Bernhard Schlink

I've written before on this blog about Bernhard Schlink. My initial comments were limited to his novel, The Reader, which was later adapted for the screen. 

Let me be clear that while I think Schlink writes in an usually clean, crisp style, he's no Sebald. And as Frank knows, I measure all books written about the Second World War against Sebald's masterpiece, Austerlitz. 

But, introductions aside, I read a collection of Schlink's essays last week. They've been assembled as Guilt About the Past. 

The collection includes six lectures - and at least four of them are excellent. Schlink's best essay tackles the distinction between forgiveness and reconciliation. He begins by arguing that first-generation victims are reserved the right to forgive. But their children, and their children's children, are not guaranteed this right. 

Instead, they are entitled to a process loosely defined as reconciliation. For Schlink, reconciliation implies a coming to terms: a meeting of parties which moves beyond guilt and recrimination. 

Reconciliation is also characterized by Schlink as requiring a measure of understanding, whereas forgiveness is the converse: it requires neither emotional understanding nor a quest for the truth. The victim, in effect, must not be compelled to understand. A world of guilt remains - and will, forever.  

Schlink comments on other areas, too. It's clear that he feels strongly that third-generation Germans (those between 25 and 45) should not be held accountable for the actions of their grandparents, even if their grandparents played an active role in Germany's awful foray into national socialism. Schlink also argues that perpetrators should not be allowed, in his words, to "make it easier on themselves" by forgetting. Here, Schlink might have made a more explicit point regarding the nature of forgetting as it plays out in contemporary politics. Visit Germany and you'll see one vision of the Holocaust. Visit Poland or Romania, places where forgetting happens all together too much, and you'll see another. 

I was convinced by Schlink's generational argument, but only, I'll concede, to a point. With victims of the Holocaust still living, there's an equally compelling argument to be made that we have not entered the realm of reconciliation - and that forgiveness is not yet reserved for the victims alone.