Waiting for the rule of law

Ambiguous temporalities in Kathrin Röggla‘s literary work on the NSU-trial

Von Ingvild Folkvord

Laufendes Verfahren is Kathrin Röggla`s third literary project that deals with the NSU-trial. The novel comes after a radio play (2020) followed by a theater play (2022),[1] and what I will try to point out is how the novel allows for experiment with temporalities and with the notion of the judicial hearing. It contributes something far more complex than just another critique of this historical trial: Laufendes Verfahren demonstrates how the genre of the novel, in very different ways than the radio and the theater plays, is able to reveal the auditory dimensions at the core of the Western understanding of justice and injustice.

The novel is dedicated to the victims of the NSU-terrorist cell. They are listed in a dedication at the very end of the book: “In memory of Enver Şimşek, Abdurrahim Özüdoğru, Süleyman Taşköprü, Habil Kılıç, Mehmet Turgut, i̇smail Yaşar, Theodoros Boulgarides, Mehmet Kubaşık, Halit Yozgat, Michèle Kiesewetter”.[2] But the narrative is not centered on their individual lives and deaths, in the sense that the text would tell who they were and what happened to them. As for the accused, their real names are never mentioned, and their individual backgrounds and motives are also not explored further. All in all, one gets the impression that, to participate in her fictional experiment, Kathrin Röggla is relying on her readers to already know quite a bit about the NSU-case, or to be able to find the information that they need elsewhere. Because this is an experiment. It is definitely not Röggla`s métier to tell about the trial in the form of a more traditional reportage, as in Emmanuel Carrère`s V13 (2023), a chronicle of the Bataclan-trial in Paris, to which her novel, strangely enough, has been compared by some critics.

Starting out in the messy domain

The title of the novel already signals that the trial is to be approached as something that is still going on. “Verfahren” can simply mean ‘process`, but also ‘trial`, referring to the legal trial itself. But it can also refer to something being stuck or derailed, thus giving the idea of an unsuccessful trial. This double entendre makes sense: unlike some of the lengthy terrorist trials that have taken place in Europe after 9/11, such as those following the 22 July terrorist attacks in Norway and the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, the NSU-trial did not create a collective feeling that the criminal offenses had been sufficiently investigated and dealt with. There are several reasons for this. Both the investigation and the judicial trial itself left the impression that the victims of the attacks, who were mostly civilians with migrant background from Turkey and Greece, were unfairly treated as suspects and blamed for the violence to which they had been subjected. The lengthy proceedings were marred by several interruptions and ambiguities regarding access to case documents and impartiality. Most dramatic for the public, however, was the revelation of far-right networks within branches of the German police and the ‘Verfassungsschutz`, the office for the protection of the Constitution.[3]

Röggla`s novel deals with all of these problems, but often in a way that could be seen as highly implicit, messy, or even boring, as some reviewers have complained. But let us try to take this as part of the aesthetic experiment. It is messy, and one gets the impression that the trial should also be experienced as something that starts out in the messy domain, not clearly structured and easily sorted out. Its progress is often stalled, blocked, the attendees lack concentration, at times losing the thread. Throughout the novel it becomes more difficult to distinguish and identify who is speaking and from where. And yet the dynamics of Röggla`s ‘Versuchsanordnung` – the experimental set-up – seem to evolve around the temporal organization of events.

Stuck in the future tense?

As pointed out in Eckhard Schuhmacher`s analysis, Kathrin Röggla focuses her attention not on victims and perpetrators, but on a constellation of people who have in common that they are all attending the trial and are located at the top of the gallery. They initially appear more as types than as individuals, a bit like in Röggla`s wir schlafen nicht (2004). The narrator, who frequently speaks not as an ‘I`, but as a ‘we`, seems to be part of this constellation, and is at the same time the instance that connects and relates these figures so that they appear as some kind of preliminary group, or even a community of observers, within the ambiguous temporal framing of the trial.

The trial is first presented as something that will take place. In terms of syntax, it is the future tense that is mobilized here. This use of the future tense seems to open up a space in which behaviors and practices are predictable. This creates ambivalence, and in the context of the trial also connotations of injustice: If the proceedings are completely predictable, if the narrator can tell what is going to happen, this would mean that it was not this particular case which was being tried, but rather some kind of judicial machinery that was at work, whatever case it was. We would simply be witnessing “[the] functioning of the machine” (13),[4] as Röggla puts it. From this perspective, one gets the impression that the future tense in Laufendes Verfahren indicates that the present, the “here & now” (19), is something that the trial and the novel would have to achieve.

