Now I have somewhat revived this blog, I find myself getting too prolix. The Collini novel is going to produce several overlong posts. But I intend to be briefer after that.
Many years ago I specifically constructed a concise post. I was actually praised for this. But I never did it again. It always takes more time to be concise.
Friedrich von Schirach, Der Fall Collini 2011
This novel was recently discussed online by the ITI GerNet book group run by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson. I did write a review of it for the ITI Netzblatt, but if anyone likes reading crime fiction, go ahead and try it. It is well paced and easy to read. From the start we know who the murderer was – the novel is about why Collini killed.
Spoilers may follow.
Schirach was a lawyer when at the age of 45 he first published fiction. He wrote short real-crime stories, and he also wrote theatre productions with audience involvement. All were widely translated and globally successful. But this was his first novel.
The novel was well received in the UK and USA. Reviewers liked the plain style. (This reminds me of the praise heaped on Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos). There is more complexity in the German-language reviews.
But rather than repeating my own review and giving away most of the story, I am interested in two points which need not hold the reader up.
Change in German law
Firstly, the main focus of this novel was probably the 1968 German law that changed the time limits for prosecution of accessories to Third-Reich crimes. Suddenly, some time limits were reduced to 20 years, meaning that no prosecutions of these offences could be started later than 1965-ish. Thus, for example, if Italian partisans were killed as revenge, the only person guilty of murder was the person who ordered the killing; the actual killers were seen as accessories to murder and after twenty years had passed, they were now exempt from prosecution.
Unfortunately, it is not easy to embed this law in a crime novel.
And it would be good for readers first to have an overview of the approach of criminal law to Third-Reich atrocities from the very beginning. In both West Germany and East Germany.
The change in time limits is known as the Dreher-Gesetz, after Eduard Dreher, a former Nazi judge who was an official in the Justice Ministry. It was smuggled into a multi-purpose statute called Einführungsgesetz zum Gesetz über Ordnungswidrigkeiten (Introductory Act to the Act on Administrative Offences), which dealt with criminal offences too. It was mainly intended to decriminalize trivial offences, but in fact it also decriminalized some more serious ones.
This is the subparagraph (Absatz) inserted in 1968, as quoted at the end of the novel:
(2) Fehlen besondere persönliche Eigenschaften, Verhältnisse oder Umstände (besondere persönliche Merkmale), welche die Strafbarkeit des Täters begründen, beim Teilnehmer, so ist dessen Strafe nach den Vorschriften über die Bestrafung des Versuchs zu mildern.
In Andrea Bell’s translation:
2. If none of the special personal qualities, circumstances or conditions (special distinguishing features) forming grounds for the penal liability of the perpetrator of a crime are present in an accessory to it, then the accessory’s penalty is to be mitigated in line with the regulations on the penalty for an attempted crime.
(This is OK, but I would rephrase it somewhat.)
The situation was more complex than stated here, in that the West German parliament was in the process of changing the law on limitation: this subparagraph undermined this process, though it was voted through by the Bundestag in 1968, its effect being downplayed or overlooked.
An excellent and full source of information is Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung – here is an article on this subject, Amnestie von NS-Tätern – Das “Dreher-Gesetz” von 1968.
An article by Richard A. Fuchs, Germany’s Justice Ministry and its Nazi past.
This refers to the Rosenburg files, the 2016 result of an investigation into the change of law initiated by Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger in 2012, the year after Der Fall Collini was published.
Comments on the English translation of the novel follow in the next post.
A holding post, there is heavier stuff to come.
These bollards mark the City of London – the square mile. (I did not go to the Lady Mayor’s Show today). It seems there is a book about them now, Bollardology. They are described as distinctive black bollards with their red stars and lemon-squeezer tops. I expect there is more to be known.
Last Tuesday I saw something strange in Chiswell Street.
The weblog has successfully moved to Hostinger UK. Domainfactory is in the process of migrating sites and email accounts elsewhere, which I was too stupid to see coming, despite their April email to me. Still, the rest of the site and the email will probably follow.
I will continue to post occasionally. How far the posts will relate to legal translation I can’t say. It does seem odd that my main achievement and work interest for forty years was something it’s very hard to make a living from now and for writings about which there is probably no public. But who knows?
This site is currently being moved to a UK provider – and not deleted. Further signs of life may be expected.
A few notes, just in case I don’t stop blogging
1. Bernstein
Richard K. Bernstein died on 15 April 2025, the 22nd anniversary of my blog. Obituaries are available. He was 90, so he made it longer than Pope Francis.
Richard Bernstein’s diabetes book tells a fascinating story: at 12, in 1946, diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Pumped full of insulin. In his early thirties, alive but with health problems. An engineer. The first diabetic to test his own blood sugar at home. Not allowed to buy a testing device, but his wife was a doctor. It weighed 8 kilos, I think (this is all from memory. Tested several times a day and developed a strict low-carbohydrate diet, his health problems vanished and he lived a normalish life.
As a non-physician he was not able to publish his findings. He therefore qualified as a doctor himself and was able to publish, and set up a diabetes practice himself.
I accidentally stumbled on his death notice when I was thinking about diabetes as I had decided to try an NHS prediabetes course. My eldest brother was diagnosed in his 50s. I am not so insulin resistant and have been prediabetic on and off for years. The course is run by something called “Thrive Tribe”. Enough said.
2. Upminster
Diamond Geezer on Upminster as the Easternmost part of London, for Easter!
He has done all the anoraky stuff on establishing which shopping parade is the easternmost in London – it’s in Cranham. He has the easternmost Caffé Nero – for some reason he overlooked Costa, but the local man has a reputation for not letting his staff have tips etc. so that’s OK.
