The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century

by Peter Watson

The German Genius is a virtuoso cultural history of German ideas and influence, from 1750 to the present day, by acclaimed historian Peter Watson (Making of the Modern Mind, Ideas). From Bach, Goethe, and Schopenhauer to Nietzsche, Freud, and Einstein, from the arts and humanities to science and philosophy, The German Genius is a lively and accessible review of over 250 years of German intellectual history. In the process, it explains the devastating effects of World War II, which transformed a vibrant and brilliantly artistic culture into a vehicle of warfare and destruction, and it shows how the German culture advanced in the war’s aftermath.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Germany, Science, Philosophy, Cultural, German Literature

992 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Peter Watson was educated at the universities of Durham, London and Rome, and was awarded scholarships in Italy and the United States.

After a stint as Deputy Editor of New Society magazine, he was for four years part of the Sunday Times ‘Insight’ team of investigative journalists. He wrote the daily Diary column of the London Times before becoming that paper’s New York correspondent. He returned to London to write a column about the art world for the Observer and then at The Sunday Times.

He has published three exposes in the world of art and antiquities and from 1997 to 2007 was a Research Associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge. He has published twelve books of non-fiction and seven novels, some under the pen name of Mackenzie Ford. He lives in London where his interests include theatre, opera and fishing.

Awards, Etc.

Psychology Prize
Durham University, 1961

Italian Government Music Scholarship
Rome University, 1965

United States Government Bursary “for future world leaders”
To study the psychiatric profession and its links to the administration of justice

Books of the Year

Psychology Today Magazine, 1978, for War on the Mind
Daily Mail, 1990, for Wisdom and Strength
Independent on Sunday, for A Terrible Beauty, 2000
Times Literary Supplement, for Ideas, 2005
Time Magazine, for The Medici Conspiracy, 2006
Queen’s Pardon
Copy from Patrick Meehan after I had written a series of articles which brought about his release from prison after he had been wrongly convicted of murder, 1976.

Gold Dagger – Crime Writers’ Association of Great Britain
For The Caravaggio Conspiracy, 1983

Beacon Award – SAFE Award – Saving Antiquities for Everyone
For The Medici Conspiracy, 2006

US Library Association
The Great Divide.

Emmy Nomination
‘The Caravaggio Conspiracy, 1984.

Best sellers

The Caravaggio Conspiracy
Crusade
Landscape of Lies
Sotheby’s: The Inside Story
Nureyev
Lectures

Peter Watson has lectured at the following venues:

Universities

Cambridge
Berkeley
London
UCLA
Birmingham
Georgia
Georgia
Chicago
Birmingham
Santiago de Chile
York
Madrid
Harvard
Tufts
Military Bases

Fort Bragg
Private Institutions in

Cleveland
Berlin
Chicago
Belfast
Los Angeles
New York
Washington
Boston
Palm Beach
Other venues

Smithsonian Institution
National Museum, Copenhagen
Royal Society of Arts
Rugby School
Royal Library, Copenhagen
Festivals

Edinburgh
Oxford
Dartington
York

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intellectually thrilling: how else can one sum up this book? Watson’s subject is no less grand than to explain how German influences have, in countless ways, laid the foundation of, as Isaiah Berlin wrote, many of the “concepts and categories” that underlie the prevailing intellectual assumptions in the modern, Western world. The wide spectrum of information he writes about could teeter on the brink of devolving into semantic clutter or, worse, a rhetorical “book of lists.” Instead, Watson writes with such an engaging fluidity to elevate his subject to something more than a mere history of ideas; it approaches the level of a compelling novel.

Watson defines “German” in the expansive sense of where and when German language and influence was most pervasive. Most of the first half of the book is a sweeping overview of the age “between doubt and Darwin.” The “advent of religious doubt” began with Newton, Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler. However, it accelerated with the birth of historicism and “modern scholarship” in Germany in the mid-18th century. This would have a profound impact on the emerging German ideals of Bildung—“in essence it refers to the inner development of the individual, a process of fulfillment though education and knowledge, in effect a secular search for perfection, representing progress and refinement both in knowledge and in moral terms.” This idea was formalized and consolidated with Wilhelm von Humboldt’s—the brother of the more celebrated Alexander—creation of the University in Berlin, which would become the model for all modern universities and scholarship.

