Scan barcode
A review by selfmythologies
Märzgefallene by Volker Kutscher
4.0
in my review of the second book in the series i talked about how the political background almost disappeared behind the case. now this volume is the opposite of that. it's 1933 and our resident apolitical detective Rath finds out to his dismay that everything is political now*, and more than anything, it's police work.
as a consequence, there is a bigger focus than ever on capturing significant events of the time, specifically the Reichtagsbrand and its consequences, but also the way people reacted to them. i was curious about this - i think capturing a certain 'zeitgeist' in a novel is an incredibly difficult task if you want to paint a nuanced picture - but i think the book did well, overall. there is a sense of the world being turned upside down, established routines and convictions broken or disturbed (be it in institutions, at work or in everyday life), and the reactions to that are very mixed: there is support and blind-eyed euphoria, but also insecurity and a sense of bewilderment at the rapid changes, which felt very realistic to me.
i think Rath's family actually depicts this sort of reaction best: they are tried and true conservatives who have always held powerful positions and connections in the political sphere - now everything has changed, but they still believe that those same old connections and institutions that they used to believe in can restore 'the normal'. it's the blind-eyed belief that 'it can't actually be that bad' that I can totally imagine many people at the time held.
of course, besides the open support and the 'well let's just hope this Nazi craze will pass after a while', there's a third reaction, which is opposition. and that's where Charly is at. i loved her character development in this book, it's the best part for me. it's not like she suddenly turns heroic revolutionary - quite the opposite, actually. she is deeply shocked by what she witnesses on the streets, and she gets more and more uncomfortable with her workplace environment. she seems to be in a state of despair and almost depression a lot of the time in this book. she finally reached her career goal of making it into the police force as a woman, only to watch the democracy she believed in and wanted to work for be disintegrated. she wants to leave, but she also doesn't want to be a housewife. she's searching to get back a sense of purpose, a sense of agency. She finds a bit of it in helping out a young girl who escapes a psychiatry, and whose disturbing past also happens to connect to Rath's case.
i loved that arc.
Now Rath, as I mentioned, also has to grapple with being politically instrumentalized, and soon finds out that the new police president doesn't actually care about Rath solving his current case correctly as much as solving it in a way that benefits the optics of the new regime. Which goes against Rath's principles of solid police work, so he tries to find a way to get to the truth regardless.
The case itself has quite a lot of interesting mix-ups and questions of identity in it, as it turns out both first victim and suspected murderer aren't actually the people they were thought to be. There's a series of murders that connects back to something that happened during WW1, and a snobbish writer who wants to use the new political landscape to gain fame by accusing his Jewish former captain of war crimes. It's certainly interesting, but in its themes of 'making the past into propaganda' I found it to be a bit of a retread of the last book, which I loved and think did this a lot better. And the whole identity theft thing did seem pretty unrealistic at points, even beyond what's usual for these types of books.
That being said, it's not bad at all, and I really liked some characters (especially the suspected murderer's wife Eva Heinen).
But overall, in this book, the case is less interesting than the circumstances around it and how the characters react to them. It's not the first time Rath goes against his superiors and follows his own intuition in a case, but both he and the reader know that the stakes are much higher this time, and things have become genuinely dangerous for him if he directly opposes his orders. And as I mentioned, Charly's character arc was amazing, felt very realistic and sobering, and I really liked the general depictions of the time, with its sense of everything being....unhinged, taking on a new shape that people can't yet see entirely.
(The only thing I really wish, and that is my one genuine point of criticism, is that we got more perspectives of the victims of Nazi violence. there's an entire arc at the beginning about the hunting down of communists after the Reichstagsbrand, but we don't get a single perspective of an actual communist or even a moderate social democrat on what is going on. i don't need them to be glorified, but their perspective is crucially missing in a book that otherwise features characters of so many different political and social backgrounds - but none of those who were actually being tortured and murdered.)
