Illusions of Subtlety: Bernhard Schlink’s Der Vorleser and The Moral Limits of Holocaust Fiction

In presenting the case of SS guard Hanna Schmitz from the perspective of her young lover, Bernhard Schlink’s award‐winning Der Vorleser would seem to represent that cutting edge of Holocaust literature interested in depicting per‐petrators in a more nuanced fashion. However, this gesture toward complexity – a welcome trend in itself – is not ultimately supported by the text, which insistently obscures Hanna’s role in a series of crimes against humanity. The likeable narrator’s attempt to come to terms with the Holocaust, which is espoused as exemp‐lary, proves in the end to rely on a problematic conception of dual victimisation: of Hanna as victim of circumstance, and of himself as victim of Hanna. This essay draws liberally upon reception data in order to discover the manner in which the novel exploits a number of entrenched assumptions on the part of readers. Chief among these are 1) the diffuse sense that confronting the Holocaust presents a demanding burden, rendering present day observers as victims of a sort; and 2) the presupposition that moral sophistication – an attribute with which Der Vorleser has been frequently credited – is tantamount to indecision or undecidability. The real ‘limits’ to Holocaust fiction are thus found to inhere within both the critical climate and the unfulfilled ambitions of the novel.