Another key idea, first posited by Johann Gottfried von Herder, was Kultur, which “refers essentially to intellectual, artistic and religious facts” that bind people. The non-German conception of culture grew to include politics, economics and history. Watson defines the distinction to not only to better understand how Germans viewed themselves, but uses the latter to make his arguments. What followed is an astounding scope of achievement that includes art history, philosophy, music, literature, geology, chemistry, physics, biology, medicine, industrialization, and business. Throughout his narrative, Watson also places the discoveries and influence in geographical and temporal context with chapters on Vienna, Berlin and Munich and the roles each city played as centers of various activities and trends.

Watson’s argument thankfully does not get bogged down in historical events; his is based on the “whys” behind the “how and whens” of history. We learn about the changing attitudes of elites during World War I. Although the primacy of German intellectual influences lasted until 1933, the decline began after World War I when “Germans were banned from international science conferences…not offered visiting fellowships, and their research was not incorporated into leading journals.” Artistic and literary influence, however, continued to flourish right up until the Nazi takeover of power.

Then, as Watson paraphrases Steven Remy, “scholarship…rejected ‘objectivity’ [and] denied that scholarship served intangible notions of truth for truth’s sake, insisting that German scholarship must serve the ‘Volk’”. The Nazi era stunted German scholarship in a way that took decades to begin to recover. Even good science like linking cancer to tobacco and diet was set back and had to be relearned. Post World War II Germany has continued to be tainted by the Nazi experience, even now, more than 70 years after its demise.

This is the primary reason Watson chose to write this book. In an incredibly well-argued introduction that outlines his thesis, he laments how in modern day Great Britain what little understanding of Germany exists is mired in the twelve year history of the Third Reich. The rich history and influence on the world of what happened in the two centuries prior to the war and the recovery and establishment of a strong democratic tradition are largely ignored. He then takes more than 700 pages to lay out the case of how German thinking has changed the world forever. His case is not blinded by a misplaced chauvinism. It is possible to read just the introduction and conclusion to permanently change one’s view of The German Genius, but one would sadly miss the interesting journey that connects them.

[MT · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went for a long trip to Germany in 2013 and wanted to get a bit of backstory on the place (asides from what we're all told about all that unpleasantness in the early part of last century).

This isn't a book about redemption, or about citing Germany's previous contributions to industry, medicine, and the arts. Watson could attempt to dissect Germany's troubled legacy, or how the nation is viewed, but such a discussion would be outside the book's focus (and would be arguably as long and detailed a read as the book is).

What it instead does is sets Germany's importance in contributing towards civilisation as a whole in a variety of areas. The book starts somewhere in the formation of the first modern universities waaay back in the day, and continues through until nearly modern times.

This is an excellent read, well-written, cogent and making great points all over the place. For me it was an excellent background into the industrial and scientific formation of modern Germany, something that is often overlooked.

However, don't think it helps to name-drop any choice bits once you get to Germany. I met a girl from the town that Zeiss, this awesome lensmaker was from, and she didn't know a thing about it. 10/10 book for the read, 1/10 for any tidbits to impress tidy German girls with.

[Ugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why do we read and write, you and I? Partly it's because we want to better ourselves. This is what people do - or what the kind of people you and I want to know do, anyway - we learn new instruments and languages, we travel, we try new things. (Or we like to think we do.)

But why do we do this? The answer may seem self-evident: who doesn't want to be "better", whatever that means? Who doesn't want to be more like the people they admire, and more liked by them? Or maybe you feel you have an inner drive: if you didn't try all these new things, you'd go crazy.

But have you ever stopped to think about the context for this behaviour? Whether people everywhere do it, and always have?

That is the concern of the first half of Peter Watson's The German Genius - or, as I like to think of it: After God, "Aargh, modernity!". Or, even more facetiously: Why we blog.

Watson tells us that the drive for self-improvement originated largely in pre-unified Germany, born out of the speculative philosophy of such titans as Kant and Hegel that arose to fill the growing hole left by declining Christianity and its message of "Do this, because I say so".

