The Arbogast Case

The court accepts the case put forward by the public prosecutor and sentences the defendant to life imprisonment for “rape and murder”. Only Hans Arbogast knows what really happened on 1 September 1953, on that late summer evening when the young hitchhiker Marie Gurth got into his car. Is he guilty or innocent?

The Arbogast Case is the story of a passionate encounter, told in powerful scenes that bring a difficult criminal case alive for us. A chapter of postwar German history and German law, from 1953 to 1969, is played out between the Black Forest and Ticino, Frankfurt and East Berlin. Thomas Hettche’s moving novel recounts love stories whose reverse side is death, it tells of a billiard table salesman for whom prison becomes like a second skin in the course of fourteen years; we learn of journalists, lawyers and a medical examiner from the GDR – people who all become involved in the Arbogast case, in the unanswered question, guilty or innocent.

“This story is a perfect crime novel.” Literaturen