The Reader

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Paperback edition from 1997 with the painting Nollendorfplatz by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

The Reader is a novel by the German writer Bernhard Schlink from 1995.

In the foreground of the three-part novel is the unequal erotic relationship between the first-person narrator Michael Berg and Hanna Schmitz, who is 21 years older. As the story progresses, the narrator, who obviously shares the view of the lawyer and author Schlink in his retrospect , increasingly focuses on ethical questions and how the perpetrators of the Holocaust in the Federal Republic of the 1960s were dealt with .

The book has been translated into over 50 languages ​​(as of 2020). It appeared in the US in 1997 under the title The Reader and became a bestseller .

action

The plot of the novel Der Vorleser is divided into three parts and describes the experiences of the first-person narrator (Michael Berg) in predominantly chronological flashbacks from the narrative presence of the 1990s.

First part

The first part begins with the fifteen-year-old student Michael Berg suffering from jaundice . As he passed in a doorway needs, it comes a woman to help later than the 36-year old tram conductress is presented Hanna Schmitz.

After his recovery, Michael visits Hanna at home to thank her. When she changes clothes in front of him and notices his sexual arousal, he runs away. A second visit leads to an act of love and thus the beginning of the unequal relationship that the first part of the novel deals with.

Michael decides to go back to school. To spend time with Hanna, he skips a few hours. When she learns about this, she states that the condition for further meetings is that he is committed to the school. Bathing and the subsequent act of love become just as much a ritual as Michael's reading aloud, first from the books dealt with in class and later from books specially selected for this purpose. Conflicts arise between the two, which are often inexplicable for Michael, but for which Michael takes the blame in order to avoid Hanna's punitive rejection.

At the start of the new school year, Michael met Sophie, who was the same age, and compared her to Hanna. He spends more time with his classmates so that his life no longer revolves exclusively around Hanna. The more intense the relationship with Sophie and his classmates becomes, the more Michael feels he is betraying Hanna. When she suddenly appears in the swimming pool and watches him with a group of peers, Michael reacts too late and Hanna disappears. When he was looking for her in her apartment and at her place of work the next day, he found out that Hanna went to Hamburg shortly after she received an offer for a promotion.

From Hanna Schmitz's date of birth (October 21, 1922) mentioned in the second part, it can be concluded that the first part takes place in the years 1958/59 and that Michael Berg was born in July 1943.

Second part

Seven years later. Michael studies law at the university and attends a war crimes trial against female guards at a subcamp in Auschwitz with fellow students . They are accused of locking prisoners in a church on a death march towards the end of the Second World War and of having them burned there after a bomb attack. To Michael's surprise, Hanna Schmitz is among the defendants. He is now following the process with growing sympathy and never misses a day of negotiations. In addition to the flame death of women in the church, Hanna is also charged with participating in the selection of female forced laborers in the subcamp; the weakest were sent to the gas chambers of Auschwitz and thus to certain death.

In the process, a Jewish woman testifies that she and her mother were the only ones who survived the church fire. She remembers that Hanna favored concentration camp inmates who read to her. Michael watches with concern as both Hanna herself and her defense lawyer increasingly make her appear as the main culprit. She is also the only one who does not deny the acts. The co-defendants, on the other hand, accuse Hanna of being the ringleader , who wrote a falsified report on the church fire that incriminated others. When the judge wants to order a written comparison , Hanna pretends to have written the report. Only now, in view of his previous experiences with Hanna, Michael comes to the conclusion that she can neither read nor write. This brings him into an inner conflict: He knows that Hanna cannot have done what has been admitted, but is not sure whether and how he should intervene in the process. Finally, he asks his father, a philosophy professor, for advice. He warns Michael against violating the dignity of the accused if he informs the judge behind her back about her illiteracy and advises him to speak to her himself. Michael shies away from meeting Hanna. Instead, he visits the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp . While he is hitchhiking , he is taken by a former Wehrmacht officer who says that the perpetrators of the Holocaust were only doing their job and were simply indifferent to the fate of their victims without malicious intent. When Michael asks him if he was involved in such murders himself, he evicted him from the car.

