Top German author confronts his grandfather's Nazi past in new book | Crime fiction

Top German author confronts his grandfather's Nazi past in new book

It's probably fair to say that Ferdinand von Schirach has become one of Germany's top authors in spite of, not because of, his famous surname. His grandfather was Baldur von Schirach, a Nazi who headed the Hitler Youth and was eventually sentenced to 20 years for crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg war trials.

Ever since Von Schirach junior started to dominate the German bestseller lists two years ago, the 47-year-old lawyer-turned-author has had to field questions about his forebears – despite the fact that his short crime stories were based on the criminals he had defended rather than those sitting above him in his family tree.

Now he has decided to publicly confront his ancestry in his work by including a character based on his grandfather in his latest book.

"I felt the need to finally write something myself about national socialism, or more precisely, about what the federal republic has done with its legacy," he said in an interview with the weekly Die Zeit.

"If you grow up with a name like mine, by the time you are 15 or 16 at the latest, you have to ask yourself some basic questions and come up with some very basic answers that you can live with. It's your responsibility," he told Focus magazine.

Von Schirach's latest, The Collini Case, is a thriller which tells the story of Caspar Leinen, a young lawyer who has to defend an Italian murderer called Fabrizio Collini. On page three we learn that Collini admits killing a German manufacturer called Hans Meyer by shooting him four times in the back of the skull before stamping on his head so hard the heel of his shoe breaks. The mystery of the novel is why he did it.

It emerges that the victim, Meyer, was the grandfather of Leinen's childhood best friend who became a father figure for the lawyer. After much soul-searching, Leinen decides to take the brief, only to discover that Meyer was responsible for shooting Italian partisans during the second world war.

The resulting novel is a classic example of what is known in Germany as vergangenheitsbewältigung, the process of dealing with the past. It is also concerned with the guilt felt by generations of Germans born after the Holocaust.

In an essay in Der Spiegel magazine this week, Von Schirach describes the day he found out who his grandfather was. "I was 12," he wrote. "In our history book there was a photo of him: 'Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler Youth'. I can still see it now."

He could not comprehend how his grandfather, a cultured, well-read man, came to join the Nazi party aged 18 after meeting Hitler.

He said he later studied the Nuremberg Trials in order to "try to understand" how the Holocaust happened, and reads of how his grandfather – "the so-called cultured person with a box at the Viennese Opera" – orchestrated the deportation of thousands of Jews from Vienna's main station.

In an interview this week with the tabloid Bild, Von Schirach said it was "no coincidence" that his latest work featured a grandfather with a murky past.

Von Schirach's first two books, both volumes of short stories, sold over one million copies in German-speaking countries alone and was translated into 32 languages. With a stream of good reviews and a top 10 position in Spiegel's bestseller list next week already confirmed, The Collini Case looks to follow suit.

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