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Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer

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Dr. Georg Letham, a philosophical man of scientific training, has committed the ultimate offense. He has murdered his wife. What could drive an intelligent man to extinguish a human life, much less that of his spouse?

Praised by Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka, written in 1931 but never translated into English until now, this big 560-page brick of a book is a tornado of fresh air blowing into your reading experience, brutally honest, compulsively paced--a slightly surreal tale with a hypnotic narrative voice that crackles with cynicism and irony and yet remains touchingly human, all of it rippling with gallows humor. It's smart, heady stuff, with the subtle thrill of genius. It's addicting. After a couple hundred pages, the book begins to seem way too short.

The story is a sinuous surprise. You can only grip this hefty tome in both hands and read in horrified fascination as the plot deftly sets off on its own journey, from mental institution to prison hospital to penal colony, full of unexpected detours from the tropics to the North Pole.

As a narrator, Georg is cynical, opinionated and constantly withholding information. He refuses to talk about some topics, like the murder of his wife. Yet his scorn for sentimentality is refreshing, and you learn to see through his harsh judgments, frequently growing to love the very people that he scorns.

For a novel so large, it has relatively few characters, but those few become almost mythic in their imaginative power. There's March, the handsome young prisoner who's chained wrist-to-wrist to Georg and falls in love with him. There's Walter, another doctor and his childhood hero, and Brigadier General Carolus, who would rather make charts than deal with anyone's body.

The novel is strewn with unforgettable images. A bloody laboratory dog with skull partially exposed breaks free of its straps and runs into a classroom of medical students. A burial at sea goes wrong, and the body floats back up to the surface to be played with by dolphins.

Oh, and rats are everywhere in the novel. They torment the convicts in the tropical penal colony. They battle the crew for possession of an ice-trapped ship at the North Pole. And in the flashbacks, they infest the home of Georg Letham's childhood, where his father has devised a particularly hideous trap for them. One of the most heartbreaking scenes in the novel is Georg's father forcing the little boy to kill a rat.

Out of such grim material Weiss creates a literary world of pure reading joy. We're so lucky Joel Rotenberg took the time to give us a fine translation and that Archipelago Books took a chance on publishing it. Read it slowly. Savor it sentence by sentence. Enjoy the bracing, invigorating slap of real literature.--Nick DiMartino

Georg Letham: Physi­cian and Mur­derer by Ernst Weiss is a fic­tional book and a Ger­man clas­sic. The book has been recently trans­lated to Eng­lish by Joel Roten­berg.

Georg Letham is unhappy in his mar­riage but happy in his research. When the oppor­tu­nity knocks he injects his older, wealth­ier and well insured wife with the lethal poi­son Agent Y. How­ever, as good as a physi­cian as Georg is he botches up the cover-up. Not only does he leave the syringe in the crime scene but also con­fesses to his father, an offi­cial in the Aus­trian bureaucracy.

Letham gets sen­tenced to a penal colony and con­tin­ues to research yel­low fever being allowed to use meth­ods he would never have been able to use in civil­ian life.

I was rec­om­mended Georg Letham: Physi­cian and Mur­derer by Ernst Weiss, a Ger­man speak­ing Aus­trian Jew, by a fel­low book blog­ger, Amy from The Black Sheep Dances. I have great respect for Amy and her taste is sim­i­lar to mine, com­bine that with the fact that the book was pub­lished by Arch­i­pel­ago Books and that the book was praised by giants of lit­er­a­ture, it was a no brainer.

How­ever, I had to admit that I had trou­ble to get through the sec­ond quar­ter of the book. I even had to put it down for a bit, read another book and get back to it. I have been try­ing to fig­ure out why - maybe my mind wasn't into it, maybe it was the dis­qui­et­ing nar­ra­tive, the prose, I had no idea why.

I could only read this book in small sec­tions. It was inter­est­ing for 75-100 pages or so and then I sim­ply had to put it down.
This book was dis­turb­ing.

After I fin­ished, I didn't sit down and write my thoughts imme­di­ately, I rarely do that any­way, but I let the novel sink in and then it donned on me - this novel is psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror at its best. Not the hor­ror nov­els one thinks about these days, but psychological-Gothic hor­ror which could hold its own against such mas­ters as Poe and Kafka.

I am not a big fan of hor­ror or gore, I've seen enough in the army to last me a life­time but this kind of hor­ror is dif­fer­ent. The unease of revul­sion and shock which accom­pa­nies the inter­nal thoughts and con­flicts of a mur­der­ous man, not a mad man mind you, but a cal­cu­lat­ing, smart per­son whose first and fore­most thought is to ben­e­fit mankind, which, coin­ci­den­tally, he doesn't even like and acknowl­edges his lack of sen­si­tiv­ity to his fel­low human beings.
If one could write a book about the inter­nal feel­ings of Hitler, Mus­solini, Stalin or any other man who brings night­mares to life - this would be it.

