The Execution of Justice

by Friedrich Duerrenmatt

“What do you want now, worthy genius of the law?” StüssiLeupin asked amiably.

  “Fräulein Kohler,” I said, barely able to hide my agitation, “I have a question for you.”

  “Please.” She went on smoking.

  “Ask it,” Stüssi-Leupin suggested.

  “At the time your father took the English minister to his plane, were you still a stewardess?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And on board the plane that flew the minister back to England?”

  She put out her cigarette.

  “Possibly,” she said.

  “Thank you, Fräulein Kohler,” I said and got up, offered my regards, left my espresso undrunk, and departed. I now knew how the weapon could have disappeared. It was all so simple. How silly. The old man had stuck it in the minister’s coat pocket as he sat next to him in the Rolls-Royce, and his daughter, Hélène, had plucked the revolver from the coat pocket on the plane. That would have been easy for her as a stewardess. But now that I knew it, I felt empty and weary, drifted along down the quay, endlessly, with the stupid lake and its swans and sailboats on my right. If my theory was correct—and it had to be—Hélène was an accomplice. As guilty as her father. Meaning she had left me in the lurch, had had to know that I was right. Meaning her father had already won. He had proved stronger than I. Arguing with Hélène was pointless, because she had already decided, because the outcome was already decided. I could not force her to betray her father. What appeal could I make to her? To her ideals? What ideals? To the truth? She had suppressed it. To love? She had betrayed me. To justice? To which she would reply: Justice for whom? For a local giant of the intellect? Ashes rest easy. For a weak-kneed, lying skirt-chaser? He’s been cremated, too. For me? Not worth the trouble. Justice is not a private matter. And then she would ask me: And why justice? For society in general? Just one more scandal, just stuff for gossip—come the day after tomorrow and other things will be the order of the day. Result of my cogitation: The value of justice did not weigh as heavily for Hélène as did her father. An enervating revelation for a lawyer. Should I therefore drag God into the affair? An admirable gentleman, no doubt, but pretty much a stranger of dubious existence. And then: What all the fellow had to worry about! (Measurement of the universe à la de Sitter—obsolete, much too modestly calculated—in centimeters: a one with twenty-eight zeros.) But the crux was to carry on, pull myself together, choke the philosophy back down, go right on with my battle against society, against Kohler, against Stüssi-Leupin—and take up battle with Hélène. Thinking is a nihilistic trait, putting all values in question, and so I doughtily turned back to the active life, wandered back into the center of town refreshed—lake, swans and sailboats on my left now—past lovers and pensioners, illumined most curiously and pleasantly by a sunset—drank Klävner right on through the evening (a wine I don’t handle well at all), and when, around one o’clock, I disappeared with a rather notorious but nonetheless saliently built lady into her apartment house, there at the entrance stood Stuber from the vice squad, jotting down addresses, bowing courteously—the gesture was meant ironically, I suppose, hot coals on the head of a dissipated lawyer. A piece of bad luck. Possibly. (But the lady herself was decent enough, it was an honor, she said, I could pay next time, about which I expressed my doubts, confessing that next time as well I would hardly be in a position to pay, and admitting my profession, whereupon she hired me.)

