Bernhard Schlink

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Bernhard Schlink
20050201-017p Bernhard Schlink Fondation Maeght Saint-Paul.jpg
Schlink, Fondation Maeght, February 2005
Born Bernhard Schlink
6 July 1944 (1944-07-06) (age 79)
Bielefeld, Germany
Occupation Author, Professor, Judge
Nationality German
Notable works The Reader

Bernhard Schlink (born 6 July 1944 in Bielefeld) is a German lawyer and writer. He was born in Bethel, Germany, to a German father (Edmund Schlink) and a Swiss mother, the youngest of four children. Both his parents were theology students, although his father lost his job as a Professor of Theology due to the Nazis, and had to settle on being a pastor instead. Bernhard Schlink was brought up in Heidelberg from the age of two. He studied law at West Berlin’s Free University, graduating in 1968.[1]

Schlink became a judge at the Constitutional Court of the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia in 1988 and in 1992 a professor for public law and the philosophy of law at Humboldt University, Berlin. He retired in January 2006.

Career

Schlink studied law at the University of Heidelberg and at the Free University of Berlin. He had been a law professor at the University of Bonn and Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main before he started in 1992 at Humboldt University of Berlin. His career as a writer began with several detective novels with a main character named Selb—a play on the German word for "self"—(the first, Self's Punishment, co-written with de (Walter Popp) being available in the UK). One of these, Die gordische Schleife, won the de (Glauser Prize) in 1989.

In 1995 he published The Reader (Der Vorleser), a novel about a teenager who has an affair with a woman in her thirties who suddenly vanishes but whom he meets again as a law student when visiting a trial about war crimes. The book became a bestseller both in Germany and the United States and was translated into 39 languages. It was the first German book to reach the number one position in the New York Times bestseller list. In 1997 it won the Hans Fallada Prize, a German literary award, and the Prix Laure Bataillon for works translated into French. In 1999 it was awarded the Welt-Literaturpreis of the newspaper Die Welt.

In 2000, Schlink published a collection of short fiction called de (Flights of Love). A January 2008 literary tour, including an appearance in San Francisco for City Arts & Lectures, was cancelled due to Schlink's recovery from minor surgery.[citation needed]

In 2008 Stephen Daldry directed a film adaptation of The Reader. In 2010 his non-fiction political history, Guilt About the Past was published by Beautiful Books Limited (UK).

Schlink currently divides his time between New York and Berlin.[2]

Awards and honours

Bibliography

Literary works in German

  • 1962 Der Andere
  • 1987 Selbs Justiz (Self's Punishment; with Walter Popp)
  • 1988 Die gordische Schleife (The Gordian Knot), Zurich: Diogenes
  • 1992 Selbs Betrug, Zurich: Diogenes
  • 1995 Der Vorleser (The Reader), Zurich: Diogenes
  • 2000 Liebesfluchten (Flights of Love), Zurich: Diogenes
  • 2001 Selbs Mord (Self's Murder), Zurich: Diogenes
  • 2006 Die Heimkehr (Homecoming: A Novel), Zurich: Diogenes
  • 2008 Das Wochenende (The Weekend: A Novel), Zurich: Diogenes
  • 2010 Sommerlügen – Geschichten (~ Summer Lies: Stories), Zurich: Diogenes

Other works in German

  • 1976 Abwägung im Verfassungsrecht, Berlin: Duncker und Humblot
  • 1980 Rechtlicher Wandel durch richterliche Entscheidung: Beitraege zu einer Entscheidungstheorie der richterlichen Innovation, co-edited with Jan Harenburg and Adalbert Podlech, Darmstadt: Toeche-Mittler
  • 1982 Die Amtshilfe: ein Beitrag zu einer Lehre von der Gewaltenteilung in der Verwaltung, Berlin : Duncker & Humblot
  • 1985 Grundrechte, Staatsrecht II, co-authored with Bodo Pieroth, Heidelberg: C.F. Müller
  • 2002 Polizei- und Ordnungsrecht, co-authored with Bodo Pieroth and Michael Kniesel, Munich: Beck
  • 2005 Vergewisserungen: über Politik, Recht, Schreiben und Glauben, Zurich: Diogenes

Titles in English

References

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External links