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Arts, Books, Legal, Society

Book Review: ‘The Collini Case’

Intro: Fabrizio Collini is a hard working, quiet and respectable man. Until the day he visits one of Berlin’s most luxurious hotels and kills an innocent man in cold blood. A murder. A murderer. No motive

ONE

IT was routine during the Second World War that both Germans and the Allies shot civilians in reprisal for attacks on their armed forces. One would be alarmed to think that a ratio could even be set at which such killings could be deemed legitimate. Yet, in 1941, Hitler set the bar at 100 civilians per soldier. Indifference aside, one would be tempted to ask how high is too high?

It is this question which fundamentally plagued the defence of an Italian man, Fabeizio Collini, some sixty years later. The Collini Case, by Ferdinand von Schirach, is based upon that historical trial.

Since the Nazi regime ended in cataclysmic defeat, like many of his generation, and some contemporaries even with a comparable heredity, von Schirach (born in 1964) is, not surprisingly, still dealing with the fall-out. That seems implicitly written into this philosophical legal thriller.

Collini, a very large man, purports to be a journalist. He walks into a luxury hotel suite in Berlin and murders Hans Meyer, the old man he has arranged to interview. Located near the Brandenburg Gate, he repeatedly shoots him from behind, and stamps his skull until it no longer resembles a skull. Collini sits in the hotel lobby and waits to be arrested by the police. Von Schirach describes the killing and post mortem with an entirely appropriate, but eerie economy and use of words.

Collini admits he did it, but the motive for doing so is unapparent. He refuses to say why he committed murder, and indeed says next to nothing.

A young and recently graduated defence lawyer, named Caspar Leinen, is assigned the case. It is his first, but it seems hopeless. His client refuses to say anything, except that he is not interested in being defended. Leinen discovers that the murdered man was a rich industrialist, who was also the grandfather of Leinen’s closest school friend, Philipp, who is now dead, killed in a car crash. Leinen used to spend holidays on the Meyer’s country estate, and fell in love with Philipp’s sister, Johanna. She insists he can’t defend this monster who had murdered her grandfather, the benign old man with whom Casper used to play chess. Leinen considers withdrawing from the case given the conflict of interest that arises, but is deterred from doing so after a conversation with a famous and highly respected defence lawyer, Mattinger, who made his name by successfully defending members of the Baader-Meinhof terrorists, and was a strong believer and advocate of the constitutional state (founded on law). Leinen is convinced and commits himself to Collini’s defence. As it happened, Mattinger becomes recruited by the Meyers Corporation as an accessory prosecutor, and becomes Leinen’s main opponent in the trial.

TWO

WERE it not for the fact that the trial had to be unexpectedly interrupted due to the illness of one of the judges, the case would have been briskly concluded and Leinen would have lost. Instead, he has an extra ten days to pursue a line of inquiry that, if successful, might well mean Collini being discharged.

All at once, the novel becomes a meditation on the law, a discussion of the difference between judicial guilt and moral culpability. Von Schirach’s characteristically spare prose could have been written with an icicle. He uses fewer adjectives than the opening by-line to this novel by Hemingway, resolutely refusing to impose emotions on the reader. Although the spectre of the Nazi past broods over this book, it is not about then, but now. In an article in Der Spiegel, written a few years ago when the book was first published in German, von Schirach maintained that he was more interested in the present than of the generations before him. In the author’s own words The Collini Case is a ‘book about the crimes committed in our state, about vengeance, guilt and the things we continue to fail at even today.’

Nevertheless, we cannot detach that the things we do today have a history. The law in any country is a complex historical document and the past it embeds continually reaches out its cold fingers to touch the present. A note at the end of the book informs the reader that this novel was a point of reference for a public inquiry into the mark left on the German Ministry of Justice by the Nazi past.

The impact of the novel’s 180 or so pages, in which not a word is wasted, is far greater than any legal thriller treble its size. The importance of the ideas contained within the narrative, combined with the meticulous unemotional prose, provides the reader with a book that is both fascinating and moving.

THREE

THE CASE draws upon the Statute of Limitations, but the existence of that law raises a philosophical point which von Schirach doesn’t really address: to what extent do we remain responsible for acts committed long ago? Is a man in his seventies like Hans Meyer the same person in his twenties? Statutes of limitations, which are found in most European legal codes (but not in ours) recognise that liability for even terrible crimes may expire.

