Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History

In this delightful romp through German culture and history, Simon Winder does two unexpected things: admits that he can’t speak German; and ends the narrative in 1933. Winder overcomes these potentially fatal handicaps, and his book Germania gives a solid overview of the history and culture of the Germans.

Winder, an Englishman and frequent traveller to Germany, naturally takes a travelogue approach. It’s a personal story of discovery as much as anything. I was put in mind of A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson, or Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz (both of which I also thoroughly enjoyed). There is humour throughout, but Winder also skilfully includes the serious side of things, and even hints at the dark side of show more German history. His choice to end the narrative when he does allows him to only ever hint at *that* dark part of the country’s history.

The great success of this book is that it brings all the incredible stories of German history to light for English-speakers in an accessible and enjoyable book.

Winder has actually done a “central European” trilogy, and I must get on to the other two volumes, which deal with the former Habsburg Empire and the Benelux nations respectively. show less

Germania is a book that only a middle aged British man could write. That doesn't make it bad; it just explains things like the book's seeming obsession with Nazis and an oddly phrased remark that Handel wasn't German. Remarkably, the closer one gets to the Nazi Era, the less he talks about Nazis, so while I almost gave the book up because it seemed that every aspect of early and medieval Germany was related to or foreshadowed the Nazis, I'm glad I stuck with it because it did get better. Winder's work is an overview of German history from the beginning through 1933 told through the filter of his travels around Germany seeking out the historic and the eccentric. And he gets to spend a lot of time complaining about the French—a favorite show more pastime of Britons and Germans. If you like obscure German microstates, questionable street food, or ridiculous provincial museums, this book is for you, because Winder does too. And he travels the length and breadth of Germany in his quest for the next juicy tidbit. But he also spends time on serious matters: his thoughts about the fall of pre-1914 European civilization especially is worth the effort of finishing the book.

Overall, it's a fun, accessible read written in a style that lets the author's personality and humor shine through. Although he does offer references/further reading at the end, this should not be confused an academic history and was never meant to be one.

Recommended for Germanophiles looking for a fun read; the follow-up Danubia, about Austria-Hungary, is even better. show less

Pungent, witty, sometimes hilarious, deftly satirical, but written from a place of deep love and affection if also exasperation and, as you might well imagine when the twentieth century comes around, borderline despair. Personalities, politics, instiutions, geography, borders, customs and endless little museums, displays, historical folk-park nonsense, often appalling monuments and frescos, meander through this exploration of place and history and, not incidentally, the mindset of the writer for whom it is all a sort of resigned obsession.

I enjoyed Simon Winder’s book Danubia enough to seek out his earlier combination travelogue/history, Germania - a "personal response," as he calls it, to German history.

Writing “German” history prior to 1871 presents a daunting task because before that date there was no country known as “Germany.” The land we think of as Germany was composed of numerous principalities, dukedoms, bishoprics, and independent city-states that popped in and out of existence owing to the vagaries of hereditary suzerainty and noble marriages. Winder notes that successive historical maps of the country resemble nothing so much as "an explosion in a jigsaw factory." He does not undertake to present a chronological narrative; rather, he travels around show more the countryside and regales the reader with stories relevant to the place he is visiting, although the history still manages to be presented in roughly chronological order.

Winder is not one to make heroes of long-gone historical characters. Of Charlemagne he writes:

"As usual with such leaders, historians – who are generally rather introverted and mild individuals – tend to wish Charlemagne to be at heart keen on jewels, saints’ relics and spreading literacy, whereas an argument might be made for his core competence being the efficient piling-up of immense numbers of dead Saxons.”

Rather, the “heroes” of Winder’s story are the Free Imperial Cities such as Strasburg , Nuremberg, and the Hanseatic League that endured the middle ages as independent entities fostering trade and cosmopolitan values.

Winder breaks off his history in 1933 with the rise of the Nazis, avoiding not only the nastiest period in German history, but also its remarkable economic recovery after World War II. But he does manage to get in a few jabs at modern Germany, as with his exploration of what it means to “be” German, spoofing the Nazi’s efforts to create a pure Aryan race. After a short summary of the shifts of various unrelated tribes over the territory for about a thousand years, he says, “In practice Germany is a chaotic ethnic lost-property office, and the last place to be looking for ‘pure blood.’” Indeed, he sees German reverence for their deep past as having a corrosive and disastrous effect:

"There can be few stronger arguments for the damage that can be done by paying too much attention to history than how Germany has understood and taught its ancient past, however aesthetically pleasurable it can be in operas."

