Reading German Books in 2020 discussion

While some readers are already attacking the Dufourspitze, the Grossglockner stands alone. So I'm going to climb up here. My husband was up a few years ago, now I'm going to climb the mountain too.
I have no plan for that. But the most important thing is the goal in mind ;-)

1st Step
Orkun Ertener: "Lebt"

It's a birthday present from 2019, so far I don't know anything about it. But I'll start it today.

Babette wrote: "1. Step
Orkun Ertener: "Lebt"

It's a birthday present from 2019, so far I don't know anything about it. But I'll start it today."

Ooh, I am curious how that book is

I finished the first book.
Here is my opinion:

Thriller are not the best genre for me, too fast pasted, but the story is okay.
What Orkun Ertener mainly wants to tell is the little-known story of the Sephardic Jews in Thessaloniki, who met the Messiah in the 17th century in the form of Sabbatai Zwi, who gave in to the sultan's pressure and converted to Islam. The resulting faith of the Dönme and its history was extremely exciting and led to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the population exchange between Greece and Turkey to the Turks in Germany and the occupation of Greece. during the Second World War. All parts of the book that made the historical events and contexts clear to me, I found very successful and were enthusiastic.

The story spun around, by Can Evinman, who seeks his identity, was too much of a tool and was less convincing. I liked to read everything about the protagonist's family and friends, but the counterpart, the "absolute evil" in this book, could not convince me at all. Probably every thriller needs an embodiment of evil, which goes over corpses for its sick idea and constantly controls the world (at least its surroundings), but I didn't think so. The finale was surprising for me and mostly succeeded.

The author's writing style was a bit of a habit at first. In almost every chapter, one is thrown into the action without introduction or explanation and is completely confused with the first sentences. Everything clears up after only a few sentences, but I usually had to read the first lines several times. The language changes from very successful formulations and demanding passages to rather flat pages. I had the impression that the author wrote some passages as quickly as I read, while others were given more time. But overall, the style is good. I can recommend the book to all those who are interested in the historical contexts and do not want to read a boring treatise.

2nd Step
Jakob Augstein "Tage des Gärtners":

The journalist and publisher Jakob Augstein is a gardener in his true vocation. Since he realized this too late, he has to be satisfied with his home garden, but puts a lot of energy into it and, after various failed attempts, it brings some success and a lot of knowledge. The book is great reading fun for everyone who likes gardens, but it is difficult to classify. It is a story about the annual course of a hobby gardener, it is a completely subjective guide, which in turn contains very useful recommendations for some types of plants (sparks, hydrangeas, roses, bulbs). It is full of humor, from self-irony to sarcasm, and it lives particularly through the many digressions that Augstein comes up with almost every word. These can be quotes from all well-known writers, references to plays and films, exurses to gardeners and breeders, to chemistry and history.

3rd Step
Esther Kinsky "Am Fluss"

It's not a bad book by any means, but it's not made for me. The first-person narrator (the author?) lives about three quarters of a year in a kind of "between-apartment" in London where she never unpacks her moving boxes. She takes walks along the River Lea, which, according to the sophisticated linguistic descriptions, leads through "between worlds". The focus is deliberately on decay and neglect, on forgotten places that face away from the city and on equally forgotten people. During these hikes, the narrator always recalls experiences on other rivers, on the Oder, on the Ganges, in Croatia, Hungary or Italy. The book is heavily constructed, elements return, encounters complement each other and fit into the theme of the “intermediate realm”. The language is excellent, with a poetic density that is rare.

I liked individual scenes, but over 300 pages of descriptions of the landscape were tiring. The book has no storyline, no tension. I felt like the waterfowl that had been described several times "stared clueless". What should I be told? Why is the background for the use of an intermediate apartment not mentioned or the destination of the move? I would also have liked to arrange the hikes in terms of time (which decade, for example), but apart from using an old Polaroid camera (which is already outdated when purchased), nothing suggests a time classification. I was also bothered by pure observation. The narrator hardly speaks to people, she describes what she sees, doesn't understand some things, but never asks. So everything stays in a London fog. A book that only lives on language is too little for me.

