Département fédéral de l'économie,

de la formation et de la recherche DEFR

Commission suisse de maturité CSM

Examen suisse de maturité, session d’hiver 2024

ANGLAIS, NIVEAU NORMAL

Candidat-e : Nom :…………………...... Prénom :.…………………….. Numéro :…………..

Durée : 3 heures
Matériel autorisé : -
Total de points : 75 points

Consignes générales
Avant de débuter, contrôler le présent document, notamment, l’ordre et le nombre de pages. Les
réponses se font dans les espaces prévus à cet effet (Partie A) et sur papier libre (Parties B et C).
A la fin de votre examen, rendre ce document avec votre travail.

Nombre de points obtenus : Partie A : ………. sur 15 pts

Partie B : ………. sur 30 pts

Partie C : ………. sur 30 pts

Total : ………. sur 75 pts

Note

Examinateur(s)-trice(s) en charge de la correction : ……………………………………………………

……………………………………………………

Remarque éventuelle : …………………………………………………………………………………......

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

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 Read the following text carefully and then answer the questions that follow.

The passage is an adaptation of the novel The Einstein Girl, by Philip Sington published in 2009.

Berlin. May, 1933.

Two weeks after her fiancé disappeared, Alma Siegel travelled across the teeming city to the edge
of the eastern districts to look at photographs of the unnamed dead. They were displayed in a
corridor at police headquarters, lined up inside glass cabinets, beneath each one a slip of paper
5 bearing information on the place and date of discovery. The corridor was busy. People came to
police headquarters for many different reasons: to present themselves at the Alien Registration
Office, to obtain a visa, to look for lost property or report a theft. They jostled her as they hurried
by, all purpose and expedient haste, never pausing to look at the rows of frozen faces staring at
them through the glass.

10 Her old friend Robert insisted on coming with her. It was he who had introduced her to Martin Kirsch
in the first place. The two men were colleagues at the Charité Psychiatric Clinic; and no doubt
Robert felt it was his duty to rally around. In any case, he assured her, the trip to police headquarters
was just a formality. Her fiancé wasn’t likely to be found among the faces in the cabinets. They
belonged to labourers, immigrants, maids and “working women” – by which he must have meant
15 prostitutes. A man of Martin’s standing, a doctor of psychiatry, didn’t keep that kind of company.
The stiff white collars of the professional classes were rarely to be found around the necks of the
unnamed dead. Their shirts were open-necked and dark coloured so as to hide the dirt.

They were photographed at the scene, rolled onto their backs where necessary, lit up in the bril-
liance of a magnesium flash, skin starkly white against bottomless black shadows. Gravity tugged
20 at their cheeks and their hair, which gave many the appearance of facing into a gale1, eyes squint-
ing or half-closed, mouths open as if gasping for their final breath. Since the beginning of the year
more than a hundred of them had been gathered from all over Berlin.

Alma brought along a photograph: Martin looking uncharacteristically suave in a three-piece suit,
hair a little longer than usual so that it flopped gamely over his forehead, smiling as he squinted
25 into the light. The police officer examined the picture and declared that they had never seen him
before.

“He wears spectacles”, she said. “For reading”. But still they shook their heads.

She came back every few days, alone. The officers got used to seeing her and would give her a
smile as she walked in. She wasn’t like the woman they usually had to deal with, with her straw-
30 berry-blonde curls and pretty retroussé nose, her tailored jackets and polka-dot scarves. Everything
about her gave off an aura of expense: her skin, her slender legs and delicate ankles, her upright
bearing, the melodious clack of her heels. They escorted her assiduously to the cabinets. They

1
Strong wind
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 even showed her the pictures that were usually considered unsuitable for public display: bodies cut
in two on railway lines, burned black in house fires, or lying in shallow graves, grinning through
35 decomposed flesh.

“Now these aren’t pretty”, they would say, as they opened the files. And then they would watch her
closely as the dark, coagulated masses took form before her eyes, became flesh and bone, became
gradually human. For all their show of reluctance, she had a sense that they enjoyed introducing
her to these horrors, as seducers took pleasure in the corruption of innocence.