Mr. Weiss' vision of his nar­ra­tor is social cri­tique at its best, a look­ing glass into the trans­for­ma­tion of soul of a man who believes he can­not win over nature, that he is sim­ply an exper­i­ment as are all of us humans and that we are no bet­ter than the rats he talks so much about. The author under­stood the con­cept of "herd men­tal­ity" and it's cer­tainly some­thing to keep in mind this time of year when you rush through the doors of your favorite store to by some idi­otic toy.

The book, while long, is actu­ally a series of short sto­ries with some very dis­turb­ing scenes involv­ing dogs and mainly rats, and rats, and some more rats. The writ­ing style which involves sto­ries within sto­ries, when done right, could be bril­liant, how­ever the con­struc­tion of the story (not the trans­la­tion) is clunky but that could be on pur­pose due to the skep­ti­cal and ironic rela­tion­ship Georg Letham has with him­self. A cold, cal­cu­lat­ing man (imag­ine House or Holmes with­out the side­kicks which keep them grounded) who con­vinces him­self that he is in the right com­mit­ting crimes using pas­sion as his logic instead of rea­son and intel­lect for which he jus­ti­fies every­thing else.

Disclaimer: I got this book for free.

"I had always had the ill-fated ability to awaken trust in people," states Dr. Georg Letham shortly after his arrival at the penal colony called C., with his characteristic aplomb. Dr. Letham is a man of science, of reason--and characteristically has disdain for emotion and instinct, both being irrational. And yet, both emotion and instict crop up, much to his consternation.

As noted by other reviewers, Dr. Letham has been convicted and exiled for the murder of his wife, and act that was premeditated, carefully thought out, and also instinctual at the same time. For reasons unknown to himself, he confesses the crime to his father, and fails to destroy the evidence. The marriage was not happy, made out of convenience, as she had the money necessary for him to carry out his experiments, and to cover his gambling debts. He finds her physically and sexually repulsive, and describes her in almost doll-like terms at times: "She doubled over in pain, her enamel mask twitched like a fish, but suddenly a sentimental, sensual smile came to her lips, she threw herself at my feet, and when I pushed her away, disliking such theatrical scenes, she crawled after me, she began to giggle coyly, and the more brutally I kicked her, the more blissful she became.

"And the ghastliest thing of all was that her arousal was transmitted to me, that she overpowered me sexually. Ugly, aging, with gold-rimmed porcelain teeth, enameled face, wrinkled, perfumed-scorched skin--what is the point of enumerating all her physical imperfections, down to the singed smell of her body--she was stronger than I." Such is the typical tone, sometimes grotesquely comic. Obviously, he has no remorse for her death, and the report that he is writing--something of an experiment on himself, is not to be fully trusted. At times, he comes across as rather brutally honest, at other times avoiding subjects that he does not want to discuss. Another example, again speaking of his marriage: "This little dog, as innocent as it was, became the source of new conflict. The howling of which I spoke just now must have been an expression of its terror of me. And the terror experienced by this thinking, feeling animal (albeit one with thoughts and feelings quite different from those of a person) was not entirely without foundation. For that little dog, which had mysteriously vanished some weeks earlier, had been found unexpectedly by my wife and the young doctor in the basement rooms of the clinic, shut in an animal cage made of heavy iron wire....I do not wish to make myself out to be better than I am. I had lured it there one day, and the only reason it had managed to cling to its miserable life in the dark cellar as long as it did was that dogs were poorly suited to my experiments of the time."

I hope that this gives you at least a little taste of what is in store. Georg Letham is one of the great unhinged characters of literature. Capable of self-deception at times, with remorse for the crime he has committed, he is also capable of some deeper insights, though even these are rather cynical: "Only fate can kill with impunity. The state: war. Nature: yellow fever, typhus, cancer, pulmonary tuberculosis, and other fine inventions of God. Hunger and the struggle for existince. All will continue as long as the world exists."

Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer is big, rich book. All anyone can do is give some small examples of what awaits.

The words of the criminally insane always bring a unique perspective. "Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer" is a translation of the chilling German novel that follows Georg Letham, a physician who is baffled by his own actions as a doctor as he studies himself as he continues his crimes. A truly intriguing and thought provoking read, the character conflicted in his interests of silence and his passion for murder leads to a unique read unlike any other. "Georg Letham" is expertly translated by Joel Rotenburg, a top grade pick for literary fiction collections.

Ernst Weiss (1882-1940) was an Austrian surgeon of Jewish descent who gave up his medical career to become a writer, after contracting TB and working as a ship doctor and a military physician. He became close friends with Franz Kafka, and eventually moved to Paris in 1934 to escape from the Nazis. There he lived in poverty, with support from Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig, until he committed suicide as the Nazis invaded the city. His novel Georg Letham. Arzt und Mörder was written in 1931. It did not appear in English translation until Archipelago Books published it in January of this year.

