Best of
Germany
1933
The Hour of Decision: Germany and World-Historical Evolution
Oswald Spengler - 1933
Spengler's writings had a great effect on the racial thinking of Adolf Hitler.
The Brown Plague: Travels in Late Weimar and Early Nazi Germany
Daniel Guérin - 1933
The Brown Plague, translated here into English for the first time, is Guérin’s eyewitness account of the fall of the Weimar Republic and the first months of the Third Reich. Originally written for the popular French left press and then revised by the author into book form, The Brown Plague delivers a passionate warning to French workers about the terror and horror of fascism. Guérin chronicles the collapse of the German workers’ movement and reports on the beginnings of clandestine resistance to the Nazis. He also describes the Socialist and Communist leaderships’ inability to recognize the danger that led to their demise. Through vivid dialogs, interviews, and revealing descriptions of everyday life among the German people, he offers insight into the tragedy that was beginning to unfold. Guérin’s travels took him across the countryside and into the cities of Germany. He describes with extraordinary clarity, for example, his encounters with large groups of unemployed workers in Berlin and the spectacle of Goering presiding over the Reichstag. Staying in youth hostels, Guérin met individuals representing a range of various groups and movements, including the Wandervögel, leftist brigades, Hitler Youth, and the strange, semicriminal sexual underground of the Wild-frei. Devoting particular attention to the cultural politics of fascism and the lure of Nazism for Germany’s disaffected youth, he describes the seductive rituals by which the Nazis were able to win over much of the population. As Robert Schwartzwald makes clear in his introduction, Guérin’s interest in Germany at this time was driven, in part, by a homoerotic component that could not be stated explicitly in his published material. This excellent companion essay also places The Brown Plague within a broad historical and literary context while drawing connections between fascism, aesthetics, and sexuality. Informed by an epic view of class struggle and an admiration for German culture, The Brown Plague, a notable primary source in the literature of modern Europe, provides a unique view onto the rise of Nazism.
The Life of Richard Wagner. Vol 1, 1813-48
Ernest Newman - 1933
It describes the important, formative years in Wagner's life and reconstructs his role in the Dresden rising of 1849. Newman also discusses the changes that the Ring poem underwent during this period and illuminates Wagner's relations with his wife Minna, his mentor Liszt, and his circle in Zürich.Volume III covers the years 1859-66 including the Tannhäuser debacle in Paris, the crisis with Minna, the first production of Tristan und Isolde and the flight from Munich.Volume IV completes the story from 1866 to Wagner's death in 1883. It covers the composition of Die Meistersinger and Parsifal, the completion of the Ring, Wagner's marriage to Cosima Liszt von Bülow, and the building of Bayreuth.