*now i would of course say that everything has always been political, and that's the thing i constantly want to scream at this character, but I feel like Kutscher implies that Rath actually doesn't know shit about politics often enough
as a consequence, there is a bigger focus than ever on capturing significant events of the time, specifically the Reichtagsbrand and its consequences, but also the way people reacted to them. i was curious about this - i think capturing a certain 'zeitgeist' in a novel is an incredibly difficult task if you want to paint a nuanced picture - but i think the book did well, overall. there is a sense of the world being turned upside down, established routines and convictions broken or disturbed (be it in institutions, at work or in everyday life), and the reactions to that are very mixed: there is support and blind-eyed euphoria, but also insecurity and a sense of bewilderment at the rapid changes, which felt very realistic to me.
i think Rath's family actually depicts this sort of reaction best: they are tried and true conservatives who have always held powerful positions and connections in the political sphere - now everything has changed, but they still believe that those same old connections and institutions that they used to believe in can restore 'the normal'. it's the blind-eyed belief that 'it can't actually be that bad' that I can totally imagine many people at the time held.
of course, besides the open support and the 'well let's just hope this Nazi craze will pass after a while', there's a third reaction, which is opposition. and that's where Charly is at. i loved her character development in this book, it's the best part for me. it's not like she suddenly turns heroic revolutionary - quite the opposite, actually. she is deeply shocked by what she witnesses on the streets, and she gets more and more uncomfortable with her workplace environment. she seems to be in a state of despair and almost depression a lot of the time in this book. she finally reached her career goal of making it into the police force as a woman, only to watch the democracy she believed in and wanted to work for be disintegrated. she wants to leave, but she also doesn't want to be a housewife. she's searching to get back a sense of purpose, a sense of agency. She finds a bit of it in helping out a young girl who escapes a psychiatry, and whose disturbing past also happens to connect to Rath's case.
i loved that arc.
Now Rath, as I mentioned, also has to grapple with being politically instrumentalized, and soon finds out that the new police president doesn't actually care about Rath solving his current case correctly as much as solving it in a way that benefits the optics of the new regime. Which goes against Rath's principles of solid police work, so he tries to find a way to get to the truth regardless.
The case itself has quite a lot of interesting mix-ups and questions of identity in it, as it turns out both first victim and suspected murderer aren't actually the people they were thought to be. There's a series of murders that connects back to something that happened during WW1, and a snobbish writer who wants to use the new political landscape to gain fame by accusing his Jewish former captain of war crimes. It's certainly interesting, but in its themes of 'making the past into propaganda' I found it to be a bit of a retread of the last book, which I loved and think did this a lot better. And the whole identity theft thing did seem pretty unrealistic at points, even beyond what's usual for these types of books.
That being said, it's not bad at all, and I really liked some characters (especially the suspected murderer's wife Eva Heinen).
But overall, in this book, the case is less interesting than the circumstances around it and how the characters react to them. It's not the first time Rath goes against his superiors and follows his own intuition in a case, but both he and the reader know that the stakes are much higher this time, and things have become genuinely dangerous for him if he directly opposes his orders. And as I mentioned, Charly's character arc was amazing, felt very realistic and sobering, and I really liked the general depictions of the time, with its sense of everything being....unhinged, taking on a new shape that people can't yet see entirely.
(The only thing I really wish, and that is my one genuine point of criticism, is that we got more perspectives of the victims of Nazi violence. there's an entire arc at the beginning about the hunting down of communists after the Reichstagsbrand, but we don't get a single perspective of an actual communist or even a moderate social democrat on what is going on. i don't need them to be glorified, but their perspective is crucially missing in a book that otherwise features characters of so many different political and social backgrounds - but none of those who were actually being tortured and murdered.)
*now i would of course say that everything has always been political, and that's the thing i constantly want to scream at this character, but I feel like Kutscher implies that Rath actually doesn't know shit about politics often enough