Finally, Michael decides not to intervene, and at the end of the trial, Hanna is sentenced to life imprisonment as the main culprit , while her co-defendants receive shorter prison terms. Despite the distance between Michael and Hanna, it has become apparent that his childhood experiences with her still have a strong impact. He finds particularly stressful erotic fantasies in which the concentration camp guard takes the place of the beloved from his memory.

third part

After completing his studies, Michael Berg begins his legal clerkship and marries his fellow student Gertrud, with whom he has a daughter. He later became a legal historian because, with a view to the concentration camp trial, he could neither imagine assuming the role of defense counsel nor that of a public prosecutor or judge. His marriage fails and other relationships with women turn out to be unfulfilled, as Michael compares her to Hanna. After spending seven years in prison, he tries to get in touch with her. He resumes the ritual of reading and sends her cassettes that he has discussed himself to prison. With their help, Hanna teaches herself to read and write in prison. She sends him letters, but he leaves them unanswered.

As Hanna's release after 18 years approaches, the prison director Michael writes a letter in which she asks him to help with Hanna's social integration. Despite his scruples , he makes the necessary preparations and visits her in prison a week before her release date. There he has the feeling of meeting an "old woman". Hanna feels his distance, but both tell each other about their very different lives. On the eve of their discharge, they talked one last time on the phone, and Michael is surprised at how young Hanna sounds when she makes fun of him about his planning. When he tries to pick her up in prison, Hanna is dead; she hanged herself in her cell. The prison director leads Michael to her cell, where he sees books written by Holocaust survivors and a newspaper photo of himself as a high school graduate. Michael learns that Hanna paid attention to her appearance for a long time and was a figure of authority among fellow prisoners. In recent years, however, it has increasingly withdrawn and neglected. The manager tells Michael how important his tapes were to her, but asks why he never wrote to her. She finally gives him Hanna's savings and reads her will to him.

Following Hanna's last will, Michael wants to hand over the money to the witness from the trial. However, she refuses to accept it herself, but agrees with Michael to donate it to a Jewish organization in Hanna's name to fight illiteracy.

characters

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main characters

The plot of the book is clearly tailored to the relationship between the two protagonists Michael Berg and Hanna Schmitz. Both the attitude of both people towards each other and their characters are characterized as ambivalent and undecided. All statements about Hanna and the other characters are based either on the narrator's experiences, feelings and reflections, or external sources (e.g. the stories of the prison director in the third part) are presented by the narrator and filtered at the same time. The subjectivity of the presentation makes it difficult to answer questions such as what kind of person Hanna Schmitz “really”, i. H. independent of Michael’s perceptions, fantasies and reflections.

Michael Berg

The 15-year-old Michael Berg is described as a dreaming, average teenager who does not pursue any particular goals. The contradiction between acquired moral values ​​and awakening sexual desire dominates him at first, so that he tries, for example, to rationalize his sexuality . Michael tries to exude sovereignty and superiority towards his peers, but these are only intended to mask his emotional insecurity. The relationship with Hanna Schmitz means a clear cut for him and separates him emotionally from his previous worlds. In this regard, he is prone to submission and conformance. Hanna keeps him at a distance, and she refuses him any further deepening that he wanted. This increases his bondage and insecurity towards Hanna's dominance. The difficulty of the relationship with Hanna leads to a creeping turning away from her towards the end; Hanna's disappearance soon afterwards made him feel very guilty because at that point in time he believed that he had betrayed her. Why Michael thinks it wrong not to have spoken to anyone about Hanna as a teenager is not entirely clear. Questions of sexual morality are just as little explicitly addressed in the novel as questions of sexual criminal law or the right to sexual self-determination of minors. The adult narrator ignores this area of ​​moral and legal reflection, although he provides extensive moral and legal reflections in the second and third parts of the book. The narrator does not explicitly suspect the reader that Michael is a victim of sexual abuse within the meaning of Section 182 , Paragraph 3 of the Criminal Code (StGB) (“sexual abuse of young people”).

The feeling of his own guilt and the uncontrolled dependence on Hanna continue and lead to Michael becoming unable to bond and rejecting other people.

