Best of
Germany

2012

Two Brothers


Ben Elton - 2012
    Born in Berlin in 1920 and raised by the same parents, one boy is Jewish, his adopted brother is Aryan. At first, their origins are irrelevant. But as the political landscape changes they are forced to make decisions with horrifying consequences.

Playing with Matches


Lee Strauss - 2012
    He's loyal to the Fuehrer before family, a champion for the cause and a fan of the famous Luftwaffe. When his friends Moritz and Johann discover a shortwave radio, everything changes. Now they listen to BBC broadcasts of news reports that tell both sides. Now they know the truth. The boys, along with Johann's sister Katarina, band together to write out the reports and covertly distribute flyers throughout their city. It's an act of high treason that could have them arrested--or worse. As the war progresses, so does Emil's affection for Katarina. He'd do anything to have a normal life and to stay in Passau by her side. But when Germany's losses become immense, even their greatest resistance can't prevent the boys from being sent to the Eastern Front. For Katrina's sake, and for his family, Emil hopes he will survive the battle. He knows they've already lost the war.

The Plum Tree


Ellen Marie Wiseman - 2012
    “Bloom where you’re planted,” is the advice Christine Bolz receives from her beloved Oma. But seventeen-year-old domestic Christine knows there is a whole world waiting beyond her small German village. It’s a world she’s begun to glimpse through music, books—and through Isaac Bauerman, the cultured son of the wealthy Jewish family she works for. Yet the future she and Isaac dream of sharing faces greater challenges than their difference in stations. In the fall of 1938, Germany is changing rapidly under Hitler’s regime. Anti-Jewish posters are everywhere, dissenting talk is silenced, and a new law forbids Christine from returning to her job—and from having any relationship with Isaac. In the months and years that follow, Christine will confront the Gestapo’s wrath and the horrors of Dachau, desperate to be with the man she loves, to survive—and finally, to speak out. Set against the backdrop of the German home front, this is an unforgettable novel of courage and resolve, of the inhumanity of war, and the heartbreak and hope left in its wake.

Letters From Berlin: A Story of War, Survival, and the Redeeming Power of Love and Friendship


Kerstin Lieff - 2012
    Like countless citizens under Hitler’s regime, Margarete struggled to understand what was happening to her country. Later, as a nurse for the German Red Cross, she treated countless young soldiers—recruited in the eleventh hour to fight a losing battle—they would die before her eyes as Allied bombs racked her beloved city. Yet, her deep humanity, intelligence, and passion for life—which sparkles in every sentence of her memoir—carried Margarete through to war’s end. But just when she thought the worst was over, and she and her mother were on a train headed to Sweden, they were suddenly rerouted deep into Russia…This powerful account draws back the curtain on a piece of history that has been largely overlooked—the nightmare that millions of German civilians suffered, simply because they were German. That Margarete survived to tell her tale so vividly and courageously is a gift to us all.

While the World Is Still Asleep


Petra Durst-Benning - 2012
    But the winds of change are blowing, and nothing can stop Josephine from pursuing her dreams.After the tragic death of her little brother, Josephine travels to the Black Forest to heal. There she discovers a feeling of freedom astride a brand-new invention called the “velocipede.” The very idea of a woman on a bicycle is beyond taboo—it is indecent and even illegal—but Josephine will not be deterred. She simply needs to find a way to ride without provoking a scandal. Back home, Josephine has the brilliant idea of riding under cover of night, while the world is still asleep. But Berlin’s streets are dangerous, especially on a bicycle.Can Josephine’s fighting heart help her overcome the obstacles in her path? Will the passion she feels for this new adventure lead her toward true love?

A Journey into Russia


Jens Mühling - 2012
    The encounter changed Mühling’s life, triggering a number of journeys to Ukraine and deep into the Russian heartland on a quest for stories of ordinary and extraordinary people. Away from the bright lights of Moscow, Mühling met and befriended a Dostoevskian cast of characters, including a hermit from Tayga who had only recently discovered the existence of a world beyond the woods, a Ukrainian Cossack who defaced the statue of Lenin in central Kiev, and a priest who insisted on returning to Chernobyl to preach to the stubborn few determined to remain in the exclusion zone. Unveiling a portion of the world whose contradictions, attractions, and absurdities are still largely unknown to people outside its borders, A Journey into Russia is a much-needed glimpse into one of today’s most significant regions.

The Myth of German Villainy


Benton L. Bradberry - 2012
    During both wars, fantastic atrocity stories were invented by Allied propaganda to create hatred of the German people for the purpose of bringing public opinion around to support the wars. The "Holocaust" propaganda which emerged after World War II further solidified this image of Germany as history's ultimate villain. But how true is this "official" story? Was Germany really history's ultimate villain? In this book, the author paints a different picture. He explains that Germany was not the perpetrator of World War I nor World War II, but instead, was the victim of Allied aggression in both wars. The instability wrought by World War I made the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia possible, which brought world Communism into existence. Hitler and Germany recognized world Communism, with its base in the Soviet Union, as an existential threat to Western, Christian Civilization, and he dedicated himself and Germany to a death struggle against it. Far from being the disturber of European peace, Germany served as a bulwark which prevented Communist revolution from sweeping over Europe. The pity was that the United States and Britain did not see Communist Russia in the same light, ultimately with disastrous consequences for Western Civilization. The author believes that Britain and the United States joined the wrong side in the war.

