Der Fall Deruga

Der Fall Deruga (The Deruga Case) is a novel by Ricarda Huch first published in German in 1917 about a physician charged with killing his ex-wife. An early courtroom drama, it depicts a trial by jury in which the defendant is reluctant, if not unwilling, to talk about the crime he has allegedly committed. In 1938 the novel was turned into a film of the same title.

After the death, assumedly from cancer, of his former wife Mingo Swieter, Dr Sigismondo Deruga, a 46-year-old nose and throat specialist, is accused by the deceased woman's cousin, a Baroness, of having poisoned her. A post-mortem is performed, and indeed traces of curare are found in the woman's body. Deruga leaves his medical practice in Prague and travels to Munich, where his wife lived after their divorce, only to learn that rumour has it that he murdered Mingo Swieter out of greed, as he now stands to inherit a considerable fortune. Deruga on the other hand claims that he did not know he was the beneficiary of her will, and that he did not communicate with her in any way for the last seventeen years of her life. Also, he maintains that at the time of the murder he was unavailable for his patients not because he was travelling to Munich to kill his ex-wife but because he was spending three days in the flat of a woman whose name he refuses to disclose as he does not want to taint her reputation.

The novel opens with the beginning of the trial, which takes place in pre-1914 Munich. Right from the start Deruga, who has not been taken into custody so far, attracts the attention of everyone present through his conspicuous behaviour, which ranges from seemingly unmotivated emotional outbursts to complete indifference as to what is going on in the courtroom—at one point he even seems to have fallen asleep. Part of his idiosyncratic demeanour is attributed to his Italian ancestry—Deruga was born and raised in poor circumstances in an Italian mountain village and only came to Germany and Austria to read medicine— but the rest is ascribed to his choleric temperament. As the trial proceeds, Deruga turns out to have been living a life somewhat outside the bourgeois society which would normally harbour people of his professional standing: he neglects his run-down practice, has debts not only with one of his colleagues but also with his restaurateur, tailor, and hairdresser, shuns the local medical society, and has frequent and irregular love affairs.

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