Reading “The Nanny”
8 September 2005
Extract:
The lawyer Joachim Vernau seems to have achieved everything in life: he is going to marry the Berlin senator Sigrun Zernikow, become a partner in her father’s long-established law firm and set up his office in the villa in Grunewald. All that reminds him of his radical years is his fellow student Marie-Luise Hoffmann, who holds high the banner of left-wing resistance in a law firm in Prenzlauer Berg. The body of an old Ukrainian woman in the Landwehr Canal turns Vernau’s life upside down in an instant – and who is Natalja Tscherednitschenkowa, who is demanding compensation from old Zernikow? Apparently, in the Second World War she was one of the forced labourers who were put to work as nannies. And why does Zernikow refuse to pay? When Vernau, tied to a radiator, finds himself facing the deadly muzzle of a pistol, he knows that more is at stake here than a black mark on the spotless reputation of the Zernikow family.