Queen of the Bremen: The True Story of an American Child Trapped in Germany During World War II


Marlies Adams Difante - 2012
    As the SS Bremen leaves New York Harbor with Marlies and her family as passengers, Marlies has no idea that what is intended to be a three-month stay will turn into a seven-year struggle to stay alive in a living hell.No one could have predicted the events that are about to unfold as the Bremen docks in Bremerhaven, Germany six days later. As World War II begins, Hitler comes into power, and all borders and ports are closed; the Adams family is prohibited from leaving Germany-now a Nazi-controlled country. In her compelling autobiography, Marlies chronicles a little girl's unforgettable journey through starvation, bone-chilling cold, prejudice, bombings, abuse, homelessness, and fear instigated by an evil dictator.Narrated with candor and many historical details that bring her memoir to life, Marlies shares the tragic yet inspirational story of how she endured a childhood in wartime Germany by relying on her own sheer will, faith, and the unconditional love of a most unusual, yet devoted best friend.

94 Maidens


Rhonda Fink-Whitman - 2012
     They are innocent schoolgirls ranging in age from 14 to 22. Under normal circumstances they should be learning, laughing, and playing. Unfortunately, the year is 1942 and the place is Nazi-occupied Poland. Nothing is normal. On the night of August 11, dressed only in cotton nightgowns, they await their fate at the hands of their Nazi captors. They are no match for the Nazi beast- or are they? Meanwhile, a young Jewish family is caught in a perilous game of cat and mouse with the Nazis in Berlin. How long can they possibly remain among the living? It's getting harder to run, more dangerous to hide. The Nazis are hot on their trail, and time is running out for both the hunters and the hunted. Rhonda is a successful television personality and a well-respected Jewish educator. With her aging mother still suffering scars left by the Holocaust some 70 years later, she decides it's time to go to Germany, where she pitches her way inside the largest Nazi archive the world has never seen in an attempt to discover the truth about what happened to her mother during WWII. Will the secrets she unveils help heal her mother's wounded soul? Or will the answers to her questions change everything she ever thought she knew about her family, her mother, and herself? Inspired by true events, 94 Maidens is an unforgettable story of heroism, resistance, martyrdom, and survival. "Total Inspiration! Never before has an account of the atrocities of Nazi Germany struck such a chord. 94 Maidens will send chills up your spine and bring tears to your eyes, but Rhonda Fink-Whitman's brilliant depiction of valiancy strengthens the inner soul." Lorraine Ranalli, author of Gravy Wars/South Philly Foods, Feuds & Attytudes and host of the Cucina Chatter Radio Network "Chillingly authentic. It's as if Rhonda dipped her paintbrush into a can of history and used her potent words to paint us a picture that is spot on. I would know." David Tuck, Auschwitz survivor, speaker, educator Meet Dave and hear other eyewitness accounts @ www.94maidens.com. "Heartfelt and moving...a great reminder to all of us about our obligation to share and preserve our own family history, the courage of ancestors, and their impact on our world." Tim Chambers, screenwriter, director, and producer of The Mighty Macs "It wasn't my choice to write this story...it was my responsibility." Rhonda Fink-Whitman RHONDA FINK-WHITMAN is a veteran TV and radio personality as well as an award-winning screenwriter, longtime Jewish educator and the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. 94 Maidens is her first novel. She lives in a suburb of Philadelphia with her husband, two children, and two cats. In their free time, for which they thank our troops, Rhonda and her family volunteer for the USO. Visit Rhonda online at www.94Maidens.com, at www.Facebook.com/94Maidens, and on Twitter @94Maidens. Serious filmmakers interested in the screenplay of 94 Maidens can contact the writer at Rhonda@94Maidens.com.

Target Tirpitz: X-Craft, Agents and Dambusters - The Epic Quest to Destroy Hitler's Mightiest Warship


Patrick Bishop - 2012
    To Churchill, she was ‘the Beast’, a menace to Britain’s supply lines and a threat to the convoys sustaining Stalin’s armies. Tirpitz was said to be unsinkable, impregnable –no other target attracted so much attention.In total 36 major Allied operations were launched against her, including desperately risky missions by human torpedoes and midget submarines and near-suicidal bombing raids. Yet Tirpitz stayed afloat. It was not until November 1944 that she was finally destroyed by RAF Lancaster Bombers flown by 617 Squadron – the Dambusters – in a gruelling mission that tested the very limits of human endurance.The man who led the raid – Willie Tait – was one of the most remarkable figures of the war, flying missions almost continuously right from the start. Until now his deeds have been virtually unknown. With exclusive co-operation from Tait’s family, Patrick Bishop reveals the extraordinary achievement of a man who shunned the spotlight but whose name will be renowned for generations to come.

Cubeworld


Karl Olsberg - 2012
    It takes him a moment to realize what‘s wrong: Everything around him is made of cubes.Haunted by skeletons, zombies, and killer cucumbers, he must find an exit from the Cubeworld. As he finally confronts the deadly enderman, there’s more at stake than just his life ...Cubeworld is the first professionally written and edited Minecraft fan fiction novel by German bestselling author Karl Olsberg.

The Living Are Few, the Dead Many: Selected Works of Hans Henny Jahnn


Hans Henny Jahnn - 2012
    Jahnn’s personal cry of existential horror and guilt expresses both a repulsion and fascination for mortality which stemmed from his earliest years; it was subsequently reinforced by his unconventional sexuality and a by a philosophy that celebrated life and death in all its aspects — not least in the embrace of eroticism and decay. His narratives, even when rooted in everyday life, burst forth in a wholly intemperate flood of prose, at once lurid and baroque. Little alleviates the apocalyptic fervour and morbid sense of doom in these writings.He has been only rarely translated into English, whereas in France his works have been compared to Antonin Artaud and Georges Bataille. This selection includes three of his 13 Uncanny Tales and the whole of his novella The Night of Lead, which nowadays is without doubt his most renowned work in Germany.