Why in Germany? Religion in Germany had been more inward anyway, as a result of Luther's protestantism returning religion to the people from the control of the church (see the novel Q, ostensibly but not really written by a former AC Milan footballer named Luther Blissett). Plus, it was the German Wilhelm von Humboldt who essentially invented the modern university, with the idea that scholars should conduct original research, and, owing to the support of Friedrich Wilhelm III, there were far more universities, and much more literacy, in Germany than places like France or Great Britain.

Kant, Hegel et al posited that in the absence of an afterlife or divinity, the purpose of life must be to better oneself, a concept that came to be known as bildung. Also, by bettering oneself, one also bettered those around oneself in one's community.

Thus, the next 100 years or so gave rise to such cultural colossi as Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert and Wagner, whose music differed from that of Handel and Bach in expressing inner concepts related to the life of man, rather than religious ones, plus Goethe, creator of the Bildungsroman, in which improvement (in the eyes of God or of man) comes only through effort on the part of the individual.

Thanks, Germany!

But then come modernity and alienation, and the second half of Watson's book, which addresses the question of whether German idealism had to lead to authoritarianism.

As Watson makes clear (borrowing on the work of others, as he's quick to point out the whole book heavily does), the idea of evolution did not originate with Darwin. Bildung is itself evolution applied to one's own character, for example. But Darwin accounted for evolution scientifically, realising it comes from overpopulation and struggle to survive and reproduce. Thus (broadly) was born the age of science.

Over the next generation or so, we have the dawn of organic chemistry and the age of cellular and molecular biology, so many of the discoveries coming from German universities and institutes. We mechanise and urbanise. We have mass-production.

Then comes the Franco-Prussian war and German unification.

Scientification continues. Education becomes less humanistic. Alongside this we have Nietzsche, telling us nothing matters anymore.

Then World War I, partly a war of now-struggling German kultur vs British mercantilism and mere civility. We have mechanised, indiscriminate killing on a scale never seen before. Germany and kultur are dealt a terrible blow, although nobody really wins.

Then Weimar and the rise of low-brow culture, followed by Einstein's relativity, Pauli's uncertainty, Godel's revelation that there are things that can never be known, atonalism in music, expressionism in art, cultural pessimism and economic plight.

Then National Socialists, with their incoherent but powerful message that everything had gone wrong and a return to classical culture was needed, and their racism, their belief that others were responsible for the way things were and that these were people who could never be truly cultured, as only true Germans could.

And what came next, which you already know.

And then the aftermath: a slow coming to terms, Heidegger and reassessment, Habermas and what now in the age of ongoing alienation and environmental profligacy.

I haven't done justice to The German Genius there, obviously. It's 365,000 words, and an awful lot of concepts that were entirely new to me. It's a lot to get your head around.

At times it reads like an encyclopaedia, and could perhaps have done with being a bit trimmer. But part of its point is that there is so much more to Germany that the Nazis, despite what British TV schedulers might think, hence there's a lot of chronicling of German achievement even when it's not essential to the narrative.

TGG is monumental in every sense, and probably the most informative and enlightening book I've ever read. I'd read it again, if only it wasn't so big. Bloody overachieving Germans, nicking all the sun-loungers...

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is gigantic, with gems of insight scattered through the 856 pages. On one hand it’s a big survey of the great minds in most every field. But the main theme is the story of how Germany became the education powerhouse of Europe for at least a century. Watson examines the rising demand for an alternative path to nobility, based on learning, not inheritance. The rulers start aspiring to lead “tutelary states” that produce “appropriate citizens,” whose ambitions “should coincide with the high and morally serious purposes of the emergent nation-state” (p. 54).

By the early 1800s, Germany has 50 universities, while Britain has 4. In 1728, the University of Göttingen removes the theology faculty's veto power over curriculum, and the whole purpose of universities starts to turn active—less to transmit received wisdom than to generate new wisdom. Where Prussia requires universal school attendance for children in the 1820s, Britain fails to do so until the 1880s. The result in Germany is a galaxy of innovative minds who shape modern physics, biology, chemistry, psychology, sociology, or industrial engineering. Yet this whole rising “educated middle class” remains excluded from political power, as the old nobility retains its grip on rulership. The universe of human potential opened to educated subjects is internal -- a kingdom of the mind, soul, culture, or private enterprise. Only after the autocratic nightmare of the Nazi regime is the public, political sphere opened up to the problem-solving creativity of educated minds.

