Oscar Wilde with a Walther PPK ~ Kerr on Gunther
He's sardonic, tough-talking, and cynical, but he does have a rough sense of humor and a rougher sense of right and wrong.
Partly that's because he is a true Berliner. Partly it's the result of life experiences.
He was a sergeant in the Great War (like Hitler, winning a Second-Class Iron Cross, but, as he says, "most of the first-class medals were awarded to men in cemeteries").
His wife died in the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 and he's had a roving eye for women ever since,
but not much luck in long-term relationships -- it's hard to have long-term relationships in Nazi Germany when people keep disappearing.
Yet that's good for business, because he's a private investigator, and a lot of his cases have involved tracing missing persons. And by extension, murder.
He served 11 years as a homicide detective in Kripo (Kriminalpolizei -- Berlin's criminal police)
and saw just about every form of deviance, corruption, and gratuitous violence before he jumped ship in '33,
when the National Socialists took over and began purging the force of all non-party members.
He was a Kriminalinspektor with a serious reputation before he quit, and he never lost the contacts he made. They have been useful in his new, private role.
He's Bernie Gunther. He drinks too much, smokes excessively, and is somewhat overweight (but a Russian prisoner-of-war camp will take care of those bad habits).
He's a hero for our time just as he was in these thrillers.
Beginning in Germany in the 1930s, the seven Gunther novels have reached beyond the horrors of the Nazi regime,
when the lunatics were running the asylum, through the viciousness of the Eastern Front, to the postwar world of starvation and exploitation,
and on to the Cold War's double dealing and ruthless disregard for morality or human life. Bernie is an equal-opportunity hater: the Ivans, the Frogs, the Brits, the Amis,
and certainly the Krauts -- because he's seen them all in action and knows the blackness of their souls.
He's also a brave man because, when there is nothing left to lose, honor rules. ~ PhilipKerr.org
Get to know Bernie, book by book...
When we first meet Bernie Gunther, it's 1936 and he's working as a private investigator in Berlin,
an ordinary man going about his business under increasingly extraordinary circumstances.
Or maybe not such an ordinary man...
As we follow along on the hunt for missing diamonds, incriminating documents, and a murderer or two,
we soon realize we're as interested in Bernie himself as the cases he's untangling.
We find ourselves registering every clue about who he is, how he lives,
what he thinks about the chaos enveloping the world around him, and how he plans to survive it.
Here are the first riveting details of Bernie Gunther as revealed in March Violets...
Click to View
Physical Characteristics and Appearance
- is 38 years old
- has one good suit left, a light grey wool flannel purchased in 1933 for 120 marks
- has a "best hat" that is dark-grey felt encircled by a black barathea band
- wears his hat with the brim lower in front than in back, a style left over from his days as a cop with Kripo
- has a perfectly circular area of smooth skin on his face where no facial hair grows,
result of a mosquito bite suffered on the Turkish front; often finds himself rubbing it when he feels uneasy about something
- describes himself as "handsome only by the standards of a fairground boxing booth" with a "broken nose and car-bumper of a jaw"
- describes himself as looking "steady and dependable"
- has blond hair and blue eyes
- has small scar on his forehead where shrapnel grazed him during WWI
- wears braces (suspenders)
- wears cufflinks
Personal History
- was born in 1898 or 1897 (age 38 just before Berlin Olympics August 1936)
- given name is Bernhard
- grew up in Wedding, a working-class district of Berlin
- widowed
- lost his wife to Spanish influenza on the day of the Kapp Putsch (March 13, 1920) after ten months together
- was raised Lutheran
- had jaundice at some point in life
Lifestyle and Habits
- lives in a comfortable one-bedroom apartment at the Prager Platz end of Trautenaustrasse, in a modest neighborhood called Wilmersdorf
- drives a small, old, black Hanomag
- drops laundry off at Adler's Wet-Wash Service on the ground floor of Alexander Haus
- buys milk off the Bolle milkman and cooks omelettes for breakfast
- smokes Muratti cigarettes
- drinks whisky
- drinks brandy
- drinks schnapps
- likes any kind of jazz
- enjoys the smell of American cigarettes
