“Aasplatz: A Presumption of Innocence” by Manfred Wieninger

Luckily for bad conscience is the truth, unlike the popular saying that not always to light. But even if deeds and perpetrators are well known, the guilty need to worry as long as key actors spread over everything a blanket merciful oblivion. And in the case of crimes before the early summer of 1945 like “the public” eh hear no more. Finally, the young state Austria had declared in its founding document ( “treaty”) from 1955 to victims of the nation and thus relieves general high official in its entirety.

As a result, Austrian courts have even canceled final judgments in arrears of invalidity or similar reasons and set the convicted offender released.

Now dares to Austrian author Manfred Wieninger, like a moth, a little hole through the rug eat, and opens a Pandora’s box. As has born in August 1945, an illegitimate child of a certain Theodor Amlinger one Anna Koinegg. Twelve years later, she filed a complaint against him because she feared for her custody.

All this happened in Jennersdorf, an ultra-conservative backwater close to the Hungarian border, where the “Aasplatz” a garbage dump, so infernally [stinks like] not even a Teufelsfurz.

Explosiveness won the matter only because women Koinegg made clear almost incidentally (and the police station of Jennersdorf dutifully logged) that the child’s father anno ’45 was different from his SS colleague stock sober when they complied their command to shoot twenty-nine Hungarian Jewish forced laborers , These were as interned hundreds of thousands of fellow sufferers to Hitler as gigantic as completely meaningless to build “East Wall” against the Red Army, and has been singled out because of “contagion”.

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The Act of 1957 was indeed like many other once “schubladisiert”, but came in the sixties by chance in the apparatus of the “Central office of the state Justice administration for the Investigation of national socialist crimes” in Ludwigsburg, Baden-Wuerttemberg, and Austrian counterpart in Vienna Interior Ministry. Now, the case of the massacre and the responsibility of the perpetrators had to be properly investigated. From Vienna the Criminal District inspector Hans Landauer (Social Democrat, Spain fighters, concentration camp inmate) was sent to Jennersdorf for this purpose.

“With a fictional character such as the Landauer could have his joy even as a writer. Then you could tell a lot,” the author admits, reports and then also tells extensively on its work and findings, and at the end Manfred Wieninger has before our eyes a incredibly detailed, nuanced and vivid picture develops all affected characters, their actions, their past and future.

More than ten years towards collecting Wieninger countless documents on the massacre of Jennersdorf, they structured now makes sense, added a few fictional elements to (properties, dialogues, scenes … “narrator allowed such a thing”), and crafted from a mix of documentation, reporting and narrative, commented a shrewd author-narrator straight from the shoulder (including his own role as ” sapient author “).

At least one quarter of the book take direct quotes from files, Pr otokollen etc. (clearly identifiable by italics). Although they often speak a clear language, Wieninger limited to the function of an investigative observer (possibly indirect Prosecutor). Because there are gaps, inaccuracies (the “classic hearsay”), contradictions in the documents that he will not ignore and must.

It is clear that the ice on which he acts sometimes can be thin. He has therefore not only a precaution completed an extensive “costly legal expenses insurance,” but also stressed the same title over and over again that, of course, the presumption of innocence applies to all suspects, as long as no one was convicted in this matter. But that will never happen in Austria more, even if the file location could prove a liability.

On the other hand, Manfred Wieninger is a brilliant writer who can lead the word to taste like a dagger, a foil or an executioner sword. He can sharpen satirical, witty and easy to sharpen, strike sarcastic or soaking covered. “Aasplatz” is a masterpiece. On the surface, the author of many nonfiction snippets a harrowing historical development reconstructed, but by the brilliant narrative treatment is it a thrilling, long continuing to produce effects critical novel itself Nazis could (whether old or neo-) bring to brood (if something because were reading ). herzutragen his trick, his innocent author Role face up (also it depends some question Landauer’s “a bit sick of out […] because we already sufficiently familiar”), sometimes flirting, sometimes ironically, to the inevitably anticipated hostility to take from interested parties from the start the wind out of the sails, is a witty and above all efficient variety hidden writing, harmless prepared the bitter truths”.

Sometimes, this book is an imposition; well, just like the reality up.” Behind the sometimes mischievous-looking mask plugged indeed the author Rage and shame about how his country has stolen after the war off the hook and let unmolested by starting up the switching points of politics, economy and culture obviously guilty afflicted people.