German Historical Fiction?

My very German recommendation is to read the Nibelung saga. ;-)

Third Reich were only 12 very unsuccessful years of shame, murder and self-destruction - and imo the most authentic stuff (e. g. analysises) about this time is written in original language. I am just reading a book about the neighborhood I grew up in: Hansaviertel in Berlin - partly heavy stuff I never heard before.

There are better times of German history to discover.

I agree. Having visited Normandy last year, I am Nazied out! A biography of Bismarck or Fredrick the great? It appears my library does no offer the saga and on line it appear to be in German.

Sadly, all I can think of is the series of Philip Kerr's detective novels featuring Bernie Gunther, a cynical cop who gets through those 12 years and more by solving many murders while barely concealing his disdain for the Nazis. The Berlin Noir trilogy (March Violets, The Pale Criminal, A German Requiem) deal with the early Third Reich years. Eleven more take Bernie through the war and postwar years, not all in Germany. He's a likeable survivor, not always heroic, and they are good stories.

I totally agree with MarkK that there are better times in German history to discover, but I can't think of historical fiction about them in English. Maybe Germany needs its own Ken Follett or Bernard Cornwell. Maybe it has them but not translated yet. Or maybe someone else knows a lot more than I do (wouldn't be the first time).

The Brunetti books are fine but not really historical fiction, they're pretty much contemporary.

Ellen, yes its unfortunate that we get stuck with fiction & history from the Nazi era. But one standout is a famous novel "Every Man Dies Alone", by Hans Fallada, which is set in this time, but with a different perspective. I second the Kerr series as some of the best mystery writing out there, with a good dose of the place and time.

I read "Winds of War" while on a work assignment in Germany.

You could also look at the 2012 satirical novel Look Who's Back (in German: Er ist wieder da). An interesting clash of history and fiction, in which Adolf Hitler reappears in modern day Germany, to sobering yet hilarious effect. The record-breaking bestseller was so successful in Germany that it also spawned an equally successful film adaptation, I think you can watch it on Netflix.

The English language version on amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Look-Whos-Back-Timur-Vermes/dp/1681449528

Or perhaps you are looking for more along the line of escapism fiction... lol

The RS website and guides still keeps lists of recommended books and movies. Can be hard to find but here is a handy link
https://www.ricksteves.com/europe/books-movies

Fiction -- Germania, by Brendan McNally

Non-Fiction -- Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History, by Simon Winder

I read both more than 10 years ago, so I couldn't tell you a thing about either one, but I do know that I enjoyed them. And I rather enjoy having two books called "Germania" next to each other on my bookshelf.

" Not sure I am up for The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but might give it a shot. " Do give this a try . As histories of that era go , it is well written and quite engaging . While it doesn't go into detail to the extent of the Kershaw or Ullrich works , it will give you a good understanding of the subject and it is most accessible , not a deep slog at all .

Ursula Hegi's books are lovely, particularly Stones from the River which is set in WWII.

Before my first trip to Germany, I asked a European History professor for a recommendation on what to read. He suggested sprinkling memoirs into my reading. My favorite is German Boy by Wolfgang Samuel; the book is about his life from his 10th birthday (shortly before the end of WWII) to his 14th birthday (toward the end of the Berlin Airlift). Great insight into the experience of a German kid from the east as a refugee in West Germany after the war -- and into how far his mother had to go to provide for her family. If you read it, don't miss the forward by Stephen Ambrose!

If you'd like to go much farther back in time, I can recommend Oliver Pötzsch. I've read almost all his books in order, starting with the Hangman's Daughter, which takes place in 1660.

Here's what Amazon has to say about him: "Oliver Pötzsch, born in 1970, has worked for years as a scriptwriter for Bavarian television. He himself is a descendant of one of Bavaria's leading dynasties of executioners."

And this is a link to his page there.

It is not precisely historical fiction (as it tends more towards the fictional than the historical), but I would recommend Daniel Kehlmann's newest book Tyll--I just read that there is now an English translation of it.

Kehlmann is a popular German-speaking author who has written rather fictionalised books about historical periods, his earlier one (Measuring the World) is about two late 18th-century German scientists. Tyll is loosely about the 30 Years War (but includes dragons, so... not entirely history). I read it when it first was first published here a few years ago, and then re-read it at the beginning of the pandemic. It is really, really fantastic. And, it made me interested in the 30 Years War, which I had ever since my school days found very boring. I recommend it to anyone interested also in contemporary German literary culture.