4th Step
Peter Richter "89/90"

It is unbelievable how many now completely buried memories this book brought to light, memories of events, places, people from Dresden and some other places. Peter Richter turned sixteen in the summer of 1989 and lived in Dresden-Loschwitz, so also not very far from where I live. The author describes his life in detail from April 1989 to October 1990 from the point of view of the teenager at the time, who met a clique at night in the outdoor swimming pool in Bühlau, went to the EOS Kreuzschule, endured the military training camp and always with his friends is in the middle of the action. He describes a time between resistance and adjustment, which you can see that changes are on the way. I experienced many of the events myself or something similar, even when I was older and because of the children (my oldest daughter started school in 1989) I could not spend the nights in the city center. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, our perceptions diverge. While in the sixteen year olds around Peter Richter more and more aggression, group dynamics and disorientation spread, I was able to identify better with his parents, who had to do with themselves and hardly noticed the street fight of the young people. I read with astonishment from the former friends who suddenly came across each other on the street either in the group of the punks or the skins and fought each other with incredible violence. People had often read about fights in the newspaper, but I only became aware of the dimensions when I read them. Peter Richter does not attempt deep explanations; based on the situations described in detail, you can make up your own mind about how the situation in Dresden came about today and understand that everything that spilled to the surface in 2015 had been there for a long time ,

The descriptions are written in a somewhat distant, humorous style that reads well. I didn't realize whether it was more of an autobiography, why it was called a novel, and how much was invented. I really liked the unusual use of numerous footnotes. Without large scrolling, explanations and background information could be obtained, which also got the personal coloring well.

Because of the personal proximity to the locations, the book was very special for me (small mistakes were not a problem). I can therefore hardly estimate how others might like it, but I can recommend it to anyone who is interested in the background of developments in Dresden or who would like to experience the relevant years from the perspective of a sixteen-year-old boy.

Hello Babette !! Thank you for your very details feedback. I hope you will give such a great review for "Am fluss". All the best for the climb

Hello Majdouline! Now I've read two thirds of "Am Fluss", but it's not my cup of tea. Very poetic descriptions without a plot, it is too boring for me, only the special language style allows me to stick with it. After I finished, I'll write more.

5th step
Rafik Schami "Märchen aus Malula"

The fairy tales from the hometown of the author's parents have a hint of the fairy tales from 1001 nights. In 1985 Rafik Schami discovered them in the Heidelberg University Library, written by orientalists who had them told in Malula in 1869 and wrote them down in Aramaic and German. In the present book, retellings are "how I imagined they were once fabulous" and "how I wish they were told that way". There are stories in which only a few magical things happen, but the weak get their way with a lot of cunning and trickery. It's amazing how often women are the heroes of fairy tales. It shows the cultural wealth of Syria, which unfortunately we encounter with completely different news.

6th step
Friedrich Schiller "Die Räuber"

My review is purely subjective and has not anything to do with the quality and importance of this classic.

What impressed me most was Schiller's language, which the 19-year-old uses. Nothing is flat there, new melodious words are used again and again that represent the situation visually. The "schröcklichen" (awful) events themselves are, of course, a product of their time, the time of storm and urge. I read it as a criticism of a society in which one's own future largely depends on the status and goodwill of the father or family. Father Moor, who prefers the older son Karl, ultimately destroyed the family. The "Story of the Prodigal Son" can be seen very clearly as a template (the first stage version was also called "The Prodigal Son"). But there is no festive reception here, the younger son Franz uses treacherous methods to secure his own future. The characters are a bit too fixed types for me, who hardly experience any development. The noble Karl, to whom honor is a valuable commodity and who makes decisions in quick resolve, which he cannot overlook and which cut off every return to his previous life. The respectable, kind-hearted Amalia, who exuberantly loves and otherwise seems to be flawless, the father who only thinks of Karl, who can forgive everything and hardly notices Franz, and then the sneaky Franz, who only embodies evil for me, also with cowardice paired. I couldn't see any good sides, although Schiller wrote in a preface from 1781: "Even a person who is completely wicked is absolutely not an object of art ..."