Röggla`s group of trial attendees are in their chatty and colloquial ways aware of the oral hearing as the core element in the legal practice. They keep referring to the “Prinzip der mündlichen Vergegenwärtigung” (73), how the oral hearing constitutes the centerpiece of the court proceedings. But what does this mean? During the two first chapters of the novel one gets the impression that this remains a fairly abstract idea that is circulated among them, up in the gallery, where they are supposed, according to the blogger, to build a “Community” (32). But then something changes, or at least a change is announced.

After a discussion among the spectators about the temporalities of the trial, the narrator announces a turning point: “A short moment later the past begins, and the future is suspended” (156).[5] Formally, the announced change becomes manifest through the fact that the text that follows is not narrated in the future tense any longer, and not by the we-narrator. Furthermore, the attention is turned from the attendees on the gallery to the interrogation of a witness at the bar, establishing a change of setting as well. One gets the impression that the interrogation, ‘das Verhör`, is introduced as an event, in the very basic sense pointed out in narrative theory: as a change that brings about a “Zustandsveränderung”,[6] a change of state.

Agonistic interrogation

The interrogation is presented in the form of a dramatic dialogue. The focus is on one particular witness and her attempt to give testimony about what she saw at one of the crime scenes: “I know what I saw and what I didn`t see” (159),[7] she initially declares. This is about her past, the observations made related to one of the murders. Yet her counterpart, who appears to be some kind of witness counsel, relates primarily to the formal order of the trial: “Be quiet. You are not to speak now; the judge is speaking. He is asking the questions, not you” (159).[8] This tendency is clear; the witness is told to be silent and listen, more than to speak, and the other warns her about the risks of being trapped in self-contradictions about what happened in the past. She has already contradicted herself, he argues, about the ethnic background of the two men she saw arriving at the crime scene.

Ethnicity appears as a crucial aspect in the fictional hearing, as it was in the investigation of the murders and the historical NSU-trial. As a matter of fact, it does not take more than a quick internet search to find journalistic reports from the historical trial referring to a testimony similar to the one which is presented here, at the beginning of the third chapter of the novel. As in the historical trial, a witness has obviously first explained that the two men she saw entering the crime scene looked “southern European”, then “eastern European”,[9] and in the following interrogations the witness is questioned in ways that brings ethnicity to the fore. Her statement that they appeared “southern European” now becomes “Turkish”: “You did say Turkish” (160),[10] her counterpart intervenes. Her testimony is thereby pushed in a direction that would make the ethnicity of the suspicious figures at the crime scene overlap with the ethnicity of the victims of violence. From the following interrogation one gathers that she is herself from Iraq, and the defense plays on her origin, her “Herkunft” (161), as something that would make her a less trustworthy witness.

Towards parody

As the interrogation develops increasingly towards the parodic register, only the defense can be heard, or read, not the witness. Her place in the hearing is marked formally by a hyphen, but her oral participation can only be perceived through the defense: In his speech we find traces of her utterances, like “[w]hy do you assume that you have been misrepresented?”(160)[11] Then a third voice appears as some kind of counter-voice, raising judicial objections against the defense lawyer, trying to rein him in when he puts the witness under pressure by questioning her evaluations, her person, and her trustworthiness in general. But the defense lawyer is allowed to continue, and the interrogation culminates in him questioning the voice of the witness:

You know that the principle of orality applies here, and you claim that you have to stick to your notes, but that’s not possible here. Are you a little traumatized? You can easily find your voice again; you shouldn‘t have lost it from the little that you observed. Your voice will be different. Your voice will differ from that of the far-right publisher who spoke before you. Your voice will differ from that of the mother of a victim who will speak after you. The far-right publisher spoke very softly, as if he wanted to overturn all prejudices about himself. Your voice, on the other hand, sounds relatively shrill. How are we supposed to believe you when you speak like that? You sound as if you really wanted to have seen something that you couldn‘t have seen. (162f.)[12]

Again, the orality of the judicial hearing is emphasized as the judicial principle, but the principle is thwarted here, turned aggressively against the witness who appears to have problems speaking freely in court. A whole series of attacks follow, and the quoted passage could be taken as parodic and somewhat humorous, but one doesn`t laugh – at least I did not. It is over the top, and at the same time all too real, and Röggla`s performative play with elements, bits, and pieces from the NSU-trial elaborates in exactly this highly ambiguous field.

