Cannons failed to determine its outcome. In negotiations last years meeting users succeeded in future and. It was the birth of modern diplomacy. Sixteen forty eight. Years starts october twenty fourth and d. W. Welcome to an arts twenty one special. One hundred german must reads we present the definitive list of german must read novels translated into english our ambitious Multimedia Project includes web videos interviews and links. To. Our literature experts read through stacks and stacks of Books Thousands of pages
a complete century was explored from beginning to end. This is their perspective on major works from klaus man and cost of life to you up follows up. Clean sounds like men in leather jackets a cliche which is true and not true. Most folks dont require a mouthguard but most folks are about beautiful orange is. Our list for worldly readers and amateurs one hundred books that have and will profoundly shaped how readers view germany and europe german novels that capture the brutality of the nazis and the holocaust stories about the divided city of berlin and the roaring golden twenty. And well show you our hall of fame the Nobel Laureates on our last. Anted for the
first time at the Frankfurt Book Fair twenty eight. Hundred one hundred german muster reads with karen helm stet. Has been having him start my name is karen helms ted and its a great pleasure to introduce our Multimedia Project to the show one hundred german must reads in english here at the Frankfurt Book Fair and yes one of them and now would like to know more about this project. Please allow me to introduce my guests first off the project leaders here to my left are g. W. Literature experts sabina keyes about and david eleven. Point zero and were particularly thrilled to welcome jenny aplin back Award Winning author and director and one of the authors on our list so congratulations are in order and a warm welcome and. You know it starts of you know ill start with you tell us what were the Biggest Challenges you encountered with this project and how long did it take you know what as it is. We spent two years doing the Research Reading and selecting works. With some authors it was easier almost all the books of thomas mann. Has been translated in winds with others only one. We had to find the english title so the research was the first challenge in that once we had decided which books to include on our list the next challenge was to compress say a one thousand page novel into two minutes might suffice i mean you. Actually have a few humans a basis just because there is so much we wanted to tell about each book but we couldnt squeeze it all into two minute videos we did argue about how to deal with that fortunately were still friends. Were pleased to hear that here and now jenny backus. One of the most versatile and most successful authors in germany. Or
visitation by its english title is your book on the list a very slim volume that belies the enormous backstory as german history play such a huge role and it illuminated through the story of a house and a property. As a german writer is that a given. Is there any way to get around dealing with germanys historical legacy that home for me in my case is that it certainly looks like there isnt for others maybe it Wasnt My Original Intention to tell stories about the Twentieth Century. I only started out with private stories and ended up with history in the. Journey back was born to be a writer her father and grandfather were famous authors but at university she study
theatre and directing before publishing your first novel in One Thousand Nine Hundred nine. The old child describes a young girls a scrape from the world of responsibility an allegory of life east germany. Blends politics into the lives of our characters her latest novel nominated for the german book prize tells a story of migration and everyday life in germany. And im dynastic and on a thursday at the end of august a group of ten black men gathered outside the Berlin City Hall building. I thought this very day i decided to stage a Hunger Strike three days later they stopped taking liquids. Up and bert fields her work with contemporary history and searches for personal solutions to the Major Political issues over time. If you find them and how did people react when they suddenly have to redefine. In their identity because their lies have changed
drastically. The writer explores similar themes of contemporary German Society in her twenty ten novel visitation which is on her list this is a its also a very private story being told as with your own Family History woven in isnt that right. Yeah. Were going to be well yes we also lost a property to its former owner after the berlin wall came down more fire. That happened to many people who do this by including my own family from you know so i was familiar with that one example. But i tried to get away from my own story somebody who is a bit like me does appear but only in the last chapter there are eleven other stories about people who wanted to stay in their homes but couldnt stand each under very different circumstances at various points throughout the century for me it was good to find my place among these different stories some of which seemed
much more serious than my own a few. New milf will come its my night. And. Its so quiet here in the german countryside now. Every corner of this country even cute little lake houses have seen some of the darkest chapters of history especially in the last century. Visitation is inspired by her grandmothers lighthouse and its many different owners who displaced each other. A jewish family forced to flee before the nazis murdered their relatives and architect his wife as a raped by a Red Army Soldier in a cause that hes built for her your waiter runs away from the east german