The novel is written in a dry, flat style, but it is extremely persuasive. The trial scenes are excellent and well-thought through, and von Schirach confronts the question of the limitations of the law by inviting us to ask what justice is. Mattinger tells Leiten that ‘judges can’t decide according to what seems politically correct. If Meyer acted correctly by the standards of the time, we can’t blame him for it today.’ Leiten disagrees, believing that we can judge the past because ‘we’ve made progress.’ Mattinger says this opinion is an expression of the ‘zeitgeist’: ‘I believe in the laws and you believe in society. We’ll see who turns out to be right.’

It would take a dull reader of this tense and taut book not to ponder over the questions being asked: are we entitled to judge the past? If so, how far back should that extend? The Collini Case is disturbing precisely because there is no conclusive answer to be given. Even with Collini, who has acted with certainty, ends by saying ‘sorry for everything’. Yet, he accompanies this apology to Casper Leinen with a photograph which asserts that his act of revenge was indeed just. The reader may agree, while remaining aware of the implications of going beyond the law to rectify the failures, or apparent failure, of the Law and the legal system.

The German legal system of the mid twentieth-century was often described as being knotty, tangled and convoluted, perhaps because many of its secrets stemmed directly from the War. Or, maybe, because the contemporary German legal system is so dramatically unlike that which exists in Britain, one could easily find oneself forgetting that Collini’s trial is set in the twenty-first century.

As a character, Leinen would seem more at home in the 1930s. The reader could qualify this through his daily routine which, to all intent and purposes, is fairly grey and timeless. His legal colleagues may speak in court of the zeitgeist, but that zeitgeist is rarely on show in this novel. For Leinen, for the prosecutor Mattinger – and conceivably too for von Schirach, himself a prominent German defence attorney – the reader may deduce or feel inclined to think that the long hours spent in chambers has precluded their full immersion in society. It is this lack and deficiency which contributes to the oppressive, grey mood that weighs down on the pages of this book.

The narrative isn’t a comfortable story, but it is an important one. It is well documented that von Schirach’s late grandfather, Baldur, was the Reich Youth Leader of the Nazi Party, sentenced to 20 years imprisonment at the Nuremberg trials. The Collini Case clearly resonates on a personal, but also on a more universal human level. Like the central hall of the law court itself, with the allegorical figures and lofty walls and high ceilings which overawe Leiden, which make him feel small relative to the law, the reader is likely to find him or herself surprisingly sucked into the perturbations of justice unfurled in this case.

Like the best murder and crime fiction novels, The Collini Case has a twist to it. The reader is left to think given the legal arguments that are presented from either side. Ferdinand von Schirach has a family history that lends a particular poignancy to this brief and compelling novel.

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Arts, Books, History, Scotland, Spain

Book Review: ‘Homage to Caledonia: Scotland and the Spanish Civil War’…

SCOTLAND: ANSWERING A CALL

SEVENTY FIVE years ago, in 1938, the International Brigades were disbanded. Never was there a better time to document and celebrate those Scots who fought, and often died, in the 20th century’s first international battle against fascism.

In many ways the term ‘Spanish Civil War’ is a misnomer. Most people knew it was no more than a rehearsal for an even bloodier conflict to come, and that the ideas being killed and died for – communism, revolution-ism, parliamentary democracy and fascism – would go on to shape the future of the entire world.

Some 549 men and women from Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow, Lothian farmlands and the Highlands are known to have left for what was then a distant and alien country. They went illegally, as the British Government had, shockingly, adopted a policy of non-intervention in the face of yet another European country falling to a Nazi ally.

The book, acknowledged in its foreword by Tony Benn as being ‘important and powerful’, is not only a culmination of extensive academic research but a personal gathering of information from relatives of those engaged in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.

The book, acknowledged in its foreword by Tony Benn as being ‘important and powerful’, is not only a culmination of extensive academic research but a personal gathering of information from relatives of those engaged in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.

Although the British, French, and American governments proclaimed support for the freely elected Spanish Republic, their every move in the war betrayed their preference for a victory by the rebel generals over a communist or, even worse, a revolutionary Spain. The Scottish volunteers crept over the border at Perpignan after an uncomfortable journey, many of them having covered long tracts of it on foot and with little to eat on the way. They fought together with Spaniards, Italians, Russians, Germans, Irish and many other nationalities at Albacete, Jarama, the Aragon Front and in the Battle for Madrid. More than 2000 British soldiers fought; over a quarter of those Scots that travelled never returned.

 

ALMOST a quarter of all British volunteers were from Scotland; more than most other countries by head of population. It was an extraordinary level of commitment, and defiance, for a small nation. People of all classes signed up for the fight against Franco’s version of ultra-conservative Catholicism, but the majority of those committed to the cause came from working-class areas such as Shettleston and Calton. Their stories, though, have never been adequately told. Daniel Gray has done them justice.