- cashes an advance check from a wealthy client and treats himself to expensive silk dressing gown at Wertheims costing 75 marks
- drinks Bock with a Klares chaser
- is rarely seen in a church
- drinks mocha (coffee)
- breakfasts on mocha, scones, butter and jam at the Alexanderquelle on Alexanderplatz
- lunches on pig's knuckle with sauerkraut at the Cafe Stock, a modest Alexanderplatz restaurant popular with police officers
- lunches on bacon, broad beans, and beer at the Pschorr Haus restaurant
- has drinks at the Wild West Bar at the shopping-and-tourist mecca Haus Vaterland
- boils water for baths
- gives his secretary a piece of Rosenthal porcelain as a wedding gift
- has often thought of marrying his secretary himself but feels he's too old and dull for her
- dances at his secretary's wedding with a girl from Grunfield's department store and later persuades her to leave with him
- has never read any Dashiell Hammett books or stories
- reads the Berliner Borsenzeitung newspaper
- is still friendly with many staff at the Adlon Hotel from his days when he worked there as house detective
- dines at the Peltzer Grill
- takes a date dancing at the Germania Roof in Hardenbergstrasse
- is well acquainted with clubs such as Johnny's and the Golden Horseshoe
- buys a new car, an Opel
Personality and Skills
- describes himself as antisocial
- knows how to drive a slipper boat
- claims to have no understanding of theater
- claims to sing off key
- dislikes Bolshevism and Nazism alike
- voted for the Social Democrats
- likes dark, pretty women with full figures; likes "warm and cosy" women with substantial backsides
- describes himself as a "city boy who prefers women who wear makeup and look like ladies" to "plain, scrubbed, rosy faces" of "Hessian milkmaids"
- considers himself to be "fairly typical German in everything except the ability to tolerate the most offensive behavior from anyone wearing a uniform
or carrying some sort of official insignia"
- describes himself as "naturally disposed to be obstructive to authority"
- loved "the easy, carefree philosophies, the cheap jazz, the vulgar cabarets, and the other cultural excesses
that characterized the Weimar years and made Berlin seem like one of the most exciting cities in the world"
- has an excellent memory when it comes to recognizing a face or a voice
- admits that the only thing that unnerves him more than the company of an ugly woman is the company of the same ugly woman the following morning
- is not much interested in the past and doesn't share in his country's obsession with its political or military history
- knows enough about diamonds to know the difference between brilliants and baguettes
- doesn't find much time for reading
- thinks there's nothing quite as much fun as trying to shake off a tail
- goes through the motions of saluting Hitler and the Nazis in public as necessary for reasons of self-preservation
- admits to being "less fastidious about corruption and his own capacity for corrupt behavior than in the past, along with everyone else in Berlin"
- possesses "a hard-earned indifference to the sight of dead bodies regardless of their condition,"
thanks to serving on the Turkish front during WWI and working in Kripo for ten years
- refers to Joseph Goebbels as "Joey the Cripp" due to his deformed foot
- recognizes the scent of the German cologne 4711
- is very familiar with the Middle High German epic poem The Song of the Niebelungen
- still misses his late wife very much 16 years after her death
Opinions and Musings
- feels that "to run like Jess Owens was the meaning of the earth,
and if ever there was to be a master race it was certainly not going to exclude someone like Jesse Owens"
- dislikes the shopping-and-tourist mecca Haus Vaterland; dislikes its "quaint old-fashioned atmosphere,"
and its "great ugly halls, the silver paint, the bars with their miniature rainstorms and moving trains"
- feels he can tell a lot about a client by his shoes
- doesn't think German shoes are much good with their poor leather "like cardboard"
- thinks the Berliner Morgenpost is the only half-decent paper left on newsstands
- feels there is no such thing as catching and punishing too many cocaine dealers
- finds people who gamble in casinos to be dull
- has never met a lawyer he could trust
- thinks the Olympic Games are a waste of money
- has never understood why men get themselves tattooed
- never liked railwaymen, except for his secretary Dagmarr's father
- thinks that the mailed fist grasping a bludgeon found on Goering’s coat of arms would have been a much more appropriate symbol for the Nazis than the swastika