Bremen and Freiburg Lectures: Insight Into That Which Is and Basic Principles of Thinking


Martin Heidegger - 2012
    The lectures given in Bremen constitute the first public lectures Heidegger delivered after World War II, when he was officially banned from teaching. Here, Heidegger openly resumes thinking that deeply engaged him with Holderlin's poetry and themes developed in his earlier works. In the Freiburg lectures Heidegger ponders thought itself and freely engages with the German idealists and Greek thinkers who had provoked him in the past. Andrew J. Mitchell's translation allows English-speaking readers to explore important connections with Heidegger's earlier works on language, logic, and reality.

Through Innocent Eyes: The Chosen Girls of the Hitler Youth


Cynthia A. Sandor - 2012
    This elite rural educational program provided the fundamental building blocks which would stay with them the rest of their lives. Their education went beyond the traditional home economics and child rearing as we have all come to believe. Through a myriad of enriching experiences, these girls developed their interpersonal mental, physical, and spiritual skills. Their challenging assignments included thought provocative discussions, problem-solving activities, and team-building experiences, which ended in their daily prayer. By the time these girls graduated at the age of 14, they could move into their chosen vocation from agriculture, hospitality, retail, office work, or full home management and child care. They had an exact understanding of their responsibility and duties to their state and in their work place. It was a great honor to be chosen for Landjahr Lager."This is the most authentic book I have read about the girls in the Hitler Youth. You capture the essence in detail." Irmgard M. Nagengast"To be alive today and see a book written about our time in Landjahr Lager Seidorf brings back wonderful memories." Eleanor (Nelly) Mohler Landjahr Madel"What a beautiful tribute to your mother. I will always remember our time together in Landjahr as if it were yesterday." Steffi Pucks Landjahr Madel"Your book gives an intimate accounting of the Hitler Youth girls as seen through a child's eyes. This book takes me right back in time." Ellie Musial Landjahr Madel"

The Complete Brecht Toolkit


Stephen Unwin - 2012
    Here are explanations of all the famous key terms, such as Alienation Effect, Epic Theatre and Gestus, as well as many others which go to make up what we think of as 'Brechtian theatre'. The book also explores the practical application of these theories in Acting, Language, Music, Design and Direction. Also included are fifty exercises contributed by Julian Jones, to help student actors investigate Brecht's ideas for themselves, becoming thoroughly familiar with the tools in the Brecht toolkit."A thorough yet crystal clear explanation of Brecht's more complicated techniques and ideas." - Teaching Drama Magazine"One of the best introductory books on Brecht currently in circulation... Unwin [presents] the theoretical and practical ideas of Bertolt Brecht in a clear, concise and connected way so that students and practitioners may consider the importance of his work in the twenty-first century." - A Younger Theatre"A useful, refreshing, no-nonsense introduction to a practitioner who can be contradictory and is often misunderstood." - The StageStephen Unwin is one of Britain’s leading theatre and opera directors. He worked at the Traverse Theatre in the 1980s, founded English Touring Theatre in 1993, and in 2008 was appointed Artistic Director of the Rose Theatre, Kingston. He has written guides to Shakespeare’s plays; Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg; twentieth-century Drama; the plays of Bertolt Brecht; and So You Want To Be A Theatre Director?Julian Jones, who contributed the exercises included in The Complete Brecht Toolkit, is Senior Lecturer in Acting at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance.

You, Fascinating You


Germaine Shames - 2012
    The song, first recorded by Vittorio de Sica in 1939, catapulted to the top of the Hit Parade and earned its composer the moniker "the Italian Cole Porter." The German version, "Du Immer Wieder Du," would be performed by Zarah Leander, the foremost film star of the German Reich, and its English counterpart, "You, Fascinating You," by the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band. Twenty-two years would pass before the maestro and his ballerina again met face-to-face. You, Fascinating You begins as a backstage romance and ends as an epic triumph of the human spirit. Editor's Choice, Historical Novel Society: "FAULTLESS."

From the Umberplatzen


Susan Tepper - 2012
    Here she meets the brilliantly eccentric German physicist she refers to as M. He is passionate about many things, including the making and flying of beautiful silk kites. The two begin a love affair. Told in flashback, after Kittys return to the states, each of these interlocking flash-fiction stories weaves an element of their love relationship into a gift or item he sends her almost daily through the mail. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler has called From the Umberplatzen a brilliant mosaic of a novel.

The Death of East Prussia: War and Revenge in Germany's Easternmost Province


Peter B. Clark - 2012
    The Red Army sought revenge when it invaded the province in the winter of 1945. Thousands of Germans tried to flee rampaging Soviet soldiers who raped, assaulted, murdered and pillaged with abandon. A wealth of eyewitness testimony provides gripping, personal narratives of the indomitable will of the East Prussians to survive under horrific conditions. The end was foreshadowed when the wartime Allies divided East Prussia between Russia and Poland and approved the expulsion of all East Prussians. Now outcasts in their own homeland, many succumbed to starvation and disease as virtual slave laborers for their new masters, and the survivors were expelled in the late 1940s. This ethnic cleansing of East Prussia was the price paid for Nazi Germany's own ethnic cleansing of Eastern Europe. Complementing this tale of human suffering is an historical analysis showing that geography, revenge and political calculation can explain the extinction of East Prussia.

the things i am thinking while smiling politely …


Sharon Dodua Otoo - 2012
    Ama loses her sista, Kareem learns to mistrust a good friend, the siblings Ash and Beth have to fight for their mother’s affection, Till and his wife drift away from each other… Sensitively, honestly and with a special sense of humour, the woman with all these roles describes how she rediscovers herself – and not only in the positive sense.Following years of activist work in the Black German community, Sharon Dodua Otoo continues to pursue empowerment as a theme, this time in the field of literature. Sharon weaves her observations on everyday racism and privilege into the story of a Black British woman whose marriage breaks down.

