Ferdinand von Schirach Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Ferdinand von Schirach is a German attorney and author who is best known for his mystery fiction novels. Before he became a bestselling author, he was a renowned Berlin criminal lawyer who practiced for more than two decades. von Schirach would also take a leading role in many other sensational cases where he shone.
He published “Crime” his first fiction work as a collection of short stories in 2009. Much of the work found inspiration in his work as a criminal lawyer and this made for realistic novels that would achieve immediate success, as they would ultimately be sold in at least thirty countries.
As it stands he has more than 10 plays, novels, and collections of short stories that are pleasant works to find entertainment and pleasure with on a binge.

Most of his works dive deep into the intricate web of justice, punishment, and guilt which Ferdinand von Schirach dealt with from an early age, given that he was the grandchild of a convicted Nazi War criminal.

Von Schirach’s birthplace was 1964 Munich, as he was born to Robert von Schirach, a businessman from Munich, and Elke his wife.

His grandfather was Baldur von Schirach, a National Socialist youth leader, and his grandmother was Henriette von Schirach. His grandmother from his mother’s side was Ernst Farhndrich who was once an employee of Heinrich Himmler.

Ferdinand spent much of his childhood in Trossingen and Munich and went to the Kolleg St Blasien Jesuit College. Later in life while he was writing for “Der Spiegel” he wrote about his experiences at the college, particularly sexual harassment in the Catholic Church.
After studying in Bonn and internships in Berlin and Aachen, he became a lawyer in 1994, as he became an expert in criminal law. He would then become one of Germany’s most prominent lawyers, even working on the Norbert Juretzko spy case.

He attracted much notoriety when he worked on the “Liechtenstein Tax Affair,” where the German Federal Intelligence Service was accused of breaching privacy by Klaus Kinski. He now works exclusively on criminal law.

As for his career choices, Ferdinand von Schirach said that he got into law because he feared poverty. Ever since he was a kid, he always wanted to be an author and began writing when he was about twelve years old.

For the most part, he loved to pen theater plays and Dichtung – poetry just like most boys of his time. His first play which had just two actors was on Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers).

As such, he had a desire to become an author but was afraid that he would fail and end up poor. During that time, he used to suffer from depressive episodes which he believed was due to the anxiety of being poor.

To future-proof his life, he decided to go to college and study the law but looking back he knows that his decisions were not the best. Nonetheless, he would become a very successful criminal lawyer even though he always felt like an actor and always worried that he would one day be revealed as a fake.
Conversely, he always felt that living as a writer could not be more real, and looking back, he believes his work as a criminal lawyer and studies in law only interrupted what he wanted to do which was write.

Ferdinand Von Schirach’s work “The Collini Case” is an utterly compelling and spellbinding courtroom drama that would become a bestseller and be compared to works by the likes of John le Carre and Bernhard Schlink.

The lead in the work is Fabrizio Collini, a thirty-four-year-old man who has been working for Mercedes Benz for years. He is a respectable and quiet person who everybody likes until he kills an innocent man at one of the most luxurious hotels in Berlin.

Caspar Leinen is the young attorney who takes the case, as he believes he could make his name if he manages to get an acquittal for his client. But after he has taken the case, he realizes that the dead man who is a well-respected industrialist is someone he knows. He now finds himself in a personal and professional dilemma.

Fabrizio will not say he killed the man but admits the murder, forcing Leinen to defend a man who will not put up a defense. Even worse, a close relation and friend of the victim insists that Casper stop defending his client. At risk are his friendship, his career, and his reputation.
But then he makes a discovery that exposes a deadly and horrific truth and is greater than what he now considers petty personal concerns.

Ferdinand Von Schirach’s novel “The Girl Who Wasn’t There” tells the story of Sebastian von Eschburg. He is the much-loved son of a self-destructive but very wealthy family, who made it through a terrible childhood and is now a controversial but celebrated artist.
He is well respected in the Berlin art scene as his disturbing installations and photographs show that reality and truth are very distinct things.

When the man is accused of killing a young woman and is in real danger of being sent to prison, he finds a lawyer. Konrad Biegler is a seasoned lawyer who takes on the case as he hopes to help himself and gain notoriety given Sebastian’s reputation. However, the lawyer soon learns that nothing about the suspect or the case is as it seems.

Von Schirach writes the story with effortlessly classy and ice-cool prose, as he paints the lead as an antihero who sees the world in very vivid colors. He contrasts this with his attorney who is a bumptious man who sees everything in shades of grey.
It makes for a discomfiting combination of truth and lies, humor and tension, anticlimax and build-up, and a novel that is just as intriguingly eccentric as its lead.

“Punishment” by Ferdinand Von Schirach is a collection of mordantly amusing, cool, pithy, and meticulously crafted stories.

A cheated wife is seeking revenge, a man who is all about silence kills his noisy neighbors, while a young lawyer sets aside her sense of justice driven by a desire to make a success of herself at her new firm. The big question is just what punishment would fit the crimes of these characters.

The narrator is a nameless criminal defense lawyer who dives deep into each case to tell of the fate of twelve characters in the stories. In gripping and spare prose he tells their stories and uncovers their desperation, loneliness, desire, and alienation that shape the consequences they face for their choices.
Inspired by the author’s experiences as a criminal defense lawyer, it is a work that masterfully straddles the line between truth and fiction. Every story is meticulously written with vivid characters and white-knuckle suspense to make for some intriguing reading.