Der Seitensprung

Bernhard Schlink, born in 1944 in Bielefeld, grew up in Heidelberg. He studied law there and in Berlin, and then became a research assistant. He held his first professorship in constitutional and administrative law in Bonn, and later in Frankfurt. In 1988, he became a judge on the Constitutional Court of North Rhine-Westphalia. After the reunification in 1989, he worked in Berlin. Today, he is a professor of public law and legal philosophy at Humboldt University in Berlin and a judge at the State Constitutional Court in Münster. He initially published academic books, followed by novels. Awards include the 1989 Glauser Author Prize for German-language crime literature ("Die gordische Schleife"), the 1992 German Crime Prize ("Selbs Betrug"), the 1997 Hans Fallada Prize from the city of Münster, Italy's 'Grinzane Cavour' and the Prix Laure Bataillon ("Der Vorleser"). In 1999, he received the "Welt" Literature Prize for the first time, and in February 2000, he was awarded the honorary gift from the Düsseldorf Heinrich Heine Society.