Hitler's Cross Sampler: How the Cross Was Used to Promote the Nazi Agenda


Erwin W. Lutzer - 2012
    Lutzer examines the lessons that may be learned from studying the deception of the church: the dangers of confusing "church and state," how the church lost its focus, the role of God in human tragedy, the parameters of Satan's freedom, the truth behind Hitler's hatred of the Jews, the faithfulness of God to His people who suffer for Him, the comparisons between Hitler's rise and the coming reign of the Antichrist, and America's hidden cross-her dangerous trends. Hitler's Cross is the story of a nation whose church forgot its primary call and discovered its failure too.

The Triumph of Reason - The Thinking Man's Guide to Adolf Hitler


Michael Walsh-McLaughlin - 2012
    His persona, that of his political colleagues, his political party; the rise and combined Capitalist/Communist destruction fall of the Third Reich, have led to the publication of - at the latest count - 120,000 different titles. Virtually all of them are the preposterous re-cycled one-sided propaganda of the victors. This absence of objectivity is equalled only by the difficulty of discovering first-hand what the German Leader actually said or thought. It is as if we sit in a court room in which the defendant, defence counsel and defence witnesses have been excluded. This publication provides a rare opportunity to examine the authentic first hand expressions uttered by the German leader, who won the hearts and minds of millions of Europeans.

Jewels and Jackboots: Hitler's British Isles, the German Occupation of the British Channel Islands 1940-1945


John Nettles - 2012
    It is also the fulfilment of an ambition to tell in much more detail than was possible in those documentaries, the true story of those extraordinary years. The Channel Islands were the only British soil to be occupied in the war, the Islanders the only British citizens to fall under German rule. How the Islanders reacted to the invaders has recently been the subject of heated argument and impassioned debate and for very good reasons which are explored in this book. It used to be thought that the Occupation of the Channel Islands was a rather gentle, even benign affair, utterly unlike that of, say, France or Holland on mainland Europe. It was believed that by and large the German invaders behaved reasonably well and kept within the terms of the Geneva Convention. For their part the Islanders responded by offering no resistance to their masters and only co-operating, not collaborating, with them according to that same Convention. It was certainly uncomfortable but not horrendous. Unpleasant but not unendurable - the conquerors and the conquered getting along together in what was thought to be the very model of a model occupation. That is not the whole truth. The real history of the Occupation is much different from that. It is more morally complex, ambiguous and difficult. It is the story of a sustained and wholesale attack on human values, of great suffering, venality, violence and grotesque and hideous murder. It is also the story of extraordinary courage, wise and resourceful leadership and, surprisingly, given the awful conditions, much good humour. This is the story which is told in Jewels and Jackboots. From the bombing raids on St Helier and St Peter Port in June 1940 to Liberation on 9th May 1945 the narrative unfolds largely through the words of those who actually endured those years, those people who were actually there when thousands of their neighbours were taken from their homes and shipped away to camps across Europe, there when the slave workers arrived from the eastern front, actually there when the Jews were rounded up and haled along the Via Dolorosa and actually there when after five long years the British soldiers returned once more to the Islands. Alongside the words there are the pictures that illustrate the progress of the Occupation every step of the way. Photographs of the heroes of those times of course and pictures from the Island of Alderney where untold hundreds of Todt workers worked and died. Extraordinary photographs too of the Germans as they arrived in the Islands, tall, handsome, proud, immaculately uniformed. Then, in stark contrast, photographs of the Wehrmacht in the final days of occupation. There are the stories too of the American PoWs, Clark and Haas and their successful escape from the Islands and of the three Jersey boys Audrain, Gould and Hassall who failed so tragically in their attempt and were betrayed by the mother of one of the lads. Every respected authority has been consulted to help establish the truth of the account of the Occupation that appears in this book but it is the voice of the Islanders themselves which is its most fascinating and important feature. Their stories as told to me and published here are among the most moving, marvellously humorous and wise I have ever heard. The reader cannot fail to be touched.

Timberwolf Tracks: The History Of The 104th Infantry Division, 1942-1945


Leo Arthur Hoegh - 2012
    Apple, Jr., Ernie Pyle, And R. A. Larsen.

Elsa


Simon Gandossi - 2012
    Everyone had fallen under his spell, listening and believing in everything he told them.Elsa and her close friends were the exception; they despised the Nazi’s and would soon learn the extent of their hatred towards others they considered a threat to their ideology of the perfect superior race. After a chance meeting with the daughter of a high ranking Nazi, feelings were kindled and she found herself a part of the minority the Nazis were trying to eradicate.“I don’t want my story to inspire people nor make them sad; I want it to educate them because hate, homophobia and racism still exist today, and although the chance of another event like the Holocaust is rare; the world will never be rid of the foundations that cause hatred among us” —Elsa BaumA compelling tale filled with drama, Elsa paints a stark portrait of a dark time in history when hatred claimed the lives of many innocent people, whose only sin was to be born a Jew. It also brings to light the prejudices that continue to exist today and how violence can suddenly rear its ugly head despite seemingly peaceful times.

Learning German Through Storytelling: Des Spielers Tod – A Detective Story For German Language Learners (For Intermediate And Advanced Students)


André Klein - 2012
    One of the most famous German Krimis is perhaps the TV-series Tatort which means crime scene and has been running since 1970 on television channels in Austria, Switzerland and Germany. Watching the weekly Tatort has become an almost iconic activity in everyday German culture. Each Sunday at 8:15pm, shortly after the evening news, millions are flocking to the screen to solve fresh crimes and mysteries.This book is a detective story especially written for German learners. Not only does it invite readers to help solve a crime but also to pick up important Krimi vocabulary that can serve as a preparation for watching series such as Tatort and many others in the original.Each chapter contains a selection of relevant words translated into English, and is followed by questions regarding the content. (The correct answers are to be found at the end of the book.)While the writing itself primarily aims at an entertaining and interactive experience, the language is specially designed to familiarize the reader with unique forms of spoken German, with an emphasis on dialogue and the daily culture of speech.(Less)

