Bernhard Schlink (German:[ˈbɛʁn.haʁtʃlɪŋk]ⓘ; born 6 July 1944)[1] is a German lawyer, academic, and novelist. He is best known for his novel The Reader, which was first published in 1995 and became an international bestseller. He won the 2014
Park Kyong-ni Prize.
Early life
He was born in Großdornberg, near
Bielefeld, to a German father (
Edmund Schlink) and a Swiss mother, the youngest of four children. His mother, Irmgard, had been a theology student of his father, whom she married in 1938. (Edmund Schlink's first wife had died in 1936.) Bernhard's father had been a seminary professor and pastor in the anti-Nazi
Confessing Church. In 1946, he became a professor of dogmatic and ecumenical theology at Heidelberg University, where he would serve until his retirement in 1971. Over the course of four decades, Edmund Schlink became one of the most famous and influential Lutheran theologians in the world and a key participant in the modern Ecumenical Movement.[2] Bernhard Schlink was brought up in
Heidelberg from the age of two. He studied law at
West Berlin's
Free University, graduating in 1968.[3]
Schlink became a judge at the Constitutional Court of the federal state of
North Rhine-Westphalia in 1988 and in 1992 a professor for public law and the philosophy of law at
Humboldt University, Berlin. Among Schlink's academic students are
Stefan Korioth and Ralf Poscher. He retired in January 2006.[4]
In 1995, he published The Reader (Der Vorleser), a novel about a teenager who has an affair with a woman in her thirties who suddenly vanishes but whom he meets again as a law student when visiting a trial about war crimes. The book became a bestseller both in Germany and the United States and was translated into 39 languages. It was the first German book to reach the No. 1 position in the
New York Times bestseller list. In 1997, it won the
Hans Fallada Prize, a German literary award, and the Prix
Laure Bataillon for works translated into French. In 1999 it was awarded the
Welt-Literaturpreis of the newspaper Die Welt.
In 2000, Schlink published a collection of short fiction called Flights of Love [
de]. A January 2008 literary tour, including an appearance in San Francisco for City Arts & Lectures, was cancelled due to Schlink's recovery from minor surgery.[citation needed]
In 2008,
Stephen Daldry directed a film adaptation of The Reader. In 2010, his non-fiction political history, Guilt About the Past was published by Beautiful Books Limited (UK).
1976 Abwägung im Verfassungsrecht, Berlin: Duncker und Humblot
1980 Rechtlicher Wandel durch richterliche Entscheidung: Beitraege zu einer Entscheidungstheorie der richterlichen Innovation, co-edited with Jan Harenburg and Adalbert Podlech, Darmstadt: Toeche-Mittler
1982 Die Amtshilfe: Ein Beitrag zu einer Lehre von der Gewaltenteilung in der Verwaltung, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot
1985 Grundrechte, Staatsrecht II, co-authored with Bodo Pieroth, Heidelberg: C.F. Müller
2002 Polizei- und Ordnungsrecht, co-authored with Bodo Pieroth and Michael Kniesel, Munich: Beck
2005 Vergewisserungen: über Politik, Recht, Schreiben und Glauben, Zurich: Diogenes
2015 Erkundungen zu Geschichte, Moral Recht und Glauben, Zurich: Diogenes[13]