JULY THREAD ON THE GRAND EUROPEAN TOUR : THE GERMANIC WORLD

Many important rivers flow through German speaking areas including the Rhine, the Danube and here the Elbe.

The German language has been the beneficiary of some of the most wonderful authors in history:

20 possibles

Friedrich Schiller
Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Thomas Mann
Stefan Zweig
Hermann Hesse
Erich Maria Remarque
Alfred Doblin
Franz Kafka
Berthold Brecht
Anna Seghers
Heinrich Boll
Thomas Bernhard
Elias Canetti
Irmgard Keun
Gunter Grass
Herta Muller
Julia Franck
WG Sebald
Peter Stamm
Marlen Haushofer

What I will read:

The German Lesson by Siegfried Lenz

I have Herman Hesse's travel memoir Singapore Dream and Other Adventures: Travel Writings from an Asian Journey out from the library so will continue to read that.
I have Melnitz by Swiss German Charles Lewinsky sitting by my laptop but don't think I'll have time for it.
I also pulled Jacob the Liar by Jureck Becker a Polish-German writer from the shelves.

Goethe’s Italian Journey will touch both the Germanic and the travel themes. Of course anyone who has not yet read Faust should take this opportunity.

I will be reading a contemporary work by Young Adult author Cornelia Funke this month. I hope that is allowable? She writes in German and her books are translated.

I will be reading a 1920's noir, The Second Rider by Alex Beer.

I’ll mostly be spending time on the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. I did read them as a child (not the Disney-died versions), but my library had a had a set of them so I’ll reacquaint myself. I’ve also borrowed Rilke, Goethe and a book by Stefan Zweig.

For fantasy fans, I can heartily recommend Walter Moer's Zamonia series.

>2 PaulCranswick: Some Great Authors - too bad the Horror of Right Wing Germany is increasing along with American nazis.

Based on your comments last year, Paul, I would like to read Remarque's The Road Back. But I need to reread All Quiet on the Western Front first, and I don't have time to read both. So I think I will try to read The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, since I have never read that one.

>6 alcottacre: Certainly allowable, Stasia.

For anyone who likes crime novels I recommend Jakob Arjouni's novels about a Turkish PI, the first is Happy Birthday, Turk! published when Arjouni was only 20 years old. They are good reads set in Frankfurt.

This is the eighth case in the von Bodenstein and Kirchhoff series, and once again it was very exciting.
I had the good fortune to meet the author Nele Neuhaus in March at the Book Love Festival in Zurich. I already knew that her books are based on newspaper reports that she saves and eventually weaves into a story.

What I particularly liked about the book is that I know and love all the locations in Zurich like the back of my hand, so I know exactly what the situation is like for the protagonists.

Oh right, I should participate in this one. There’s just one difficult political book in German on my tbr now, maybe I’ll find something nicer for the challenge. I’ll be interested to see how >3 PaulCranswick: will be for you. It was a 5 star for me, but not an easy one. And it’s about as German as can be :D

Some interesting books listed here!

>8 PawsforThought: Oooo, I never thought of them. I also have an anthology of Brothers Grimm. Hope to get to them!

>17 Tess_W: They were on a list of “books you have to read” that I’ve been using as inspiration for my reads this year. I wanted to include a lighter read in case the other Germans in my list became too much.

>12 PaulCranswick: Good to know. Thanks, Paul.

I'm 75 pages into All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski, and so far it's excellent.

I’ve started The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. A good start, but it’s a tome. Still looking for some lighter reading. Unfortunately I have lost my old copy of Heidi as I’m really in the mood for it.

>21 EllaTim: Wow, Ella, that is a massive book! I opted for my Mann-read to be of the shorter variety: Death in Venice. Saving that for later in the month, though.

>22 PawsforThought: Good luck reading that one, Paws. Do you know the movie they made of it? Also called Death in Venice, of course, Visconti.
I found Heidi on Gutenberg.org so I can always switch.

>23 EllaTim: I know of the film but have never watched it. I know there was a documentary recently about the (tragic) life of the boy in the film.

