Wolfgang Schorlau

Wolfgang Schorlau 2014

Wolfgang Schorlau (* 1951 in Idar-Oberstein ) is a German writer and author of political crime novels , in which he combines criticism of social and political conditions and background research with exciting narrative elements. Several novels were made into films.

Life

Wolfgang Schorlau was born in Idar-Oberstein in 1951 as the son of a railway official. After the early death of the father, the mother raised her two children alone. When he was eleven years old, she sent Wolfgang to an orphanage of the Federal Railroad in Freiburg im Breisgau. He later processed his childhood experiences in his novel "Rebellen".

In 1966 he began an apprenticeship as a wholesale merchant in the electronics trade in Freiburg im Breisgau . During this time he joined the apprentice movement. He demonstrated against training conditions and local politics in Freiburg and dealt with the content of the “Wednesday training courses” instead of his training. Under the guidance of students and professors, the apprentices read “Das Kapital” and “ What to do? “By Lenin and texts by Ernest Mandel , Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich :" I read Marx and became a trainee of the world revolution. Three months before the journeyman's examination I was thrown out of my apprenticeship. " His fellow apprentices convinced the boss that he could at least take the exam, which he just passed. In the 1970s Schorlau was also active in the Communist League of West Germany , but later distanced himself from its dogmatic and sectarian dogmatism.

In West Berlin, he made up his Abitur on a second educational path and wanted to study sociology at the university, but found the lectures on Marx and Engels too boring. Instead of studying, he completed an apprenticeship as a computer scientist and started his own small software company.

His first book was published in 1995: “The PC in galvanic operation”, and in 2000 “Down at Theresa's”, an illustrated book about the blues .

In 2002, when he was in his early fifties, he gave up his job to devote himself to writing political crime novels as a freelance writer. Since then his books have been published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch .

In November 2017, Wolfgang Schorlau took over the poetics lectureship at the University of Tübingen.

The novels about Georg Dengler

The hero of Schorlaus crime novels is Georg Dengler, a former BKA investigator who went into business for himself as a private investigator. Although Schorlau's writing colleagues had warned that stories about private detectives would not be successful in Germany, unlike Anglo-Saxon crime fiction, work on his first novel The Blue List was too far advanced to change the concept again. By 2007 three novels about the hard-drinking blues fan Georg Dengler, who runs his practice in Stuttgart's Bohnenviertel , had been published successfully . In 2006, he received third place in the German Crime Prize for Das dunkle Schweigen .

The Krimiplot serves Schorlau especially political opinion on controversial events in modern German history. Under the motto Finding and Inventing , Schorlau explains the background research and sources for his novels in an epilogue so that the reader can separate reality and fiction.

The blue list. Dengler's first case.

In the first novel in the series, Schorlau brings together three events that have not yet been fully clarified:

• the murder of the first president of the Treuhandanstalt Detlev Rohwedder on April 1, 1991 by the RAF ,
• the crash of Lauda Air flight 004 on May 26, 1991 over Thailand , in which 223 people were killed,
• the events on June 27, 1993 in Bad Kleinen , in which the RAF terrorist Wolfgang Grams died by suicide.

The plot assumes that Rohwedder had to be eliminated because his (alleged) ideas about cooperative participation models for GDR companies stood in the way of the capital interests of Western corporations. The third generation of the RAF, portrayed as unsuspecting, was then instrumentalized by backers (from the state apparatus?) With the attack. Those involved had to be eliminated later in Bad Kleinen as potential confidants, as had previously scientists who defended the cooperative model. One of them survived because he missed the sabotaged flight. Dengler is entrusted by relatives with the seemingly hopeless search for this scientist, finally locates him in Italy and puts him in danger through his activities because the people behind the attacks are also looking for him.

The dark silence. Dengler's second case.

Here Schorlau is concerned with a little-studied complex of the Second World War : the cases of lynching of Allied soldiers (Schorlau estimates the number at over 1,000).

Foreign water. Dengler's third case.