Why Germany Nearly Won: A New History of the Second World War in Europe


Steven D. Mercatante - 2012
    Ironically, these methodologies also created and exacerbated internal contradictions that undermined the same war machine. In turn, as the German war machine gradually lost the crucial ability to fight a war of maneuver, Germany's enemies learned how to fight. The book begins by examining topics such as the methods by which the German economy and military prepared for war, the German military establishment's formidable strengths, and its weaknesses. The book then delves into how Germany nearly established hegemony over Europe by seeking to seize critical economic resources from the Soviet Union and playing to Germany's strengths as a continental military power. In examining why this effort ultimately failed, the book also examines how the Soviet Union was able to refashion the massive military establishment Germany had regularly bested early in the War into one capable of achieving victory. The last section explores the War's final year, including addressing how Germany hung on against the world's most powerful nations and revisiting brute force's role in producing Allied and Soviet victory.

Der deutsche Goldrausch


Dirk Laabs - 2012
    Organized as a peculiar state agency, hampered by a lack of ressources and pressed by various interests, the enormous task of restructuring state-owned companies with more than 4 million employees often resembled a cross between 'wild west' and white-collar crime novels.

A History of German: What the Past Reveals about Today's Language


Joseph Salmons - 2012
    A key to understanding how any human language works is understanding how that language developed over time. German speakers, as well as language learners and teachers are often puzzled by many questions about the German language: How did German come to have so many different dialects and close linguistic cousins like Dutch and Plattdeutsch? Why does German have 'umlaut' vowels and why do they play so many different roles in the grammar (noun plurals and subjunctive verbs, among many more)? Why are noun plurals so complicated (-e, -en, -er, umlaut, -s or nothing at all)? Are there reasons for the different gender markings in the language (die Woche versus das Auge)? Are dialects dying out today? Does English, with all the words it loans to German, pose a threat to the language? Full, satisfying answers to many of these questions are emerging in current research and this book presents, in an accessible manner, a concise linguistic introduction to the history of German as specialists understand it today. The book is supported by a companion website and is suitable for language learners and teachers and students of linguistics, from undergraduate level upwards.

The Event


Martin Heidegger - 2012
    Richard Rojcewicz's elegant translation offers the English-speaking reader intimate contact with one of the most basic Heideggerian concepts. This book lays out how the event is to be understood and ties it closely to looking, showing, self-manifestation, and the self-unveiling of the gods. The Event (Complete Works, volume 71) is part of a series of Heidegger's private writings in response to Contributions.

Almost 1 Book / Almost 1 Life


Elfriede Czurda - 2012
    Fiction. Translated from the German by Rosmarie Waldrop. This volume contains almost all of Elfriede Czurda's first book and all of her second, Fast 1 Leben. Czurda comes out of the experimental Wiener Gruppe. She is especially fond of letting repetition and permutation shift words through their whole gamut of meanings--and sometimes beyond. However, she is also not averse to thumbing her nose at any rigidities, even those of the experimental imperative. In ALMOST 1 LIFE (novella? politico-cultural satire?), the ruling avant-garde has licenced "monomania" as official language and punishes misuse by expelling the offender--into reality. Which is where Czurda positions herself. She combines exploring language with exploring the social power structures embedded in it--all with lots of fun and humor.

Totalitarianism and Political Religion: An Intellectual History


A. James Gregor - 2012
    Yet, as A. James Gregor argues in this book, they themselves functioned as religions. He presents an intellectual history of the rise of these political religions, tracing a set of ideas that include belief that a certain text contains impeccable truths; notions of infallible, charismatic leadership; and the promise of human redemption through strict obedience, selfless sacrifice, total dedication, and unremitting labor.Gregor provides unique insight into the variants of Marxism, Fascism, and National Socialism that dominated our immediate past. He explores the seeds of totalitarianism as secular faith in the nineteenth-century ideologies of Ludwig Feuerbach, Moses Hess, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Richard Wagner. He follows the growth of those seeds as the twentieth century became host to Leninism and Stalinism, Italian Fascism, and German National Socialism—each a totalitarian institution and a political religion.

Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Simaite


Julija Sukys - 2012
    An old lady with a limp and an accent, she is invisible to most. Certainly no one recognizes her as the warrior and revolutionary she was, when again and again she slipped into the Jewish ghetto of German-occupied Vilnius to carry food, clothes, medicine, money, and counterfeit documents to its prisoners. Often she left with letters to deliver, manuscripts to hide, and even sedated children swathed in sacks. In 1944 she was captured by the Gestapo, tortured for twelve days, and deported to Dachau.Through Epistolophilia, Julija Šukys follows the letters and journals—the “life-writing”—of this woman, Ona Šimaitė (1894–1970). A treasurer of words, Šimaitė carefully collected, preserved, and archived the written record of her life, including thousands of letters, scores of diaries, articles, and press clippings. Journeying through these words, Šukys negotiates with the ghost of Šimaitė, beckoning back to life this quiet and worldly heroine—a giant of Holocaust history (one of Yad Vashem’s honored “Righteous Among the Nations”) and yet so little known. The result is at once a mediated self-portrait and a measured perspective on a remarkable life. It reveals the meaning of life-writing, how women write their lives publicly and privately, and how their words attach them—and us—to life.

Music in 1853: The Biography of a Year


Hugh Macdonald - 2012
    By limiting the perspective to a single year yet extending it to a group of musicians, their constant interconnections become the central motif: Brahms meets Berlioz and Liszt as well as Schumann; Liszt is a constant link in every chain; Joachim is close to all of them; Wagner is on everyone's mind. No one composer is at the centre of the story, but a network of musicians spreads across the map of Europe from London and Paris to Leipzig and Zurich. Music in 1853 shows how musicians were now more closely connected than ever before, through the constant exchange of letters and the rapidly expanding railway network. The book links geography and day-to-day events to show how international the European musical scene had become. A larger picture emerges of a shift in musical scenery, from the world of the innocent Romanticism of Berlioz and Schumann to the more potent musical politics of Wagner and of his antidote (as many saw him) Brahms. HUGH MACDONALD is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University, St Louis. He has authored books on Skryabin and Berlioz and has previously published Beethoven's Century: Essays on Composers and Themes with Boydell/URP.