- doesn't like male secretaries; would take on a partner before taking on a male secretary
- finds the Bavarian countryside pleasant but not the Bavarian people
- thinks there are only two positive things about Bavarians one of which is the size of their women’s breasts
- finds it interesting that the rich liked being told where to get off as they confuse it with honesty
- doesn't think there's much around worth reading what with all the book banning
- considers his cases to be nothing more than puzzles, not mysteries, as mysteries are something
beyond human knowledge and comprehension and therefore a waste of time to try to solve
- finds the general penchant for saluting among all German political parties past and present ridiculous
Military Experience and History
- was a sergeant in the German infantry in WWI; fought on the Turkish front and won an Iron Cross second class
- felt it was "rather easy" to collect the Iron Cross towards end of the war
Current Professional Life
- in business for himself as a private investigator
- has an office on Alexanderplatz, on the fourth floor of an office block called Alexander Haus on Alexanderplatz in front of the Alex (police headquarters) to the northwest
- pays 75 marks a month rent for the office
- pays the Alexander Haus superintendent, a Gestapo informer, three marks a week as "tip" to be donated to the German Labor Front "cause of the week" and to stay on his good side
- shares the fourth floor with a "German" dentist, a "German" insurance broker, and a "German" employment agency, which provides him with a temporary secretary
- in Bernie's office suite: a waiting room, Bernie's private office, a small cubicle with a door for the secretary, a
washroom out the in hallway outfitted with shards of soap and dirty towels
- in Bernie's office: a desk with nearly full drawers, untidy stacks of files on the floor behind the desk;
a drinks cabinet stocked with scotch whisky; a push-open window that looks onto Alexanderplatz
- on Bernie's desk: a blotter, a candlestick telephone, a silver cigarette box with a lid that flips up, several paperweights, a framed photo of his late wife
- refers to himself as a "private investigator" and once corrected someone who called him a "private detective"
- investigates almost anything except divorce cases; was once beaten up by the husband of a client and ended up in hospital for weeks
- investigates anything from insurance investigations to guarding wedding presents to finding missing persons (the one area of business that's improving)
- has a lot of Jewish clients, always missing persons cases
- always carries a cigarette case with modeling clay in it for making impressions of keys;
has a locksmith at Alexanderplatz who frequently makes keys from molds for him no questions asked; knows no better way of opening locked doors
and has "no miracle lock-picking tools"
- owns a licensed Walther PPK 9mm gun; also owns at least one spare gun
- keeps his gun in the bedside drawer when at home
- keeps a gun and a pair of handcuffs under the seat of his car
- routinely charges clients something less than 70 marks a day plus expenses
- would go to any lengths to protect the best informer he ever had, but does not necessarily find him reliable
- likes to form mental pictures while working; likes to examine as much of the crime scene and evidence as possible
- illegally possesses a Gestapo warrant disc purchased from junk-dealer friend; has used it to pose as Gestapo to gain entry and information
- offers 60 marks a week cash pay to a hired assistant
- sometimes pays the owner of a lunch spot popular with policemen for gossip about what's going on the Alex
- is acquainted and friendly with the Tegal Prison governor
- doesn't have much faith in experts or the statements of witnesses; favors "good old-fashioned circumstantial evidence and information received"
- isn't afraid to admit to Hermann Goering that he left Kripo because he opposed "the purging of so-called unreliable police officers"
In the second book, it's 1938 and Bernie's still working as a private investigator in Berlin.
Business is booming -- especially the missing persons cases -- and Bernie has taken on a partner.
As the story opens, he is embarking on a private case involving blackmail.
But he's soon coerced into returning to the police force temporarily, where he is charged with the
task of finding a serial killer that is embarrassing authorities.
Here are the details of Bernie Gunther as revealed in The Pale Criminal...