[Tobias · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an enormous book 850 pages of accounts of German intellectuals. Took me more than three months to read. But its enormous for a reason. Its a book with a huge agenda to bring to light the great German thinkers (from Goethe to Habermas) who lie at the heart of so much of modern thought and, partly because of the Nazis and partly because of Anglo-American-centrism have been unjustly overlooked. Having said that the book also charted where German thought began to go wrong at first very slowly but on a very deep level beginning in the failed revolution of 1848 and eventually leading to the collapse of the Weimar Republic in 1933 and its eventual revival in the 1968 to 1989 period.

[Özgür Atmaca · Rating 5 out of 5]

✅️Son zamanlarda, kurgu olmayan bir kitap okudum ve bu kadar heyecanlandığımı hatırlamıyorum. Aslında bu kitabı kaçıncı paylaşışım onu da hatırlamıyorum ya neyse

✅️Peter Watson’ın Fikirler Tarihi kitabını da heyecanla okumuştum, ancak bu eser tam anlamıyla bir fikir bombasıydı. Kitap, düz bir metin ya da anlatı değil, aralara serpiştirilen çıkarımlar ve kıyaslarla beni etkiledi. Arabada, yatarken, işe giderken hep yanımdaydı. Belki de ilk defa bir araştırma kitabını tamamladım.

✅️Kant ve Ahlak Bilim Felsefesi
Kitabın temelleri üç ana eksende şekilleniyor: Kant’ın ahlak, bilim ve estetik algıları, Alman dili ve fikir inşası, ve elbette müzik. Bu üç eksen tüm medeniyetlerin kültür kodlarının temellerini oluşturuyor.

✅️ Matematik ve Gauss
Modern matematik, Newton’dan değil, Gauss’tan başlar. Gauss, Kant’ın matematiğin hayal gücünün bir yansıması ve özgürlük biçimi olduğu görüşünden etkilenmişti. Gauss, düzgün çokgenleri inşa etmek için basit araçlar kullanarak Yunanlılardan beri süregelen bir geleneği devam ettirdi. 18 yıl boyunca matematik günlüğü tutarak hayatını tamamen matematiğe adadı. Dünyada Anne Frank’tan sonra günlüğü sanat eseri kabul edilen tek kişi Gauss’tur. Gauss, sayıların davranışının teknikten ziyade estetik bir mesele olduğunu düşündüğü için, matematik dünyasına olan bakışımı değiştirdi.

Doğu Rönesansı ve Batı’ya Etkisi
Ve en heyecan verici bulgularımdan biri de, Batı Rönesansı'nın temellerinin Doğu Rönesansı'ndan aldığı fikriydi. Kalküta’dan Çin’e, Doğu Afrika’dan Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’na kadar, fikir, sanat ve bilim ateşleri Batı’ya doğru yayıldı. Batı Rönesansı'nın köklerinin sadece Avrupa’da değil, tüm Doğu coğrafyasının etkisiyle şekillendiğini fark etmek oldukça aydınlatıcıydı.
Kitapla alakalı anlatacak o kadar çok şey var ki, neyi nereye yazsam hangi çıkarımdan hangisini çıkartsam bilemiyorum.

Wagner akımları,
Laboravutarların yükselişi,
Sanayinin dünyaya şekil vermesi,
Viyana okulları,
Berlin ve duvarlar felsefesi,
Weimar ve zihinsel uyanıklık,
Teologların alacakaranlığı,
………….



✅️Beni en çok etkileyen kısımlardan biri, Kant’a yapılan bu kadar yoğun bir odaklanma oldu. Normalde Kant’ın Aristoteles ve Platon’dan sonra gelen en büyük filozof olduğunu düşünürdüm ama günümüz dünyasında Avrupa'nın, tüm dünyadan kaçanlara ev sahipliği yapma çabası bile Kant’ın ahlak felsefesinin nasıl bir derinlik taşıdığını gösteriyor. Bir fikirle tüm toplumu şekillendirebilmek, ikna edebilmek, bir anlamda atanamamış bir peygamberlik gibi geliyor bana.

