Die Ermittlung (German Edition)

by Peter Weiss

Paperback, 1991

Status

Available

Call number

832.914

Genres

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

Suhrkamp Verlag (1991), Paperback, 240 pages

Description

The Investigation is a dramatic reconstruction of the Frankfurt War Crimes trials, based on the actual evidence given. This testimony, concerning Auschwitz and the atrocities which were enacted there, has been edited and extracted by Peter Weiss into a dramatic document that relies solely and completely on the facts for its effectiveness. There is no artistic license, no manipulation of facts and figures, no rearrangement of events for theatrical effect. Nameless witnesses stand and recall their appalling memories of Auschwitz, allowing us to bear witness to their painful and painstaking search for truth and, ultimately, justice. What emerges is a chastening and purging documentary of deeply moving power. Peter Weiss was born in 1916 and settled in Sweden before the outbreak of World War II. Apart from his writing, he was also well known as a painter, theatrical and operatic director, and a film maker. His magnificent playMarat/Sade, which is also available from Marion Boyars Publishers, established his reputation among English-speakling audiences as a revolutionary dramatist, and has continued to be a bestselling classic. He died in 1982.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member jburlinson

As with most holocaust literature, the reader (viewer) is staring at the Medusa's head of history. The act of reading is, by definition, an act of participation, which immediately precipitates a moral judgment on the reader, the writer, the characters (and their originals), nations, races, peoples,

God, etc. To read on is to wander deeper down a corridor that does not end. The simple questions "why?" and "how?" self-renew and none are given a chance to evade them, least of all the reader, who struggles vainly to remain passive, if not exempt. Why are you reading? How does this material exert a fascination that transcends the merely "hisorical"? Weiss does not "invent" anything; the text is drawn directly from the The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, 1963–1965, the largest, most public, and most important trial of Holocaust perpetrators conducted in West German courts. Weiss does, however, exert considerable control by reconstructing the utterances into free verse, creating "chapters" ironically entitled "songs" (e.g., "Song of the Swing", "Song of Cykklon B"), and utilizing numerous techniques to drain the performance of overt emotional display (or release). The accused are identified by name and number. The witnesses are identified only as numbers. The line between accuser and accused, in many cases, is razor thin. Direct exchange is rare, both accusers and accused respond only to questions by the judge, the prosecuting attorney, and counsel for the defense. Speeches are declaimed, puntuated occasionally by such directions as (the always distasteful) "The Accused laugh". I well remember seeing a televised version of this play when I was a teenager -- 40+ years ago. Even then, I was both riveted and appalled, as much by the fact that such material was being offered as "entertainment" of some weird (yet genuine) kind. My copy of the text is a used book, with many pencilled markings by my predecessor, who must have been preparing to play a role in a production. Words, phrases, lines, even whole sections are highlighted, excised, revised. Some of the choices are fascinating, leading to speculations that only enhance the reading experience. Some are easily explainable, with more explicit language being replaced by something blander (as when "[they] inspected our rectums / and our sexual organs" is changed to "inspected our bodies.") Other revisions are harder to understand; why, for example, systematically change the word "texts" to "books"? Why pencil a huge question mark next to this passage: "One of them came up to us / and shouted / Prisoners / See that smoke behind the barracks / That smoke / is your wives and children / And for you too now that you're in here / there's onlly one way out / Up through the soot in the chimneys." There are a lot of why's.

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