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Germania: A Personal History of Germans Ancient and Modern |  | Author: Simon Winder
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: £18.99
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Rating:  reviews
Sales Rank: 2285
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.8
ISBN: 0330451391
EAN: 9780330451390
ASIN: 0330451391
Publication Date: February 5, 2010
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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Product Description
Mesmerized by Germany; its cuisine, and its fairytale landscape, the author is equally passionate about the region's history, its folklore, monarchs and its changing borders. In this book, he describes Germany's past afresh, taking in the story from the shaggy world of the ancient forests right through to the Nazis' catastrophic rise in the 1930s.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A quirky but authoritaive compendium of German history and culture June 8, 2010
A Common Reader (Sussex, England)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
This book a vast compendium of German history and culture, combining anecdote, travelogue, history and personal reminiscences in a very readable style, amounting to about 450 pages.
Simon Winder seems to have acquired all the information contained in this book the hard way - by slogging through the country from north to south, year after year, visiting castles, cathedrals and museums wherever he went, collecting as much information as he could. Whereas most of us would look cursorily around such places before moving on to the next location, Simon seems to have made a personal study of each site, obviously buying the guidebooks and then working out the connections with other places and other times - in other words he is a "synthesiser" who has brought together a vast array of information in order to create this substantial volume.
His background reading was also about as comprehensive as one could expect (seven pages of bibliography), and this has led to a book which while being in places very funny (in the humorous sense), it also seems authoritative.
The amount of detail is overwhelming at times, but Simon's evident fascination with everything he sees carries the reader along in a sort of joyous fog, with fact after fact trailing along behind him (its all rather too much to take in in one go. While we read of the countless princes, kings and "tribal warlords" who ruled the land we now know as Germany (which of course barely existed as a cohesive whole until the 19th century), I found the charm of the book to lie in Simon's mandy and fascinating digressions.
Germania is one of those books I feel don't actually want to live without - its got to be there on my shelves to refer to whenever I come across some new item I want to look up when reading books by German authors or books about Germany. My only regret is that the story ends in 1933. I hope that Simon Winder now writes another volume to cover the period up to the present day. Perhaps the changes of the last 77 years were just too vast to be slotted in to Germania.
Germania May 19, 2010
S. Thomas (UK)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
It may sound a silly thing to say but initially I was put off by the title - `Germania' sounded as if the author was determined to be slightly highfalutin on the subject. In truth, Simon Winder is entirely disarming in his style of writing. Even in the Introduction (and I rarely read the bit before chapter 1) his light observations put one at ease - reflecting on his age he succeeds in invoking empathy with asides such as (on being in his forties) he is now `reconciled to dying still unable to identify tree species or remember phone numbers'.
This story of Germany from naissance to Hitler's rise to power aims to give a broad view of well, where Germany `came from' and by doing so to improve grasp of the country and the people above the usual stereotype . Sub-titling the book a `personal view', he distinguishes the book from a straight history essay by interweaving personal experience of Germany to create a palatable whole.
On the one hand, it is clear that the author has done his research (seven pages of bibliography) which means that you can read this book as an education. However, there is none of the dry citation that litters academic texts and distracts. Even the layout and headings are designed to break up the subject into palatable morsels, intrigue (a `glass pyramid filled with robin eggs') and amuse. Thus, the book is not simply for those with an interest in the history of Germany but anyone who wants to understand more about a nation that is often cited more for its wars than its peace.
The weaving of personal anecdote and historic vignettes turns subject matter that might lie heavily on the digestion (like a meal of sauerkraut and bratwurst) into a buffet style feast that one can graze. Although this is an entertaining book it is not intended to be flip in approach or a `fun read'. Rather, it represents an approachable gateway to subject matter that could otherwise make for a dour read. Simon's light touch helps to create a broad perspective from detailed observation and the net effect is that one can gradually stand back from the tapestry he creates to see a picture emerge.
This is an intelligent book and in depth book - not for those who want to know `all about Germany in five minutes'. However, it is ideal for those who have a real interest in Germany whether through speaking the language, visiting, staying or simply wanting to understand the cultural and structural origins of the people. Although it is not intended as an academic text, I would also think it a must for anyone studying the country because it will create a counterpoint to much fustier tomes on any reading list.
In conclusion, a book that proved surprisingly enjoyable from a writer that knows how to win over the reader.
ART, IDENTITY AND MAKE-BELIEVE February 15, 2010
DAVID BRYSON (Glossop Derbyshire England)
14 out of 18 found this review helpful
This is a book about things that can now be seen in Germany, and I can categorise it in that way with complete confidence because I am simply quoting its author. However Simon Winder takes these as his starting point and goes behind the scenery, paintings, pottery and architecture into an exploration of the history of Germany and the soul of its people. He feels obsessed with the place, and there is a pun on `mania' in the book's title. I can understand a fascination of this kind because I have felt it myself in the four visits, at intervals over half a century, that I have made to Germany. These visits were instructive but only superficially, and I have not enjoyed a book so much in a long time as I enjoyed the experience of having this fascinating nation interpreted for me by a guide who is careful not to claim to be an expert but who is manifestly knowledgeable, sympathetic, balanced in his judgment and independent-minded.