Die Welt, 18 April 2025
Building for a new housing area in Stein uncovered the centre of Wallenstein’s camp in 1632, which was over 16 km long. 13,000 trees had to be felled for it. There were three gallows and a wheel with the body parts of someone who had been quartered.
Wallenstein residierte im Süden des Lagers in einem zerlegbaren Holzhaus. Aus Böhmen war seine silberne Badewanne mitgebracht worden. Golo Mann vermerkt, dass der Generalissimus Kräuterbäder nahm, gerne Rebhühner aß und Weizenbier trank. Vermutlich auch Erdbeeren genoss, es war ja Erdbeerzeit.
Gustav Adolf was established in Nuremberg and Wallenstein aimed to starve his army out.
I just accidentally noticed this significant date. I may remove this whole blog from the Web in the near future as I am no longer updating it and its post-Brexit survival on a German site with UK registration is complicating my life. It’s been fun!
Two photos from Fürth.
In the Jewish Museum there is one room whose roof can be removed and replaced by branches, where the family who lived there could stay during the Feast of Tabernacles (Laubhüttenfest/Sukkot). This is a shot of it:
This is a balcony in Friedrichstraße – according to the famous FürthWiki this is a tabernacle, built in 1907: “Balkonanbau, vermutlich Sukka, von Adam Egerer, 1907″:
And here is an advert for the Fürth football team, Greuther Fürth, as seen in Nuremberg Airport in both February and September 2023:
I know things are bad in this country – I know courts have been closed (even without containing RAAC), I know legal aid has been cut, I know prisons are overcrowded (while the government calls for more and harsher sentences) – but this still doesn’t sit very well with me.
A court in Karlsruhe decides against extradition of Albanian man ‘in view of the state of the British prison system’.
A German court has refused to extradite to the UK a man accused of drug trafficking because of concerns about prison conditions in Britain, in what is thought to be the first case of its kind.
This was the Oberlandesgericht.
Karlsruhe higher regional court in south-west Germany made its decision earlier this year, and it has only recently been made public.
A translation of the court report said: “The court decided that the extradition of the Albanian to Britain was ‘currently inadmissible’. Without British guarantees, extradition is not possible in view of the state of the British prison system. There are no legal remedies against this.”
The man was arrested by German police and held in extradition custody.
His defence lawyer, Jan-Carl Janssen had studied in Glasgow and had written a thesis that looked at UK prison conditions.
In court, Janssen cited his research about chronic overcrowding, staff shortages and violence among inmates in British prisons. On the back of this evidence, the German court sought reassurances on two occasions from the UK authorities about prison conditions there.
The court said guarantees from the UK of compliance with minimum standards in accordance with the European convention on human rights were required. In addition, the court asked the British authorities to specify which prisons the Albanian man was going to be detained in and what his conditions of detention would be in those prisons.
A police station in Manchester replied to the court’s first request on the final day of the deadline for a response, saying 20,000 extra prison places were being built to deal with the problem of overcrowding. The second request for reassurance about UK prison conditions received no response from the UK.
…Since the UK is no longer a member of the EU, the rules of the European arrest warrant no longer apply.
It does look as though similar decisions have been made in Ireland and the Netherlands. It does sound rather weak to promise that the UK is building prisons for 20,000 more people.
From the Frankfurter Rundschau:
In dem neueren Fall hatte der Verdächtige einen Anwalt, der so etwas wie ein Experte für den Zustand der britischen Gefängnisse war. Jan-Carl Janssen schrieb seine Dissertation über das Strafvollzugssystem in England, Wales und Schottland und führte vor Gericht seine Untersuchungen zu Themen wie chronische Überbelegung, Personalmangel und Gewalt unter Insassen an. Er sagte auch, dass einige Zellen zu klein, zu dunkel und schlecht belüftet sind.
That’s a one-year LL.M. dissertation btw.
Here is Jan Carl Janssen and here is his book on prison conditions.
LATER NOTE: A report on this case on Udo Vetter’s blog, with four comments (glad the UK is out of the EU, especially because the right of silence has been weakened). Not yet references to how a prisoner escaped from Wandsworth last week. Udo gives the file number of the German case: 301 OAus 1/23
(Excuse the lack of spaces between sections – I don’t understand the latest edition of WordPress)
On the platform formerly known as Twitter, Mary Aspinall-Miles (followed by 27 people I follow) wrote:
May I ask a question about criminal justice language: When did the word “perpetrators/perp” start getting wide-scale use in the UK generally?
After the pandemic when we all started watching too many US cop shows on Netflix?
Has it though? I don’t hear this at work: it’s suspect / offender / nominal / defendant; and very occasionally accused / subject / target / person of interest. I think it may be more common in victim support services, maybe ?
In the light of concerns about the Ben Butler case in June 2016, this post by Sarah Phillimore attempts to explain the law that will apply in the family courts when a child has been hurt and there are a number of adults who could have done it – the so called ‘pool of perpetrators’.
In Re B (Children: Uncertain Perpetrator) [2019] EWCA Civ 575, [2019] 2 FLR 211 (“Re B: 2019″), Peter Jackson LJ clarified the proper approach in respect of uncertain perpetrator cases and the concept of a pool of perpetrators.
A person who perpetrates something, esp. a crime or evil deed.
Estemed as menquellers and perpetratours of most wicked factes.
, Actes & Monumentes (revised edition) vol. I. 110/2
…
The actor or absolute perpetrator of the crime.
, Commentaries on Laws of England vol. IV. iii. 341796…What is often said..of other crimes..if the perpetrator be sufficiently illustrious, it becomes a virtue.
, Book-hunter (1863) 1831951Harington was the Queen’s godson—clever,..naughty, a light~weight, perpetrator of puns and practical jokes.
, English Past 241995
He wanted the perpetrators captured and executed.
, Op-center xx. 100