However, what I liked is the timeless theme of enforcing law through violence. The robbers, and Karl in particular, not only rob for their own needs, but try to strike a balance between rich and poor in the style of Robin Hood. However, it becomes clear that new injustices are emerging that would be called collateral damage today. Also, with the greatest nobility, no gang of robbers can be transformed into honorable figures, so that the robber captain company must inevitably end in a catastrophe. I did not find the ending, which is typical of the classic tragedies, as convincing as the actions before.

7th step
Joseph Roth: "Die Flucht ohne Ende"

A young man comes to World War I almost as a child, quickly becomes captive, can flee and survives with a loner in the taiga. When he found out in 1919 that the war was over, he wanted to return home, but was initially unsuccessful and spent a few more years in the Soviet Union. When he finally reached Austria, then Germany and later Paris, the book developed an immense linguistic pull and painted a precise picture of a person who can no longer find his way in life.

At the beginning the short novel hadn't grabbed me and my expectations were therefore not very high, but at the latest when the protagonist showed up with his brother on the Rhine, I was absolutely delighted with the linguistic images that matched. Franz Tunda looks at life in Central Europe like an alien and sees so many absurd things that determine everyday life like meaningless rituals. He keeps trying to tie in with his old life, finds help but no sense.

What I loved most was the slightly ironic, pictorial, but short and precise language that put a lot of thoughts into one sentence. I loved this book!

8th step
Christa Wolf "Kein Ort. Nirgends"

Libraries are closed, I finally turned to my bookcase. I bought the book when it was published in 1979, read a few pages and then put it away because I wanted to read it "in peace". Today I not only have peace and quiet, but also the opportunity to look up a few basics beforehand on the Internet. With these prerequisites, I was able to enjoy this fictional encounter between Karoline von Günderrode and Heinrich von Kleist and recognize Wolf's special achievement in showing the two people in such a short work in their tornness and the impossibility of adaptation, their helpless interaction with the environment, but also knowing oneself in the other. And at the same time the author transports the situation into the presence of the writers of the GDR if one can interpret the vague comments. We still come across highly sensitive people who cannot cope with the role they are intended to and who clearly feel that they can never come to terms with the life that they lead or could lead, and perhaps everyone was already in a situation like this he has moved very far away from the "self" through external or internal constraints. Some thoughts will surely keep me busy.

9th step
Natascha Wodin "Irgendwo in diesem Dunkel"

After reading "She came from Mariupol", the story of the author's mother, I attended a reading from the book about the father last year. There I saw a likeable Natascha Wodin, who dashed hopes of a similar story about her father because she admitted that he had avoided her search and there was virtually no evidence of his past. the author did not write this book to tell her readers about the situation of forced laborers in Germany or to deal with her own past, but because, as she herself admitted, she is subject to compulsory writing. Writing was always synonymous with survival for her. In this sense, the book is a very personal description of her own childhood as the daughter of a probably traumatized father, as homeless people born in Germany by forced laborers. It was only through the author that I realized how the situation after the war remained without a chance for quite a few forced laborers in the German armaments industry. I had never heard "displaced persons" before.

One should not rate a biographical narrative. The book undoubtedly touches, it contains bad experiences of a marginalized child in post-war Germany and conveys knowledge about the time and the situation of a special group. The language used is good, the most unbelievable facts are soberly described in a few sentences. The lacrimal gland is never pressed and yet there are many emotions behind it that can be felt through the sentences.

10th step
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "Die Leiden des jungen Werther"

For the most part of the book, Goethe describes his own experiences in the figure of Werther. Here he could completely convince me. The sensitive young man, who is equipped with a special perception of his surroundings, who looks closely at nature and people and can enjoy many things, is certainly conceivable today. To be active as an artist, these qualities are probably necessary. The love for Lotte, to whom he has a good connection and a place in the community, as he does to her siblings, is told in a believable way. Then comes the point where he leaves. His new position reveals his real problems: the sensitive young man does not get along with the etiquette and the arrogance of his social standing, and he does not feel comfortable in his work beyond his artistic ambitions.

