The woman on the stairs

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In Bernhard Schlink's novel The Woman on the Stairs from 2014, a woman stands between two men, another falls in love with her. She escapes and evades all three men. After more than 40 years in which she disappeared, the four people meet again in Australia. A connection with the left-wing extremist Red Army faction RAF is revealed. The woman is terminally ill, and the man, whose love flares up again, accompanies her until death.

The history

First part. The story is shaped by the third man as the first-person narrator from the retrospective. His name is not mentioned. The story takes place in 1968 and around 2010. - The successful entrepreneur Peter Gundlach (around 40 years old) had a picture of his wife Irene (early 20s) painted by the painter Karl Schwind (early 30s). In the door-sized picture, Irene comes face-to-face and naked down a staircase. Gundlach received and paid for the picture, but Irene left him and lives with Schwind. Gundlach refuses a divorce. Irene has "her own money" from an inheritance. She works in the “Museum of Arts and Crafts, Design”.

Both men want to own the woman and the picture. In the summer of 1968 they both contacted a young lawyer from a well-known Frankfurt law firm (around 25 years old) - the later first-person narrator. He is supposed to draw up a “contract” in which Irene's return to her husband and the painting's return to the painter are agreed. The lawyer falls in love with Irene and wants to help her in violation of his professional duties. With his participation, Irene succeeds in getting the picture and then escaping from all three men.

Gundlach does not report the theft and does not report the theft to the " Art Loss Register ". Irene and the picture are gone. Gundlach's businesses are growing. He remarries and has children. Schwind becomes "the most famous and most expensive contemporary painter". The professional misconduct of the lawyer has no consequences. He becomes a partner and senior in his law firm; he marries a colleague and the couple have three children. Later the wife had a fatal accident.

Second part. Approx. 40 years later, the first-person narrator is negotiating a contract in Sydney . After graduation, he sees Irene's picture in an art gallery. A detective agency tracks him down near Sydney. He seeks her out, she doesn't turn him away. She has lived there since 1990, single, under a false name and illegally in a house on the coast in a nature reserve. She makes her payments with a German credit card. She is a nurse and helps neighbors. Over the years she has offered "abandoned, stray, drug or alcohol addicted children" a temporary home and support.

Shortly afterwards, Gundlach and Schwind appear. Irene had given the picture to the gallery wishing to see them again. Gundlach would like to get the picture back, Schwind would like to present the picture and woman at his exhibition in New York. Both don't ask. Gundlach and the narrator also want explanations from her. Gundlach reports that Irene is being wanted by the police in Germany and is hardly recognizable on a wanted poster. At the time he feared he would be shot by her or her "friends" "for the revolution". Irene replies: “I wouldn't have done anything to you. [...] I was out of joint, free of everything that limited me - and everything that had held me. A life like an addiction. After that I was on withdrawal. «Irene was accepted into the former GDR in 1980 (see RAF dropouts ). “But life there was my salvation. After those crazy years it was like staying in a sanatorium ”(p. 143 f). After the fall of the Wall, she escaped arrest because she went to Australia with her passport, which was valid until 1990, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall . She took the picture that her mother had kept with her. Gundlach asks several times: “You still haven't said what you did back then.” Irene replies: “Did I kill someone? Do you mean this? I was just there. I didn't know yet that nothing would change. Nobody knew ”(p. 160). Irene doesn't reveal anything more. Even later she does not express regrets or remorse. - Irene gave the picture, which is now "worth more than twenty million", to the gallery. The gallery has »become the owner in good faith«. Gundlach and Schwind leave.

Third part. The narrator stays. Irene had said to him: “I'm sorry that I hurt you then. I felt so trapped that I just wanted to break free and didn't care about anything else. […] I've used others worse than you. ”She has pancreatic cancer and will not live long. They resume their relationship and find each other. He cares for and cares for them. He allows the closeness that it gives him. He no longer cares about her past. His love is the current Irene. In a bush fire, he can save Irene and himself with the boat. He falls asleep, the next morning Irene is no longer in the boat. "She woke up in the morning, tortured herself to the edge of the boat and let herself fall." His time with Irene was 14 days. “How am I supposed to live without what I learned from her? [...] I didn't want my old life anymore. ”The novel ends when the narrator returns to Frankfurt.

Irene's example answers the question of how a person lives on after years of life in the terrorist underground and after criminal offenses: It is possible to lead a life that appears normal afterwards; the person is no longer dangerous. Irene's participation in terrorist activities was only partially politically motivated as the pursuit of "justice for the exploited and humiliated" (p. 111). Her report about her escape to the GDR is an admission of guilt. However, it does not provide adequate information and the bereaved, including the victims, have to live with it.

In the novel The Weekend of 2008, Schlink deals with a similar topic. A German terrorist who was convicted of four murders is pardoned on his request and released from prison after 23 years. The reason for his application was his advanced cancer. Former friends and sympathizers spend the first weekend in freedom with him. He makes a statement, but with which he finds no understanding. He has given up the role of terrorist, just wants to lead a private life and work; he shows no remorse.

Nils Minkmar wrote in 2015 with regard to Middle Eastern terrorism : “Terrorism can end too. […] In many cases, terrorists, their milieu, their supporters are not defeated by the police and the military, they simply retire, even after years of imprisonment. "

criticism

Reviews emphasize the complicated relationships at the beginning and late love. The story "is just enough for a little romance novel, admittedly quite original". There is talk of a “brisk [and] good comedy”. Irene's escape in the VW bus is rated as a "grotesque [and] thoroughly unlikely episode". The novel is "an immensely disappointing book, little more than a kitschy soap opera." The author had "only constructed the constellation [...], thought it up, put it together appropriately, but not filled it with life."

Irene's connection to the radical left underground is mentioned rather casually and not by all reviewers. She had "without knowing more about it, spent many years in the left-wing terror scene and then hiding in the GDR." Schlink is referred to as "the one who has come to terms with the past". Compared to The Reader , The Woman on the Stairs “became the better book.” The “look into the past” of the woman and the man was “touched upon with a GDR story and FRG terrorism.” Irene “has a past as RAF terrorist behind, from whom we learn little. And she was not only a terrorist, but one of the RAF dropouts who were lucky enough to find acceptance in the GDR from 1980 until the fall of the Wall. "

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schlink B. The woman on the stairs. In a note (p. 245), Schlink refers to Gerhard Richter's painting Ema. Act on a staircase from 1966 (see also act, descending a staircase No. 2 ). He emphasizes, “Gerhard Richter and the painter Irenes [have] nothing in common; Karl Schwind was invented. "
  2. ↑ Minkmar, Nils 2015. The uncertainty. Causes, Effects and History of Terrorism. In: Der Spiegel, December 2015, Chronicle 2015 , 8-17.
  3. ↑ a b Jähner, Harald. The quiet pride of the reader. Frankfurter Rundschau September 30, 2014. The quiet pride of the reader,
  4. ↑ a b Müller, Burkhard. The lost file. Süddeutsche Zeitung August 28, 2014. The lost file.
  5. ^ A b Rainer Moritz: Sensual weight. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. October 7, 2014, accessed March 29, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Kilb, Andreas. Group picture with muse. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung August 27, 2014. Group picture with muse.