3 - Plurality and Alterity in Wolf Haas’s Detective Brenner Mysteries

Summary

Like most people, former police inspector Simon Brenner has some skeletons in his closet. Readers of the Austrian novelist Wolf Haas’s (1960–) Brenner mysteries, however, are unaware of the detective’s youthful transgression until the sixth novel in the series, Das ewige Leben. The revelation of the detective’s crime in the “last” mystery (Haas intended to end the series but wrote one more Brenner novel six years later) coincides with a number of important disclosures. The first is that Das ewige Leben finally reveals the identity of the narrator of Haas’s novels. It is also the first of the Brenner mysteries with a more overt focus on race and ethnicity. And, as mentioned above, Das ewige Leben finally narrates the events of a bank robbery that took place long before Auferstehung der Toten, the first novel in the series.

Das ewige Leben reveals that when Simon Brenner was in the police academy, he and three other police cadets had robbed a bank. While studying various alarm systems, they began planning the robbery of the Raiffeisenkasse, a bank in Graz, as an intellectual exercise. The heist was scheduled to take place during Fasching (carnival), when intoxicated and costumed celebrators will help conceal the robbers’ escape. Interestingly, the four police cadets decide to disguise themselves in traditional Austrian dress: “Der Saarinen hat gesagt, mit den Trachtenanzügen halten sie uns auf der Straße für verkleidet, aber in der Raiffeisenkasse halten sie uns für normal angezogen und auf der Flucht wieder für verkleidet, praktisch perfekte Tarnung” (44; Saarinen said that with the Trachten [traditional costumes] people on the street will think we are costumed, but in the bank they will think we are dressed normally and during our escape, again, as disguised, practically the perfect camouflage).

So, chronologically speaking at least, the first crime in the Brenner mystery series is committed by none other than the protagonist Simon Brenner, a police cadet turned robber wearing a traditional Austrian Tracht: an Austrian masquerading as an Austrian. Although the reading audience is not aware of Brenner’s criminal act until the sixth novel, viewed against the backdrop of police officers robbing a bank and Austrians disguised as Austrians, Haas’s mysteries can be read as an exploration of identity in a diverse and pluralistic society.