That’s great you can read Heidi if you want something lighter after all. I’ve never read it but watched a film version when I was little - I don’t remember much about it, though.

I finished The Sorrows of Young Werther, J. W. von Goethe (1774), translated from the German by David Constantine.

>24 PawsforThought: Read Heidi so many times as a child I pretty much had it memorised.

>25 kac522: Getting ready to begin that now!

I finished the excellent novel All for Nothing, which is set during the waning days of the Reich. Highly recommended

>27 Tess_W: Lots of Sturm und Drang. Fortunately, it's short.

>29 kac522: Never heard that term before, but you are correct!

I finished The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe It is a short novel where the reader endures the illogical and drawn out sufferings of Werther as he pines for a woman he can not have. All does not end well. Told in letters from Werther to his "friend", Wilhelm. Very dramatic. In a word: angst. 92 pages 3- stars

>30 Tess_W: Apparently led to a rash of suicides among susceptible contemporary young men.

>30 Tess_W: I learned the term in music history classes and never realized it applied to literature as well until I read about Werther.

>30 Tess_W: I read that one in school (was made to read it) and while I could recognise that it was “great literature”, I was so annoyed by Werther and his over dramatic self even though as a teenager I was as dramatic as they come.

In Sweden, we use use the phrase “hjärta och smärta” (heart and pain, except it rhymes) to describe badly written and over dramatic literature -in particular poetry. Werther would 100% write that type of poetry.

>28 labfs39: A BB for me on that one!

Deviating from the program to read I Chose Freedom. I have been trying to track down this book, once a best-seller and Reader’s Digest selection, because it is one of the books discussed in The Anti-Communist Manifestoes, which looks at four “Cold War Classics” from literary and social perspectives beyond the merely political. Kravchenko’s book has proved very elusive, but a student friend borrowed it from his university library for me and I don’t want him to be hit with any fines, so have begun slogging through its 476 pages.

>34 Tess_W: I think you'll like it, Tess.

So I went into the bookshop to find something nice for this challenge and 2 books caught my eye, both by German authors with a migration background, dealing with identity and “Heimat” - and what is more cozily German than Heimat, except for maybe Gemütlichkeit and Bratwurst? This book was the shorter and easier one, so I read it first to make sure to have at least one finished book in the challenge.

45. Mama, bitte lern Deutsch by Tahsim Durgun

The title translates to „Mum, please learn German“ and is about the difficulties of integration into a society the author was born into, but where he has always been an outsider. Tahsim‘s parents are Kurds of the Yazidi belief, they were granted asylum in what must have been the very early 90s. Their origin and religion made them also outsiders of the huge muslim, mainly Turkish communities (many of whom hate the Kurds generally and think Yazidi people are worshipping the devil).

They settled in Oldenburg in Northern Germany and had 4 kids, Tahsim being the second oldest. While he wasn’t a bad student, he was put into a special class with other kids with migration background, and I was horrified reading that chapter. I could have imagined that treatment in the early 70s, but not in the 90s, with teachers who must have been my age. Fortunately, his parents didn’t follow the primary school‘s assessment to send him to Hauptschule (the lowest level of middle school), but put him into a Gesamtschule/ comprehensive school where he found great teachers, perfected his German to a point that he later studied German literature at university.

This was his way to fight back, after endless visits to local and government agencies where he translated for his parents and they still didn’t get the necessary documents together because something of the “Behördendeutsch” had slipped them. He decided to master that da**ed language and to „out-German“ them, and he did! Yay, go Tahsim!

As the title shows, the book is also about his annoyance with his parents, especially his mother, not to integrate more and not to improve her German, when she has such exceptional poetic skills in her own language. He gets tired of having to answer every phone call, every call at the door and to come along to every medical visit. He‘s also annoyed with his siblings, the youngest being born after 2000 automatically receiving citizenship (he had to wait over 20 years for it) and never making a real effort.

It is a short and easy read, some chapters are a bit meh, others are great and the last one is just beautiful.