Winder livens up his sweep of German history with a tourist’s eye for the unique and noteworthy in his travels, describing the Christmas markets, the Ratskellers (with their massive glasses for serving beer), the ubiquitous castles, dense forests, flower-bedecked windows on half-timbered houses, marzipan in a variety of shapes (including, in one Lübeck shop, models of the Brandenburg Gate, the Eiffel Tower, and the Houses of Parliament) and “endless sausages.” He quips, “There is always a pig and a potato just around the next corner…..”

Evaluation: Germania, like Danubia, is a quirky book that could hardly be classified as serious history, although it contains a lot of factual information on an important topic. ("Germany," the author writes, "is a place without which European culture makes no sense.”) Perhaps “travelogue with historical background” might be a more apt description. The writing is sprightly and entertaining, and the book presents an often delightful and decidedly unique guide to the region.

(JAB) show less

If you would like to know more about German history than just the events of the Second World War, then I recommend this laugh out loud history of the Germans. Simon Winder has organised his view of Germany history using his travels around Germany and its neighbours to develop themes such as a Germanic cultural obsession with the Middle Ages, the horrors of the Black Death and the Thirty Years War and the role of Free Imperial Cities. Those readers who have a more extensive knowledge of Central European history than me can have fun disagreeing with his vividly expressed opinions and amusing asides.

Here is one example from p150, 'One very odd aspect to many European countries, not often noticed, is that, if you start in their top show more north-wests they are generally unattractive, gloomy, harsh places - but if you travel south-east life gets better. This is drastically true in Scandinavia, but more curiously it works for Spain, Italy, France and Greece.'

If you, like me, reside in the fair city of Sheffield (the greenest city in Britain), you too can borrow this excellent book from the public library. show less

The starting-point of Simon Winder's book is Tacitus' "Germania", published in AD100, and its vision of the tribes and lands outwith the then Roman empire, a vision used to promote the concept of 'pure blood' throughout German history.

Winder suggests, to the contrary, that "in practice Germany is a chaotic ethnic lost-property office, and the last place to be looking for 'pure blood', and the book goes on to elaborate on this theme.

The author is clearly knowledgeable, with a wide-ranging appreciation of history and an encyclopaedic knowledge of both high-brow and low-brow German culture, as evidenced by his discourses on opera, mining and cooking.

However, despite the obvious and extensive scholarship on display here, the serious stuff show more is too often accompanied by asides or acerbic comments. For example, on pp. 111-112, he says: "Of course, even allowing for the huge oversimplification created by clinging to crowned heads, German history is just endlessly more interesting and funny simply because the Wettins, Hohenzollerns, Wittelsbachs and Habsburgs between them generate a madly complex gimcrack of genealogies, competing, interrelating, rising, falling, dying on the battlefield, going mad, doing nothing much at all".

This is historical writing gone fallow: what could have been interesting and insightful ends up as either knocking copy or wasted text. There's a hint that the author, too, knocks his own copy when he describes this work, in the Introduction, as "chaotic" (pg. 14).

It is, and I chose not to finish it. show less

Germany. The industrial and economic behemoth of the modern Europe. But it hasn’t always been that way. In this book Winder takes us way back into Germanys past, as far as the Romans even, before bringing up to the relatively modern age. The Germany of this age was a frontier of the Roman empire, similar to the far north of England; over the line were the barbarians. There is still architecture from those days too, that has survived countless wars and skirmishes.

Until relatively recently, 1871 in fact, Germany was a patchwork of princedoms, mini states and bigger empires, some really tiny too. Sometimes they all got along, but frequently they didn’t. As he travels around the country he reveals snippets of history about the places he show more visits. There are tales of battles, disputes, religious leaders whose remains were displayed in gibbets around the town (the gibbets are still there too), of aristocrat princes and barons and the castles and cathedrals that they built.

He does avoid recent World War 2 history, partly because the history that the Germans prefer is prior to that too, and also that they are countless other books on that conflict. He does brush gently against it, looking at the events that lead to Hitler and the Nazis seizing power in the 1930’s.

I was quite looking forward to this one, as I had enjoyed reading another of his called Danubia. That book was interesting, and also witty and fairly often really funny. Sadly this one didn’t seem to have that lighter humour that it really needed to lift it. IT is stuffed full of fact and anecdotes, and come across as being fairly well researched. Worth reading if you have a fascination with Germany, but may not be for everyone. 2.5 stars show less