There is no lack of historical fiction in German but there is a lack of translations. Among the best of the translated ones are

• Lion Feuchtwangers "Success" (German: "Erfolg"), a perceptive analysis of the petty-bourgeois milieu in Munich in the 1920s, where Nazism had its roots, written not in retrospect but in 1928, long before Hitler's rise to power.

• Erich M. Remarque, "All Quiet on the Western Front" (German: "Im Westen nichts Neues"), a pathology of the (1st world-)war from the perspective of a common soldier.

Much of the 19th century production is now forgotten, and rightly so, only one or two names have been preserved in a different context. For example, there is a hopelessly pathetic counterpart to Tolstoy's "War and Peace" by Ludwig Rellstab ("1812"), that enjoyed an enormous popularity among German readership till it's last edition in 1923, but which no one reads today (except me and a few other crazy people), but Rellstabs name is still known because of the settings of his poems by Schubert, Meyerbeer and Liszt, and above all because he gave its name to one of Beethoven's most famous sonatas, the "Moonlight Sonata" (German "Mondscheinsonate").

Here’s a second recommendation for the series, The Hangman’s Daughter. We traveled around Bavaria vicariously through these novels and were planning some specific sightseeing because of the varied locals in the 7 novels for our Oberammergau Passion Play trip this summer that was of course cancelled. We’d visited 6 or the 7 towns/cities on past trips. For our 2022 redo, I’m determined to actually stay in Schongau, the only town in this series we haven’t been to. I love this time period in historical fiction and the setting, in Bavaria in the 1600s, is extra intriguing for me.

Passing on this link. Someone on this forum mentioned this resource a long time ago, for mystery novels set in Europe: stop you're killing me This link goes to the Germany section, but you can look up other countries from there. The Hangman series is listed, so thanks for the recommendation. Mystery is not everyones favorite genre, but since OP mentioned Brunetti, this may be useful.

Stan, thanks! What a goldmine!

What? No love for "1632"? :-)

A West Virginia coal mining town from the present gets dropped into the 30 years war (1632) already mentioned. Sure livened up my appreciation for the history of that time. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1632_series

(snip)
The 1632 series, also known as the 1632-verse or Ring of Fire series, is an alternate history book series and sub-series created, primarily co-written, and coordinated by Eric Flint and published by Baen Books. The series is set in 17th-century Europe, in which the small fictional town of Grantville, West Virginia, in the year 2000 was sent to the past in central Germany in the year 1631, during the Thirty Years' War.

Try some Herman Hesse - "Beneath the Wheel".
If you can find translations, books by Goethe or Heinrich Heine.

One more suggestion: The Reader by Bernhard Schlink. In German: Der Vorleser. It's about postwar Germany.

"If you can find translations, books by Goethe or Heinrich Heine."

The book "Sorrows of young Werther" by Goethe kicked off the Romantic movement across Europe where young men, dressed appropriately, were found brooding over distant peaks. Personally I preferred Hesse's Siddhartha and "Magister Ludi: the Glass Bead Game".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorrows_of_Young_Werther#Cultural_impact

(snip)

The Sorrows of Young Werther turned Goethe, previously an unknown author, into a literary celebrity almost overnight. Napoleon Bonaparte considered it one of the great works of European literature, having written a Goethe-inspired soliloquy in his youth and carried Werther with him on his campaigning to Egypt. It also started the phenomenon known as the "Werther Fever", which caused young men throughout Europe to dress in the clothing style described for Werther in the novel.[7][8] Items of merchandising such as prints, decorated Meissen porcelain and even a perfume were produced.[9]

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is pretty great. Worth mentioning here even though 1) it's so well-known there's a good chance you probably have read it, and 2) there was a film adaptation made but the book was so good and so unique I never bothered to see it.

Holy Mackerel - so many suggestions, thank you, thank you, what a wealth of information.

"The Sorrows of Young Werther" is about suicide and the church tried to ban it, setting off a rush for everyone to read it and to print it in dozens of languages, making it the worlds' first best-seller after the Bible.
You can read about "the Werther effect" which keeps suicides and how they are committed, out of the news in many countries.
Yeah, the men held Werther parties and the Werther look was hot and trendy. So get out your grey, velvet frock coat and your yellow vest and you can have the Werther look too.