Mr Gray was perfectly placed in writing this book. A curator at the National Library of Scotland, he is in his element amongst archives and historical records, histories and memoirs. For Gray’s cleverly titled book, he has drawn on national and overseas sources, and has organised a very complex story into a well-constructed and compelling narrative. Daniel is a capable writer; his prose is unfussy, fluent and warm. Pointedly, he has squared the circle of producing accurate history while retaining a deep respect for those who archive and steward it. Homage to Caledonia is in no way hagiography – a chapter is dedicated on those Scots who supported Franco – but, Mr Gray’s admiration for those volunteers who risked their lives is subtle and elegant.

Daniel Gray has a remarkable intuitive sense in knowing when to let the soldiers, nurses and writers tell their own stories. Sydney Quinn’s testament, for instance, is expressed:

…Whenever I see the thousands of Spanish children streaming along the road away from the fascists, my thoughts revert back home, and I can see you and your brothers in the same circumstances if we don’t smash the fascist monsters here.

Mr Quinn wrote that paragraph to his family back in Glasgow on the eve of going into action against fascism.

Steve Fullarton wrote from the thick of battle:

… I found George Jackson lying stretched out. George came from Cowdenbeath … Charlie McLeod of Aberdeen was lying with his head on George Jackson’s chest. And Malcolm Smith was lying about a yard or so away. All were dead…

Gray studies the reasons for the Scots’ decision to volunteer. Over half were affiliated in one way or another to the Communist Party. Garry McCartney, a blacksmith from Dennistoun, commented:

…We weren’t fighting for communism; we just wanted to beat the fascists.

The personal letters of David Murray, a member of the Independent Labour Party, cast a fascinating light on Spanish anarchists and those who fought alongside them. The death of Larkhall’s Bob Smillie, for instance, whose death to this day still divides the Scottish left – did he die of natural causes or was he kicked to death by Spanish Communists? Ethel Macdonald, the so called ‘Scottish Scarlet Pimpernel’, who reported from within the anarchist camp in Barcelona, vehemently documents the belief in the latter. Mr Gray’s chapter on MacDonald is a revealing examination of the fault-lines on both the Scottish and Spanish left.

 

FOR the men and women who went to fight, or to help in whatever capacity they could, doctrinal differences were of little or no importance. Rather, a sense of solidarity – amongst the Scots themselves and the volunteers from countless countries – and a sense of fighting at an historic and honourable moment:

…One day we shall tell our children about the defence of Madrid; this epic story can never die in the pages of world history. I think of Jock Cunningham from Coatbridge out in Spain… leading his men fearlessly and unafraid, dancing with death.

Daniel Gray has written a deeply moving account of one part of human history that is thought-provoking and vividly emotional, not only of those 549 Scottish people, but of two nations – Scotland and Spain – battling with an evil that would soon darken the whole of Europe.

– ‘Homage to Caledonia: Scotland and the Spanish Civil War’ written by Daniel Gray is published by Luath Press for £16.99. 

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Arts, Books, Britain, First World War, History

Book Review: Birdsong…

Birdsong, written by Sebastian Faulks, is an epic novel of World War I courage and turmoil.

Birdsong, written by Sebastian Faulks, is an epic novel of World War I courage and turmoil.

IN 1910, Stephen Wraysford, a junior executive in a textile firm, is sent by his company to northern France. Whilst in France he falls for Isabelle Azaire, a young and attractive matron who abandons her abusive husband, a wealthy textile baron, who sticks by Stephen long enough to conceive a child. Wrayford convinces her to leave a life of passionless comfort to be at his side, but things do not turn out according to plan. Wraysford is haunted by this doomed affair and carries it with him into the trenches of World War I.

Six years on, Stephen is back in France, as a British officer fighting in the trenches. Facing death and embittered by isolation of war, he steels himself against thoughts of love. But despite rampant disease, harrowing enemy tunnel explosions and desperate attacks on highly fortified German positions, he manages to survive, and to meet with Isabelle again. The emotions roiled up by this meeting, however, threaten to ruin him as a soldier. Everything about this masterly written novel is outsized, from its epic, if occasionally broken-down, narrative, to its gruesome and utterly convincing descriptions of battlefield horrors. Birdsong is enlivened with considerable historical detail related through accomplished prose. Sebastian Faulk’s narrative flows with a pleasingly appropriate recklessness that brings his characters to forceful and dynamic life.