The defense proceeds by telling the witness to “find back” her voice, then he ridicules her and diminishes her by claiming this should be easy for her, “from the little” (163) that she has observed. In a way, this is the most vicious aspect in this fictional interrogation: The defense lawyer is asking the witness for something that he at the same time will not let appear, calling for her voice while constantly working to block her from speaking freely. At the same time, one gets the impression that his discourse cannot really be taken seriously as a subject of criticism. It is too far off, a rambling mixture of illegitimate questions and silly claims. The text leaves it open: maybe it was not said exactly like this – “Like this or similar” (165) – and maybe what we just read was only said “backstage”, in “exchange with the other court participants” (165).[13] And yet Röggla`s novel leaves no doubt that it is about language and power, in the trial and in a broader social discourse about the NSU-violence and the attempts to deal with it collectively.

As pointed out above, the changing narrative modes are often difficult to grasp and describe, but one aspect seems to be important when this interrogation is explicitly announced as some kind of turning point in the narrative. In this part of the text, the fictional figures are no longer described from the outside, but rather mainly described through their speech (or the lack thereof). There is a different performative dimension involved in this, compared with the two previous chapters. The interrogation part goes on over nine pages and ends with the testimony of the witness being summed up in three short sentences: “So you saw a van pull up at 1 pm. So, you saw two cyclists pull up at 1 pm. You saw bicycles at 1 pm. That’s all” (167).[14]  One gets the impression that the oral hearing made the voice and the testimony of the witness disappear. These three sentences are disconnected, they do not constitute a narrative sequence, are not related to the crime that was on trial, and there are not traces or traits left of the observations the witness had originally shared. What remains after the agonistic interrogation are sentences without any relation to the intentions of agents, merely to vehicles that appeared at the same time.

Becoming voices?

Hence, the announced turning point seems to have very little to do with justice being served. With American philosopher Judith Shklar, one could rather say that the interrogation contributes to a “sense of injustice”,[15] both in this fictional universe and for the reader. It is my impression, at least, that the ‘hearing` described above mobilizes a sense of justice through injustice. This is, according to Shklar, a fruitful point of departure that makes it possible to reach a more profound understanding of injustice and its social character.[xvi] 

After this sequence of interrogation, this ‘Verhör`, the attendees in the gallery are presented differently, and questions of justice and of being heard are dealt with in different ways. One could not, however, claim that the interrogation leads to specific and clearly identifiable consequences on the level of plot. When certain aspects in the parts that follow appear as changes or transformations, it has to do with the fact that the focus on the interrogation seems to create another awareness of the importance of individual voices and public hearings.

We are turned again towards the group of attendees, but the very first noticeable change is that their names now appear as subtitles, put in brackets, like this: “(Grundsatzyildiz)” (167); or, five pages later: “(Der Gerichtsopa)” (172). In formal logics, brackets indicate the place of variables, and in Röggla`s novel it is as if the figures are thereby given more space, that they are becoming voices in ways that could go beyond the temporal and the narrative grid of the first two chapters. The narration is diverse, it is about fear, experienced injustice of the past, and racism. It is about a daughter who is obviously part of the right-wing scene, about refusing to speak under certain circumstances, about the expectations towards institutions and about being misunderstood or even judged by others and many other issues.  The narrative mode is also diverse, moving between versions of first-person narration, quoted monologue, free indirect discourse, and third-person narration.

A different future tense?

