Ritter, Tod und Teufel: Protagonists and Antagonists in the Prose Works of Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Abstract

When, in Durrenmatt's novel Der Verdacht,' Police Commissioner Hans Barlach finds himself a prisoner in the Zurich sanatarium Sonnenstein, he notices with alarm four objects in his room : a huge mirror on the ceiling, a glass wall carved with dancing figures, a crude black cross over the door, and a large print of Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson. It is a combination of effects calculated to make him aware of his weakness and infirmity of body, his age, and his impending death. Determined to resist such psychological undermining, he demands that the Rembrandt be replaced by a reproduction of Durer's well known engraving Death and the Devil. This demand occurs at a significant moment in the novel. Dramatically, it is the moment in which reversal occurs, the moment in which Barlach realizes the danger of his pursuit of the ex-Nazi war criminal Emmenberger, owner of the sanatarium. He realizes that he is no longer the pursuer but the captive. But more than this, the moment is one in which the dialectic of the novel is established. The evocation of Knight, Death, and the Devil removes Der Verdacht from the category of a detective story, 2 and transforms it into an allegory of the modern world in which a representative of humanitarian principles seeks to call to justice a man who is the embodiment of a particular aspect of our modern understanding of evil.