Crime Fiction in German

Der Krimi

Katharina Hall, Katharina Hall

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781783168194
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria alemana

Crime Fiction in German is the first volume in English to offer a comprehensive overview of German-language crime fiction from its origins in the early nineteenth century to its vibrant growth in the new millennium. As well as introducing readers to crime fiction from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the former East Germany, the volume expands the notion of a German crime-writing tradition by investigating Nazi crime fiction, Jewish-German crime fiction, Turkish-German crime fiction and the Afrika-Krimi. Significant trends, including the West German social crime novel, women's crime writing, regional crime fiction, historical crime fiction and the Fernsehkrimi television crime drama are also explored, highlighting the genre's distinctive features in German-language contexts.

This volume includes a map of German-speaking Europe, a chronology of key crime publishing milestones, primary texts and trends, as well as an annotated bibliography of print and online resources in English and German.

1

Crime Fiction in German: Concepts, Developments and Trends

KATHARINA HALL

Undoubtedly, the crime novel displays all the characteristics of a flourishing branch of literature.¹

This volume, which forms part of the University of Wales Press ‘European Crime Fictions’ series, is the first in English to offer a comprehensive overview of German-language crime fiction from its origins in the early nineteenth century to the post-reunification Germany of the new millennium. Its primary aim is to introduce readers to key areas of crime fiction from the German-speaking world through this and subsequent chapters on early German-language crime, Austrian crime, Swiss crime, the Afrika-Krimi (German-language crime novels set in Africa or with African characters and themes), the Frauenkrimi (crime written by, about and for women) and twentieth-century historical crime. An additional aim is to highlight the richness of German-language crime fiction and to provide readers with a springboard for further reading, viewing and research. To this end, our understanding of the crime genre is purposefully broad, allowing hybrid crime narratives by literary authors to be considered, and relevant links to be made to films and the highly popular Fernsehkrimi (television crime drama), which is explored in chapter 8. A significant percentage of the crime narratives under discussion are already published in English, thus providing the non-German speaker with opportunities to access works (where a novel’s English title is italicized, this indicates that the text has appeared in translation).² Chapters conclude with an English-language extract to showcase a primary text, as well as providing bibliographies of core primary and secondary materials. A substantial annotated bibliography at the end of the volume directs readers towards further German- and English-language resources.

More broadly, the volume aims to expand the notion of a German-language crime-writing tradition, drawing inspiration from publishers such as Edition Köln, which is reprinting forgotten early works, and from academic studies by contemporary scholars in the German- and English-speaking worlds, which are successfully illuminating neglected areas of research. Until remarkably recently, it was argued either that Germany had no proper tradition of crime fiction or that German crime fiction only came into being in the 1960s, when authors supposedly started to write crime narratives set in Germany that engaged with specifically German concerns.³ These claims gained purchase due to a complex set of factors: a deeply entrenched distinction between U- und E-Literatur (entertaining literature and serious literature),⁴ whose codified notions of quality discouraged research on so-called Trivialliteratur (trivial literature);⁵ German academia’s disinclination, even once crime fiction became a more legitimate area of study in the 1970s,⁶ to explore its own crime fiction heritage, focusing instead on Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle and British Golden Age writers;⁷ and a self-perpetuating acceptance of the critical status quo until a post-reunification generation of researchers began to reassess the field in the 1990s. As a result, important examples of German crime fiction were often ignored, such as Hans Fallada’s Jeder stirbt für sich allein (Alone in Berlin, 1947), as indeed were entire phases of crime fiction production, such as under National Socialism (1933–45).⁸ As recently as 2008, Edition Köln’s publicity slogans for two series reissuing neglected primary works were as follows: ‘German-language crime fiction has no tradition? True. But it could have one’ and ‘Edition Köln – the publisher that’s writing (crime) history’.⁹