This thriller focuses on efforts to privatize the water industry . Schorlau describes, among other things, the Guerra del Agua (water war) in Cochabamba and the effects of the privatizations carried out in Kiel and London . The title of the novel quotes a poem by Ingeborg Bachmann .

Burning cold. Dengler's fourth case.

In this novel, Schorlau deals with the dispatch of Bundeswehr soldiers to the Afghan war and the speculated use and testing of microwave weapons there, as well as the consequences for the soldiers. In a secondary line of the plot, it deals with the introduction of the new electronic passport in Germany. The Marler Zeitung writes: "What Schorlau stages in horror is the possible real horror of weapon systems, as they come up with the producers who make money with the death of people."

The Munich plot. Dengler's fifth case.

Dengler's fifth case is about the bombing of the Oktoberfest in 1980 . In his novel, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution takes part in the development of organizations such as the NPD in the new federal states or the military sports group Hoffmann in the 1970s. It's about a secret paramilitary organization and a secret United States Army Field Manual . In the epilogue of the novel, Schorlau says that after being contacted by two police officers who did not introduce themselves to him, he was brought on the case. The two police officers allegedly enabled him to study documents from the Theresienwiese special commission and made him aware of individual points in the files. Likewise, they would have it on Ulrich Chaussy's book Oktoberfest. Referred to an assassination attempt .

The literary critic Claudine Borries judged: "Wolfgang Schorlau achieved a really great success with this political thriller."

The last escape. Dengler's sixth case.

Published in autumn 2011, Schorlau tells the story of a professor at the Berlin Charité who was falsely accused of murder and child abuse . The actual background, however, is the criminal machinations of the pharmaceutical industry around application monitoring . During his investigation, Dengler not only got to know the dominatrix scene and the kitchen in Frank Oehler's dining room - he also witnessed the protests against Stuttgart 21 in a subplot . In 2010, Schorlau was the editor of the non-fiction book Stuttgart 21. The arguments on this topic.

On the twelfth day. Dengler's seventh case.

The novel, published in December 2013, tells of Dengler's search for his missing son Jakob and his friends. It deals with the practices of intensive animal husbandry and the working conditions of Eastern European contract workers .

Dengler's son has joined a group of radical animal rights activists, including a pretty girl, an activist and vegan spokesperson . While trying to film the unsustainable conditions in a pig and turkey fattening operation in Lower Saxony at night, they are arrested by a rocker gang who were hired by a large industrialist in the animal industry to deal with unruly Romanian cheap workers and at the same time deal with the growing problems with animal rights activists to get rid of. To this end, the peasant family was lured to leave the farm temporarily. The entire property should be burned down and the arson should be blamed on the young activists, who should also perish in the process. Dengler, who is sent on a search by his annoying ex-wife, is skeptical at first and can only avert the disaster at the last second, in this case the farmer dies. The industrialist is ultimately arrested after he literally sausages a defiant Romanian slaughterer.

Two sermons by Monsignor Peter Kossen ( The Abuse of Work Contracts as Modern Slavery and Terrifying Contempt for Human Beings and Mafia-like Structures ) are printed in the appendix .

The protecting hand. Dengler's eighth case.

Schorlaus novel, published in 2015, takes up the events of the right-wing extremist terror group National Socialist Underground (NSU). Dengler is assigned to investigate the deaths of NSU members Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos . Schorlau spans his novel from the right-wing extremist scene in the GDR to a stay-behind organization and the NSA that was dissolved in 1991 . In the context of his research, Schorlau reported in 2015 to the first NSU investigative committee of the Baden-Württemberg state parliament .

In Deutschlandradio Kultur , it was criticized that Schorlau propagated conspiracy theories with representatives of authorities as an actively murdering state, instead of explaining the case with careless and failing authorities. The Süddeutsche Zeitung picked up Schorlaus Roman as a sign of the rioting of conspiracy theories on the NSU complex and accused him of mixing “uninhibited facts and fiction” and at the same time asserting “boldly that it is about the search for truth”, while he “the readers sell a favorite legend of the conspiracy scene only with cheap means.

The book reached number 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list. An expanded and updated paperback edition was published in April 2017.

