Repository logo
 

The difficulty of knowing: Bernhard Schlink's Der Vorleser

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Date

2007

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington

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.

Description

Keywords

Women concentration camp guards, Concentration camps in literature, Internment camps, Bernhard Schlink, World War II

Citation

Collections