Click to View
Physical Characteristics and Appearance
- turns 40 during the summer of 1938
- has been diagnosed as calcium deficient
- owns a German Forest suit
- is susceptible to headaches brought on by bad smells
- wears a waistcoat
- wears a hat
- wears a watch
- carries a handkerchief
Personal History
- as a child, visited with Reichstag with his mother, entering through the public entrance portal V
- father died prematurely when Bernie was a teenager
- has at least one friend from his time in WWI that he can call up for a favor
- still has his wedding ring and can still get it on his finger with the help of soap
Lifestyle and Habits
- has had nothing but casual affairs in the past two years
- doesn't like menthol cigarettes
- has been sleeping just a few hours a night lately and has no appetite
- owns a camera
- has moved apartments since starting the P.I. business
- lives in a concierge building on Fasanenstrasse, a "nice quiet street a little way south of Kurfurstendamm
and within easy reach of all the theatres and better restaurants" he "never goes to"
- the apartment building has all white, mock porticoes and Atlantes supporting elaborate facades,
and impressive lobby hallway with more marble than the Pergamon Altar
- lives in an large apartment on the second floor in a suite of rooms with ceilings "as high as trams" and a "solitary lofty tree" outside the window
- apartment has a front hall, a bedroom with adjacent sitting room
- front apartment windows look onto Fasanenstrasse; back apartment windows look onto adjoining buildings and into several sitting rooms
- describes his apartment as not cheap but his only luxury -- other than a business partner -- in two years
- takes baths
- reads Berlin Illustrated News
- practices self-relaxation technique of closing eyes, breathing deeply through the nose, and concentrating on a simple shape, learned at a health clinic while on a case
- takes a female colleague to Die Letze Instanz, a local bar at the end of Klosterstrasse on the old city wall, for drinks
- hasn't read poetry since studying Goethe at school
- claims to a colleague never to have slept with a Jewish woman
- drinks coffee to wake up
- has dinner at the Blaue Flasche on Hall Platz in Nuremberg while there on a case
- does not ordinarily listen to Party broadcasts
- has watched Western films
- enters a pharmacy, buys headache "powders" and swallows them without water just after telling a couple their daughter had been found murdered
- goes to Cafe Kerkau on Alexanderstrasse for beers
- plays pool but not particularly well
Personality and Skills
- feeling "a bit coochie-coo" near babies lately
- feels the urge to procreate
- has found out too late that he's temperamentally unsuited to having a partner in business
- describes himself as "a shade taciturn"
- hates the paraphernalia of pipe smoking
- is able to recognize architecture styles such as Palladian, neo-Gothic, Wilhelmine, Southern Plantation, Byzantine, neo-Baroque styles
- is not offended by a bit of dust and dirt in a home
- is not fond of dogs
- isn't sure what exactly psychotherapy is
- claims to a doctor to not like cheese
- thinks about women all the time
- prefers the antidiluvian murals and stone reliefs on the walls of the aquarium to the actual reptilian inhabitants
- refers to homosexuals as "pansies," "flowers," and "lemon-suckers"
- is not familiar with croquet
- prefers his women like his tomatoes, sweet and firm with smooth, cool skins, and with some green left in them
- does his best to scare a teen girl makes a pass at him out of ever making a pass at another stranger
- doesn't have much of memory for words and can barely remember the words to the national anthem
- quietly disagrees with a colleague who said he was glad not to have a daughter
- claims not to be much of a reader and not to know much about Nietzsche
- likes children
- envies a colleague leaving work early to take his kids to amusement park
- recognizes Beethoven from the apartment below
- recognizes that the sweet smelling cigarettes like bay-leaves or oregano would actually be hashish
- recognizes the scent of Bajadi perfume
- is turned on by the smell of women's perfume
- is nauseated by witnessing two men engaged in a homosexual act
- recognizes the subject matter of paintings depicting Merlin, the sword in the stone, the grail, and the Knights Templar
- knows runic symbols when he sees them
- is familiar with the freemasons
Opinions and Musings
- finds pipe smokers to be "the grandmasters of fiddling and fidgeting" and "as great a blight on our world as a missionary landing on Tahiti with a boxful of brassieres"
- doesn't care for the German cabinetmaking style of carved dolphins
- feels that beyond the age of 50 women's age ceases to be of interest to anyone but themselves which is the opposite of men's situation
- describes Berliners as people who "like to be made to feel exceptional, although at the same time they like to keep up appearances"
- describes Berliners as typically wearing "scarf, hat, and shoes that could walk you to Shanghai without a corn"
