Cherrypicker | Literature
Lost in terrible times

Ex-crime commissioner Gereon Rath, who was thought to be dead, returns to Germany from the USA. He wants to say goodbye to his dying father. A bad idea, because the SS doubt his death. The last Rath novel by Volker Kutscher ends with the November pogroms of 1938.

By Swantje Schütz

The tenth Rath is the last Rath – how sad! But that's how it is with beloved book series: they are good mainly because their authors don't produce text into infinity, but because they leave us alone at some point and take away our fictional companions that we long for from then on. But the intense stories don't let us go, they stay with us for a long time if they were good. We can only recommend the books to others and envy those who – as in this case – still have all ten volumes ahead of them. 

It began with a fish

Volker Kutscher published Der nasse Fisch (The Wet Fish) in 2007. This was the first volume about the detective inspector Gereon Rath – and the reading should also begin with this, followed, in order, by the other volumes. Rath was finally published at the end of 2024 – and that was the end of the series. 

In the ten volumes, Kutscher tells the story of Gereon Rath's life between 1929 and 1938: rich in detail, well-researched and often hard-hitting and unsparing. The not always likeable detective inspector Rath is increasingly sidelined during this period, while Germany heads towards the Second World War. The author skilfully interweaves historical events with the story of a man who refuses to bow to the Nazi regime and who, towards the end, is no longer a detective inspector.

Back home at risk

In the final volume, Gereon Rath returns from the USA to see his dying father. Rath is presumed dead in Germany and hides with Konrad Adenauer, his father's friend in the Rhineland. The Schutzstaffel, the SS, doubts Rath's faked death, which creates additional tension.

Rath's plan is to flee with his wife Charly and return to America. But the former trainee inspector, now a private detective, becomes embroiled in a case: Her former foster son Fritze is accused of murdering a Hitler Youth. Charly investigates as always, skilfully and fearlessly, only this time she does so at the risk of her life, in a state where no one is safe. The Nazi terror is taking on menacing proportions and fear in Germany is growing and growing. When Charly disappears, Gereon sets off for Berlin and puts himself in great danger.

Burning topicality

The novel shows how frighteningly easy it can be for a society to move towards dictatorship. In an NDR interview, Kutscher's main motivation for his writing is discussed. The author says it was the question “How could this happen? How could the not-so-bad Weimar democracy become the worst possible dictatorship on German soil?” And: “How were contemporaries not able to recognise this?”
In the same interview, Kutscher also tells us what he likes to say at readings:

For fans – Gereon Rath in other media

The former daily newspaper editor and screenwriter Kutscher's novels were the basis for the successful television series Babylon Berlin. And there is now a podcast on RBB, Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (Berlin-Brandenburg Broadcasting), entitled “Der Zerfall Babylons - 1929-1938” (The Fall of Babylon – 1929-1938). In it, host Thomas Böhm and the author talk not only about the novels, but also about the period itself – in a relaxed, chatty tone.