The figures from the gallery speak, then an “Ich” which is also put in brackets: “(Ich)” (188), maybe a transformed version of the narrator who previously spoke as a “we”? The open brackets – “(….)” (189) – could be taken as a sign that this diverse, somewhat repetitive, and partly circular discourse could just go on; it is an ongoing process. This is followed by a more distinct dialogical sequence, with two separate voices that speak to each other in ways that draws our attention from the past and the ongoing trial towards future trials, or even towards a future in which there might be no trials:

-Other people will come, you know that
-No
-Other people will come. They will storm the court‘
-That’s different, they‘ll also storm the seats of government.
-Have you seen these pictures? (189)[17]

The most striking aspect is not how the text here, towards its ending, introduces yet another modality – a new way of telling, maybe an inner dialogue – but the fact that we encounter here another version of the future tense. Whereas the earlier uses of the future seemed to open up a space in which behaviors and practices in court were predictable, this dialogue brings in an opening towards a future after the trial. In Röggla`s poetics this future is not a promise of progress and certainly not a state in which one can breathe out in relief, after the crimes, after the verdict. As in the works by her Austrian ‘sisters`, Ingeborg Bachmann and Elfriede Jelinek, the crimes are deeply social, they are perpetrated again and again, within the social order, hence also the disturbing question from the laymen and -women in the gallery; “is the murdering over now?” (20).[18] The catastrophes, according to Röggla – and this appears as a ‘Problemkonstante` in her work on critical events since her writing on the 9/11 responses – must be investigated through hybrid forms that tell from the world, “from the actual context in which our current catastrophes arise”.[19]

The dialogue continues over three pages, and introduces a future determined by uncertainty, inspired by images from the US. But in Laufendes Verfahren, 9/11 is not the point of reference, in a “really ground zero” sense. Other images have replaced the ones of airplanes flying into buildings: The text refers to the images from the January 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol Building in Washington D. C. by supporters of the then-US president Donald Trump.  Hence, this new version of the future tense, the vision that ‘other people` will come, appears as a rather gloomy anticipation. From this point of view, established houses for public hearings – court houses and parliaments – appear in a new light. With all their flaws and shortcomings, they still enable fora where different voices can be heard, and Röggla describes the contemporary literary interest for the ‘judicial` as a search for “residues of the enlightenment”.[20]

Being heard

How can a novel like Laufendes Verfahren end? In a way, it cannot. There is, of course, no ending in a traditional sense, and yet the narration cannot go on forever. The fourth and final chapter of the novel is entitled “Urteil” and reflects on the ending of the trial, describing a trial that failed in many respects, and yet created some kind of ‘after`. But this temporal organization can also be questioned and reworked as part of Röggla`s experiment. According to the narrator, it is only later on that one will be able to date the ending of the trial properly: “That was indeed the verdict, on that day” (201).[21]

It is in the novel, and not in the radio-play or the theater play about the NSU-trial, that Röggla establishes the most intriguing engagement with the notion of ‘hearing`. This genre allows her to combine an experiment with hearing in relation to established judicial practices and principles with hearing as a basic condition for being-with others. The last lines of Laufendes Verfahren emphasize the latter:

“There’s so much missing here,” someone says at this moment. “Was that you now?” – “You can‘t really claim that this was it now.” Whose voice was that? Any of you. No. We basically can‘t hear you anymore. Ddo you hear me? (203f)[22]

One has the impression that a new voice can be heard at the very end of the novel – as if the novel keeps generating not only new modes of telling, but also genuinely new voices. The utterance of this newcomer is marked as a quotation; the narrator reproduces the speech of another voice which then seems to enter the discourse about the ending of the trial (or the novel), by claiming that “you” cannot really claim that “this was it”. Similar to the ending of really ground zero,this final sequence of Laufendes Verfahren is dialogic and ambivalent, but I understand it as even more precarious than the 9/11-text: The final sequence of the novel gives the impression that the dialogue should be extended, that the narrating “we” here reaches out to a larger “you”, the reader, and thus also questions the ability of narrative experiments such as this one to make us participate. In one sense, the ending is open: there is a turn outwards, but no specific addressee and space for interpretation. But through the “nicht mehr”, the “not any longer” of the last line, the capacity of hearing, at the core of the aesthetic experiment, and of the human capacity to relate to self and to others, is radically questioned.

Anmerkungen

[1] The radio play is titled “Verfahren” and was produced by the Bayrischer Rundfunk: Röggla, Katrin: “Verfahren“ – der NSU-Prozess als gespenstische Groteske. In: BR Podcast, 12.2.2021. URL: https://www.br.de/mediathek/podcast/hoerspiel-pool/verfahren-der-nsu-prozess-als-gespenstische-groteske/1791112 [accessed 4.9.2024]. The theater play with the same title was first staged in Saarbrucken in April 2022.

