The Limits of the Law: Recent Fiction on the West German Prosecution of Nazi Atrocities

This workshop examines fictional representations of West German legal endeavours undertaken during the first two decades after the founding of the Federal Republic to address systematic Third Reich atrocities. It focuses on a cluster of novels, films, and plays that have been produced within the past 15 years and that all set their respective plots against the same historical and thematical backdrop, namely the early West German efforts to hold Nazi perpetrators criminally accountable, contribute to Allied denazification initiatives, and compensate surviving victims of Nazi persecution. All of these fictional works problematize simplistic understandings of legal prosecution and question the adequacy of investigations and trials to address systematic human rights violations. In response to the limitations they uncover, the fictional works envision a notion of justice that extends beyond a purely retributive dimension, confronting their respective audiences with key considerations that have emerged from transitional justice scholarship.