communists a pair of writers returning from soviet exile. Youve heard the expression Theres No Place Like Home but what happens when theres no where you belong. When youve arrived can you still be said to be fleeing and when youre fleeing can you ever arrive. In visitation the characters fates are all tied together by the brutality of the Twentieth Century whether or not they realize it its a quiet little place and germany is not so very quiet history. Before you surprised that this book was chosen for the list. Needed me because it does not necessarily i was pleased to be on the list much but which book i like in particular i think my favorite is visitation sometimes art its close to my heart
but what should i say its like with parents they love all their children. Its only if youre asleep its definitely close to your heart thats clear you once said its very important for you to make the forgotten and the foreign audible visible and readable what does that mean exactly please read my stuff going to. Be physically what i try to do is see what is beyond my own horizon and think my way into the stories in the minds of other people just as we can be as i said this book has twelve chapters and only one of them takes place in my own head. So. In the other eleven i try to see things through the eyes of people who are very far away. And even very alien to me at least at the start with regard to this one house all of these are. Questions what belongs to you what is my property. And
what does it mean to leave a place you love. Very different ways to love a place and to think about the idea of home. Im always interested in viewing the world through other peoples eyes only have two of my own but this is. Certainly deftly done in visitation thanks. To in the holocaust the two events in the last century that in some way affected nearly every Family History here in germany and also in most of europe. Do they cast their shadows in the other books on the list or even through all of modern german literature. Does begin to. Invade started well before the Second World War with the nazis seizing power. Published the opera months as early as one Nine Hundred Thirty Three the very year they took over a guy from there he was a visionary he saw what was going to happen including the Concentration Camps and
the war. There is a number of such question novels. And then there are the great works from after the war that deal with. And then came the next generation each with news stories as in your. Out of the children followed by the grandchildren all writing about the Second World War and the holocaust. As a recent example as. A writer from ukraine who lives in berlin she wrote about the fate of her family. I dont think it will ever end. Can writers accurately reflect the horrific events of the holocaust some writers have been able to describe the mass murder of European Jews and at the same time create outstanding literature. Maybe esther by a touchup
a trial begins with a Family Secret that is too awful to talk about. It involves a journey through Eastern Europe and a search for clues to the fate of a jewish family. The first time i no longer understood how i ever could have imagined that i had been spared somehow i knew my polish relatives had all perished siblings his mothers Zygmunt Haleigh their family how else could this event did what i had never thought about them. There was an athlete those recipes for delicious sweet sausages died with her. And grandmother or publish them rosa who had great legs and love to dance to charleston and the great grandmother who was executed by german troops in one Nine Hundred Forty One her name was esther maybe. Writes in german although her native language is ukrainian this linguistic diversity allows her to describe her characters with
a certain detachment from life maybe esther is a very sad story but its not melancholy its an unusual account of the holocaust the family of cutoffs and the people who come alive again in this novel with a new band this one. Novel austell it says also filled with Uncertainty Travel and a search for clues but this is not an autobiography it is a semi fictional account of the jewish historian Jacques Austerlitz who is trying to recall memories that he has long since lost. One day at a Train Station also to. Sees a young boy who he realizes is his four year old self being sent by kindertransport to england this vision finally inspires him to go searching for his original family. His life was saved by a train later his mother was deported to auschwitz by train Train Stations play
a key role in this novel ouster lets as a man who has a child lost his homeland language and even his name. Chances are youve seen heard and read lots of stories about World War Two and the holocaust but you havent read one like alstom lets. Hear it becker was one of the first authors to inject a bit of humor into an otherwise tragic holocaust novel called the liar it was published in one Nine Hundred Sixty nine the work is set in a polish ghetto similar to the one that the author himself grew up in most of the novel is fictional. Noir to the. Bones a cafe and distributes to his customers fake Radio News Reports to to getto will soon be liberated. On veni and when i try to make use of the very last possibility that keeps them from just lying down and dying with words do you understand what i try to do that with words because thats all i have and then you come and tell me