Rating 4 stars

Some great books listed here! :)

Sharing my experiences

The Magic Mountain is one of my all time favorite books (I just love Thomas Mann’s writing), but it took me three attempts and then months to get through. It starts easily enough and then gets slower and slower, probably as a metaphor for those 7 years up there.

Death in Venice is the Mann I return to every couple of years. Also loved the Visconti movie which is a bit different, but captures the atmosphere so well (and I wish I hadn’t seen the docu about the child actor).

Heidi is one of my big childhood loves, read it countless times and often asked my mum for a small bowl of milk and a piece of dry bread and cheese which I then ate in our garden, imagining to be surrounded by goats! :D

The sorrows of young Werther: we had to read that one at school. While I see the literary and societal impact, I really disliked it, like all of Goethe’s prose I read for the 1001 list. At least it’s short, though it doesn’t feel short. Give me Faust any day over this one!

>38 Deern: A recipe for rösti (a fried potato dish) I read in a Miriam Ungerer cookbook began with her reminiscing about reading the account in Heidi of the Alm Uncle toasting a piece of cheese on a fork over the fire. Why didn’t it melt and run down his arm? Eventually she discovered the secret of the cheese. But it was fun to be reminded that at least at one point every little girl read Heidi.

I finished The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. Here's another classic book that I missed when it came out (in English). I was starting grad school about that time, so was too busy to pay attention to anything besides my studies, and I was also older than the intended audience, so I really wasn't aware of it at the time. I thought it was a wonderful story, one I would have loved if I had read it when I was a child. I'm very glad to have finally gotten to this one.

I completed The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe for this months European Tour. So much emoting!!! I am glad it was short.

This is an example of Sturm und Dang and a good one at that.

Belated start to this month’s challenge: Italian Journey. I know I’ve read it before, but remember nothing, and it fits with my sub-challenge of books about European travel.

Realised that Auto da Fe, despite the author’s Italian-sounding name and Bulgarian birth, was written in German. I’ve already used it for The Ottoman Empire and Non-National Languages, but reading it was such a chore I’m using it for triple-credit.

I finished Singapore Dream and other Adventures by Herman Hesse. This includes delightful descriptions of his trip to Southeast Asia, some poetry inspired by his trip and a short story about a young missionary's arrival to India.
The translator, Sherab Choozin Kohn, looks to have led an interesting life.
https://www.chronicleproject.com/tribute-to-sherab-chodzin/

I finished an unplanned one, Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck. It had quite an impact on me. Her books either hit me hard or don‘t touch me at all. Heimsuchung/ Visitation so far is my favorite, painful, but perfectly balanced. This one here hit too hard at times, I had to skip a small part. She has a way to just cut your (German) soul open and analyze its details, while using wonderful language. Rated it with 4.5 stars.

This was a successful month of reading, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Most of the books had been on my TBR list for quite some time, and I was able to reduce it just a tiny bit 😊

Im Wald by Nele Neuhaus (4½ stars) Germany
Nachtschein by Seraina Kobler (4stars) Switzerland
Das Erbe der Schuld Hendrik Falkenberg (4½ stars) Germany
Dunkelsprung by Leonie Swann (4 stars) 🎧 Germany
Schattenriss by Theresa Prammer (4 stars) Austria
Todessturz by Irène Mürner (3 stars) Switzerland
Tod im Cabaret Voltaire by Miriam Veya (4 stars) Switzerland
Schatten über der Villa Patumbah by Miriam Veya (4 stars) Switzerland
Daily Soap by Nora Osagiobare (3 stars) Switzerland
Tatverdacht by Petra Ivanov (4½ stars) Switzerland
Der Buchspazierer by Carsten Henn (4½ stars) 🎧 Germany
Die Meisterdiebin by Christine Jaeggi (3½ stars) Switzerland
Todesrache by Andreas Gruber (4½ stars) Austria

>46 Ameise1: That’s quite the list Barbara!
I read the first book in a series by Nele Neuhaus, but I think she’s not for me.

