Last February 22 at the Kodak Theatre Los Angeles, the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, or the Oscars, recognized again the excellence of professionals in the film industry. Among the awardees is Kate Winslet who received an Oscar as best actress in the movie The Reader which only started in Germany last Thursday.
The movie is based on Bernhard Schlink’s novel, Der Vorleser. Schlink grew up in Heidelberg, Germany, studied law in Berlin and professionalized in constitutional law. Since 1988 he is a judge at the constitutional court of Nordrheinwestfahlen, a federal German state. Der Vorleser was published in 1995 and was ever since then among the favoured pieces of literature read in German secondary education. It was translated into 39 languages and after 1997 it became a bestseller even in the US. Thus it is no wonder that in 2008 Miramax Films made it a movie.
What is so special about this story? Is it not just another German “post world war II” novel? One might wonder and in fact Schlink touches many such issues in that novel. There is the issue of sexual relationships, the issue of psychology of guilt, all the issues of World War II and many more.
I think what makes it significant is the way Schlink narrates the events of the time of the first German generation after the war. He takes a very uncommon point of view. As first person narrator he takes us to the individual life of 15 year old Michael Berg, and the focus remains with him rather than telling the great documentary story. This makes us see a life of that time in a particular and rather segmentary way.
Schlink tells a strange love story between Michael and Hanna. And it is only in the ongoing story, after the protagonists have become familiar with one another, and have become recognisable individuals to the reader, that Hanna is revealed to have been a guard in a concentration camp. Even before Michael gets to know about that, the love relationship gets interrupted and he only gets to see Hanna again after years, when she is put to court for what she did in her past. The sympathy for Hanna even increases when she in court wrongly but consciously admits to have been a guard in a leading position back in those times. And she does so, merely to keep hidden her secret of being an illiterate.
It is indeed an interruption and irritation to sense that the character one already got close to now turns out to be guilty of crimes done under the Nazi regime. And being involved in the story already the question arises: Is Hanna really guilty? Or is she too a victim? This is the old question ever since those times after World War II. How are the individuals to be judged? What is the individual’s responsibility? And this question is not merely one of those days, but it is an always current question. Is one guilty or not guilty if he can provide good and reasonable reasons for having done or failed to do something?
As for the Holocaust we all know that it was and still is evil, and that judgment is clear. The first generation after the war even raised a general accusation against their parental generation condemning them stock and barrel. And here is where Schlink’s story moves in between the positions. That makes the nasty question creep in while reading: the question of individuals’ responsibility and criminal liability. Where in an ordinary life, in an ordinary family and neighbourhood is the individual’s responsibility? Today and back in those times, did THEY stand up against the evil? And today, do WE do that? Do we name and expose the evil openly for what it is? Do we have the courage to speak out loud and in front of a known or unknown audience, that we see evil and wrong being done? Do we do that? And do we ask that from others? And dare we ask that from others if we ourselves are not brave enough to do it? Or do we rather remain silent and unrecognized, as the consequences would mean to us and our family to lose face, to lose reputation, to lose influence, to become ridiculed, prosecuted by neighbours, by colleagues, by the media or even by armed forces? Do we preferably hide behind another one’s back?
Like a fountain of youth Der Vorleser takes us back to renew our awareness and consciousness, to sharpen the sense for our very responsibility as individuals. Here in Germany the movie started last Thursday, and I admit I am looking forward to seeing it.