Michael meets Hanna again when, as a student in a war crimes trial, he recognizes Hanna as a defendant - namely as a former concentration camp guard. The renewed encounter with Hanna happens enormously suddenly for the student Michael Berg and overcomes the repression mechanisms and defense tactics that Michael has built up in the meantime . This refers him back to his inner emptiness and powerlessness. New feelings of guilt arise in him when he realizes that he has loved a criminal, and the feeling that he is estranged from Hanna increases. In addition, it is impossible for him to communicate with her in the courtroom. Michael knows about exonerating hints about Hanna's guilt. This moral dilemma paralyzes him, and his attempt to bring these clues to the judge fails.

The following years of adult Michael are further determined by the distance to his fellow men and the avoidance of possible injuries through numbness and distance. Even if these phenomena diminish over time, Michael's five-year marriage to former college colleague Gertrud fails. Michael repeatedly states that the women with whom he had intimate relationships as an adult have evoked “wrong” sensory impressions in him, in particular that they “smelled wrong” and “felt wrong”; the impressions that 36-year-old Hanna left with him were standard and norm for him.

When Michael makes "tape contact" with Hanna in prison, a slow, self-therapeutic process begins for him. However, he continues to keep his distance from Hanna and is reluctant to look forward to her imminent release. Although he feels responsible for Hanna, to whom he wants to assign a “niche” in his further life, he cannot imagine a future together because he also has the sensory impressions of the now 61-year-old, “too old” woman going out (appearance, smell, feeling when touching), rated as "wrong".

The older ( autobiographically narrating) Michael Berg finally shows a high degree of guilt and reflection. In various places he describes writing as conflict resolution. Michael has found a certain moral purification which culminates in the unadorned description of his life story. The visit to the Jewish woman who lives in New York, with whom he speaks openly about his relationship with Hanna, seems to be important for this development. He doesn't contradict her when she sums up his relationship with Hanna by saying: “What was this woman brutal. Have you coped with being fifteen ... ”. The woman then correctly guesses Michael's private biography: "And the marriage was short and unhappy, and you did not remarry, and the child, if there is one, is in boarding school."

Hanna Schmitz

The reader only receives information about Hanna from Michael's point of view, which makes her characterization very difficult. Already in the first part the later narrator admits: "[...] I don't know anything about her [Hanna's] love for me." Michael, neither as a fifteen-year-old nor as the narrator, worries about why Hanna chose him. He is also apparently not interested in whether Hanna had a lesbian relationship with the readers in the concentration camp. It was only when Michael saw his high school graduation photo that it occurred to Michael that he might have played a role in Hanna's mind after she left his hometown, just as she did in his mind. Michael interprets Hanna's biography as a constant attempt to hide her illiteracy. With an accompanying subliminal admiration, he interprets the trial as Hanna's “fight” for “her justice”. Hanna is afraid that her weakness, illiteracy, will be exposed . Your reactions here fluctuate between adaptation, flight and aggression. There is also evidence of increased brutality in their behavior. When the management of the institution reveals that she is illiterate, Hanna's love of order begins to wane. Hanna Schmitz appears to the reader as a contradicting character. The values ​​of their socialization include an increased sense of duty and a strong work ethic, hierarchical subordination and a sense of order. However, it is noticeable that she has lost self-discipline in the last years of prison: Hanna becomes fat and starts to smell unpleasant due to lack of personal hygiene, which not only Michael notices. However, according to the prison director, Hanna rated this change positively, as in her last years "appearance, clothing and smell were no longer of any importance". Hanna is of average intelligence, but besides illiteracy, she also has other socio-cultural deficits: The public, culture, social communication and the courtroom are alien spaces for her, she has no patterns to interpret them. This can also be seen in the fact that it is unable to recognize secondary virtues such as a sense of duty (it is the duty of guards to prevent prisoners from escaping) as such. After reading the relevant literature on the subject of “illiteracy”, the first-person narrator comes to the conclusion that Hanna has a case of partial, possibly self-inflicted underage , the expression or cause of which is her illiteracy. Nonetheless, Hanna, the illiterate, managed to get hold of the photo of the high school graduate Michael, which speaks for a certain ability to live, especially since she is already able to sign in the first part. A real change in Hanna's character does not seem to take place until the time of imprisonment. Before that, her character structure seems almost rigid, even if she behaves differently in different milieus. During her imprisonment, Hanna grapples with the historical facts and moral problems of National Socialism. This indicates a significant change in their way of thinking. The fact that she went on a sit-in to improve the situation of the prison library during her imprisonment shows that, at least at the end of her life, she is no longer “underage”. The reasons for suicide are varied and represent one of the core questions of interpretation. In principle, Hanna's guilty consciousness developed for the first time, which allows her to classify her actions. In addition, her original emphasis on external strength has now turned into powerlessness and dependence on Michael. And last but not least, she faces tasks that seem overwhelming: integration into the outside world, in which she has no place, neither in terms of her professional position, nor her moral judgment, nor her material future. In addition, the detention process has begun in recent years. At the time of her death, 61-year-old Hanna had become an "old woman" who is no longer attractive to Michael, which she seems to be feeling.