40 One of the older sergeants had a patch of shiny smooth scar tissue down the side of his face and
an eyelid that was never fully open. “What makes you think he’s dead”, he asked her one day, as
they stood before the cabinets, “your Dr Kirsch?”

“We were going to be married”, she said.

“Yes, Fräulein, but did he say anything? Anything that gave cause for alarm? Did he have enemies,
45 for instance?”

Alma shook her head. She had thoughts on the matter, instincts, but nothing she could explain.
They concerned one of Martin’s patients, a young Slavic woman. The case had been in the news-
papers for weeks, the subject of much lurid speculation. As her doctor, Kirsch had been photo-
graphed and written about, a development Alma had welcomed at the time. But that was when
50 Martin had begun to change. The case seemed to act on him like a drug. He had been seduced,
poisoned. Robert had complained about his remoteness and his secrecy. He had hinted at a fixa-
tion. This was not the Martin Alma knew, or anyone knew.

His superiors were reluctant to discuss the case. They could not say if it had anything to do with
Martin’s disappearance. They were politely unhelpful, as if concealing some professional embar-
55 rassment. But their lack of alarm betrayed a belief that Martin had disappeared of his own volition.
Or if he had fallen victim to a criminal act – a street robbery gone wrong, a kidnap, an assassination
– it was a crime they had no intention of investigating.

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Part A - Vocabulary and Comprehension (15 points) (approximate time 30 minutes; 20% of
total points)

I. Explain the following words as they are used in the text in another way, using either a
synonym or an expression. (5 points)
1. theft (l. 7) _____________________________________________________

2. haste (l. 8) _____________________________________________________

3. spectacles (l. 27) _____________________________________________________

4. hinted (l. 51) _____________________________________________________

5. concealing (l. 54) _____________________________________________________

II. Supply the antonyms for the following words, as they are used in the text. Use either
one word or expression. (4 points)
1. displayed (l. 3) _____________________________________________________

2. slender (l. 31) _____________________________________________________

3. shallow (l. 34) _____________________________________________________

4. innocence (l. 39) _____________________________________________________

III. Write the letter T (TRUE) or F (FALSE) after the following statements. Indicate the line(s)
(3 lines max.) of the text which justify your answer.
(6 points)

1. Alma is invited by the police to identify her missing fiancé. _____ (l.__)

2. Robert believes it unlikely to find Martin among the unnamed dead. _____ (l.__)

3. Robert thinks that Martin is acquainted with prostitutes and labourers. _____ (l.__)

4. The unnamed dead were predominantly from the working classes. _____ (l.__)

5. The photographs of the unnamed dead were taken at the police headquarters. _____ (l.__)

6. Martin’s colleagues think that he might have disappeared willingly. _____ (l.__)

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PART B - Interpretation (30 points) (approximate time 75 minutes; 40% of total points)

Answer the following questions in complete sentences, using your own words on a separate
sheet of paper.
• There are 6 points per question (1/3 for form and 2/3 for content).
• Length: 40-50 words per question. Quotes from the text do NOT count.
• Count your words and indicate the number at the end of each answer.

IMPORTANT! For Parts B and C you are asked to hand in a clean copy that is entirely legible.

1. What is Robert’s role? How does his attitude influence the reader? Justify.

2. How does the description of the unnamed dead contribute to the atmosphere of the pas-
sage? Include textual evidence.

3. What impressions does Alma make at the police headquarters?

4. Give examples of “chaos and order” at the police headquarters.

5. In which way(s) is Martin an ambivalent character? Justify your answer.

PART C - Expression (30 points) (approximate time 75 minutes; 40% of total points)

Write a coherent and well-structured essay on one of the following topics.

• Length: minimum 160 words (1/2 for form and 1/2 for content).
• Count your words and indicate the number at the end of your composition.

1. “For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.”

― Noam Chomsky, (American professor and intellectual). Comment and discuss.

2. Compare and contrast how the police is represented in fiction (series, movies) versus how
they are often perceived nowadays.

3. “Fame is a double-edged sword”, says Mouloud Benzadi, (British Algerian writer). Explain
and argue.

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