In addition, a narrow critical focus on German crime fiction as ‘crime fiction from Germany’ rather than ‘crime fiction in German’ has tended to minimize the contribution of Swiss, Austrian and East German crime narratives to a German-language crime writing tradition.¹⁰ The scholarly separation of Germany’s crime fiction from that of other German-speaking countries may reflect certain value judgements (that they are ‘minor’ crime corpora due to the small size of the countries concerned and/or the negative assessment of their literary worth),¹¹ or an overzealous attitude to scholarly categorization (wishing to keep the outputs of different nations separate). However, a Germany-centred approach is limiting, because it excludes seminal crime novels and misses the opportunity to trace the similarities, differences and dialogues between the crime fiction of the four countries.¹² Obvious examples are the Swiss crime novels of Friedrich Glauser and Friedrich Dürrenmatt, which portray the Switzerland of the 1930s and 1950s, but also address the country’s uneasy relationship with Germany before, during and after National Socialism. Both authors have also undoubtedly had a lasting influence in and beyond the German-speaking world. Accordingly, this volume includes chapters on crime fiction in specific national contexts, exploring the distinctive features of German, Austrian and Swiss crime, but also offers an integrated overview of German-language crime fiction in the ‘Chronology of Crime Fiction in German’ and in the chapter that follows.

This chapter will examine key terminology relating to crime fiction in German and provide a diachronic overview of its development. Spatial constraints prohibit an exhaustive survey: Jockers and Jahn’s 2005 Lexikon der deutschsprachigen Krimi-Autoren (Encyclopedia of German-language Crime Authors) contains 600 contemporary writer entries alone, most of whom have authored multiple works. The aim is rather to highlight important texts and trends, alongside industry and publishing milestones. Particular attention is paid to areas that are touched on, but not covered in detail in other chapters, such as National Socialist and East German crime fiction, the 1970s Soziokrimi (social crime novel) and Turkish-German crime fiction. In common with the volume’s other chapters, the overview draws on a wide range of German- and English-language criticism, and places its discussion in the larger contexts of social, political and historical events.

Der Krimi

The crime novel is affectionately known as der Krimi in the German-speaking world – an abbreviation of the noun der Kriminalroman (the crime novel) – and is used as shorthand to describe all varieties of crime novel from the psychological thriller to the police procedural. However, it is worth noting a long-standing distinction between the Kriminalroman and the Detektivroman (the detective novel) in the reception of German-language crime fiction, which allows an appreciation of different narrative approaches taken by crime authors. Definitions vary from critic to critic, but Richard Alewyn provides the following summation: ‘the Kriminalroman tells the story of a crime; the Detektivroman tells the story of the solving of a crime’.¹³ As Heinrich Henel usefully elaborates,

the crime narrative first acquaints the reader with the perpetrator, then with the crime, and lastly with the consequences of the crime; it is interested in the psychological developments that led to the crime … The detective narrative is the opposite. It begins with the discovery of the body, reconstructs the crime using clues and tracks down the criminal at the end; it is interested in the intellectual work of the detective, so that the perpetrator’s motives only function as clues or as a means of securing the legal aspects of the case.¹⁴

An example of the Kriminalroman in its purest form is Ingrid Noll’s satirical crime novel Die Apothekerin (The Pharmacist, 1994), in which a perpetrator relates the story of a series of murders, with the police playing a minor role. The first quarter of the narrative focuses on the events leading up to the first murder and explores the murderer’s motivation, thereby contrasting with a Detektivroman such as Jakob Arjouni’s Happy Birthday, Türke! (Happy Birthday, Turk!, 1987), which shows the crime at the beginning of the narrative, and only reveals the perpetrator and motive through the rational deductions of the detective at its end. The Detektivroman is often explored by German critics through reference to classic detective narratives and iconic detectives (Poe’s Dupin, Conan Doyle’s Holmes, Georges Simenon’s Maigret and Agatha Christie’s Poirot),¹⁵ but applies equally to later police-led investigations (such as Nele Neuhaus’s ‘Bodenstein and Kirchhoff’ series, 2006–), or noir detective fiction featuring private investigators (such as Arjouni’s ‘Kayankaya’ series, 1987–2012). Predominantly, the distinction between the two types of narrative rests on the perspective from which it is told – that of the perpetrator or the investigator. However, it is entirely possible for crime narratives to carry elements of both approaches through the adoption of a dual perspective, thereby creating hybrid forms, as seen in Jan Costin Wagner’s ‘Kimmo Joentaa’ series (2003–), which alternates between the perpetrator’s and the policeman’s point of view, and pays detailed attention to the psychology of both.