✅️Deha ve Kusursuzluk
Kitapta ayrıca deha meselesi de tartışılıyor. Deha, doğanın yaratamadığı kusursuzlukta eserler yaratıyor: Mozart’ın 40. Senfoni’si, Kant’ın Ethica’sı, Darwin’in Türlerin Kökeni, Einstein’ın Görelilik Teorisi, Newton, Shakespeare, Tesla gibi isimler... Deha, ruhun gelişimine etki eder ve ruh bedenin, beden de zihnin üzerinde değişim yaratır. Sonuçta mükemmeliyet doğar.
Mozart’ın dehasını düşünürken, onun yalnızca doğuştan gelen bir yetenekle değil, aynı zamanda çevresi, ailesi, yaşadığı zenginlikler ve duygusal deneyimlerle de şekillendiğini düşünüyorum. Deha, doğanın bir parçası olsa da, tek başına yeterli değildir. Çevre, deneyimler ve zamanla değişim, dehanın ayrılmaz bir parçasıdır.

[Vuk Trifkovic · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had extremely high expectations after reading the introduction. It tackles a very pressing and neglected topic. It promised breadth, depth and tremendous amount of insight. However, I had to give up after about one third in. Basically, as you progress the book slowly looses a common narrative plot and becomes an encyclopaedic overview giving accurate but still fairly basic information about figures. There's very little to connect the episodes, and the snapshots themselves are pretty formulaic.

I'm sure there is a common thread somewhere in there, but frankly, I can't be bothered to look for it. This is all terribly disappointing and I don't think it dos the service to the author. I feel we're being deprived from a real masterpiece by almost total lack of editorial control. In my opinion this should have either been pared down to a tight, well rounded book of 400 pages, or perhaps exploded across several tomes as an encyclopaedia of German thought.

[Elliott Bignell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was perhaps the best reading surprise I have had in recent years. A work of startling erudition, it attempts and in my opinion succeeds in describing the spirit and achievements of an entire culture across its full breadth. And what a culture! Directed at the war-obsessed English-speaking readership, it does not dodge the question of how the world's perhaps most advanced culture of the time gave birth to Nazism but tries to trace the differences and proclivities that made this, of all places, the birthplace.

The author treats of music, painting, architecture, literature, biology, physics, engineering, mathematics, economics and philosophy. This list is probably not exhaustive and Watson seems to speak with authority wherever I myself have the knowledge to judge. In virtually all these fields, Germans have made decisive contributions and often enough led the field. It was said by Churchill's secretary that the allies won the Second World War because we had better German scientists than the Germans did. He was not exaggerating, and I would only add that very many were German Jews.

At any rate, the rise of Nazism led to a prolific diaspora of German speakers, products of the most advanced university system of the 19th Century, as the regime sought to sanitise artistic and political discourse, rid music of "degeneracy" and to move against the Jews who had played so great a role in the advances of the previous century. The result was catastrophic for the regime's chances of beating the combined resources of the British Empire and Asian Russia backed up by their own nation's brains, but it has shaped our own minds more deeply than many would admit. Just to name a couple of examples, the Chicago School of economics and the entire field of psychoanalysis are almost entirely shaped by German minds.

The question that will probably never lose its hold on British - in large part ancestrally germanic - readers is, "What about the war?" Well, both wars. And one World Cup. (Doo-dah, doo-dah.) This account should firstly make clear the narrowness and puerility of this obsession. The book does not settle on a single, definitive explanation, but it highlights a set of circumstances that render Germany arguably unique, and which may comprise a predisposition: The spirit of Prussia's Iron Kingdom is part of it, with its cherishing of the martial spirit and pride in "entrepreneurialism" over contempt for English-speaking mercantilism. The Romantic dream of the isolated figure in an empty, native landscape is another factor, as it brought the soil to "blood and soil" nationalism. As Popper argued at length, historicism, a strong feature of German philosophy, contributed to both Nazism and Marxism - a product of yet another German mind. The Nietzschean conception of the moral "superman" fits into the picture. And of course the Weimar Republic saw the rise of a vicious conservatism that birthed a yearning to "get our country back" and to purify art of modernist "degeneracy". German classical scholarship is visible in the neo-classical brutality of Nazi architecture, its primacy in cinema and communications technology must have played a role in Nazi mastery of mass propaganda, expertise in mythography and Germanic sagas and fables contributed to the incoherent blend of Christianity and pagan heroism which Hitler concocted to provide a purely Aryan form of state religion.