Minor characters

Berg family

The Michaels family is only described in passing, but provides important clues about Michael's socialization . It concerns a family of six (Michael has three siblings) of the upper middle class, which shows a classic distribution of roles for the 1950s. However, in view of the middle-class milieu, the self-evident fact that Michael and his little sister are planning several shoplifting is irritating.

The father appears in two more essential scenes. He is a professor of philosophy , specializing in Kant and Hegel . Within the family, he plays the role of a moderate patriarch . He keeps his children at a strong emotional and physical distance and, like his students, schedules them in daily appointments. His behavior is interpreted as an unconscious role model for Michael's development.

The mother is a figure portrayed positively, but apparently Michael cannot relate to her enough. It gives him the feeling of closeness, but Michael cannot be completely satisfied with this feeling. After the first night with Hanna, Michael remembers a scene from his early childhood: his mother washed and dressed him in front of the warming stove. This scene of maternal pampering becomes the model for the bathing scenes with Hanna, which play a formative role in their relationship. At the same time, however, there are also feelings of guilt connected with it: “… I wondered why my mother spoiled me so much. I was ill?"

The siblings only play a subordinate role. Michael is in a relationship of mutual rivalry and distance to them.

Gertrud

Michael's (ex) wife Gertrud was initially his fellow student. It appears in the book for the first time in a scene at a ski hut . She is described as "smart, efficient and loyal". Michael marries her when she is expecting a child from him. He compares his marriage to Gertrud with his love affair with Hanna, but finds nothing in common. The attempt during her marriage to Gertrud to free himself from Hanna internally fails. Five years after their daughter Julia was born, Michael and Gertrud divorce.

Julia

As a child of Michael and Gertrud, she suffers from the divorce of her parents and lives in a boarding school after their separation .

Helen, Gesina and Hilke

Helen, Gesina and Hilke are his next partners after Michael's divorce from Gertrud. He tells them about his relationship with Hanna, but says they weren't particularly interested in the story. In the novel, you are also an example of the general lack of interest in the past as well as Michael's attachment disorder.

Friends and Sophie

Among Michael's friends and classmates, Sophie occupies a prominent position as a contrasting figure to Hanna. Michael sleeps with her during his student days without really being interested in a relationship with her. She is described as attractive, as "brown-haired, brown-eyed, tanned in summer, with golden hairs on her bare arms".

Also named as Michael's friends are Matthias and Rudolf Bargen (“a heavy, calm, reliable chess and hockey player”), with whom Michael had little contact in the old class, but who later became a good friend. Holger Schlüter is also mentioned, who, like Michael, is interested in history and literature .

Fellow students

At the beginning, a strong group identity develops among the fellow students of the law students , which changes with Michael's distance at least between him and the other students. The others see themselves as the “avant-garde of the Enlightenment” who condemn the generation of their parents in general, and are representative of the summary and poorly differentiated judgments of the 1968 generation .

Michael meets a participant of the “concentration camp seminar” who remains unnamed by name at the funeral of his professor . Michaels' former fellow student was initially a lawyer , but is now an innkeeper in a pub . After the long time he wanted to know from Michael why he was so obviously interested in Hanna during the trial. Michael evades his question by running to the tram and leaving his fellow student standing.

professor

The professor who heads the “concentration camp seminar” is described as one of the few who worked on the bygone era of National Socialism and the show trials . Michael's description - "an old man who has returned from emigration, but has always remained an outsider in German law" - shows the professor's attitude towards National Socialism , but also the lack of interest in his work on the part of his professional colleagues and society as a whole in the end withdrew from the “constraints of society” and consequently lost contact with it.