The big plan. Dengler's ninth case.

In this novel, published in 2018, Schorlau tells of the investigations into a kidnapped employee that were officially carried out on behalf of the Federal Foreign Office . It dealt with the euro bailout fund for Greece and the effects of the Troika's policy, and there is suspicion that it has tracked down criminal machinations. For Schorlau, this is the reason to inform the reader about credit default swaps and illegal debts . But after the kidnapped woman was killed during the liberation and Dengler was seriously injured, a new clue emerges that leads to the time of the German occupation of Greece in World War II , the Distomo massacre and the consequences of the unpaid forced loans in Greece .

Schorlau writes "of the consequences of the Greek crisis [...], of an overloaded health system, a country that was once again systematically driven to the brink of hunger and beyond". "Stefan Kister asked himself in his criticism:" But do you even read a novel here? More than in earlier Dengler cases, this 'Grand Plan' is broken down into a critical non-fiction book section and a crime plot - and unfortunately it has to be said that the way in which the Greek debt crisis is explained theoretically seems a lot more likely than the ludicrously motivated one Kidnapping act. "

Other publications

Rebels

This book with many autobiographical elements is about the student movement and Schorlaus “years of apprenticeship as a professional revolutionary”. The author describes key events in the local scene and leading figures such as Hans-Jörg Hager , Michael Moos and Klaus Theweleit almost without a distance , says the reviewer of the Stuttgart newspaper Martin Halter. The Stuttgarter Zeitung sums it up:

Schorlau describes the "wonderful and strange" time with a lot of verve, combative pathos and some nostalgia; the atmospheric soundtrack ranges from “Streetfighting Man” to Marx's “Wage Labor and Capital”. In any case, Schorlau remained true to the “dreams of his youth”.

Martin Halter sees the novel as “indisputable merits” in historical and documentary terms, but finds the ambitious plot rather poor: “Two men with a woman in between. The main contradiction or 'battle of two lines', to stay in the jargon of the time, runs exactly along the class boundaries between Paul, the poor orphanage boy, and Alexander from the villa across the street ”.

The burning piano

The biography depicts the life of the musician Wolfgang Dauner , but also traces “an impressive piece of cultural and contemporary history in the Federal Republic as stimulating as a crime thriller” (NDR Kultur). For Carina Pranges (jazzdimensions) Schorlau succeeds in pulling the reader under its spell: “Well researched and compiled in countless conversations with the protagonist, Schorlau documents Dauner's life without any noticeable gaps. He tells and describes vividly, making use of many quotes from Dauner, but also allows the jazz musician and bon vivant Dauner to have his say in long passages. "

Summer on the Bosphorus

The Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz sees the travel novel as an individual view of the city on the Bosphorus that cannot be found in a travel guide. "An entertaining read for anyone interested in Istanbul."

Arguments against Stuttgart 21

Schorlau's intention in this book is to critically appreciate the different aspects of Stuttgart 21: railway technology, ecological, financial, monument protection, urban planning and architectural. He is of the opinion that since the police operation on September 30, 2010 at the latest, "very fundamental questions of the further development and expansion of the democratic system" have been discussed. Therefore this book is divided into two chapters: The train station and The democracy. According to his statement, the idea for this book arose on September 30, 2010, “the day that went down in Stuttgart's history as Black Thursday”.

Commissario Morello

Together with the actor and author of Sicilian origin Claudio Caiolo, Schorlau wrote a Venice crime thriller in 2020. With the arrest of corrupt politicians, Commissioner Antonio Morello earned the name “The Free Dog” (the book's title) in Sicily . Now he's on the Mafia's death list . He was transferred to Venice for his protection . Venice is quick to hate Morello for its crowds and cruise lines . However, over time he succumbs to the charm of the city. His neighbor Silvia leads Morello to secret places and shows him previously unknown qualities of the tourist destination. With this co-production, Schorlau continues the concerns of his highly political Dengler series in front of a new backdrop.