[2] Röggla, Kathrin: Laufendes Verfahren. Frankfurt am Main 2023, p. 207. Further quotes from the novel will follow in the text, in English translation, and the German original in the footnotes.

[3] For a broader account of these aspects, see e.g. Antonia von der Behrens (ed.): Kein Schlusswort: Nazi-Terror, Sicherheitsbehörden, Unterstützernetzwerk. Plädoyers im NSU-Prozess. Hamburg 2018.

[4] das „Funktionieren der Machine”

[5] „Einen kurzen Augenblick später setzt die Vergangenheit ein und die Zukunft aus“.

[6] Schmid, Wolf: Elemente der Narratologie (3. und erweiterte Ausgabe). Berlin 2014, p. 14.

[7] „Ich weiß, was ich gesehen habe und was ich nicht gesehen habe”.

[8] ”Seien Sie still. Sie haben jetzt nicht zu sprechen, jetzt spricht der Richter. Er stellt die Fragen, nicht Sie“.

[9] See Schultz, Tanjev: “Das waren die nicht, das ist unmöglich”. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 31.7.2013. URL: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/zeugen-im-nsu-prozess-das-waren-die-nicht-das-ist-unmoeglich-1.1735672 [accessed 4.9.2024].

[10] „Sie haben doch türkish gesagt”.

[11] “[w]arum gehen Sie davon aus, falsch wiedergegeben zu sein?”

[12] „Sie wissen, hier gilt das Prinzip der Mündlichkeit, und Sie behaupten, Sie müssen sich an Ihren Notizen festhalten, das geht hier aber nicht. Sind sie etwas traumatisiert? Sie können Ihre Stimme schon ruhig wiederfinden, die dürfte Ihnen bei dem wenigen, was Sie beobachtet haben, doch nicht verloren gegangen sein. Ihre Stimme wird abweichen. Ihre Stimme wird schon von der des rechtsextremen Verlegers abweichen, der vor Ihnen an dieser Stelle gesprochen hat. Die Stimme wird abweichen von der Mutter eines Opfers, die nach Ihnen sprechen wird. Der rechtsextreme Verleger hat äußerst sanft gesprochen, als wolle er alle Vorurteile über sich über den Haufen werfen. Ihre Stimme hingegen klingt relativ schrill. Wir sollen wir Ihnen glauben, wenn Sie so sprechen? Sie klingt, als wollten Sie unbedingt etwas gesehen haben, was Sie nicht gesehen haben können.“

[13] „So oder ähnlich“, „im Wechsel mit den anderen Gerichtsbeteiligten“.

[14] “Sie haben also um 13 Uhr einen Lieferwagen vorfahren sehen. Sie haben also um 13 Uhr zwei Fahrradfahrer vorfahren sehen. Sie haben um 13 Uhr Fahrräder gesehen. Mehr nicht.”

[15] Skhlar, Judith: The Faces of Injustice. New Haven and London 1990, 50.

[16] Skhlar, 14.

[17] „-Es werden andere Leute kommen, das weißt du / -Nein / -Es werden andere Leute kommen. Sie werden das Gericht stürmen / -Das ist was anderes, sie stürmen dann ja auch Regierungssitze. / -Habt ihr diese Bilder gesehen?“

[18] „Ist das Morden schon vorbei?“

[19] Röggla, Kathrin: Disaster awareness fair. Graz 2006, 50.

[20] Röggla, Katrin: Im Zeitalter von Populismus, Postfaktischem und Politikberatung. In: Deutschlandfunk, 5.3.2017. URL: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/zwischengeschichten-im-zeitalter-von-populismus-100.html [accessed 4.9.2024].

[21] „Das war tatsächlich das Urteil, an jenem Tag.”

[22] “‘Hier fehlt ja so viel‘, sagt in diesem Moment aber jemand. ‚Seid ihr das jetzt gewesen?‘ – ‚Ihr könnt doch jetzt nicht wirklich behaupten, dass es das jetzt war.‘ Wessen Stimme war das? Jemand von euch. Nein. Wir können euch im Grunde nicht mehr hören. Hört ihr?“