What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933
10 best books like What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933 (Joseph Roth): The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century, The White Rose: Munich, 1942-1943, Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s, The Oppermanns, Berlin Stories, The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape, The Artificial Silk Girl, Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin (Expanded Edition), Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy, An Ermine in Czernopol
The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century
| Author | Peter Watson |
| ISBN | 0060760222 |
The German Genius is a virtuoso cultural history of German ideas and influence, from 1750 to the present day, by acclaimed historian Peter Watson (Making of the Modern Mind, Ideas). From Bach, Goethe, and Schopenhauer to Nietzsche, Freud, and Einstein, from the arts and humanities to science and philosophy,...
| Author | Inge Scholl |
| ISBN | 0819560863 |
The White Rose tells the story of Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl, who in 1942 led a small underground organization of German students and professors to oppose the atrocities committed by Hitler and the Nazi Party. They named their group the White Rose, and they distributed leaflets denouncing the Nazi...
| Author | Otto Friedrich |
| ISBN | 0060926791 |
A superb "survey" of Berlin in the 20s by a writer who
appreciates the fantasticalities of the era. It encompasses
everyone fr Fritz Lang to Marlene to Grosz and Hitler's niece
Geli Raubal, the murdered Walther Rathenau and aesthete Harry Kessler. The torchlight parades begin, the candles...
| Author | Lion Feuchtwanger |
| ISBN | 0786708808 |
"Extraordinary . . . No single historical or fictional work has more tellingly or insightfully depicted . . . the insidious manner in which Nazism began to permeate the fabric of German society than Lion Feuchtwanger's great novel."--New York Times
First published in 1934 but...
| Author | Robert Walser |
| ISBN | 1590174542 |
A New York Review Books Original
In 1905 the young Swiss writer Robert Walser arrived in Berlin to join his older brother Karl, already an important stage-set designer, and immediately threw himself into the vibrant social and cultural life of the city. Berlin Stories collects his alternately...
| Author | Brian Ladd |
| ISBN | 0226467627 |
In this compelling work, Brian Ladd examines the ongoing conflicts radiating from the remarkable fusion of architecture, history, and national identity in Berlin. Ladd surveys the urban landscape, excavating its ruins, contemplating its buildings and memorials, and carefully deconstructing...
| Author | Irmgard Keun |
| ISBN | 1892746816 |
In 1931, a young woman writer living in Germany was inspired by Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to describe pre-war Berlin and the age of cinematic glamour through the eyes of a woman. The resulting novel, The Artificial Silk Girl, became an acclaimed bestseller and a masterwork of German literature,...
| Author | Mel Gordon |
| ISBN | 1932595112 |
“Voluptuous Panic is simultaneously appalling and thrilling, repellent and seductive, grotesque and gorgeous—not a typical coffee table book. It would go better with absinthe drunk from a human skull.”—Gary Meyer, Clean Sheets
When Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar...
Thoroughly up-to-date, skillfully written, and strikingly illustrated, Weimar Germany brings to life an era of unmatched creativity in the twentieth century—one whose influence and inspiration still resonate today. Eric Weitz has written the authoritative history that this fascinating...
| Author | Gregor von Rezzori |
| ISBN | 1590173414 |
Set just after World War I, An Ermine in Czernopol centers on the tragicomic fate of Tildy, an erstwhile officer in the army of the now-defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire, determined to defend the virtue of his cheating sister-in-law at any cost. Rezzori surrounds Tildy with a host of fantastic characters,...
| Author | Allan Janik |
| ISBN | 1566631327 |
This is a remarkable book about a man (perhaps the most important and original philosopher of our age), a society (the corrupt Austro-Hungarian Empire on the eve of dissolution), and a city (Vienna, with its fin-de siecle gaiety and corrosive melancholy). The central figure in this study of a crumbling...
Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1880-1918
These fascinating, never-before-published early diaries of Count Harry Kessler—patron, museum director, publisher, cultural critic, soldier, secret agent, and diplomat—present a sweeping panorama of the arts and politics of Belle Époque Europe, a glittering world poised to be changed...
| Author | Peter Gay |
| ISBN | 0393322394 |
First published in 1968, Weimar Culture is one of the masterworks of Peter Gay's distinguished career. A study of German culture between the two wars, the book brilliantly traces the rise of the artistic, literary, and musical culture that bloomed ever so briefly in the 1920s amid the chaos of Germany's...
| Author | Detlev J.K. Peukert |
| ISBN | 0809015560 |
The nature of Weimar's terminal crisis - how a politically liberal and culturally progressive society could succomb to fascism - remains one of the central historical questions of our century. In this major work, Detlev J.K. Peukert offers a stimulating interpretation that not only places Weimar...
| Author | Franz Hessel |
| ISBN | 3942476118 |
”To date, perhaps Berlin hasn’t really been loved enough…”
Oh to be a flâneur! I love the idea of spending my days absorbing a city’s idiosyncrasies and its vibe and energy, then putting pen to paper to share my bon mots.
Alas, there seem to be no vacancies for a flâneur,...
| Author | Hans Fallada |
| ISBN | 0093080409 |
Wolf Among Wolves is a sprawling saga of the collapse of a culture - its economy and government - and the common man's struggle to survive it all. Set in Weimar Germany soon after Germany's catastrophic loss of World War I, the story follows a young gambler who loses all in Berlin, then flees the chaotic...
| Author | Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen |
| ISBN | 0715630008 |
Essential peri-WWII reading discovered thanks to one of those "readers also enjoyed" recommendations on GR's upper-right margin. I was like, hey, that sounds like a catchy title, an uplifting romp to help me through the recent extreme Arctic freeze. GR was ultimately right: I liked this a good deal,...
Begun in Poveromo, Italy, in 1932, and extensively revised in 1938, Berlin Childhood around 1900 remained unpublished during Walter Benjamin's lifetime, one of his "large-scale defeats." Now translated into English for the first time in book form, on the basis of the recently discovered "final...
| Author | Simon Winder |
| ISBN | 0374254001 |
A unique exploration of German culture, from sausage advertisements to Wagner
Sitting on a bench at a communal table in a restaurant in Regensburg, his plate loaded with disturbing amounts of bratwurst and sauerkraut made golden by candlelight shining through a massive glass of beer, Simon...
| Author | Volker Weidermann |
| ISBN | 3462046004 |
Ein belgischer Badeort mit Geschichte und Glanz: Hier kommen sie alle noch einmal zusammen, die im Deutschland der Nationalsozialisten keine Heimat mehr haben. Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Irmgard Keun, Kisch und Toller, Koestler und Kesten, die verbotenen Dichter. Sonne, Meer, Getränke – es...
The Island of Second Sight
| Author | Albert Vigoleis Thelen |
| ISBN | 1903385067 |
Unavailable to English readers for more than 50 years, The Island of Second Sight is a masterpiece of world literature. Set in the years leading up to World War II, it is the fictionalized account of the time spent in Mallorca by the author and his wife, who experience the most unpredictable and surreal...
The File: A Personal History
| Author | Timothy Garton Ash |
| ISBN | 0679777857 |
When Timothy Garton Ash graduated from Oxford in 1978, he went to live in Berlin, ostensibly to research and write about Nazism. But once there, he gradually immersed himself in a study of the repressive political culture of East Germany. As if to return the favor, that culture--in the form of the dreaded...