Film adaptations

→ Main article : Dengler (TV series)

The ZDF radiates since 2015 in an irregular series of films according to Dengler novels from where Ronald Zehrfeld Georg Dengler and Birgit Minichmayr Olga plays. Lars Kraume directed the first three films, and Rick Ostermann directed the fourth and fifth . The prelude was Dengler - The Last Escape , which was broadcast for the first time on April 20, 2015, Dengler - On the twelfth day on March 14, 2016 and Dengler - The protective hand on November 6, 2017. The fourth film adaptation Dengler - Foreign water was on First broadcast on May 14, 2018. Unlike in the novel, parts of the plot take place in Greece. Dengler - Brennende Kälte was broadcast for the first time on October 7, 2019 .

Prizes and awards

• 2004 Story Prize from the Nahe newspaper, Idar-Oberstein

• 2006 German detective award for "Dark Silence - Dengler's second case"

• 2008 City Clerk in Trabzon / Turkey

• 2009 Herzogenrath handcuffs for burning cold - Dengler's fourth case

• 2009 The sponsorship group of German writers in Baden-Württemberg awards a working grant for the novel project "Paul" in June 2009

• 2012 Stuttgart Crime Prize for "The Last Escape"

• 2014 Stuttgart crime prize for "On the twelfth day"

• 2019 Rheinbacher glass dagger for the entire work

Reception and criticism

“Wolfgang Schorlau's thrillers are never for the faint of heart. They always scratch the image that we make of reality and this knowledge can sometimes just hurt. ”This is what Uli Wagner means in his review of The Great Plan .

“The crime novels by the 66-year-old from Stuttgart are politically charged to a high degree. 'So political that it hurts', she describes Dorothee Kimmich , head of the poetics lectureship , in her introductory speech for Schorlau. Because the author likes to go with his books where there are inconsistencies, where things remain in the dark and where authorities fail. He puts his finger deep in the wound of the traumas of German post-war history. "

“It is the consequences of economic activity that determine the life of every individual. Politicians not only base their decisions on economic necessities, they can in fact in no way afford to violate or even revolt against the supposed or actual needs and demands of what was called 'the markets' as one used to call 'the' Rulers' and even earlier said 'the gods'. Wolfgang Schorlau has known this for a long time. And for a decade now, his novels have been opening their readers' eyes to it. "

Quotes

“I don't make theories; I tell stories in which real events are shown from a new angle. Why should everything the police and the judiciary say always be true? Why shouldn't we think in another direction? (...) What I can contribute to is to create a social atmosphere in which people are interested in the fact that something is wrong and what different points of view there are. That's worth a lot. "

Private

Schorlau lives as a freelance writer in Stuttgart.

Fonts

• with Karin Herzog: The PC in galvanic operation. ISBN 3-87480-110-1 .
• with Marc Po Kempner: Chicago blues: down at Theresa's…; the photographs of Marc PoKempner. , Prestel, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-7913-2300-8 .
• The blue list. Dengler's first case. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-462-03479-0 .
• Summer on the Bosphorus. An Istanbul novel. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-462-03427-8 .
• The dark silence. Dengler's second case. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-462-03614-9 .
• Foreign water. Dengler's third case. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2006, ISBN 978-3-462-03748-7 .
• Burning cold. Dengler's fourth case. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-03982-5 .
• A perfect murder. Edition Nautilus , Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-89401-579-4 .
• The Munich plot. Dengler's fifth case. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-462-04132-3 .
• The burning piano. The musician Wolfgang Dauner. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-89401-730-9 .
• Stuttgart 21. The arguments. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-462-04258-0 (as ed.).
• The last escape. Dengler's sixth case. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-462-04279-5 .
• Rebels. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-462-04076-0 .
• On the twelfth day. Dengler's seventh case. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-462-04547-5 .
• The protecting hand. Dengler's eighth case. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-462-04666-3 .
• The big plan. Dengler's ninth case. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2018, ISBN 978-3-462-04667-0 .
• with Claudio Caiolo: The free dog. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2020, ISBN 978-3-462-05245-9 .