George Grosz: The Big No


Lutz Becker - 2012
    Ranging from primitive and graffiti-like drawings to complex Futurist street scenes with teeming crowds of overlapping figures, this collection shows Grosz at the height of his satirical powers, through the works from his largest portfolio, Ecce Homo. Pimps, black-marketeers, prostitutes, demobbed soldiers and the nouveau-riche rub shoulders in drawings of razor-sharp acuity and technical precision. Also included are the powerful, anti-militarist Hintergrund drawings, originally published in 1928 to accompany Erwin Piscator's production of The Good Soldier Schwejk, which resulted in criminal charges being brought against Grosz for "blasphemy and defamation of the German military." George Grosz: The Big No is an essential guide to one of the twentieth century's most important satirists.

Tragedy at Dieppe: Operation Jubilee, August 19, 1942


Mark Zuehlke - 2012
    With the Soviet Union thrown on the ropes by German invasion and America having just entered the war, Britain was under intense pressure to launch a major cross-Channel attack. In Canada, too, the public was calling for action, impatient to see Canadian soldiers wrap up their training in Britain and get into the war. Almost 5,000 Canadians formed the core of a 6,000-strong force. By the raid's end, 913 would be dead or mortally wounded, 1,946 would be prisoners of war and the Dieppe raid would become Canada's most costly day of World War II. Drawing on rare archival documents and personal interviews, Mark Zuehlke examines how the raid came to be and why it went so tragically wrong. From the clashes of personality and ambition among those masterminding the raid to the experiences of the common soldier left to carry it out, this tenth instalment of the Canadian Battle Series tells a compelling, unflinching story.

Rückzug: The German Retreat from France, 1944


Joachim Ludewig - 2012
    The massive landing on France's coast had been meticulously planned for three years, and the Allies anticipated a quick and decisive defeat of the German forces. Many of the planners were surprised, however, by the length of time it ultimately took to defeat the Germans. While much has been written about D-day, very little has been written about the crucial period from Augus

2,001 Most Useful German Words


Joseph W. Moser - 2012
    These up-to-date terms cover 21st century digital technologies and consumer electronics, and a convenient reference section offers greetings and words related to directions, restaurant orders, and other everyday activities, plus helpful tips on vocabulary and grammar.

All Power to the Councils!: A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918-1919


Gabriel Kuhn - 2012
    While the Social Democrats grabbed power, radicals across the country rallied to establish a communist society under the slogan "All Power to the Councils!" The Spartacus League launched an uprising in Berlin, council republics were proclaimed in Bremen and Bavaria, and workers' revolts shook numerous German towns. Yet in an act that would tragically shape the course of history, the Social Democratic government crushed the rebellions with the help of right-wing militias, paving the way for the ill-fated Weimar Republic—and ultimately the ascension of the Nazis. This definitive documentary history collects manifestos, speeches, articles, and letters from the German Revolution—Rosa Luxemburg, the Revolutionary Stewards, and Gustav Landauer amongst others—introduced and annotated by the editor. Many documents, such as the anarchist Erich Mühsam's comprehensive account of the Bavarian Council Republic, are presented here in English for the first time. The volume also includes materials from the Red Ruhr Army that repelled the reactionary Kapp Putsch in 1920 and the communist bandits that roamed Eastern Germany until 1921. All Power to the Councils! provides a dynamic and vivid picture of a time of great hope and devastating betrayal. “Drawing on newly uncovered material through pioneering archival historical research, Gabriel Kuhn’s powerful book on the German workers’ councils movement is essential reading to understanding the way forward for democratic worker control today.”—Immanuel Ness, Graduate Center for Worker Education, Brooklyn College “An indispensable resource on a world-historic event.”—Lucien van der Walt, Rhodes University, South Africa

Forgotten Voices: The Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Europe After World War II


Ulrich Merten - 2012
    Polish authorities suspected that they were German civilians that were killed by advancing Soviet forces. A Polish archeologist supervising the exhumation, said, "We are dealing with a mass grave of civilians, probably of German origin. The presence of children . . . suggests they were civilians."During World War II, the German Nazi regime committed great crimes against innocent civilian victims: Jews, Poles, Russians, Serbs, and other people of Central and Eastern Europe. At war's end, however, innocent German civilians in turn became victims of crimes against humanity. Forgotten Voices lets these victims of ethnic cleansing tell their story in their own words, so that they and what they endured are not forgotten. This volume is an important supplement to the voices of victims of totalitarianism and has been written in order to keep the historical record clear.The root cause of this tragedy was ultimately the Nazi German regime. As a leading German historian, Hans-Ulrich Wehler has noted, "Germany should avoid creating a cult of victimization, and thus forgetting Auschwitz and the mass killing of Russians." Ulrich Merten argues that applying collective punishment to an entire people is a crime against humanity. He concludes that this should also be recognized as a European catastrophe, not only a German one, because of its magnitude and the broad violation of human rights that occurred on European soil.Supplementary maps and pictures are available online at http: //www.forgottenvoices.net

Hitler's Prophecy and the "Final Solution"


Ian Kershaw - 2012
    It was well into its second half when Hitler madehis infamous Prophecy. . .

