The verdict (Manfred Gregor)
The judgment is a novel by Manfred Gregor from 1960, which was published by Kurt Desch Verlag. It is the second novel by Gregory after his debut Die Brücke . In 1961, a film adaptation by Gottfried Reinhardt followed under the name Stadt ohne Sympath with Kirk Douglas and Christine Kaufmann in the leading roles.
content
The 16-year-old Karin Steinhoff was raped by four American soldiers, which resulted in an improvised military trial in a small German town in 1958. The girl inevitably becomes the plaything of the interests of American military justice, the public and her own family. Although Karin survived the grueling trial of the cross-examination of the defense attorney of the four perpetrators, the ensuing family strife forced her to commit suicide.
The judgment comments on a questionable post-war society which, in all its passivity, which already characterized it under National Socialism , takes on voyeuristic traits in the face of the rape of a fellow citizen who was still underage. After the dedication in the novel, “Dedicated to the better understanding of two peoples”, the novel attempts a dialogue between Germans and Americans and contrasts the opposites of friend and foe such as occupier and partner. The third point of conflict is the extent of the concept of honor in (upper) middle-class relationships.
Central characters of the novel
| figure | description |
| Karin Steinhoff | The stepdaughter of a mayoral candidate is a figure who is composed of the principle of innocence and the martyr , but who also knows how to live a modern life. Her suicide does not result from the pressure of the cross-examination in the criminal trial, which is viewed as a second rape, but from the defamation of the city population, the violation by her stepfather and the pointlessness of wanting to flee with her friend Frank. Seeing itself as the source of everything that happens, it sacrifices itself to the raging river. The properties of innocence that are repeatedly attributed to her in the novel and the priest's funeral oration give her absolution. |
| Captain Stefan Korneff | The American defense attorney is said to support the four defendants Burt Neykam, George Crotti, Jim Roger and Tom Bancroft in the trial. He himself detests the four Army soldiers for raping the German girl, so his motives for defending her are pragmatic and personal at the same time. As a military attorney, Korneff wants to do his job and avert the maximum penalty under American law, which in the United States is the death penalty . His personal intent is based on sentencing a man to death. As a public prosecutor, he was also negotiating a rape case in the States and was able to enforce his demand for the death penalty. Korneff was present at the execution of the convicted man. He looked him in the face as he prayed in the face of death in the gas chamber. This made the captain a staunch opponent of the death penalty. In order to prevent this from happening to his four clients, Korneff hopes that Karin will be kept out of the process. When this is not promised, he is only out to wear Karin through the cross-examination in the process so that she is no longer able to make statements, in order to achieve a lower sentence for lack of facts. By bluffing to ask her almost a hundred intimate questions that may reveal her contributory negligence in the rape, the captain, tortured himself, achieves his goal when the girl collapses during the interrogation.
Although Captain Korneff and Karin are in an adversarial relationship, they part in a last encounter in peace, benevolence and respect when the captain salutes the girl. Both thus pacify the relationship between Germans and Americans, which was troubled in the novel, when a certain enmity turns into forgiveness. |
| Dr. Samuel Goldstein | A Jewish lawyer who lost his entire family during the Shoah . He is a friend of Karl Steinhoff and therefore feels it is his duty to assist his stepdaughter Karin during the entire process. However, he fails because of the stepfather's stubbornness to want to take her out of the process. Since the process is a military criminal court, Goldstein is not allowed to intervene as a civil lawyer. However, he remains a very active and important figure for the novel. In a dialogue with Captain Korneff, Goldstein asks the defense attorney to spare the girl, which he refuses. They also discuss the relationship between Germans and Americans. Goldstein warns that the Americans have not yet recognized their German friends as such, although politically, according to the time in the novel in 1958, they already are. The captain is so inspired by Goldstein that he uses some of Goldstein's views in his plea . |
| Karl Steinhoff | He took Karin and her mother into his home when it became certain that the biological father and husband had died at the front. He always treated Karin like his own daughter. When she is raped, his honor is also violated, which can only be restored by the death penalty of the four accused GIs. When Karin became known to the public as a victim of rape, Steinhoff became paranoid and imagined the foul gossip of his fellow citizens. This leads him to behave in a negative manner towards the public. Despite repeated warnings about the consequences, he refuses to cross-examine Karin, where she has to defend his honor in his place. When the premarital intimacy with Frank comes to light, Karl Steinhoff casts his stepdaughter out. |
| Frank Bernfeld | 18-year-old Frank is Karin's friend. He is the son of a dam construction engineer who lives and works separately from his family in Switzerland. Frank diligently emulates his father. When Karin is raped, he tries to save her, but is knocked to the ground, unconscious. Karin then allows the rape without resistance to protect her boyfriend. Since then, Frank has had a guilty conscience towards Karin. The young couple's premarital relationship, which is revealed, is received with reluctance by their parents. Since Karin and Frank are each banned from contact, Frank decides to run away with Karin and to flee to his father in Switzerland. To do this, he clears his savings account in the bank, which the mother considers to be an act of theft. Karin feels responsible for Frank's behavior, which triggers her suicide. |
criticism
Although Manfred Gregor had already made a name for himself with Die Brücke , his next two novels did not favor his career as an author. This is what Marcel Reich-Ranicki predicted in his criticism of The Judgment . He attested the novel a certain triviality and also indicated that Gregor had thereby missed his chance as a constant novelist.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Authors. Retrieved August 25, 2019 .
- ↑ Manfred Gregor: The judgment . Kurt Desch, Munich 1960, p. 5 .
- ^ Gösta von Uexküll: Adenauer . 11th edition. Rowohlt, 2009, p. 90 .
- ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki: Pointless in a higher way . In: The time . March 17, 1961, ISSN 0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed August 25, 2019]).