  My Country and Its People: A few remarks are unavoidable. A murder brings its ambience with it, its nearer and farther environs, the yearly average temperature, the mean frequency of earthquakes, and the human climate. All of this is interwoven. The enterprise that sometimes goes by the name of our country, sometimes by that of fatherland, was founded a little more than twenty generations ago, roughly calculated. Region: At first it was, for the most part, a play of limestone, granite, and molasse, with the addition of later Tertiary phenomena. Climate: Tolerable. History: At first mediocre, the Hapsburgian dynasty set itself abrewing, law-of-the-jungle chiefly, the idea was to club your way to the top, and club they did, cracked open knights, cloisters, and castles as if they were safes, prodigious plundering, booty, no prisoners taken, prayers before battle and orgies after slaughter, huge drinking bouts, war was profitable; but then, unfortunately, came the invention of gunpowder, big-power politics met with evergrowing resistance, thrashings with halberds and spiked clubs found their limits, close-quarter soldiers were banged silly from a distance; after less than eight generations, then, the famous retreat, followed by another seven generations of relative savagery, in part a matter of people murdering one another, subjugating peasants (freedom was never taken too seriously) and battling over religion, in part a matter of hiring out as mercenaries on the grand scale, spending blood for the highest bidder, protecting petty princes from the citizenry and all of Europe from freedom. Then finally the storm of the French Revolution gathered, the hated Guards were mowed down as they bravely fought a forlorn fight in the service of a system gone rotten by the grace of God, while one of their aristocratic officers sat secure in his garret and penned poetry: “Forests now are dappled, stubblefields turned gold, and autumn has begun.” A little later, Napoleon made a final clean sweep of all that rubbish about gracious lords and vassal states. Defeat was good for the nation. The rudiments of democracy appeared and new ideas: Pestalozzi, poor, shabby, and hot with passion, moved about the country, from one misfortune to another. A radical shift to commerce and trade began, draped in the appropriate ideals. Industries began to show their stuff, railroads were built. To be sure, the earth was not rich in natural treasures, coal and ore had to be imported and processed, but everywhere there was antlike diligence, growing wealth, but without any waste, nor, sad to say, any brilliance. Thrift established itself as the greatest virtue; banks were founded, at first hesitantly; debts were considered a disgrace; where once mercenaries had been the chief article of export, now came the bankrupts: Whoever went on the rocks had another chance across the ocean. Everything had to turn a profit and turn one it did, even the boundless heaps of stone and gravel-slides, the glacier tips and precipices. For once nature had been discovered and every idiot could feel sublime in mountain solitude, the tourist industry became possible. Our country’s ideals were always practical ones. And for the rest, the populace lived so encapsulated that every conceivable foe found it more useful to leave them in peace—an immoral but healthy mode of life, granted, revealing little grandeur but considerable political common sense. People molted their way through two world wars, maneuvered between the beasts, always got out with their hide. Our generation appeared.

  The Present (A.D. 1957): Major segments of the population live their lives away with hardly a care, secure and insured; churches, education, and hospitals are available at moderate cost, cremation ensues, if need be, without charge. Life glides along on solid tracks, but the past rattles the edifice, shakes the foundations. He who has much fears he will lose much. People climb down from their horses after some danger has passed like the proverbial rider after his ride over ice-covered Lake Constance. People are too timid to see that their own intelligence is a necessity, they can no longer accept the fact that they have been, if not heroes, at least reasonable; they rank themselves among the victors, the saga of warlike ancestors rises up, and out of those myths comes the danger of a short circuit; people dream of the ancient battles, rewrite the epics with themselves as fighters in the resistance, and behold! here comes the general staff conjuring up a world of Nibelungen, dreaming of atomic weapons, of a heroic war of extermination in event of attack, the goal of the army is to prepare the way for the end of the nation, root and branch, inexorable and final, while all around peoples subjugated long ago learn ways to squeak through with courage and cunning. But wait, the probable end may be taking another, droller course. Foreigners are buying up the land that people are out to defend, the economy’s momentum is in alien hands and only administered by native ones; paying hardly any taxes, the citizen
ry is forming itself into an upper class, while below them thrifty and diligent Italians, Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese, and Turks—often penned up together in quarters for which they pay shameless rent—are taking root, despised to some extent, often still illiterate, helots (indeed, in the eyes of their masters, subhumans) who, once they have become an aware proletariat, confident of its own vitality, may loftily demand their rights, in certain knowledge that half of the shares of the corporation that calls itself our nation have already been bought up by foreign capital and that it is dependent solely on them. In reality our little country, so people suspect, rubbing their amazed eyes, withdrew from history when it went into big business.