The German Minority in Interwar Poland


Winson Chu - 2012
    After the First World War, German national activists made regional distinctions among these Germans and German-speakers in Poland, with preference initially for those who had once lived in the German Empire. Rather than becoming more cohesive over time, Poland's ethnic Germans remained divided and did not unite within a single representative organization. Polish repressive policies and unequal subsidies from the German state exacerbated these differences, while National Socialism created new hierarchies and unleashed bitter intra-ethnic conflict among German minority leaders. Winson Chu challenges prevailing interpretations that German nationalism in the twentieth century viewed Germans as a single homogeneous group of people. His revealing study shows that nationalist agitation could divide as well as unite an embattled ethnicity.

Defending Fortress Europe: The War Diary of the German 7th Army in Normandy, 6 June to 26 July 1944


Mark J. Reardon - 2012
    US Army historian Mark Reardon departs from familiar convention by combining a mixture of modern scholarship with primary source material written over 65 years ago. The primary source material consists of the record of daily activities, covering the period from 6 June to 26 July 1944, compiled by a staff officer from the 7th Army s operations and planning section. This record, known as the Kriestagebuch (Daily War Diary), served not only as a historical reference, but also as an aide-memoire for the commanding general and his staff. Material from Army Group B and OB-West opens each chapter, providing a context for the 7th Army war diary that follows. Reardon adds introductory chapters to set the scene for the combat to begin on 6 June. In the concluding chapters he describes subsequent action and analyzes Normandy in a broader perspective.

Art in Europe: Museums and Masterworks


Victoria Charles - 2012
    Additionally, it highlights the various cultural policies and points of view concerning the promotion of artistic heritage in Europe. The most emblematic European museums are presented along with some well-kept and fascinating secrets, such as in Nicosia of Cyprus and Sofia in Bulgaria.

Christmas Trees Lit The Sky: Growing Up in World War II Germany


Anneliese Heider Tisdale - 2012
    

The Sorcerer of Bayreuth: Richard Wagner, His Work and His World


Barry Millington - 2012
    Over the course of his long career, he produced a stream of spellbinding works that challenged musical convention through their richness and tonalexperimentation, ultimately paving the way for modernism. This book presents an in-depth but easy-to-read overview of Wagner's life, work and times. It considers a wide range of themes, including the composer's original sources of inspiration; his fetish for exotic silks; his relationship with hiswife, Cosima, and with his mistress, Mathilde Wesendonck; the anti-semitism that is undeniably present in the operas; their proto-cinematic nature; and the turbulent legacy both of the Bayreuth Festival and of Wagnerism itself.Making use of the very latest scholarship - much of it undertaken by the author himself in connection with his editorship of The Wagner Journal - Millington reassesses received notions about Wagner and his work, demolishing ill-informed opinion in favour of proper critical understanding. It is aradical - and occasionally controversial - reappraisal of this most perplexing of composers. The volume's arrangement - unique among books on the composer -combines an accessible text, intriguing images and original documents, thus ensuring a consistently fresh approach. Bringing new insights to anendlessly fascinating subject, The Sorcerer of Bayreuth will charm anyone interested in music and in the wider cultural life of the 19th century and beyond.

Fairy Tale


Andrew Teverson - 2012
    It:explores the ways in which folklorists have defined the genre assesses the various methodologies used in the analysis and interpretation of fairy tale provides a detailed account of the historical development of the fairy tale as a literary form engages with the major ideological controversies that have shaped critical and creative approaches to fairy tales in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries demonstrates that the fairy tale is a highly metamorphic genre that has flourished in diverse media, including oral tradition, literature, film, and the visual arts.

Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany


Quinn Slobodian - 2012
    Quinn Slobodian upsets that storyline by beginning with individuals from the Third World themselves: students from Africa, Asia, and Latin America who arrived on West German campuses in large numbers in the early 1960s. They were the first to mobilize German youth in protest against acts of state violence and injustice perpetrated beyond Europe and North America. The activism of the foreign students served as a model for West German students, catalyzing social movements and influencing modes of opposition to the Vietnam War. In turn, the West Germans offered the international students solidarity and safe spaces for their dissident engagements. This collaboration helped the West German students to develop a more nuanced, empathetic understanding of the Third World, not just as a site of suffering, poverty, and violence, but also as the home of politicized individuals with the capacity and will to speak in their own names.

The Legitimate History Of Lies


Aleksandr Rainis - 2012
    Revealed within its pages is the fantastical history created by Germany's Nazi masters for the brainwashing of German youth. For the first time ever, English audiences are able to read and study the lies used by the Nazis to control the German populace, to keep them in fear, and to instill in them a willingness to die for a charismatic tyrant. But all is not as it seems; the German intelligentsia had, for generations before the Nazis, unwittingly prepared Germans to uncritically accept these lies. In a detailed and well-researched introduction, the Romanticism of German history is dissected as a guide for readers to navigate through the textbook. The German historical profession's often dubious past reveals a shocking truth: a Legitimate History of Lies.

Girl in White


Sue Hubbard - 2012
    A young musician, Mathilde, finds herself pregnant by her famous violinist lover, a Jew, who has been forced to flee Berlin with his American wife. Devastated at his loss she takes a trip out to a remote village on the north German moors where she was born, to find solace in the memory of her mother, who died only days after her birth. There she beings to unravel the life of the remarkable Paula Modersohn Becker: a young woman who defied tradition to become a painter. “a tour du force: masterly, moving; Hubbard goes where few dare go, and succeeds. You are the less for not reading it.”Fay Weldon

The Complete Illustrated History of Ancient Rome Boxed Set


Nigel Rodgers - 2012
    The two books in this box set chronicle the story of one of the greatest historical periods. One examines the warfare, government, conquests and leadership of ancient Rome, while the other shows how people lived and worked during this cultural peak in world history.