I would look for a biography of Frederick the Great - the founder of modern Prussia... and the founder of what would become the core of Germany when it was unified under Kaiser William and Otto von Bismarck (except for the Kingdom of Bavaria of course).

Fredrick was allied to Britain versus Austria allied to France in the Seven Years War (1756-1763). It is known in North America as the French and Indian Wars. That was what provoked (encouraged?) Britain to increase taxation on the American colonists for their "defense" which helped trigger you know what in 1775-1776.

of what would become the core of Germany when it was unified under Kaiser William and Otto von Bismarck (except for the Kingdom of Bavaria of course).

On the contrary, Ludwig II of Bavaria was first forced by Bismarck to join the North German Confederation and thus lose Bavarian sovereignty, then to write the so-called "King's Letter", which offered the Prussian King Wilhelm the imperial dignity of a newly founded German Empire. All that remained of Bavarian sovereignty was the army (under Prussian supreme command) and the Bavarian State Railway. Both were lost to Berlin only in 1920.

Not books but two movies that I saw several years ago at Film Neu, the DC German language film festival, that may be of interest:
Nordwand (Northface) about two Eiger climbers in the 1930s. The other was Westwind about East German teenage sisters set in the late 1980s. Two completely different periods, but bookends on a period in history, and both are about athletes training on behalf of their countries.

Just remembered this one: Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann. I read it a long time ago and found it very dense as you might expect, but about life in N Germany.

Also, In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson mostly non-fiction that reads like a novel; a description of life for American diplomats in pre-war Berlin.

https://persephonebooks.co.uk/collections/grey-books-wwii/products/the-oppermanns

Thanks to the wonderful UK bookshop Persephone Books (also available in a different paperback format via Amazon etc, though I do love getting my parcel of their books from London) I just discovered The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger--written in 1933, about a German Jewish family at the very beginning of what would become the Holocaust. Beautifully written. I have also enjoyed the works of Hans Fallada.

just discovered The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger

That's the follow-up to "Success" mentioned above. The last volume of the trilogy is "Exile". If you like the "Oppenheims" you might like "Success" even more because it is more complex.

I wanted to recommend a piece of literature but unfortunately there seems to be no English translation.

I would like to share it for the ones who can read German:
"Sansibar oder der letzte Grund" by Alfred Andersch.

"In a small town on the Baltic Sea, 1937: six figures meet by chance: 'The Boy'; Gregor, the KPD functionary; Judith, the Jewess; in the place itself are the priest Helander; Knudsen, the fisherman and fishing boat owner; last of all the wooden sculpture of the 'Reading Monastery Student'. And these six figures have no other concern than to leave Germany... Alfred Andersch's great book Sansibar is a first-class veto of mistrust against our pompously bloated 'people of the middle'."

No one has yet recommended The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood. So that is my contribution to this thread.

This one is both a book and a TV Series but Babylon Berlin is a really good view of the Golden Twenties in Berlin. While both the book and the TV Series follow each other closely as they are written by the same person the book is slightly better. I've found it has made me google bits of German history I didn't know before just to see what the setting looked like. It takes place in the late 20s amongst the political violence setting the stage for what would come later in the 30s.

It's a fantastic book and if you don't want to read it Netflix has it in the USA and you can watch all three seasons.

Fred is one of our Germany experts. I happened to talk to him tonight, and he asked about what was happening in the Germany forum. He was intrigued by this topic and recommended novels by Theodor Fontane, a 19th century German novelist, for insight into late 19th century life in the country. Fred mentioned that the author's novels often have strong, resolute heroines. He recommended Trials and Tribulations (Irrungen Wirrungen) in particular.

Try "The Memories of Glückel of Hameln". This is a diary of a middle-aged German, Jewish widow, mother of 14 kids, written 1690-1691.
This is a true story and gives an amazing look at what life was like in this time period if you were Jewish, but also everything happening in Germany then, mainly in the northern part.
One of her descendants is Bertha Poppenheim, who assisted with getting this memoir published.
I find the book to be absolutely fascinating.