Georg Letham is a physician and bacteriologist who finds himself in a state of desperation, as he is trapped in a marriage to a wealthy woman he does not love, and he is out of money, as he has neglected his clinical practice to focus on his reserach of the toxin that causes scarlet fever. In an act that is both planned and spontaneous, he murders his wife, but is soon caught, after he confesses to his father.

Letham seems to lack remorse during his trial, and is quickly convicted of his crime, but is spared the death penalty thanks to former colleagues who spoke on his behalf. He is given a life sentence of hard labor on an island off the coast of Brazil, and is transported alongside other prisoners on a steamer. He bribes an officer on the ship, and is permitted to treat other prisoners in the ship's sick bay that have become afflicted with typhus. After an arduous journey, the ship arrives at the unnamed island, and he is designated for work at a hospital that specializes in the care of those infected with yellow fever. The cause of yellow fever was not known at that time, and Letham soon learns that several of his physician colleagues from Vienna have also come to investigate this plague. He is permitted to assist the researchers, and soon becomes a member of the team. The researchers hypothesize that the illness is transmitted from bites of infected mosquitoes, but it appears that only monkeys and humans are affected by the disease. The researchers decide to undertake a risky research study, by infecting themselves with mosquitoes that are allowed to bite patients hospitalizaed with yellow fever, which is an untreatable and often fatal illness.

Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer is told from the view of Letham, a most unreliable narrator, whose motivations and rationale for his actions reveal his depravity. He claims that his father, a despicable man whose story is described in detail, is the cause of his amoral character and personal failure. He seems to be unable or unwilling to care about anyone else, except for a young girl who succumbs to yellow fever under his care. His decision to participate in the study of yellow fever initially seems heroic and noble, but this is not the case. The story is a frame for the study of a man of medicine and science in the early 20th century, a time in which ethical behavior and the compassionate care of the patient were of little or no importance, and greed, egotism, and personal recognition or reward were sought instead. Letham's behaviors and motivations may seem extreme to our modern sensibilities, but the history of medicine is filled with similar and even more depraved men. Highly recommended!

The classic symptoms of a sociopath are a wanton disregard for right and wrong and an inability to care about the feelings of others or the tenets of law or societal norms. Most sociopaths can be defined fairly early in life by their behavior and attitude.
With this in mind, I began what I thought was a story about a sociopath. In Georg Letham, Physican and Murderer by Ernst Weiss, the main character Letham is a classically trained physician who specializes in research in the distasteful specialization of vivisection. In the initial chapters he confesses his role in the murder of his wife with no apparent remorse. In fact, he only did it because he needed her money and she refused to "voluntarily" die of her own volition. He complains about his wife and his father, both of whom held the key to his financial betterment:

"Neither of them could give me what I yearned for in the depths of my soul, but there was one medicine that they could have given me to ease my suffering: the original medicine, money."

Circumstances after the murder unravel and his perfect plan fails spectacularly. He ends up carted off as a 'common' criminal to a life sentence, a fate made more demeaning by the extremely high opinion he had of himself. As he acclimates to incarceration and is transported to a tropical prison camp, he explains more of his childhood and more of his relationship with his father. He reveals in slow and painful detail exactly what his father did to make him a strong man, and suddenly the diagnosis of classic schizophrenic becomes vague. Because while he clearly was influenced by his father's hateful and moral deficiencies, he never outright blames him or uses him as an excuse. He accepts all responsibility himself for his crime and also acknowledges his own moral failure. A true schizophrenic never accepts blame. Throughout this first half of the book to this point, the reading has been complicated and painful; the details were horrifying and unsettling.

However, in his new location in the tropics, a change occurs in his life that confirms that Georg Letham is no sociopath. He is allowed to work in the medical field again, this time doing research to find a cure for the deadly Yellow Fever that haunts the tropical regions. A parallel is drawn between the rats his father abhorred and tried forever to eliminate with Georg's efforts to find a remedy for this similarly persistent and deadly danger. While his father was led into the depths of moral depravity because of his inability to control the deadly rodents, Georg rises morally by putting himself at risk for the welfare of others by trying to have some effect on the deadly disease. Throughout the second half of the book we see him change, yet he never transforms completely. That would be too easy and too unrealistic.

A fascinating part of the text is the medical aspects of the study of disease, and how diseases like Yellow Fever are transmitted. This is a far more interesting way to learn about biology than high school science! No details are omitted in the search for a cure, and Weiss never dumbs down the medical language. Reading about the treatment of criminals in the early twentieth century as well as the service of military doctors and their dedication in this time period is absorbing.

This is not an easy read. Details of the animal testing are gruesome. His own attitude is obnoxious, but changes to more of a snarky sensibleness as events progress. His father's heartlessness is painful, and many events are described so brutally that you may cringe and have to put the book down for a few minutes. One thing is constant: Georg is honest even when it would suit him to be less so. And despite the difficulties, this book is something you can't put down and certainly won't want to.