Terror and Democracy in West Germany


Karrin Hanshew - 2012
    The militants failed to bring down the state, but this book argues that the decade-long debate they inspired helped shape a new era. After 1945, West Germans answered long-standing doubts about democracy's viability and fears of authoritarian state power with a 'militant democracy' empowered against its enemies and a popular commitment to anti-fascist resistance. In the 1970s, these postwar solutions brought Germans into open conflict, fighting to protect democracy from both terrorism and state overreaction. Drawing on diverse sources, Karrin Hanshew shows how Germans, faced with a state of emergency and haunted by their own history, managed to learn from the past and defuse this adversarial dynamic. This negotiation of terror helped them to accept the Federal Republic of Germany as a stable, reformable polity and to reconceive of democracy's defence as part of everyday politics.

Germany's Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space


Kristin Leigh Kopp - 2012
    These depictions often made direct reference to the American Wild West, portraying the eastern steppes as a boundless plain that needed to be wrested from the hands of unruly natives and spatially ordered into German-administrated units. While conventional definitions locate colonial space overseas, Kristin Kopp argues that it was possible to understand both distant continents and adjacent Eastern Europe as parts of the same global periphery dependent upon Western European civilizing efforts. However, proximity to the source of aid translated to greater benefits for Eastern Europe than for more distant regions.

The Novels Of The Sisters Brontë Volume 10


Charlotte Brontë - 2012
    Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 Excerpt: ... He paused. I did not answer. "Probably," he added, with a smile, "your only regret on the subject will be, that I do not take all my companions along with me. 1 flatter myself, at times, that though among them, I am not of them; but it is natural that you should be glad to get rid of me. I may regret this, but I cannot blame you for it." "I shall not rejoice at your departure, for you can conduct yourself like a gentleman," said I, thinking it but right to make some acknowledgment for his good behaviour, "but I must confess I shall rejoice to bid adieu to the rest, inhospitable as it may appear." "No one can blame you for such an avowal," replied he gravely; "not: even the gentlemen themselves, I imagine. I'll just tell you," he continued, as if actuated by a sudden resolution, "what was said last night in the dining-room, after you left us--perhaps you will not mind it, as you're so very philosophical on certain points," he added with a slight sneer. " They were talking about Lord Lowborough and his delectable lady, the cause of whose sudden departure is no secret amongst them; and her character is so well known to them all, that, nearly related to me as she is, I could not attempt; to defend it.--Curse me," he muttered, par parenth&se, "if I don't have; vengeance for this! If the: villain must disgrace the family, must he blazon it abroad to every low-bred knave of his acquaintance?--I beg your pardon, Mrs Huntingdon. Well, they were talking of these things, and some of them remarked that, as she was separated from her husband, he might see her again when he pleased. "' Thank you, ' said he; 'I've had enough of her for the present: I'll not trouble to see her, unless she comes to me.' "'Then what: do you mean to do, Huntingdon, when we're gone i' said Ralph...

Inhumanities: Nazi Interpretations of Western Culture


David B. Dennis - 2012
    David B. Dennis shows how, based on belief that the Third Reich represented the culmination of Western Civilization, culture became a key propaganda tool in the regime's program of national renewal and its campaign against political, national, and racial enemies. Focusing on the daily output of the Volkischer Beobachter, the party's official organ and the most widely-circulating German newspaper of the day, he reveals how activists twisted history, biography, and aesthetics to fit Nazism's authoritarian, militaristic, and anti-Semitic worldviews. Ranging from National Socialist coverage of Germans such as Luther, Durer, Goethe, Beethoven, Wagner, and Nietzsche to 'great men of the Nordic West' such as Socrates, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, he reveals the true extent of the regime's ambitious attempt to reshape the 'German mind'.

Bonhoeffer, Christ and Culture


Keith L. JohnsonLori Brandt Hale - 2012
    A complex mix of scholarship and passion, his life and writings continue to fascinate and challenge Christians worldwide. He was a pastor and profound teacher and writer on Christian theology and ethics, yet was also involved in the resistance against Hitler which plotted his assassination. Bonhoeffer graduated from the University of Berlin and earned his doctorate in theology at the age of twenty-one. While pursuing postgraduate work at New York's Union Theological Seminary his life and ministry was profoundly influenced by his unanticipated involvement with the African American Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem during that time. Protesting the unconstitutional interference by Hitler of the established national Protestant church and the persecution of the Jews, and rejecting the alignment of the German Christian movement with the Nazi regime, Bonhoeffer became head of an underground seminary for the resisting Confessing Church in Germany. At the 2012 Wheaton Theology Conference, Bonhoeffer's thought and ministry were explored in stimulating presentations. Bonhoeffer's views of Jesus Christ, the Christian community, and the church's engagement with culture enjoyed special focus. Throughout it is clear that in the twenty-first century, Bonhoeffer's legacy is as provocative and powerful as ever.

The Charisma of Adolf Hitler


Laurence Rees - 2012
    So how was it possible that Hitler became such an attractive figure to millions of people? That is the important question at the core of Laurence Rees' new book.The Holocaust, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the outbreak of the Second World War - all these cataclysmic events and more can be laid at Hitler's door. Hitler was a war criminal arguably without precedent in the history of the world. Yet, as many who knew him confirm, Hitler was still able to exert a powerful influence over the people who encountered him. In this fascinating book to accompany his new BBC series, the acclaimed historian and documentary maker Laurence Rees examines the nature of Hitler's appeal, and reveals the role Hitler's supposed 'charisma' played in his success. Rees' previous work has explored the inner workings of the Nazi state in The Nazis: A Warning from History and the crimes they committed in Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution. The Charisma of Adolf Hitler is a natural culmination of twenty years of writing and research on the Third Reich, and a remarkable examination of the man and the mind at the heart of it all.

New Images of Nazi Germany: A Photographic Collection


G. Paul Garson - 2012
    Together, these photographs create a time capsule of indelible images that capture the faces of the individuals who fell under the sway of the swatstika as well as those who suffered under its onslaught on humanity"--Provided by publisher.