its prohibited you know exactly is this full bore. The novel is realistic in its portrayal of life in the ghetto but it also expresses a sense of human warmth and hope. And no wonderful book that will stay with you. And if you visit sites so a certain time in a certain distance to the events was needed to actually grappled with these chapters of History David you brought something of an outsider perspective to this project tell us your thoughts you know. The outside perspective because im from the us and the english language videos for this project. Basically we decided to focus on the twentieth and twenty first centuries and a lot of people were quite horrified that we left out of the list. Fortunately no one is b. M. s out yet or sense any threats but i expect
a vital system that i dont have anyway we decided to concentrate on more modern literature because we want people who read these books to come away with a different view of germany and europe our list starts in one thousand or one with the Boarding Books by thomas mann and ends with philip think less twenty sixteen novel. The second how could reading these books change the readers view of germany or even of europe. And yemen that. These books provide a deep insights into history. But first and foremost they give us insights into humanity or. Readers will better understand who the people of Central Europe are whats their mentality what was their mentality in the past to get to particularly people who shaped history because weve in how. You were born and hes berlin then the former east germany is a big topic in your novels do you think well see a similar phenomenon they are not that is the years go by writers will be able to take a more differentiated view on the countrys communist past. Good saves some friends
of mine say all my books are really about the Old East Germany i didnt go for a very long time i never wanted to write about it. And i find it hard to do and also very hard to talk about. This of this but im just now starting to publish texts i have written about that period. I might even write something new about it all the city of india. Doesnt fit on the home of us im better there were its very odd to experience emotions that are hard to explain in rational terms is a lot. The money. Sometimes twenty or thirty years to understand or depict certain things this is. There are so many preconceptions about east germany this is there isnt a style just for the good old days there but also blanket condemnation of the
lawless dictatorship minds are made up of i should try to tell a different story youll encounter a lot of resistance. Also if you dont stand down too soon thanks for that david you come from the us as weve said which german authors on the list are people in the states familiar with. Them and Listening Afternoons are the first of all in the English Speaking world theres just not that much for militarily with literature written in other languages theres some room for improvement there. People will know some titles for instance All Quiet On The Western Front amok. Even people who dont know the book will know the title because its become an expression in english meaning everythings calm nothing new to report. To scoot then there are books on the list that have been turned into movies for months like Jacob The Liar by you like becker or potential costs. People may
know the movie is better than the books. And theres another category of the authors that people have read schoolies you have him on how much has a franz kafka but people may have forgotten that those authors actually wrote their books in german as this even though has is a Nobel Prize Winner yeah right but things arent even that different here in germany ok maybe a little bit different but i bet if we asked people on the street here they wouldnt necessarily know even all the Nobel Prize Winners on our list you feel you know how many Nobel Prize Winners are actually on the list sabina for him and why not get so we just checked there are seven on the list who are for. German Speaking Country has been home im given credit we didnt use that as a criterion for selecting a book. Having a nobel prize was not relevant. To really since you know of course books by Prize Winners do tend to be better known and therefore theyre more likely to get
translated as it is of you know the same with other prizes. Clearly the giants of german literature cannot simply be ignored and many are included on our list our compilation features seven authors who have won the Nobel Prize For Literature their works are set against some of the great historical events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In one such novel we have a prosperous german port city. A society in turmoil and a prominent family of merchants. These are the cornerstones in thomas months family saga Britain Brooks in fact it reflects munns own upbringing he was born into a middle class family in lubec in Eight Hundred Seventy Five his father was a Grain Merchant Monday wrote about The Life And Times that he knew well. Society was in the grip of a recession the lives of the middle class were being turned upside down months good
and broke charts the rise and fall of the merchant family between decadence and rash consumerism. Months novel was published in one thousand one and is considered one of the earliest examples of modern