Winder digs as far back in history as he can, which effectively means as far as the Germania of Tacitus. I would not blame him for not being aware of another Roman source roughly contemporary with that, the astrological epic poet Manilius who criticised Germany harshly, doubtless knowing nothing about it. From memory all I can recall is a scrap of Latin verse composed by Housman for his great edition of Manilius, in which Housman asks
`O Germany, did an unfair astrologer sing of you as being fit only to give birth to beasts?'
(Tene feris dignam tantum, Germania, matrem
dixerat iniusti musa mathematici?)
Manilius would not have been the first to have such an opinion, and he will not be the last. However we will not get a fairer picture unless someone does the work necessary to paint it. Simon Winder seems to have been everywhere in what is now, and once was, Germany. That includes Austria, the Sudetenland and East Prussia, and of course it includes Alsace and Lorraine, pulled one way and the other by France and Germany like the body of Patroclus on the battlefield in the Iliad. Winder does not stick to famous places, and the book is full of his loving (or occasionally loathing) accounts of artefacts whose wider cultural significance he ponders. Nearly every little place seems to have some building that has survived centuries of wars well enough to retain on display pictures or statues that tell a story. He does not have to force his interpretations, because the whole history of Germany until Bismarck in the 19th century was one of separate regions and states so small in many cases that their ownership and government were continually changing, and this state of flux is reflected in art. It is just a matter of making sense of it all, and the sense is often so complicated that any author tackling the subject needs not just intellectual grip but also enough intellectual stamina not to become fatigued by it
Winder is a bit of a chatterbox, but his sheer gift of the gab, along with his sturdy common sense and pleasant style of writing, makes this book, 450 pages of it including some illustrations in the pre-publication format, a constant pleasure to read. For me, he makes very good sense of this complex story, and he makes it a page-turner down to page 450. Obviously other interpretations of events are possible, but Winder's are always at least fair and rational. He is not iconoclastic just for the sake of it, but some stereotypes are dismissed in a useful way, as for instance when he points out a consistent theme of Prussian military ineptitude that makes nonsense of any belief that `Germans have some inherent thirst for or brilliance at warfare.' A nice turn of phrase makes some of his perceptions memorable too, and to counterbalance the quotation I just gave you I liked Winder's ironic incredulity at one small exhibition that tried to portray Prussia `as a land of rustic carts, folk-craft and embroidered dresses.'
The story, he tells us repeatedly, stops with the accession of Hitler. Well, it does and it doesn't. It ceases to be a sequential chronicle at 1933, but there are numerous forward references to the nazi regime as well as glimpses of Germany post WWII that naturally have a lot to say about it. This seems a sensible balance. There would have been no point in attempting any half-hearted account of the period 1933-45 - either treat it exhaustively or leave it out except for occasional allusions and lessons. It calls for a book in its own right, and there are plenty of those, although I would be interested to read one by Winder.
So many cultural topics are covered that it probably seems unreasonable to say that I could have done with one more, although Winder may have felt it was too far outside his area of major interest. What happened to German scholarship after Sedan in 1870? Its great age, the age of Madvig, Haupt and Lachmann, was, as Housman says, the era of a Germany divided and poor. The age of the dullards that Housman excoriates so brilliantly came after German unification, and I wonder why. I have no right to demand more considering how much this fine volume gives me already. It is knowledgeable, thoughtful, instructive, coherent, readable and entertaining. Surely that ought to be enough, and in any case the answer is probably that after unification the best minds had other careers than scholarship to attract them.
EXQUIST January 26, 2010
A. Taylor (Ash, England)
29 out of 39 found this review helpful
This is a brilliant book which I heartily recommend to anyone with both a sense of humour and (even a) passing interest in Germany and the Germans. Mr Winder covers German history from the Romans to the rise of the Nazis but, as the title says it's a personal history so the items included are, I presume, those of interest to the author. In other words it's not a timeline history and some of the periodS are mentioned only perfunctorily if at all.
As I understood it the book is aimed at giving people who travel to Germany a better understanding of what makes the Germans tick. The following example of the authors style should give an insight into way Mr Winder approaches his subject. " If, for some, travel is a chance to admire Counter-Reformation altarpieces and for others a chance for a one-on-one roughhouse with a Dortmund transsexual ....."
However, while the book maybe humorous don't get the idea that the book is a joke or an `attack' on anyone, Germans or otherwise, it's not. The author is obviously very fond of Germany and the Germans and as I see it this is his attempt at "history and all that". Highly recommended.
Completing the Jigsaw March 22, 2010
Mr. C. G. Leggatt
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
My goodness, the author has uncovered a hidden niche in the market with a pitch that is neither drily academic nor hip (as a quick-read on the aircraft for the discerning tourist). It helps if you already know a bit about German history - say, that Frederick the Great and Kaiser Wilhelm II existed and created a bit of trouble - but not much more. Simon Winder leads you through his personal appreciation of the heritage of the many lands, micro-states, principalities and kingdoms today known as: Germany. He successfully illuminates them, their rulers and their peoples while not offering a precise essay of dusty facts and figures; indeed, the joy of Germania is that it fills in those quirky cultural bits that give the fuller picture, beyond what many history books can offer. It's idiosyncratic, of course, with almost as many references to the historically nigh-invisible King Ludwig III of Bavaria as to his "pop star" predecessor but one, mad King Ludwig II of castle-building fame. But this is a compliment, not a criticism; I put Germania down feeling that many missing pieces of a jigsaw had been handed to me.
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