Judge

For the judge in Hanna's trial, coping with the past is exclusively professional. This becomes clear when Hanna asks him how he would have acted in the situation at the time: "The judge's answer seemed helpless, pathetic." Narrative on the one hand for the official moral line of society after the time of National Socialism, on the other hand his role during the time of National Socialism remains largely hidden - one only learns that he seems to have a clear conscience .

accused

The other defendants in Hanna's trial all separate themselves from Hanna from Michael's perspective. They use Hanna's behavior for themselves by placing all responsibility on her. They show the typical behavior patterns of real defendants in court proceedings on this matter.

lawyers

Hanna's defense attorney is a public defender and the only younger man in the group of lawyers. The other defenders in Hanna's trial are almost exclusively old Nazis . Her defense attorney avoids their style of speech and theses , but is "of a hasty zeal that harmed his client just as much as the National Socialist tirades of his colleagues their clients".

Witnesses

The mother who survived the death march (which will be tried in court) is not further described. She does not come to Germany as a witness to the trial , but stays in Israel , where she is questioned by the court.

Your daughter, on the other hand, lives in the United States . “Everything about her seemed businesslike, posture, gestures, clothes. The face was peculiarly ageless ”: Just like her as a person, her memories of the concentration camp and the death march, which she recorded in a book, are, according to Michael's understanding, characterized by sobriety and not inviting for identification. When Michael carries out Hanna's last will , the daughter Hanna cannot and does not want to give absolution . She shows empathy towards Michael by condemning Hanna's behavior towards him.

motorist

The driver who drives Michael as a hitchhiker on the way to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp describes indifference as the only motive for murder for the perpetrators in the concentration camps and elsewhere. All other reasons (including the well-known emergency of orders ) do not apply to him. However, his conversation with Michael is short-lived: the driver doesn't really want to deal with his own role during the Nazi era. He later evicts Michael from the car when the latter tries to confront him with this past. Michael suspects that the driver was involved in the shooting of Jews.

Prison director

The prison director is “a small, thin woman with dark blonde hair and glasses. She looked inconspicuous until she started talking, with strength and warmth and stern look and energetic movements of hands and arms. ”She has a good reputation in the detention center and the facility she runs is considered a model facility. Her request that Michael take care of her a little after Hanna's release from prison emphasizes that Hanna's rehabilitation is important to her .

Locations

Although the novel does not mention the name of the protagonist's hometown, topographical details (Heiligenberg, Philosophenweg, Neuenheimer Feld, etc.) are mentioned, which suggest the city of Heidelberg and the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region as the setting for the first part of the novel , even for readers with little knowledge of the area . The descriptions at the beginning of the novel also clearly suggest Heidelberg. The streets and houses described there also exist in the Heidelberg-Weststadt district , where the author Bernhard Schlink actually grew up. The description of the route of the bike tour to Miltenberg during the Easter holidays only makes sense if one assumes that Heidelberg is the starting point. In this context, the choice of Amorbach as the setting for a scene in which Hanna brutally beats Michael with a leather belt is evidence of subtle irony . Local color is also characteristic of Schlink's other works. The trial in the second part takes place “in another city, less than an hour away by car”. The novel here seems to allude to the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials.

Style and storytelling

Bernhard Schlink

Choice of words and sentence structure

Bernhard Schlink's style in The Reader is predominantly simple and precise in the narrative passages. However, the narrator mostly avoids giving dates (the only exception: Hanna's date of birth). Only occasionally does he explicitly mention place names. A first name is usually given to women with whom Michael was intimate (even if it was only a casual contact). The daughter Julia is an exception. Other women (e.g. the prison director and the Jewish woman in New York) and men are referred to solely by their social roles.

It's such a paratactic or syntactic before simple sentences. A stylistic device are chapter openings that convey important or surprising information in a succinct sentence, giving the plot a turn. Language becomes poetic in reflective passages. Above all, playing with opposites ("I did not reveal anything that I should have kept silent. I kept secret what I should have revealed ..."; Chapter 15) and attempts to capture complex memories in memorable images are decisive (" … Pictures of Hanna that have remained with me. I have saved them, can project them onto an inner screen and look at them on it, unchanged, unused. ”Chapter 12).