A number of subgenres are referenced in discussions of German-language crime fiction, many of which draw on other national crime-writing traditions. Examples include the Rätselkrimi (puzzle crime novel), influenced by British Golden Age writers such as Christie;¹⁶ the Soziokrimi (social crime novel), shaped by Swedish authors Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö;¹⁷ the Polizeikrimi (police novel/ police procedural), which draws on Simenon’s Belgian ‘Maigret’ series, the French roman policier and the works of Sjöwall and Wahlöö;¹⁸ the Frauenkrimi, which grew from the work of Anglo-American authors such as Sara Paretsky and Val McDermid;¹⁹ der psychologische Krimi or Psychothriller (psychological crime novel/ thriller), influenced by American author Patricia Highsmith,²⁰ and the Privatermittler (private investigator) crime narrative, which emerged belatedly from the hard-boiled tradition of Hammett and Chandler.²¹ Unsurprisingly, given the rich and turbulent history of German-speaking countries, der historische Krimi (historical crime novel)²² also plays a prominent role, particularly in post-1945 crime fiction. These subgenres frequently overlap with one another, making rigid categorization impossible and undesirable: for example, a historical crime novel such as Richard Birkefeld and Göran Hachmeister’s Wer übrig bleibt, hat recht (To the Victor the Spoils, 2002) also contains elements of the police novel and psychological crime. Hybrid crime novels by ‘literary’ authors must also be acknowledged, as they constitute some of the most powerful and innovative works in the field: examples include Patrick Süskind’s Das Parfum – Die Geschichte eines Mörders (Perfume – The Story of a Murderer, 1985), East German author Jurek Becker’s Bronsteins Kinder (Bronstein’s Children, 1986) and Austrian Nobel Prizewinning novelist Elfriede Jelinek’s Gier (Greed, 2000; see Marieke Krajenbrink’s analysis in chapter 3 on Austrian crime).

At first glance there may be few contemporary subgenres – such as the Regionalkrimi (regional crime novel) or the Öko-Krimi (ecological crime novel highlighting environmental concerns) – that appear to be home-grown, but as this volume will show, German-language crime writers have taken narrative forms from British, American and European arenas and made them their own, refining and extending them in the context of their individual cultures and national concerns. For example, many German-language crime narratives draw on long-standing traditions of political satire in magazines, cabaret and literature, resulting in blackly humorous critiques of past and present society (see chapters 3, 6 and 7 on Austrian, women’s and historical crime). This is a process of acculturation in its complex, modern sense. As Eva Kushner and Milan Dimic argue,

[i]n the past, acculturation has often manifested itself through the dominance of an invading or invasive culture over another … Yet, it can be shown that the receptor culture, far from being passive, has the ability to appropriate and transform the invader culture which in turn undergoes acculturation, a dynamic of great complexity, never at a standstill.²³

Here, then, acculturation is figured as a vibrant cross-fertilization that leads to innovation on the part of the receptor culture rather than simply reproducing existing cultural forms. However, it should be emphasized that German-language crime fiction has also been shaped by its own crime-writing heritage, for in the case of the early detective story, it was German-speaking crime writers who led the way.

The pioneers (1828–1933)

Scholars begin the history of German-language crime fiction in different places. Some, like Winfried Freund, view early works by major writers as origin texts: Friedrich Schiller’s Kriminalbericht (crime report) Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre (The Criminal of Lost Honour, 1786), which is based on a genuine case, Heinrich von Kleist’s Der Zweikampf (The Duel, 1811) and E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Das Fräulein von Scudéri (Mademoiselle de Scudéri, 1819), set in France during the reign of Louis XIV.²⁴ However, as Ailsa Wallace argues, ‘concentrating on the canonical “greats” of German literature’, perhaps in order ‘to invoke respectability for the German tradition of crime writing’, can result in overlooking the works of less famous authors who are the true innovators in the field.²⁵ By contrast, Hans-Otto Hügel’s groundbreaking 1978 study of nineteenth-century German detective stories excavates an arguably more detailed and precise history of popular German crime, and it is this developmental arc that Mary Tannert foregrounds in chapter 2 of the volume.²⁶

Tannert explores the emergence of German-language crime fiction in the context of its relatively early maturity: Adolph Müllner’s Der Kaliber (The Caliber, 1828), the first German-language detective story, was published a full thirteen years before the text usually regarded as the model for the genre, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841). She shows how Müllner, Otto Ludwig and other nineteenth-century authors from German-speaking Europe were crime-writing pioneers: influenced by Romanticism, the Enlightenment and manifold legal advances in the German-speaking world, they developed the detective story ahead of...