Dirk Schümer does not see his novel “The Black Rose” as a “direct sequel” to the world bestseller “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco. The author, journalist and Italy expert admits in an interview with SWR2: “The book had a big impact on me back then.” 40 years after it was published, he read Umberto Eco’s novel again and found that it ended openly. “The prehistory, the revolutionary mendicant monks against the very wealthy Pope and the Inquisition, remains open.”
In his work he focuses on the phenomenon of the state, which was invented around the time that Eco’s monk-detective William of Baskerville lived. That’s why his book is “more of a story about the state and its tyranny.”
Like Eco, he is committed to the stylistic device of irony, explains Schümer. The central character of the plot, a Westphalian Dominican novice named Wittekind, who lives at the Pope’s court in Avignon, is a skeptic. “I probably put it in from modern times,” admits Schümer. In his story, he attaches particular importance to the sensuality of the Middle Ages, because back then people would not have lived as socially controlled as we do. What is modern in his book is the overarching dispute between the individual and the state over authority: “How do I deal with the state’s and ideology’s claim to power – I tried to address that in an entertaining way,” says Schümer.
Dirk Schümer was born in Soest/Westphalia in 1962. He studied German, philosophy and medieval history and was a correspondent for Europe and Italy for the feature section of the FAZ until 2014 before moving to the WELT Group in the same position. Schümer is also an appointed member of the German Academy for Football Culture.
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