The language level is consistently high-level. At the same time, Schlink uses many continuous images and motifs, for example when describing the bathing ritual.

Narrative attitude

The description is characterized by the narrator's writing posture , which has already been reflected in part , but the emotional closeness is still noticeable in most places. What the narrator, now 52 years old, writes often has an irritating effect on the reader:

  • In the end, he complained that his story was "round, closed and directed". Nonetheless, when describing the 15-year-old Michael’s second visit to Hanna, he lets the reader fall into the same trap that the boy fell into: Hanna “would behave normally, I would behave normally, and everything would go back to normal be ”,“ reasonable ”the 15-year-old, and the 52-year-old Michael sees no reason to suggest to the reader that it could be otherwise. A distance from the perspective of the “reasonable” 15-year-old can at best be implicitly recognized in the word “reasonable”. In general, the question arises whether the author, Bernhard Schlink, occasionally deliberately uses the technique of unreliable storytelling . An attentive, average intelligent reader who started reading the novel without any prior knowledge of the novel would have to have come to the conclusion by the end of the first part that Hanna had problems with reading due to the large number of textual information provided by the narrator who must . The narrator does not explain why Michael only came to this conclusion as a student.
  • The second and third parts of the novel suggest that the author himself speaks in the comments, using the narrator as a mouthpiece. In some interpretations, the novel is understood as a key novel . Bernhard Schlink makes it clear, however, that the love story of the first part is fictitious. That would mean that the feelings and thoughts that the narrator describes in the first part exist exclusively in the fantasy of an adult and only fake memories of the experiences of a real young person.
  • The 52-year-old explains his academic career by stating that he viewed the standard activities of a lawyer from a distance; he loathed the way judges, attorneys or prosecutors formed judgments. Nonetheless, he forms a judgment about the imprisoned Hanna, whom he does not visit, "based on the files" by reading literature on illiteracy. He comes to the opinion that she is an "underage" person. The 52-year-old did not revise this judgment later, not even after the reader learned that Hanna had learned to defy authorities and even took part in a sit-in.
  • The narrator leaves the statements of various women in the room without comment, although some of them contradict his reflections considerably. So he quotes z. B. the testimony of the younger American Jew in the trial against Hanna that she had assumed that Hanna had lesbian relationships with the readers ("and we thought that she was with them ..." - the same hinting technique as in the conversation with Michael in New York - ) and the subsequent denial (“But it wasn't like that”). Later, however, he doesn't really dare to express the same suspicion explicitly: by asking himself: “And who was I for you? The little reader she'd used, the little sleeper she'd had fun with? Would she have sent me on the gas if she couldn't leave me, but wanted to get rid of me? "He shows that he sees a parallel between himself and the readers, namely in the three-step" Let read aloud - have sexual fun - in to send death ”.

reception

The reader is anchored in the curricula of lower secondary level I and secondary level II in various German federal states (e.g. Lower Saxony , Saxony , Thuringia , Rhineland-Palatinate , Berlin , Brandenburg , Hesse , North Rhine-Westphalia ). The “Umbrella Association of Teachers in Switzerland” draws attention to the fact that when dealing with the novel in class it is essential to address the fact that the couple's behavior in the first part is illegal under Swiss law.

In academic criticism, the focus of the analysis is the complex problem of guilt raised in the novel. With reference to the essay The Present of the Past , in which Schlink claims the persistence of the National Socialist epoch and its immense influence on the consciousness of his generation, the literary scholar Michaela Kopp-Marx understands the reader as a literary examination of the controversial collective guilt thesis: “The Roman illustrates the phenomenon of past guilt by removing it from its abstract historical dimension and transferring it to the personal experience of a fictitious later born who falls in love with an SS woman. Love and betrayal on the individual level of the relationship are inextricably linked with crime and guilt on the collective level of German history - this cumulative process of potentiating conflict not only harbors aesthetic risks, it also raises more questions than the novel is able to answer is. "