  The Reaction of the Public: Against this background, the murder committed by the Dr.h.c. stood out in relief. Its effect could be calculated: Since we have depoliticized our politics—in this regard we point to the future, only in this are we truly modern, true pioneers, the world will either perish or be Swissified—since, then, nothing can be expected from our politicians, no miracles, no new life, only some gradually improved highways, since the country is behaving in a biologically refreshing fashion and refraining from conceiving children (that we are not numerous is a great asset, that our race is slowly improving thanks to our foreign workers, our greatest), every interruption in the daily rat race is greeted with gratitude, any diversion is welcomed, particularly since the stiff, dignified annual procession of our guilds can in no way provide a substitute for the carnival we lack. Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler’s deed had, then, a liberating effect, people could laugh unofficially at something at which they were officially outraged, and already on the evening of Professor Winter’s demise, the rumor spread—ascribed to a high official in city government if not to the city president himself—that Kohler deserved another honorary doctorate for having prevented Winter’s next speech on the First of August. Likewise, the bungled actions of the police yielded hardly any added moral outrage, the schadenfreude was simply too great. The relation between the populace and the police is strained; for some time now our city has not lived up to its reputation in that regard. Having unexpectedly become a metropolis, it wants to preserve the coziness, the middle-class sedulity, the virtue it always ascribed to itself, continues to ascribe, wants to remain personally impersonal, in the grip of tradition, even though tradition has long since gone to hell. Time has grown mightier than the city, for all her diligent deportment, it does with her what it will. And so we are neither the people we once were nor those we now need to be, we live at war with the present, do not want to do what we must do, obstinately never quite doing what must be done, but at best only doing things halfway, and even that grudgingly. The outward expression of our miseries is the growth of police operations, for he who lives at war with the present regiments things. Our community has for the most part become a police state that interferes in everything, in our morals and in our traffic (both in a chaotic state). The police are a symbol not so much of protection as of bullying. Enough. Under heavy influence of alcohol. Besides, the lady from the apartment has just entered my office (I’m back in my garret on Spiegelgasse), needs the protection of the law. I’ll advise her to get a dog. She can take it and herself out for two walks per night (recommendation of the humane society, accepted by Jämmerlin with much gnashing of the teeth).

  Prosecutor Jämmerlin: He hated the canton deputy. The fellow’s nonchalance grated on his nerves. He could never forgive Kohler for having shaken his hand in the Tonhalle. He hated him so much that he found himself at variance with himself. The tension between his hate and his sense of justice had become unbearable. He considered declaring himself biased, but then again, he hoped the canton deputy would object to his serving as prosecutor. In his perplexity he confided in Chief Justice Jegerlehner. The chief justice sounded out the pretrial judge, who sounded out the commandant, who sighed and had the deputy brought to his office from the district jail, just to make things more sociable. The Dr.h.c. was in the best of moods. The Cheval-blanc was splendid. The commandant approached him again about Stüssi-Leupin, adding that his public defender was a notorious washout. Kohler replied that that was of no consequence. The commandant finally came around to the issue of Jämmerlin’s scruples. The canton deputy assured him that he could not imagine a more impartial prosecutor, an answer which, when passed on to Jämmerlin, elicited a cry of rage, he’d show the canton deputy now, would bury him for life, whereupon the chief justice came close to dismissing the prosecutor but let matters rest for fear that in his fury the latter would have a stroke—Jämmerlin, he knew, was not in the best of health.

  The Trial: It took place before five appellate judges of the appellate court, an early trial by our standards, in nothing flat, so to speak, one year after the murder, again in March. The crime had been committed in public; who the murderer was need not be proved. There was, however, no way to settle on a motive. There appeared to have been none. They could get nothing out of the canton deputy. They stood before an enigma. Even the painstaking interrogation of the accused by the judge whose task that was failed to bring the least indication to light. Relations between murderer and murdered could not have been more correct. They were involved in no business relationship, jealousy was out of the question, there weren’t even conjectures in that regard. In view of this strange fact, there were two interpretations: Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler was either mentally ill or an amoral monster who murdered for the pure joy of killing. The public defender, Lüthi, took the former position, Prosecutor Jämmerlin the latter; contradicting the former was the patent fact that Kohler made a thoroughly normal impression, contradicting the latter, his glorious past—a politician and captain of industry was of necessity a man of lofty morals. Besides which, for years he had been praised for his leanings toward policies of social (not socialistic) improvement. But this was Jämmerlin’s most ambitious case. The hate, the ignominy, the jokes told at his expense, gave the old lawyer wings, the judges were no match for his irresistible momentum, the colorless Lüthi proved ineffective. To everyone’s astonishment, Jämmerlin’s theory of Kohler as inhuman monster prevailed. The five judges believed they had to set an example, even Jegerlehner yielded. Once again everything was done to preserve the façade of morality. The people, so the argument of the verdict read, must not only expect and demand morally impeccable conduct from the financially and socially privileged classes, but also be able to see that conduct lived out. The canton deputy was sentenced to twenty years in prison. Not quite a life sentence, just practically a life sentence.

