The difficulty of knowing: Bernhard Schlink's Der Vorleser

Abstract

This study of Bernhard Schlink's Vorleser examines the ambiguous characterisation of the female protagonist, Hanna Schmitz. Despite the enormous popular appeal of the novel - both in Germany and internationally - critics have often responded harshly to the work, many perceiving this lack of transparency as a fault of the work. However, my research reveals that there is justification for Schlink's withholding information to do with Hanna and that Hanna's ambiguous characterisation is in fact a virtue of Der Vorleser. The inscrutability of her character has historical authenticity: little is known about female concentration camp guards. Their backgrounds, motives, real attitudes towards those they guarded, their trials and post-war lives and Weltanschauungen remain largely unknown. Hanna's characterisation also signals the concealment and shame surrounding her illiteracy. Hanna and Michael's problematic relationship should be read as a more complicated version of the relationship between "first" and "second" generation Germans (as is explored in the genre of Vaterliteratur) - as a metaphor of dealing with the German past. Der Vorleser persuades readers against making hasty or simplistic judgements about the past and urges them to take a complex view of history, which means incorporating 'not knowing' as a legitimate part of this. These difficulties are countered with the necessity of engaging in, understanding, and ultimately, of accepting the past.