A legal system is questionable, if it is claimed infallibility? Juli Zeh worked so far, only literary with the judiciary. Now with a PhD, a lawyer, is also a volunteer constitutional judge.
Juli Zeh, born in 1974 in Bonn, studied law in Passau and Leipzig and at the Institute of literature. You reports always politically committed to the word and refers to a Position on current social issues. Her books have won multiple awards, and in more than 30 languages. Your 2016 published novel “under the people” stand for months on the bestseller lists.
12. December 2018 was chosen by the writer from the Brandenburg Landtag to the judge of the constitutional court. The 44-year-old doctorate in law had been proposed by the SPD parliamentary group and received a 71 out of 86 votes cast. For your against a candidate of the AfD group’s proposed lawyer Victoria Tuschik, voted 13 members; two abstained. Even in your novels, July deals toe with the right questions.
“Corpus Delicti” – a bleak vision of the future
In your sober telling of the novel “Corpus Delicti” shows you what can happen when a good intention with totalitarian means. The historical references to the “unworthy of life”, the national socialists defined and eliminated, are significantly. “Santé” is the pointed greeting in the care of a dictatorship.
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DW-literature-expert Sabine Kieselbach on “Corpus Delicti” by Juli Zeh
“Since his youth, Heinrich Kramer, the Well-being of the people in mind.” Kramer, smart talk the master and the chief ideologist of the state of “method”, has chosen Mia Holl as a sparring partner. Because Mia Holl is no longer the same, since her brother is in jail killed. The sober scientist neglected your Routine. The Chip in your arm shows it: it moves too little, the home coach is at a standstill. The Cutlery to the collection of blood samples and the mug for the regular urine samples remain unused. Used crockery piled up on your Desk.
Instead of devoting himself conscientiously to the duties that all citizens of the “method” regulated by the German state in the middle of the 21st century. To meet century, Mia is in her apartment and mourns. Society makes her the “Ideal lover”, a fictional girlfriend, who has left her brother. You, the structure of anarchist imagination, is the only comforting human voice in MIA’s loneliness: “‘This Kramer is a fanatic,’ says the ideal beloved, and weighs in at Mia as a mother.”
Physical Well-being is equal to happy life
July had written Zeh’s “Corpus Delicti” first of all, as a theater piece for the Ruhrtriennale 2007. Very successful it was premiered back in to eat. Two years later, she has treated the substance of their Science Fiction dystopia in the form of a novel and as a book published.
The future is also in their later future novel “the Empty heart” – is not far away, the present seems to be just a little grossed out. At first glance, the future of Germany looks not bad at all: towns Nestle in the forest, disused factories, serve as cultural centers, churches light the museums were free on the highway, no cars to drive.
“There’s nothing here stinks. Here is no more digging, gerußt, torn, and burned; here is a retired, mankind has ceased to be the natural, and to fight this himself.”
The top priority in this state is not a philosophical ideology, no Religion, no idea, but the care and preservation of health. Health as a prerequisite for “a long, trouble-free and happy life.”
Deviations endanger the state’s goals
To achieve this, is to control the behavior of people via implanted data chips. You must not consume anything Unhealthy to yourself, do not smoke or drink alcohol, even the Drain in your apartment will be analyzed for harmful residues. Deviations must not be in this perfect System.
A group of writers around Juli Zeh (l.) protests in 2013 because of the NSA Spähaffäre in front of the Federal Chancellery
No sadness, nor fallibility in this controlled System, because to Doubt both, and doubt are destabilizing, and could jeopardize the public health. The once apolitical, straight-line Mia, which is forfeited in its melancholy, more and more, no longer meets the standards. You will be charged.
But there are dissenters who resist that your private body is supervised on behalf of the state. People like MIA’s brother Moritz, who just wanted to live unzielgerichtet, Smoking wanted, the feet are in brackish water, many of the women’s data and use his imagination. And kills himself as he is to atone for a murder he did not commit. Moritz is no opposition, he is a free man.
Historical arc, in the future, curious
In addition, there are still those who are conspiring against the “method”. You don’t want to accept that the result of the government-mandated DNA investigation pretends to be the Pool from which you can select your Partner. Almost involuntarily, Mia device in this circuit.
And the author uses historically. Ambiguous, it refers to the witch hunts of earlier centuries. The Name Mia Holl is reminiscent of Maria Holl, the in 17. Century was burned as a witch, Heinrich Kramer is the author of the in the 15. Century, the witch burns right ready-to-book derived “witch hammer”.
When is resistance to mandatory?
In her novel, the body that is the subject of a Crime – the Corpus Delicti -and Eco – and health craze, is perhaps only an example. A social field, which can stand for many other developments that are today applied in the approach: global Internet control in the prevention of terrorist acts, video surveillance to combat crime, fully power called readiness classification of people…
How far a state may restrict the individual rights of its citizens? There is a right of the Individual to resistance? What’s the people as state citizens to resist? Juli Zeh’s book provoked up-to-date questions. “Corpus Delicti” is an exciting warning before slipping into the total surveillance state, by showing how a free society insidiously a non-free will.
Juli Zeh: “The Corpus Delicti. A Process” (2014), Schöffling & Co.