This amounts to a complex and hard-to-falsify picture, but what can one expect? The demonic energy of fascism is a true puzzle in the land of Goethe, Freud, Mozart and Einstein, and these answers seem to me to create a convincing whole.

A work of genius about a genius.

[Mesoscope · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fundamentally, the question this book poses to the critical reader is, how much can you really expect to learn about Beethoven in a page and a half?

That's what you get from Watson's breathless survey of a few centuries of pre-Nazi German culture - hundreds of very brief intellectual biographies, strung together with only the thinnest connective tissue. Perhaps useful as a reference, but for my taste, it's hardly worth slogging through one elliptical summary after another, usually with less depth than the corresponding Wikipedia article on the same subject.

I would also warn the prospective reader that Watson shows himself to be completely out of his depth in dealing with German philosophy - his account of Kant, for example, is quite wrong, and obviously derived from a flawed understanding of secondary literature.

[Nooilforpacifists · Rating 5 out of 5]

You won't find over-much politics here. What you will find is German culture Uber alles. A huge, fascinating book.

[Coulter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an amazing whirlwind tour of, well, German genius from the death of Bach in 1750 to the present: not only the artists, writers, historians, and philosophers that typically people the pages of cultural histories, but also scientists, engineers, businessmen, and doctors. If it has a fault, it's that Watson tries to cover as many people as possible, so occasionally it feels a bit like you're reading one encyclopedia entry after another. But that's more than outweighed by the overall arc of the book, which not only gives a great refresher course on philosophers like Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Habermas (which sticks well in the brain because Watson is so successful in anchoring them in general Western cultural development), but also highlights large-scale traits particularly characteristic of 19C and early 20C Germany, notably a well-educated middle class, supported by first-rate research institutions, inclined more to Innerlichkeit ("inwardness") than to political activism, and devoted to a holistic approach to educational self-betterment, i.e. Bildung. The way he describes it, the entire country sounds like it would be an INTJ in a Myers-Briggs test, which is no doubt one reason the book appealed to me so much. He also does a convincing job of showing how all this led to the catastrophe of the Nazis. One of those Hydra-like books that leaves you with a much longer to-read list than you started out with...

[Lydia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somewhere along the line after writing the introduction and title, Watson forgot his mission to explain how Germany became a dominant economic European country after 1945. Chapter 1 starts with year 1747. Not to be deterred, I waded through 713 pages to get to post-WWII. I took note of priests, architects, musicians and scientists. The changes in thought leading up to 1938 are useful, and answered lots of questions for me. Watson is an English journalist with an academic bent hoping to educate all--he writes beautifully. This was recommended to me by a German architect. Once I gave up my desire to learn about government, industry, culture and changes in Germany over the last 50 years, I really enjoyed this book.

[Olan McEvoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Germans are so smart, why did the Finanzamt once reply to an email by mailing me a letter?

[Josh Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

This felt like two different books. Book 1 (basically the beginning and the end): a nuanced argument about the evolution of German intellectual history, its complicated relationship with Nazism and our inability to discern the complexity of that relationship because of our overwhelmingly Nazism-centered understanding of Germany and German history. Book 2: a long concatenation of 5-page overly simplistic summaries of every possibly important German intellectual, of every possible stripe, for the past 300 years or so. Book 1 would have been more interesting on its own; Book 2 had its own pleasures but ended up feeling more like high school history class than it should have.

I'm not really in a position to prove that every one of the summaries is overly simplistic, but there are a handful of people whose work I *do* know a lot about (mostly philosophers or social theorists - Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Nietzsche, etc.) and extrapolating from Watson's consideration of those thinkers' ideas, I feel confident in asserting that their thoughts' complexity is generally being flattened in the interest of the breadth of the study.

If you remember a high school European history class in which you were told things like "Hegel thought all ideas moved in a pattern from thesis, through antithesis towards synthesis" (something Hegel never said, so far as I know) that memory will give you a general feeling for how this book will go. Each thinker's ideas are so minimally described in their complexity that you don't really learn anything about any of them individually, just about the overall flow of German intellectual history. To be fair, in some cases, they alerted me to people whose work I was not aware of, and like the "Briefly Noted" section in the New Yorker, might send me towards reading those books or listening to that music.

