With The Woman on the Staircase , Bernhard Schlink made it to number 1 on the “Fiction” bestseller list of the news magazine Der Spiegel .

According to Beate Dreike, Schlink's books often deal with the complex law and justice . In the Selb novels, for example, the law proves to be an unsuitable instrument for the establishment of justice for deeds long ago, and in Der Vorleser the question arises of how to judge deeds that were committed under a different legal system. The book remains open in its position, which has also brought it criticism.

When asked about the motivation for his writing activity, Schlink replied in an interview: "I write for the same reason that others read: You don't just want to live one life." On Schlink's 75th birthday, Peter Mohr recalled his confession in literaturkritik.de In an interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ten years earlier, his “second life” as a writer could no longer change his life overall: “I was too old for the new role to have changed my life decisively. I had already found my place in the world. ”Elsewhere he said about his motivation to write:“ I always liked the idea that my book would be bought at the station bookstore, taken on the trip and read on the train. ” Guilt was an important theme in Schlink's life, but it was not the only subject of his work.

In 2009 Schlink donated his literary manuscripts and correspondence to the German Literature Archive in Marbach . The manuscript for The Reader is in the Museum of Modern Literature seen in Marbach in the permanent exhibition. Schlink is a member of the German writers' association PEN Center .

Publications

Legal textbooks

Fiction

All published by Diogenes Verlag , Zurich:

Audiobook versions of his fiction works

Radio plays

  • 1994: Selbs Justiz Bayerischer Rundfunk, 108 min. In 2 parts, director: Irene Schuck, co-author: Walter Popp

Essays

  • 2000: Heimat als Utopia (revised and expanded version of a lecture on December 16, 1999 at the American Academy in Berlin). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main, ISBN 3-518-06613-7 .
  • 2005: Assurances - About Politics, Law, Writing and Faith. Diogenes, Zurich, ISBN 3-257-06483-7 .
  • 2007: past debt. Contributions to a German topic. Diogenes, Zurich, ISBN 3-257-06597-3 .
  • 2015: explorations. On history, morals, law and belief. Diogenes, Zurich, ISBN 978-3-257-06936-5 .

Awards

Film adaptations of his works

  • 1991: Death came as a friend (template: Selbs Justiz , ZDF)
  • 2008: The Reader (The Reader)
  • 2008: The Other (The Other Man)
  • 2013: The Weekend

literature

  • Christoph Cornelißen : 14th place. Bernhard Schlink: The reader. In: Christoph Jürgensen (Ed.): The Germans' Favorite Books . Verlag Ludwig, Kiel 2006, ISBN 3-937719-34-2 , pp. 39-59.
  • William Collins Donahue: “Holocaust Lite.” Bernhard Schlink's “Nazi Novels” and their adaptations. Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2011, ISBN 978-3-89528-832-6 .
  • Sascha Feuchert , Lars Hofmann: Reading key: Bernhard Schlink: The reader. 2., updated Edition Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-15-015359-8 (also available as a download).
  • Manfred Heigenmoser (Ed.): Bernhard Schlink, The Reader. Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-15-016050-2 .
  • Juliane Köster: Bernhard Schlink, The Reader. Interpretation. Oldenbourg-Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-486-88745-9 .
  • Micha Ostermann: Aporia of remembering: Bernhard Schlink's novel Der Vorleser. Marcel Dolega publishing house, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-937376-03-8 .

Web links

Commons : Bernhard Schlink  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jost on the Maur: Poet of the brave . In: Schweizer Familie 20/2018 ( PDF file ).
  2. ↑ http://www.diogenes.de/leser/autoren/az/s/schlink_bernhard/biographie
  3. ↑ http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/autor-und-spd-träger-bernhard-schlink-ich-erlebe-die-spd-als-einfallslos-mutlos-kraftlos/20921386.html
  4. ^ Topics and reporters of the annual conference at the Association of German Constitutional Law Teachers .
  5. ↑ DocumentArchiv.de (ed.): Draft of the constitution of the German Democratic Republic of the working group “New Constitution of the GDR” of the Round Table , Berlin 1990.
  6. ↑ a b c Bernhard Schlink in the dictionary of German crime fiction authors .
  7. ↑ a b Nicholas Wroe: Reader's guide to a moral maze. In: The Guardian . dated February 9, 2002.
  8. ↑ Bernhard Schlink at Diogenes Verlag .
  9. ↑ Bestsellers Paperback Fiction. In: The New York Times. March 21, 1999.
  10. ↑ The other. Internet Movie Database , accessed June 8, 2015 .
  11. ^ Report on the reading on September 11, 2014 in the Berliner Ensemble. In: Popshot.over-blog of September 14, 2014.
  12. ↑ Reference to the painting Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) by Marcel Duchamp (1912) http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51449.html and to the painting by Gerhard Richter "Ema" Akt auf einer Stairway. (1992) [1] artnet .
  13. ↑ Peter Mohr: Guilt as a life issue. For the 75th birthday of the writer Bernhard Schlink on July 6th . In: literaturkritik.de . July 5, 2019 ( literaturkritik.de ).
  14. ↑ DLA press releases from 2009 .
personal data
SURNAME Schlink, Bernhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and law professor
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Bielefeld