- says Berliners are likely to own dogs -- "something vicious looking for the masculine Berliners, something cute for the rest of Berliners" --
due to their fondness for walking
- says Berlin men comb their hair more than women and grow mustaches "you could hunt wild pig in"
- says Berliners will take cream with just about anything including beer
- says Berliners take beer very serioiusly, and women prefer a "ten-minute head on it, just like the men, and don't mind paying for it themselves"
- believes that tourists think a lot of Berlin men "like to dress up as women, but that's just the ugly women giving the men a bad name"
- notes that Berliners all drive too fast but wouldn't think of running a red light
- notes that Berliners have rotten lungs from polluted air and too much smoking
- thinks Berliners have a sense of humor that "sounds cruel if you don't understand it and even crueller if you do"
- notes that Berliners buy expensive, solid furniture with glass doors and then hang little curtains to hide what's in it,
a "typically idiosyncratic mixture of the ostentatious and the private"
- observes that heavier weight stationery -- "the kind that costs so much it just has to be taken seriously" -- is bought only by people in love
- finds Austrians to be arrogant
- thinks that cynicism in a detective is like green fingers in a gardener -- it stops him from underestimating people
- thinks people who read or write for occult magazines are probably crazy
- thinks the Barbary sheep exhibit at Berlin zoo is too theatrical looking to be a
good imitation of the natural habitat and finds the sheep to be "supremely uninteresting"
- says if you've cracked the case "then you are always assured of a warm welcome" at a client's house, no matter how unprepared they are for your arrival
- thinks the Central Criminal Courts building is more pleasing and intelligent looking than the brutal looking Imperial Police Praesidium or the Alex
- thinks gardening is "too much like work"
- marvels at the dexterity of a man who can roll a cigarette as good as any machine-made
- understands that hatred is one tool people use to escape fear
- thinks the British are enviably absurd and thus enviably impossible to radicalize
- tells a subordinate to trust a few hunches now and then and take a few a few chances, because without taking chances you can't ever hope to solve a case
- doesn't like Bavarians much; thinks Bavaria has never offered much in the way of amusements but admits Bavarian beer is good
- thinks Jung would have made a good policeman
- thinks if you won't take money for your work then it can't have been worth much and you should never work for free
- thinks lots of money is no guarantee of good taste but can make the lack of taste glaringly obvious
- thinks his line of work has made him "a rapid and fairly accurate judge of character"
- thinks that expensive modern furniture is easier to look at than to live with; claims to prefer personal comfort to "the worship of geometry"
- thinks some modern art looks like the inside of a monkey's mind
Professional History
- caught Gormann the Strangler in 1928
Current Professional Life
- has taken on a fellow ex-cop as partner in the P.I. business, which has more business than they can handle
- has refused an offer to purchase his business because he knows he would make as bad an employee as an employer
- is professionally recommended by several law firms
- has seen plenty of houses in the worst slums of Neukolln and Wedding
- charges 70 marks a day plus expenses which might include travel, bribes, anything that results in information; gives receipts for everything except the bribes
- claims to have had no complaints from clients about bribe expenses on the bill
- tries hydrotherapy, naturotherapy, and a solarium treatment and electrotherapy while undercover at a health clinic
- thinks minor alterations to appearance and staying out in the open are essential when following someone
- recommends always going "after the money" in cases involving ransom
- negotiates with Heydrich for the rank of Kriminalkommissar when Heydrich is coercing him to return to the police force temporarily
- claims to hate and loathe bureaucracy, but finds the "bureaucracy of information" to be required in policework
- back at Kripo, has a badge, a warrant card, and an office on the third floor of the Alex
- has an office with an olive-green metal desk, olive-green worn linoleum, olive-green dingy curtains, cigarette stained walls; as far away from the offices of the Murder Commission as it was possible to be
- notes there is a dismal aspect to the office, even on a sunny day
- his office being a few doors down from the busy Resident Registration Office in room 350, the noisy corridor forces him to keep the door shut
- stays at the Deutscher Hof hotel in Nuremberg on business
- kicks off of his team a junior policeman he suspects of murdering a suspect
- carries a Mauser 9mm automatic in a shoulder holster
- considers himself "not that good an interrogator"
- threatens to have a suspect shot during interrogation
- deals with young SS officers by outdoing their arrogance
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