What's strange to me is that Watson could have written a much shorter (therefore much more readable) book that still achieved the same ends. The over-simplified intellectual portraits do not, by and large, help to demonstrate the truth of the claims about the hovering cloud of Nazism and its effects on both Germans and other western non-Germans.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should have been titled "The Unchecked German Genius." Watson sets out to correct what he views as an error to define Germany simply by the thirteen years of the Third Reich. As he so well demonstrates in painstaking detail, Germans of the 19th Century led the world in nearly everything, from science to math to music, chemistry, industry and, most notably, philosophy. As he does so, he carefully lays out how that philosophy, culture and political view of itself very much provided the foundation that brought on the Third Reich, the Holocaust and two world wars that changed history. It really was the Germans and not just a circumstance of history. And, most surprising, Hitler really had no new ideas. He just brought bits and pieces of old ones to fruition. Ironically, as Watson describes the German genius, he also proves up the reason why Germans deserve very much to be defined by those thirteen years. Now, if the Greeks are correct, and Germany is again taking over Europe, these 800 pages may be a good way of understanding just why Germans do what they do, this time hopefully without the evil goofballs that brought it to ruination the last time around.

[Maxim Kolmakov · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of names, events and masterpieces are listed in the book. The book length excluding a reference is 856 pages after all. The reference itself contains 108 pages with a very tiny font. Unfortunately, you drown in all this and it's very hard to put out the head and do generalizations as well as attempt to accomadate the information.

The book is in some sense encyclopedia about German scientist, artists, philosophers. I would prefer more analytical work (although I don't say the book contains none) and probably more cross-referencing since a name once mentioned rarely occurs again.

When you read this book as encyclopedia (10-15 pages per day) memory just can't hold all those names. You left with the feeling that you've just finished an enormous work. You apreciate German Genius indeed but you can hardly name any specific.

[Manuel J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a work of love, in the double sense of trying to be thorough regarding accomplishments of people of german origin, and in the call for a deeper look to the german contribution to the present world that's hidden behind a historical curtain caused by recent events.
Is Watson successful in this undertaking? I think he is, even considering the compromise of breadth and deepness over the different subjects that is always a characteristic of these books. I kept wanting to know more about this or that character/subject, and I will, as Watson enticed me. And that's the main point of the book: let you know how little you know, and then acting accordingly.

[James Henderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

An almost limitless source of information about the men and ideas that contributed to Germany's preeminence in culture, science, and the humanities ever since the middle of the eighteenth century. All the big names are here along with many others that you should know about due to their impact on our world. I find this a never-ending source of education and a resource to provide context for other reading.

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I have ever read. Informative and full of the most philosophical and logical facts in tracing the rise of Germany's cultural achievements.

[Ahmad Abdul Rahim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jenayah Nazi sewaktu Perang Dunia tidak mampu termaafkan oleh sesiapa.

Tapi tiada siapa boleh mengelak untuk bertanya bagaimanakah sesebuah negara demokratik yang mempunyai tahap pendidikan am dan kemajuan materi yang tertinggi di Eropah (jika bukan di dunia), dengan gergasi budaya dan intelektual seperti Goethe dan Kant, serta legasi kepimpinan tercerah seperti yang kenampakan pada sosok Friedrich dan Friedrich The Great serta Bismarck, akhirnya terpedaya dengan karisma dan wacana sektarian lagi rasis Hitler?

*Sedikit konteks: celik huruf tertinggi dalam kalangan tentera Jerman adalah yang tertinggi dalam Eropah (hanya 1 dalam 100 ribu buta huruf) begitu juga kadar celik huruf dalam kalangan rakyat umum. Jumlah pemenang Nobel yang datang dari jajahan Jerman lebih tinggi dari Britain dan Amerika andai dicampurtambah.

Bagi aku terdapat pengajaran yang besar boleh digali di situ.

***

Buku ini mempunyai 856 ms yang tegap; aku tak tahu bagaimana aku boleh merumuskannya.

Satu generalisasi selamat yg boleh dibuat adalah separuh pertama buku ini dihabiskan untuk membincangkan 'intelectual history' Jerman dan separuh yg kedua 'cultural history' yg diladeni dengan fakta2 budaya yang melambak (seni pementasan, seni visual, perfileman, muzik, orkestra/simfoni, penulisan fiksyen, falsafah dsb).