  Kohler’s Behavior: Everyone was impressed with the accused murderer’s dignity. He entered the courtroom well rested, having spent his pretrial detention primarily at a psychiatric clinic on Lake Constance, governed by some loose police regulation to be sure, but under the care of Professor Habersack, a close personal friend. He was allowed to move about; the caddy on the golf course was the village constable. When finally brought before the appellate court, Kohler rejected all preferential treatment, demanding “to be handled like an ordinary man of the people.” The start of the trial was itself typical. The Dr.h.c. fell ill, the flu, the thermometer climbed to 102 degrees, he rejected any postponement, refused to use an invalid’s chair in the courtroom. To the five judges he declared (trial transcript): “Here I stand, so that you can pass judgment on me according to your consciences and the law. You know what I have been accused of. Fine. Now it is for you to judge and for me to submit to your verdict. I will acknowledge it as just, however it may turn out.” After the verdict, he was deeply moved and thanked them for the humane manner in which he had been treated, even thanked Jämmerlin. Actually, people listened to these effusions with more amusement than compassion; the general impression was that in Dr. Isaak Kohler’s case the rolling wheels of justice had set an exceptional example, and as he was led away, the curtain seemed to have fallen on an unambiguous, though not thoroughly elucidated, affair.

  Concerning Myself, Then and Now: This, then, the rough outline of the backgr
ound, disappointing, I know, an event that came with the day, remarkable only for its participants and for those more intimately informed about it, the basis for gossip, for more-or-less tired jokes and for a few moralistic reflections on the crisis of Western civilization and democracy, a criminal case, dutifully reported by court reporters and commented upon by the editor in chief of our world-famous local paper (a friend of Kohler’s) with customary national dignity, the topic of conversation for a few days, hardly the stuff to go much beyond the city limits, a provincial scandal that quite rightly would soon have been forgotten had there not been a plot hidden behind it. That I was to play a decisive role in that plot is my own bit of bad luck, though I must also admit I smelled something rotten from the start. But at this point I have to insert a few words about the state of my own affairs after Kohler’s trial. Their state was not all that happy even then. I had tried to set myself up on my own after all and had established an office on Spiegelgasse, above the assembly hall of the Saints of Uetli, a pietist sect, in a room whose roof slanted toward its three windows, with a few armchairs grouped in front of a desk from Pfister Furnishings, with “aerial view” prints on the walls—I prefer to pass over the wallpaper—and with a telephone that was not yet functioning: a hole-in-the-wall that had been created when the owner had torn out the wall between two garrets and had had one of the two doors bricked up. The third garret was inhabited by Simon Berger, the preacher and founder of the Uetli sect, who looked like Saint Nicholas of Flüe and with whom I shared the corridor toilet. Granted, my office was situated ever so romantically, Büchner and Lenin had lived in the neighborhood, and the view out to the chimneys and television antennas of the old city stirred your admiration for the hometown, making you feel cozy in your own little parlor, lusting to start a cactus window-garden—and yet it was as unsuitable as imaginable for a lawyer, not just because it is difficult to reach by car, but because the cubbyhole is well-nigh impossible to ferret out: no elevator, steep creaky stairs, a rat’s nest of corridors. (Addendum: At the time, this office site was inconvenient, but I was ambitious then, wanted to get a foot in the door, get ahead, become a respectable citizen; nowadays, for the down-at-the-heel specialist in whores that I have in fact become, this closet has proved ideal, even though the built-in couch makes it frightfully cramped; I sleep, screw, live, even cook here now, surrounded by the nocturnal drone of the psalms of the Saints of Uetli, “Search thy heart, O Christian man, save thy soul immortal, save, oh, save whate’er thou can, become a sinless mortal.” At any rate, Lucky, the fellow who protects the lady of remarkable build and aboriginal profession and who just now dropped by, partly to satisfy his curiosity and partly to take care of some business problems and study the general situation, was of the jovial opinion that you could really breathe in here.) And so, even back then, clients stayed away in droves, I was essentially unemployed, had nothing to work on except a few shoplifting cases, debt collections, and the bylaws of the Prisoners’ Gymnastic Club (a commission from the Department of Justice), soon took to lazing about, sometimes on the green banks of the quay, sometimes in front of the Café Select, played chess (with Lesser, both of us insisting on the Spanish opening, so that for the most part it was always the same game ending in stalemate), dined on an unimaginative but not unhealthy diet in the restaurants of our ladies’ clubs. Under such circumstances, I could hardly afford to reject Kohler’s letter requesting me to visit him in prison at R.; not that the request didn’t seem somewhat fishy, since I couldn’t imagine what the old man could want with an unknown, unestablished attorney, and also because I was afraid of being dominated by him; I repressed all such hollow feelings of dread, had to repress them. The decent thing to do. As a product of our work ethic. No pain, no gain. Root, hog, or die. So I drove out there. (Still in my VW in those days.)