The return to Lotte as a like-minded person or actually the escape from a society in which he cannot cope, the hopelessness of the situation and the slow slide into depression are still understandable, but in my opinion the preparation and execution of the suicide no longer fit in with the development so far. In the appendix I was then also confirmed that Goethe connected the story of his friend with his own. I found the break clearly palpable; although the end is essential for the plot, Werther's condition did not yet seem so hopeless to me.

Nor was I convinced by the inserted story with the farmer, especially Werther's defense of the murder. And the last evening at Lotte's was a little too tearful. The assault showed that Werther had projected onto Lotte all his wishes that went beyond a love affair.

So I thought about the term "passion". To burn for a person or an idea, everything you are convinced to do with intensity is positive at first. But how destructive this quality can be when it becomes an end in itself and loses sight of the other person, comes out well in Werther, and I can also observe in the current Dostoyevsky reading.

All in all, this book was absolutely worth reading for me, and apart from the small deductions mentioned, it was still a readable and recommendable reading today.

11th step
Ulrich Plenzdorf: "Die neuen Leiden des jungen W."

It was a good thought to read this book in direct comparison to Goethe's Werther. I already knew it, but immediately afterwards the statement and above all the achievement of Ulrich Plenzdorf becomes clearer.

The author succeeds in transposing the plot of Werther to the 1970s in the GDR and portrays a contemporary youth. Edgar W. is also sensitive and cannot fit into society as is expected of him. On the other hand, neither society can do anything with people who deviate strongly from the average and want to make more liberal decisions. Both Werther and Edgar's fellow human beings behave in a predominantly benevolent manner. They make an effort to bring him back into society or into the normative behaviour which they themselves regard as the best way to happiness. Edgar also projects his wishes and ideas onto a woman whom he calls Charlie rather than Lotte, and who does not have many siblings but is a kindergarten teacher. But the unhappy love does not play the central role as it appears with Werther. It becomes much clearer that this love is in a single fantasy and his problems are of a completely different nature. The figure of Dieter fits the Kestner grandiosely and at the same time into the GDR norm.

The structure of the book is quite different from Goethe's, a novel of letters would certainly not have been successful. But the reviews of the already dead Edgar, the search of the father, who saw the son for the last time at the age of 5, for the person Edgar and the again and again ingeniously interspersed quotations from the classic are brilliantly done. Absolutely authentic are the situations in which Edgar finds himself: the apprenticeship with a bullying teacher (senseless work during the apprenticeship seemed very familiar to me), living in the summerhouse, Dieter's apartment, the painters' brigade, buying jeans, etc. Many things lived for me also from my own experiences in similar times. In the figure of Edgar, I saw young people I knew, vacillating between shyness and self-confidence, convinced that they already knew everything and could assess every situation (and yet, looking back, he always described himself as an idiot), rebelling and provoking, but recognising that to a certain extent adaptation is necessary for survival.

I also liked the fact that Edgar does not commit suicide. Exactly this point was not quite conclusive for me with Goethe, here the sequence is more logical. To want to prove to everyone what is really inside you is a strong motive.

I liked the language less. Yet it was quite in keeping with the times, as young people in the 70s spoke. And it became clear that it was a reference to Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye", whose author I respected for his precise powers of observation and translation into literature, but whose language I still didn't like. Both Holden Caulfield and Edgar Wibeau are not people I could put myself in their place.

If you liked Salinger's book, you will certainly find it absolutely worth reading, also in comparison to Goethe. Apart from that, I am not able to assess how it affects younger readers today.