I’m glad I didn’t pick Young Werther to read! Sounds unappetizing!

I read Little Man, what now by Hans Fallada. Set during the thirties, the crisis, in Berlin. Difficult times, and Fallada writes well. I could empathize with the young couple he writes about, and their sometimes funny but mostly awful situation, having to bow and scrape.

I must confess I got stuck in The Magic Mountain. I put it aside for the moment, and then forgot about it. Maybe later.

>47 EllaTim: Thanks so much Ella

I had to read The Sorrows of Young Werther during grammar school, and yes, I simply had to read it.

The Magic Mountain is very long-winded. If you would like to read something else by Thomas Mann, I can recommend Buddenbrooks or Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man. The story of Felix Krull is highly amusing.

>48 Ameise1: Frederick Crews’ parody of a lecture to an undergraduate class in The Pooh Perplex has this description of The Magic Mountain: “It’s about this bunch of birds who sit around an old health resort wondering if they’re going to croak. Some do, some don’t, and then the book is over. If it weren’t for the philosophic development of the plot this would be the most boring thing since Orientation Week. But if you size up this philosophic development you see it’s really all about Western Man, humanism, science, Freud, Liebestod, and stuff like that, and you’ve got to admit it’s good, whether you like it or not. “ Summed up my experience.

>48 Ameise1: >49 booksaplenty1949: I don’t know if this is helpful to me reading on!

>50 EllaTim: But I think the course in question was Very Great Modern Classics or some such. You will feel better and stronger for having read it.
Goethe’s Italian Journey is quite charming, BTW. A keen tourist to whom most of us can relate.

>50 EllaTim: Dear Ella, don't stress yourself out. Life is too short to read authors you don't like, no matter how prestigious they are in world literature. There are countless excellent authors who never make it onto literary lists but who, in my opinion, are fantastic. Leave it alone and read what you enjoy. I never bow to such lists; I'm too good for that. I prefer to browse through shelves and if I like something, I take it.

Those who *had* to read The Sorrows of Young Werther at some point might enjoy Lotte in Weimar, Thomas Mann’s “sequel.” A lot less Sturm und Drang, or “Sturm und Dang” as someone here called it earlier.

Only about a 100 pages to go in Italian Journey, but have just discovered that there is a Folio Society edition with illustrations of the works of art Goethe discusses. Have ordered a copy and put finishing the book on hold.

>51 booksaplenty1949: Better and stronger! For having lifted a heavy tome, of course.
>52 Ameise1: Hi Barbara. You are quite right of course, no need to force oneself to read a book one doesn’t like. But I’m just in two minds about The Magic Mountain. I’ll just see how far I get.
>54 booksaplenty1949: Sounds really interesting.

I also completed The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig. This is a short story/novella (66 pages). It's a rather odd little book! It's the story of 2 men: a world class chess champion who must stare at the board constantly and takes his full allotted 15 minutes for each play vs a Dr who had been held as a POW by the Nazis. I think this is the early version of a psychological thriller.

I managed two books for the challenge in July. The Pine Islands by Marion Poschmann and The Pigeon by Patrick Suskind.

The August European Grand Tour Challenge thread is up and this is the only month we have dedicated to an individual our late and very dear friend Anita Meulstee. We are visiting the Benelux countries this month.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/372858

I finished De Wand by Marlen Haushofer. (The Wall)
A woman unexpectedly finds herself locked behind a glass wall. On the other side everybody is dead, she is left alone in a mountain hunting lodge, with just animals for company. It’s a chilling idea, but so beautifully written. Especially the relationship the woman develops with her animals.

Came back from my holiday to find my FS copy of Italian Journey waiting for me. Looked at all the beautiful illustrations and finished the last 100 pages. A lighter side of Goethe that I found quite charming.

I never updated my July reads.

Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke
The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
Death in Venice and Other Stories by Thomas Mann
and
Roman Elegies by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I read Measuring the World in October which would have worked for this months Euro challenge. I really like dit.