Birdsong derives much of its incredible power from its descriptions of mud and blood, and Stephen Wrayford’s attempt to retain sanity and a scrap of humanity while surrounded by the Nazi onslaught. What becomes highly enthusing as the story progresses is the simultaneous description of his present-day granddaughter’s quest to read his diaries, though incomplete and difficult to read, is designed to give some sense of perspective and proportion. Birdsong is an unflinching, articulate fictional war story that rewards the reader with beautifully flowing use of the English language. Faulks deserves every accolade that has been heaped on him to date.

 

THE writing is impressive throughout. The writer’s prose is always exact and elegant and, on occasions, rises to real lyricism, without (cleverly) ever sounding forced. What makes Faulk’s style come to life is the authentic nature of the dialogue, a discourse that is well placed without the irritating linguistic anachronisms that so often blight historical novels set from the recent past. The experience of trench warfare, for instance, is made so vivid and clear that sometimes the reader may well be tempted to put Birdsong aside. But, it’s worth going on if such thoughts cross the mind because events are seen through the eyes of very well developed characters. The author is able to connect the central character, Stephen, with the reader in an extraordinarily adept way; one feels emotionally involved. A link exists with the modern era, through Wrayford’s granddaughter, who goes to great lengths in finding out more about her grandfather, whom she never knew, and who is stridently seeking to establish her own identity more definitively in the process. This establishes a sense of continuity with the past.

 

THE book starts before the war in Amiens, in 1910, when Wraysford has an intense love affair with a married woman that comes to an unsatisfactory end. Sexual passion is, no-doubt, a notoriously difficult subject to portray in a novel, but Faulks manages it with good demeanour and disposition.

The prose then shifts in time to 1916, when we encounter Stephen, already an officer promoted from the ranks, becomes trapped in the travails of the troglodytic netherworld of the Great War’s western front. The horrors of such experiences are depicted objectively; the facts are allowed to speak for themselves on countless occasions, and are all the more telling for that. But in Stephen Wraysford’s military character and being – despite the bestial filth of trenches, narrow underground tunnels, and random death – an ember of self-preservation resists annihilation. Faulks does exceptionally well in describing with clarity, and bracingly dramatises survival against all the odds.

Though fictional, Faulks has, undoubtedly, done his homework. The reader is left to feel that his descriptions of events are based on clearly documented facts and research. Some of the central scenes in the novel are set in a relatively unfamiliar context: that of the mining tunnels, for instance, that both sides constructed between their respective trench networks. The Allies and the Germans both dug these mines and countermines – sometimes, as Faulks illustrates, one side would succeed in detonating explosions that destroyed the enemy tunnels, killing the sappers or burying them alive. To describe the technicalities of this in fiction is no easy task, but Faulks manages it well by allowing his reader to see it through the eyes of one of the sappers.

From conveying the heart-rending anxieties of leading men over the top, Faulks moves to soften Wraysford’s increasingly cold fatalism with memories of his torrid pre-war liaison and love affair with Isabelle, a Frenchwoman. The affair ruined her life but produced a child whose daughter furnishes a vehicle for flash-forwards to the 1970s, when that granddaughter becomes curious about who Wraysford was. As typical of the “lost generation” of Britain, the Wraysford antihero realistically conveys what a waste, in terms of lives and psyches, the trench experience was.

 

DESPITE the masterfulness offered by Faulk’s, the book isn’t an unqualified success. There are distinctive aspects of Stephen’s character that are not wholly or satisfactorily resolved. This claim is laid bare when we consider that Wraysford didn’t know his parents. He was brought up, first by his grandparents, then in an institution, before being taken away by a man he didn’t know who became his legal guardian, but for whom he doesn’t care for. Here the novel becomes unclear. Stephen Wraysford’s level of education is left vague, though it appears higher than might otherwise be expected from his background. His religious views are also left somewhat nebulous and indefinable; he occasionally prays when under stress and, once, before an assault, he receives Holy Communion. For the most part, however, the reader may well come to the view that the central figure is an agnostic. On leave in England he has an experience of nature mysticism that has no connection with Christianity.

 

BIRDSONG ends on an affirmative note, when Elizabeth, Stephen’s granddaughter, gives birth to a baby whom she names after a boy, the son of one of the sappers, who died near Stephen after an attempt to extricate themselves from an underground tunnel enemy explosion. This could easily have been interpreted as being sentimental or over-symbolic but, whilst highly charged and very emotive, paid off because the theme fitted in with Elizabeth’s determination to discover her family history.

Sebastian Faulk’ Birdsong is an impressive and well-crafted achievement. The story, one that is based on the ruins of war and the indestructibility of love, will likely stay in your mind long after you close the book.

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