In recent years, the problem of sexual abuse has come to the fore in interpretations of the novel. The psychologist Sabine Lellek writes: “Young people of both sexes also fall in love with adults and agree to sexual contact out of this feeling. Nevertheless, they are often overwhelmed by the sexuality of an adult and are flooded with feelings that do not correspond to their sexual maturity, with negative consequences for their further development. Again, this can be a form of abuse. This is impressively described by Bernhard Schlink in the novel Der Vorleser . "Konstanze Hanitzsch doubts that Michael should appear to the reader as a victim: The surviving younger Jewish woman takes" Michael 'on the boat of the victims', although sex with Hanna is currently taking place The positive basis of the text belongs: without him and the love and passion [, sic!], Michael’s processing of Hanna would not be understandable, as he is suffering precisely from being unable to reconcile Hanna and the SS guard Hanna . "

Reviews

Much of the literary criticism praised the reader . Above all, Schlink's precise style, direct narrative style and the extraordinary way of coming to terms with the past were emphasized.

Rainer Moritz ( Die Welt , October 15, 1999) emphasized that the novel “reduces the artificial contrast between privacy and politics to absurdity”. Werner Fuld ( Focus , September 30, 1995) remarked that "you don't have to spread big topics if you can really tell".

On the other hand, Schlink was heavily criticized for his method of describing the Nazi crimes and placed in connection with historical revisionism and historical falsification . Jeremy Adler emphasized in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that Schlink was engaged in “culture pornography ”, in that in his book the “decisive motives of guilt and responsibility as well as the question of the relationship between personal and state power” were becoming less important. Schlink “simplify” the story and force an identification with actually guilty perpetrators of the Nazi era.

In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Bernhard Schlink protests against the following “misinterpretations”: He doesn't mean that

  • Hanna Schmitz is innocent because she is illiterate;
  • one is also moral if one is only educated;
  • Hanna Schmitz understood her guilt and was purified by learning to read;
  • the novel is a key novel about sexual abuse; this view shortens "the reality of love shamefully".

In 2009 Jan Schulz-Ojala responded to the latter thesis: "No, the meeting between someone who has closed himself off from the world and someone whom she uses and allows her body to approach as a reward cannot be a love story."

Success abroad

Schlinks Der Vorleser is one of the few bestsellers by German authors on the American book market. The reader has been translated into over 50 languages ​​and was the first German book to make it to number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list . In particular the announcement of Oprah Winfrey , the reader (The Reader) will in her Book Club discussed, provided a million sold paperback copies in the United States.

Prices

filming

Main article: The Reader (film)

In 2007 and 2008, an English-language film adaptation ( The Reader ) of Schlink's successful novel was made. British theater and film director Stephen Daldry directed it , while fellow countryman David Hare adapted the novel for the big screen. Both had already worked together on the Oscar-winning novel adaptation The Hours (2002). For his preparation, Daldry visited Berlin at the beginning of July 2007 and took part in a murder trial at the local criminal court. From September 19, 2007, the first shooting took place in Berlin and Görlitz . The Australian actress Nicole Kidman , who had already worked with Daldry and Hare on The Hours in 2002 and received an Oscar for the role of Virginia Woolf , and the young German actor David Kross ( Knallhart ) were selected for the leading roles . Kidman announced in January 2008 that she would not be available for filming because of her pregnancy. The British actress Kate Winslet could be won as a replacement . The last recordings were shot in Cologne and Görlitz from the beginning of July to mid-July 2008 . For her role in the film, Winslet received a Golden Globe and an Oscar in the category “Best Actress” in 2009 .

The acting ensemble was complemented by Volker Bruch , Vijessna Ferkic , Karoline Herfurth , Bruno Ganz , Susanne Lothar , Matthias Habich , Burghart Klaußner , Hannah Herzsprung , Moritz Grove , Alexandra Maria Lara and Ralph Fiennes . The two Oscar winners, Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack , who have now died, and the producers of The Hours, Scott Rudin and Robert Fox, were responsible for the production. The world premiere took place on December 3, 2008 in New York's Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan . The German theatrical release was on February 26, 2009.