Web links

Commons : Wolfgang Schorlau  - Collection of Images

• Literature by and about Wolfgang Schorlau in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website by Wolfgang Schorlau
• Book reading from The Great Plan .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wolfgang Schorlau: The apprentices of the revolution , Badische Zeitung
2. ↑ Wolfgang Schorlau: When politics becomes a crime thriller. In: marx21. January 4, 2015, accessed on April 26, 2019 (German, interview with Schorlau). 
3. ↑ Wolfgang Schorlau: When politics becomes a crime thriller. In: marx21. January 4, 2015, accessed on April 26, 2019 (German). 
4. ^ Wolfgang Schorlau - Munzinger biography. Retrieved April 26, 2019 . 
5. ↑ From manager to crime writer. April 18, 2014, accessed April 26, 2019 . 
6. ↑ Crime writer in search of truth | Copper blue - campus magazine Tübingen. Accessed April 26, 2019 (German). 
7. ↑ Unfortunately no fiction , in: Marler Zeitung , July 1, 2015; P. 14.
8. ↑ Criticism in the reading magnifier
9. ↑ Nana Brink: Crime writer settles accounts with German secret services. In: DeutschlandradioKultur.de , July 20, 2015.
10. ↑ Literary investigations in the NSU complex. Deutschlandradio Kultur, November 12, 2015.
11. ↑ Tanjev Schultz: Conspiracy Theories: Where Dark Forces Work. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 1, 2016. See also the review Collateral damage in world politics. In: NSU-Watch , February 13, 2016. A comprehensive discussion of Schorlau's arguments can be found in Tomas Lecorte: Conspiracy din . Wolfgang Schorlaus NSU crime thriller has nothing to do with education. In: analysis & criticism . No. 613, February 16, 2016, p. 34, more detailed online: NSU: Schorlau facts check - “The protective hand” ... neither hand nor foot! In: Lecorte.de.
12. ↑ Peter Unfried : Krimi about the NSU: The literary investigation. In: Die Tageszeitung , January 9, 2016.
13. ^ Gabriele Muthesius: NSU. When, how and where did Mundlos and Böhnhardt die? In: The paper . April 10, 2017.
14. ↑ Thomas Morawitzky: Dengler, Greece and me. in the Stuttgarter Zeitung on March 9, 2018
15. ↑ Stefan Kister: Where have the billions for Greece gone? Stuttgarter Zeitung from March 8, 2018
16. ↑ Stuttgarter Zeitung, Stuttgart Germany: "Rebels" by Wolfgang Schorlau: Playing with the dirty children. Retrieved April 26, 2019 . 
17. ↑ Stuttgarter Zeitung, Stuttgart Germany: "Rebels" by Wolfgang Schorlau: Playing with the dirty children. Retrieved April 26, 2019 . 
18. ↑ Stuttgarter Zeitung, Stuttgart Germany: "Rebels" by Wolfgang Schorlau: Playing with the dirty children. Retrieved April 26, 2019 . 
19. ↑ Wolfgang Schorlau - reading sample. Retrieved April 26, 2019 . 
20. ↑ Review in the SWR. Retrieved June 22, 2020 . 
21. ↑ Dengler - The last escape on ZDF.de. Retrieved April 21, 2015.
22. ^ Kai Mudra: ZDF filmed "Dengler - The protective hand". Crime sows doubts about NSU investigations. In: Thüringer Allgemeine , October 13, 2017. Meetings with Nikolaus von Festenberg, among others : Pictures are the new facts. In: Der Tagesspiegel , November 5, 2017; Annette Ramelsberger : When terrorists become victims. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , November 5, 2017.
23. ↑ Dengler - Burning Cold on ZDF.de. Retrieved October 8, 2019
24. ^ Saarländischer Rundfunk: Wolfgang Schorlau: "The great plan". August 6, 2018, accessed April 26, 2019 . 
25. ↑ Crime writer in search of truth | Copper blue - campus magazine Tübingen. Accessed April 26, 2019 (German). 
26. ↑ read. Retrieved April 26, 2019 . 
27. ↑ Wolfgang Schorlau: When politics becomes a crime thriller. In: marx21. January 4, 2015, accessed on April 26, 2019 (German).