The Napoleon game
The Napoleon Game is a novel by Christoph Hein from 1993.
content
The novel consists largely of a letter from prisoner on remand Wörle to his lawyer Fiarthes. Wörle, himself a successful lawyer, is in prison for murdering a man in a Berlin S-Bahn with a billiard cue after thorough prior planning . In the course of the story, Wörle's biography is expanded and the motivation for the murder is clarified.
Wörle grew up in Stettin as the son of a chocolate manufacturer during the war and was expelled with his parents in 1945. In Thuringia he attended elementary and high school. After fleeing the GDR , he studied law in the west, then did his doctorate. In 1967 he began to work as a consultant in the local politics of West Berlin. Neither profit nor power interests him in politics, he is only interested in it “because it has to react to constantly changing conditions”. Twenty years later he has withdrawn from politics and lives in prosperity, but stagnation. He is becoming increasingly indifferent to his environment and regards all social subsystems only as “playing fields” - in the end, Wörle doesn't care who - apart from himself - becomes the winner or loser. Even after retiring from politics, however, he is still active - always looking for new challenges - in the field of case law and becomes a successful lawyer. Ultimately, he becomes so bored of success that he decides to commit a murder that defies all definitions and interpretive patterns of murder that work in the legal system. Although there was an eyewitness to the murder, Wörle was acquitted, forcing the legal system to admit its own impotence.
expenditure
- Christoph Hein: The Napoleon game. Novel. Suhrkamp Taschenbuch 3480 (1st edition January 27, 2003). 190 pages, ISBN 978-3-518-39980-4
literature
- Astrid Köhler : Christoph Hein. “The past is not dead; it has not even passed ”. In: Dies .: Building bridges. GDR authors before and after reunification. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2007, pp. 131–156.
- Short meeting in {egotrip}
Individual evidence
- ^ Astrid Koehler: Christoph Hein. “The past is not dead; it has not even passed ” . In: Dies .: Building bridges. GDR authors before and after reunification. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2007, p. 149.