There's also Garden of Beasts by Jeff Deaver set in 1936 Germany. He's famous for his detective novels (Lincoln Rhyme); this is completely different from them.

Mark Twain spent a lot of time in Germany and wrote several short stories, maybe essays too.

Back in the mid-1800's there was a series of books written of a Grand Tour of Europe thru the eyes of a 12 year old boy. The book "Rollo on the Rhine" starts in Cologne and goes thru the Rhine river valley in detail, talking of the sights, the people, and the customs. It's worth a read if you plan to visit that area.

These are some fascinating travel books from the 1830s, in English, by John Murray. I was able to read one of them about Frankfurt, Mainz, etc. and was amazed at the detail. There are dozens of books by him.
Click on "Full View" to go to the book, which has 528 pages but you get an index first for the cities and their page number.
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008588800

Ms. Jo--

That's a fascinating read. From Salzburg to Ischl, catch the post wagon that travels twice per week. There is not a good inn along the way, so plan to take the whole 7-hour ride.

There is a nice description of visiting a salt mine, which "may be seen by permission of the managers."

The author HATES Carniola, especially the people, whose "dirty habits, suspicious and disagreeable manners, and barbarous language... diminish the pleasure which its natural objects of interest might afford."

There is a nice discussion of the mercury mines at Idrija, which allowed visits then as today. The Schwarzer Adler, the inn at Idrija, is described as "especially bad and dirty." This is the kind of description I want from Rick Steves!

Yeah, it is a very unique travel book and he has them for all of Europe!
A guide friend gave me the link because I found all these British people buried in the Frankfurt cemetery around 1828-1850 and could not figure out why they were all here. Seems there was a regular steamship route from London to Koblenz, then Koblenz to Basel, as well as routes on the Main. Because the Rothschilds were based in Frankfurt, there was a huge back and forth of British travelers here in the city, doing business with them as well as living here. I need to read some more about all the other cities. It is fun how he tells people to walk here and walk there, distances many of us wouldn't think of walking today on a daily basis.

Mark Twain spent a lot of time in Germany and wrote several short stories, maybe essays too.

Twain learned German, as an adult, in an amazingly short time. He had some comments about the German language:

"I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective."

"Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth."

Here's another story about German verbs. During Bismarck's time as Chancellor of the German Reich an American lady being on a visit to Berlin and being a fan of Bismarck's wanted to hear him speak in the Reichstag. She got two tickets for herself and an interpreter for the spectator gallery as her German wasn't good enough to understand everything. Bismarck started his speech, but the interpreter didn't say anything. After a minute or so she gave him a nudge. He replied "Excuse me, Madam, I'm still waiting for the verb."

I strongly recommend “All For Nothing,” a beautifully written semi-autobiographical novel by Walter Kempowski. It’s set in eastern Prussia during the final months of WWII. A growing fear of the advancing Red Army leads a 12 year old boy and his mother to flee westward on roads crowded with refugees.

“Crabwalk” by Nobel laureate, Gunter Grass, is another fascinating novel set in the last months of WWII as well as 60 years later. It features the greatest naval disaster of all time, which dwarfs the Titanic or other naval tragedies. The ship which sank was the Wilhelm Gustloff with the loss of 10,000 people who were also trying to flee the Red Army’s advance.

The two books are set in the same era but there is very little overlap and the literary styles are quite different.

If you read only one of them, read “All For Nothing.”

I don't think anyone recommended "Where Ghosts Walked" by David Large. It's about Munich and the rise of the Nazi party. I wish I'd read it before going there.

@ Ellen....On German historical fiction I suggest the novels by T. Fontane, Germany's greatest novelist in the Age of Realism, especially f you are interested in the role of the woman character in patriarchal society. In particular the traslation of "Irrungen Wirrungen" (don't know in English title). Fontane gives an accurate portrayal of Prussian landed society after 1871.

Yes, Napoleon viewed "Werther" in great esteem, met with Goethe at least twice, when he was winning in 1808 and after the disaster in Russia in 1813 during the time of crusade to kick the French out of Germany (Befreiungskrieg), a testimony to Goethe's tolerance, when the poets (Kleist, Koerner, etc, ) were producing literature to awaken nationalism to expel the French.

On the topic of Nazism as you indicated above, I would avoid that book; instead I heartily recommend, K.D. Bracher, "The German Dictatorship."