12th step
Gabriele Tergit: "Käsebier erobert den Kurfürstendamm"

4,5*
For such a realistic depiction of a section of Berlin society between 1929 and 1931 there could also be 5 stars. Gabriele Tergit uses her knowledge of human nature, insider knowledge from her work as a journalist, and good powers of observation to tell very vivid stories about work in a newspaper publishing house, the progress of a construction project, or the effects of advertising, among other things. The middle-class society of the time of the Great Depression is portrayed with some wit and satirical elements, but never exaggerated, but in such a way that one thinks one knows such people well. The various fates of women in particular can rarely be read in such close proximity to reality, be it the woman who wants to fight her way through alone as a gymnastics teacher, or the journalist with a doctorate who cannot make any great leaps and hopes for a romantic love against her own reason, or the widow who, due to external circumstances, lets the inheritance of the once rich man slip through her fingers.
The storyline, which also gave the book its name, is about a "media hype" about a singer who is highly praised, well marketed and soon forgotten. But I didn't find this part as appealing as the many small scenes that result from the main strand: e.g. a society with a rich and influential woman, the daily work in a newspaper publishing house with the constant pressure of deadlines, the granting of a building permit, an auction, a court date, etc. I had the impression of being there while reading in Berlin. The book was written in 1931 from direct experience and was published in the same year, but some things seem as if nothing has changed since then. Especially in the scene around the building project, which is where I know best, some dialogues could be heard just as today ("Nah, it's not much fun anymore, do you think people want good work? No one is interested anymore...") Or the conversations about people not appreciating good journalistic work. If I did deduct half a point, it was because I sometimes couldn't get along with the dialogues, which were in a kind of Berlin jargon with very shortened sentences, and because the frequent repetition of the advertisements was a bit too much for me. But that is nagging on a high level.

All in all it was a great pleasure to read this book and it is an equally great reading recommendation. I'm very grateful to the group "Reading German Books in 2020" for having me on it and I don't understand why a book that is rightly compared to books by Kästner or Fallada is not much better known.

13th step
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "Wahlverwandtschaften"

A few years ago, at a meeting of my former study group, I passed by an estate in Thuringia, where it was claimed that Goethe wrote elective affinities there and was inspired by the surroundings. Our professor recommended that we read it because the book is about garden design, among other things.

After I already liked "The Sorrows of Young Werther", I finally took up the novel and read it with enthusiasm. The composition is impressive, which not only tells a simple story of adultery, but also shows the interplay of nature and art as well as of reason and passion. Indeed, the garden design, in which especially the strict French gardens went out of fashion and the imitation or perfection of nature blossomed in the much freer English garden art, is a successful background with some allusions to human relations. Further reflections come from chemistry, from which the title was also taken. Here the question arises whether there is an attraction between people against which "no herb can grow". The relationships are based on excellent psychological observations.

I also particularly liked the fact that the development of the relationships is not straightforward and therefore the plot is not completely predictable. Even if the events indicate the end, these connections only become clear in retrospect. Characters like Luciane, who always rushes around like a "burning comet nucleus that produces a long tail", the gentle architect, the mediator or the "helper" from the pension illustrate the different characters and add some more facets to the plot. The style of Ottilie's diary, which, as the narrator suggests, is supposed to consist of sentences copied from elsewhere, strung together life wisdoms in such a way that the diarist's inner life is revealed nonetheless. That also impressed me. I noticed some symbols (e.g. the plane trees by the lake), much will have escaped me. I have the feeling that every little scene has meaning and there is still much to read out. Definitely a book that one should read several times.

So really a masterpiece that I can absolutely recommend.

14th step
Wolfgang Herrndorf: "Tschick"

15th step
Rüdiger Safranski: "Hölderlin: Komm ins offene Freund! Biografie"

16th step
Julia Franck: "Die Mittagsfrau"

17th step
Friedrich Hölderlin: "Hyperion oder Der Eremit von Griechenland"

18th step
Judith Schalansky: "Der Hals der Giraffe"

19th step
Mareike Fallwickl: "Dunkelgrün fast schwarz"

20th step
Nino Haratischwili: "Das achte Leben"

21st step
Rainer Buck: "Fjodor M. Dostojewski"

22nd step
Eugen Ruge: "Metropol"

23rd step
Bodo Kirchhoff: "Der Prinzipal"

24th step
Erich Loest: "Der elfte Mann"

25th step
Jens Wonneberger: "Die Pflaumenallee"

Thanks for your fascinating reviews Babette, I have a copy of the Tergit, looking forward to reading it, and I have added the Goethe to my list!