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20. Juli
Im Warenkorb
20. Juli
Im Warenkorb
20. Juli
Im Warenkorb
The 20th of July
Play
Published by Diogenes as 20. Juli
Original Title: 20. Juli

Bernhard Schlink's first play is a disturbing mind game about the presence of the past and about the price of trade: being left with dirty hands. 

The last day of school falls on the 20th of July, the anniversary of an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. The previous day, the right-wing party ›Deutsche Aktion‹ with their charismatic young leader won 37 percent of the vote in the regional election. In history class, a heated discussion arises between the final year students and their teacher: shouldn't the assassination attempt have been carried out 13 years earlier, in 1931? What can be learned for the future? Is it better to keep one's hands clean, or to risk getting them dirty?

A lesson about morals, responsibility and making decisions.

Contemporary Literature
96 pages
2021

978-3-257-07160-3
Bernhard
Schlink

Bernhard Schlink, born in 1944, was a Professor of Public Law and Legal Philosophy and a former judge at the Constitutional Court of North Rhine-Westphalia. His first novel, Self's Justice, was published in 1987; his 1995 novel The Reader, translated into more than fifty languages and adapted by Stephen Daldry into a film starring Kate Winslet, established his worldwide renown. He has been awarded with national and international prizes like the German ›Bundesverdienstkreuz (Order of Merit) 1st Class‹, the French ›Chevalier dans l’Ordre de la Legion d’Honneur‹ and the Italian ›Grinzane Cavour Prize‹. His latest novel is The Late Life.

Bernhard Schlink

Pressezitate

Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Essen

»Bernhard Schlink’s contemporary play leaves (almost) all questions open – and stays in your mind.«

Focus, Berlin

»A provocative depiction of a moment in time.«

Welf Grombacher
Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung, Potsdam

»He plays through the thought in an almost classical way, in five scenes, awakening associations with Rolf Hochhuth or Hans Magnus Enzensberger.«

Sebastian Fischer
Abendzeitung München, Munich

»In The 20th of July, Schlink expands his thinking about our present day, in which the clash of political forces suggests a turning point.«

Catrin Stövesand
Deutschlandfunk, Cologne

»A successful, perfectly-timed mind game.«