The Collini case
The Collini case is a 2011 novel by Ferdinand von Schirach . He tells the legal processing of the murder of the industrialist Jean-Baptiste Meyer by the retired guest worker Fabrizio Collini.
action
In the Berlin luxury hotel Adlon , the 85-year-old owner of Meyer-Werke, Jean-Baptiste "Hans" Meyer, is brutally murdered without any apparent motive. Immediately after the crime, Fabrizio Collini surrenders to the police in anticipation of a conviction. The young lawyer Caspar Leinen is appointed as Collini's public defender and begins his first major case.
Only when Leinen is called by the victim's granddaughter, with whom he spent childhood and adolescence, does he realize that the murdered man was a fatherly friend from his youth. The granddaughter, Johanna Meyer, asks him to resign from his mandate as defense attorney, which he initially wants to do, but refrains from after the advice of the older, famous criminal defense attorney Mattinger and a baker.
Meyer begins a love affair with linen. Mattinger is commissioned by her to represent her as a joint plaintiff in the criminal proceedings .
After Collini remains silent during the trial and everything amounts to a conviction for murder, a lay judge falls ill ; the process is suspended for ten days. In the evening, Leinen goes through the files again because he feels that he has overlooked something. When he calls his father to congratulate him on his birthday, he, a hunter and forest owner, reports about a rifle. After the phone call, Leinen remembers that he once saw a Walther P38 , as Collini used it in the act, at his father's. A second call to the father brings enlightenment and the turning point in the Collini case. Leinen uses the interruption in the process and drives the next day to the branch office of the Federal Archives in Ludwigsburg, the central office of the state judicial administrations for the investigation of National Socialist crimes . He stayed there for five days and copied a large number of documents. At first, the reader does not find out what he has found.
Back in Berlin, Leinen attends the celebration of Mattinger's 65th birthday. The legal advisor of Meyer-Werke, Baumann, involved Leinen in a conversation on the banks of the Wannsee and explained to him that he knew of Leinen's research in Ludwigsburg. In the event that Leinen resigns from Collini's mandate, Leinen will receive lucrative mandates. Leinen refuses and leaves the party.
In the following days of the trial, Leinen explains, based on the files found in Ludwigsburg, that the young Hans Meyer, as SS-Sturmbannführer, led a shooting of partisans in fascist Italy , in which Collini's father was shot. Collini's motive to avenge this act now seems clear. Subsequently, at Mattinger's request, the head of the Ludwigsburg Federal Archives is questioned. She says that Collini reported Meyer back in the 1960s, but that the proceedings were discontinued after a year. When Mattinger pointed out that the shooting was legal under the law of the war at the time, the ongoing trial was interrupted again. Linen points out that the case against Meyer because of entry of the limitation period had been discontinued because it is factually not murder - would have been excluded in which the statute of limitations - acted.
The following day, Collini is found dead in his cell; he committed suicide. The proceedings against him are closed. Collini leaves a letter on Leinen with a yellowed photo of his sister, five years his senior. After his father's arrest, Collini had to watch a German soldier raping his sister and then shooting him. After that, Collini's father's yard was set on fire along with the sister's body. Collini apologizes on a slip of paper.
background
The novel deals with the limitation scandal to Nazi crimes as a result of Article 1 No. 6 of the.. Introductory Act to the Code of Administrative Offenses were barred (EGOWiG) of 24 May 1968 after 15 years; this period expired on May 8, 1960.
What the turning point in the Collini case will bring is only hinted at in the novel: Collini had claimed to have bought the murder weapon, a Walther P38 , at a flea market in Italy. This model was also the standard pistol of the German Wehrmacht.
filming
Directed by Marco Kreuzpaintner was The Fall Collini than the same literature . Elyas M'Barek as Caspar Leinen, Heiner Lauterbach as Mattinger, Alexandra Maria Lara as Johanna Meyer, Franco Nero as Fabrizio Collini and Manfred Zapatka as the murder victim Hans Meyer can be seen in the main roles . The film was released in German cinemas on April 18, 2019.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Collini case . Northern German Radio. Archived from the original on November 6, 2013. Retrieved December 31, 2011.
- ↑ Federal Law Gazette 1968 I 503-547
- ↑ Release dates on IMDB.com , accessed on January 3, 2019