Review: A Paragon of Virtue - Christian Von Ditfurth
A Paragon of Virtue is the first novel by Christian Von Ditfurth to be translated into English and I find myself looking longingly at the list of his novels in German wondering how long we will have to wait before reading more about his convincing historian/investigator Josef Stachelmann.
A Paragon of Virtue is an intelligently written crime novel and shows Von Ditfurth's experience as a historian. The main character, Josef Stachelmann, is a professor of history at Hamburg University. and finds himself embroiled in an investigation into the murders of the family members of a prominent citizen of Hamburg, Maximilian Holler.
As Stachelmann's researches get underway, we find that the root causes of Holler's distress are found way back in the Nazi era, when party members could buy up houses and businesses from terrified Jews at huge discounts. While the police go up various blind alleys in their efforts to find the killer, Stachelmann combs through archives of the era and draws complex conclusions which would escape those who fail to see the historical origins of the modern-day crime.
Just after finishing this book yesterday, I listened to a BBC Radio 4 programme The Last Nazi Hunter, about Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre. I was struck by the similarities between Von Ditfurth's Josef Stachelman's search through historical archives and the real-life attempts to glean new information from the seven million documents in the Israeli holocaust archive. Clearly Von Ditfurth as a historian has personal experience of sifting through the minutiae of letters and private papers in order to make new connections and answer complex questions.
Like so many good crime novels, A Paragon of Virtue centres on the life of the investigator, in this case Stachelmann, a complex character, struggling to complete a major historical thesis so that he can gain tenure at his university. Stachelmann is other-worldly and doggedly committed to historical studies, while struggling with rheumatoid arthritis. His personal life is far from satisfactory and he seems unable to respond to obvious approaches from his colleague Anne who assists him with his researches. In addition, as he researches the misappropriation of Jewish property he discovers that his own family roots are tainted by the fraudulent activities of the Nazi era.
Von Ditfurth tackles the immensely difficult issues of how German history of sixty years ago can affect the present day and I can only admire the way in which he almost ruthlessly turns over stones to find some extremely unpleasant horrors underneath them.
I very much enjoyed the way the book was rooted in the real world. In an earlier post I wrote about how I could trace the locations in the book on Google Earth, but the sense of reality is fostered throughout the book by the authors in-depth knowledge of the geographical and historical aspects of the story. In Britain we do not have a great deal of German literature available to us in translation and it was refreshing to read a fine detective novel not set in Britain or America.
This is a serious novel and Von Ditfurth deserves a place among the best writers of crime fiction. I can only hope this book is a success when it is released in paperback so that the publishers find it worthwhile commissioning further translations of Von Ditfurth's work.