Others

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.

literature

Primary literature

Secondary literature

  • Norbert Berger: Bernhard Schlink. The Reader. Contemporary novels in class. Teaching aid with copy templates and materials for the film (9th to 13th grade). Auer, Donauwörth 2011, ISBN 978-3-403-06221-9 .
  • Hanns-Peter Reisner: Bernhard Schlink, The Reader. Klett learning training for reading aids, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-12-923070-1 .
  • Sascha Feuchert , Lars Hofmann: Reading Key - Bernhard Schlink: The Reader. Reclam , Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 978-3-15-015359-8 .
  • Manfred Heigenmoser: Explanations and documents on Bernhard Schlink: "The reader". Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 978-3-15-016050-3 (= Reclam Universal Library 16050).
  • Juliane Köster: Bernhard Schlink, The Reader. Interpretation. Oldenbourg, Munich 2000, ISBN 978-3-637-88745-9 .
  • Ekkehart Mittelberg : Bernhard Schlink, The Reader. Lesson model with copy templates. Cornelsen, Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-464-61634-5 .
  • Miriam Moschytz-Ledgley: Trauma, Shame and Self-Pity - Inherited Trauma in Bernhard Schlink's novel “The Reader”. Tectum, Marburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-8288-9959-9 .
  • Micha Ostermann: Aporias of remembering. Bernhard Schlink's novel The Reader. Dolega, Bochum 2004, ISBN 978-3-937376-03-5 .
  • Bernhard Schlink, Bettina Greese, Sonja Pohsin, Almut Peren-Eckert: EinFach Deutsch lesson models: Bernhard Schlink: The Reader - Revised: With materials for the film. Upper secondary school. Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-14-022490-1 .
  • Cerstin Urban: Bernhard Schlink: The reader. Comments, discussion aspects and suggestions for production-oriented reading, Beyer, Hollfeld, 2011, ISBN 978-3-88805-521-8 .
  • Michaela Kopp-Marx: Nets of Guilt: Bernhard Schlink's novel “The Reader” , in: Yvonne Nilges (Ed.): Poet lawyers. Studies on the poetry of law from the 16th to the 21st century , Würzburg 2014, pp. 237–252. ISBN 978-3-8260-5550-8 .

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Diogenes Verlag - Bernhard Schlink. Retrieved May 3, 2020 .
  2. ↑ teachsam.de: Schlink, The Reader: adolescence. Michael - victim of sexual abuse?
  3. ↑ Teacher training in Baden-Württemberg: The reader - love and sexuality , link to: Advertisement
  4. ^ Umbrella Association of Teachers Switzerland (LCH): Respect and protect integrity. A guide for teachers, school administrators, other school professionals and school authorities. Zurich 2014, p. 20.
  5. ↑ Bernhard Schlink: The present of the past. In: ders .: Past Debt: Contributions to a German topic. Zurich 2007, pp. 112–123.
  6. ↑ Michaela Kopp-Marx: Nets of Guilt: Bernhard Schlink's novel "The Reader". In: Yvonne Nilges (ed.): Poet lawyers. Studies on the poetry of law from the 16th to the 21st century. Würzburg 2014, pp. 237–252.
  7. ^ Sabine Lellek: Sexual abuse.
  8. ↑ Konstanze Hanitzsch: Guilt and Gender. Strategies for the feminization of the Shoah in literature after 1945  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ). Humboldt University Berlin. 2005. p. 20 (199).@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.gender.hu-berlin.de
  9. ↑ In conversation: Bernhard Schlink. Mr. Schlink, is “The Reader” history? Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 20, 2009.
  10. ↑ cf. also the casual treatment of the subject by Schlink in his interview with the " Spiegel " ( I live in stories . Der Spiegel . Issue 4/2000. January 24, 2000, p. 182f. online )
  11. ↑ Jan Schulz-Ojala: Schlink film adaptation "The Reader": The immorality of love. The daily mirror . February 26, 2009.
  12. ↑ Bernhard Schlink's world success . In: Die Welt Kompakt , April 10, 2013, accessed on December 21, 2013.
  13. ↑ cf. “The Reader” is filmed at Focus Online
  14. ↑ cf. Time travel to Görlitz at welt.de
  15. ↑ cf. Kate Winslet replaces Nicole Kidman at welt.de
  16. ↑ cf. Last shoot yesterday for “Der Vorleser” . In: Sächsische Zeitung , July 15, 2008, p. 13
  17. ↑ cf. Start of shooting for “Der Vorleser” with Nicole Kidman at welt.de
  18. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: DLA press releases from 2009. ) PM 010 deals with the donation.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.dla-marbach.de