Justice (Dürrenmatt)

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Justice is a crime novel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt . It deals with the public murder of a Swiss cantonal councilor of a professor , tells from the first-person perspective of a young lawyer , on behalf of the convicted cantonal council, to re-investigate the murder under the assumption that he was not the murderer. « The young lawyer (...) realizes too late in which trap the judiciary has let him fall because he confuses it with justice. »(Friedrich Dürrenmatt)

Emergence

In his own words, Dürrenmatt began working on justice in 1957; the novel should be finished after a few months. However, since work on other plants intervened, the judiciary was left behind until Dürrenmatt finally stopped working on it entirely. In 1980 he wanted to complete the novel as the 30th volume of his work edition, but failed because he could no longer reconstruct the originally planned plot. In 1985 he finally got down to it again, developing a new plot on the existing fragment; and so the novel appeared, “ although in a different sense than originally planned. »

action

Framework story

The novel is written in the form of memoirs or memories. In the first two sections, lawyer Felix Spät writes retrospectively and reflectively on the most absurd case of his career, which ruined him and as a result he makes a difficult decision. In the third section, which takes place years later, a writer who wants to publish these memoirs as a book writes about his research that will finally clear up the case for the reader.

Internal act

first section

The Zurich Cantonal Council Dr. hc Isaak Kohler publicly shoots the Germanist Prof. Winter in the overcrowded restaurant Du Theâtre and is arrested shortly afterwards without resistance. In a show trial he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, despite a lack of evidence and with no clear motive, as there was no doubt about what had happened. Kohler, very wealthy, once highly respected and popular, commissioned the young lawyer Spät from prison to re-examine his case under the assumption that he was not the murderer - assuming scientific interest. For lack of money and in the hope of a business upturn, Spät finally accepts.

second part

A private detective commissioned by Spät is again collecting evidence of the case, which has now been several months. It becomes clear that the formally catastrophic process - no murder weapon found, neither a clear confession nor a comprehensible motive, no recording of testimony - makes the judgment legally untenable. With the help of Spät's investigations and after the process that was reopened (which Spät does not conduct for reasons of conscience), Kohler is acquitted. Since nobody was able to explain Kohler's act from the start anyway and his likeable appearance casts a spell over everyone, the acquittal is generally accepted. The suicide of another suspect (the former Swiss pistol shooting champion, Dr. Benno) seems like an un pursued admission of guilt. Late has ruined his reputation and completely lost his self-respect through this assignment, calls himself a "rotten whore specialist" and sees only one way to restore justice: the murder of Kohler followed by suicide.

Third section

Murder and suicide fail. It is slowly becoming clear: Cantonal Councilor Dr. hc Isaak Kohler staged a murder that was just one piece of the puzzle in a complex and well thought-out personal vengeance campaign by skillfully exploiting human weaknesses and the limits of the modern judiciary.

Appreciation

As so often in his novels, Dürrenmatt also targets clichés and common behaviors. In addition to bizarre and very multi-faceted characters such as the failed lawyer Spät - drunk and resigned, but endowed with an incorrigibly naive belief in justice - the extremely rich, lonely and short-stature Monika Steiermann, the fat, self-satisfied and successful star lawyer or the young and pretty Edelhure Daphne, social and cultural developments and the phenomenon of the judiciary , an institution that often stands in its own way, are discussed in detail.

filming

The novel Justiz was filmed for the cinema in 1993 . Directed by Hans W. Geißendörfer ; the main roles were played by Maximilian Schell and Thomas Heinze .

Book editions

literature

  • Bernhard Auge: Friedrich Dürrenmatt's novel “Justice”. History of origin, problem analysis, classification in the overall work . LIT, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7188-6 (Dissertation University Mainz 2001, 480 pages Google Book Search ).
  • Otto Keller : Dürrenmatt's gangster. From the crime novels of the 1950s to the justice novels of the 1980s (= exchange , volume 19). Lang, Bern 2014, ISBN 978-3-0343-1347-6 .

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