Bahagian pertama adalah kegemaran aku; adapun bahagian kedua mulanya memang mengujakan: aku masih terkejut betapa perkembangan2 terawal tradisi sinematik di Amerika atau Hollywood adalah datangnya hasil daripada perpindahan kemahiran yg dimiliki budayawan dan seniman2 Jerman yg berhijrah ke sewaktu fasa kebangkitan Nationalist Socialist Party (1933-1945) yg mengekang kebebasan artistik.

Namun, lama-kelamaan pembaca akan mendapati sebahagian besar tenaganya dan rasa ingintahunya terbazir apabila tema yg sama diulangsebut seperti konsep keasingan atau 'alienation' yg terhasil dan diekspreskan di dalam dramaturgi, pementasan teater, dan penulisan fiksyen.

Untuk pengetahuan, konsep 'alienation' ini diartikulasikan paling awal oleh Hegel di dalam sistem falsafahnya, sebelum Marx merampas dan menyerapnya ke dalam wacana pertentangan kelas (class struggle) bourjuis vs proletar.

Kata Marx dengan ketibaan era industri, pekerja menghasilkan satu2 produk dalam keadaan di mana kewujudannya langsung terpisah daripada tangan yg memasang dan mencantumkannya

Apakah bahan yg digunakan untuk menghasilkan produk ini; bagaimanakah ia digali; kemanakah produk ini akan diekspot; siapakah pembeli2nya; berapakah marjin keuntungan yg diperolehi dsb...segala persoalan ini bukan urusan si pekerja kilang untuk diambil peduli.

Aspek 'keterasingan' ini tiada di dalam kalangan penghasil kraftangan atau artisan tradisional dahulukala.

Justeru dilema eksistensial yg serupa, di mana pekerja2 kilang merasakan sebahagian daripada makna menjadi manusia di dalam dirinya telah terhakis, adalah unik untuk Zaman Industrial.

Kata Marx lah.

[Adakah kehidupan masa kini di mana kita tidak mengenali jiran, pekerja kedai, penjual daging di sekitar kawasan kejiranan boleh dikira sebagai suatu bentuk 'keterasingan' - unik dalam satu era 'mass society' sarat dengan masalah ledakan populasi? Wajar direnung]

Apa2pun aku tak ingat berapa kali konsep ini berulangkali timbul di dalam penulisan Watson. Malah, separuh kedua buku ini atau secara umumnya bahagian 'cultural history' buku ini adalah kelemahan terbesar German Genius. Tiada latar belakang historikal yg mencukupi disajikan untuk pembaca. Segalanya fakta.

Di ms 715 contohnya, Watson 'memuntahkan' nama demi nama pelarian-pelarian Jerman ke Amerika yang telah menempa nama di Dunia Baru tersebut hampir satu muka penuh (nama sahaja)! Seolah2 Watson baru sedar -menginjak bahagian terakhir bukunya- bahawa ambisi beliau terlalu besar sehinggakan beliau tidak kisah pun untuk memberikan konteks bermakna.

Ini agak menyedihkan kerana selepas membaca buku "The Closing of American Mind" di mana pengkritik budaya Allan Bloom menempelak penyusupan fikrah atau ideologi Heidegger ke dalam pemikiran dan kebudayaan mujtamak Amerika, aku sedikit tertarik dengan budaya kesenian Jerman. Aku mendapati diri aku tertanya2 apakah inspirasi di sebalik penghasilan adikarya simfoni dan sonata milik Beethoven (Simfoni Kesembilan dan Keenam), Bach, Strauss II, dan Richard Wagner.

Apakah konflik dalaman, peribadi atau masyarakat, yg cuba mereka nyatakan dan suarakan lewat susunan muzik, melodi dan fugue?

Buku ini, dengan tebal hampir 900ms, tidak nafikan telah memberikan pembaca imbasan-imbasan jawapan kepada persoalan2 tersebut tetapi ia bukanlah suatu jawapan yg lengkap. Pun begitu, penulis bagi aku, sekurang2nya telah berjaya mempamerkan bagaimana aspek2 kebudayaan itu sebahagian besarnya adalah terbit daripada pertelingkahan atau dialektik dalaman yg berumah pada intelek - sepertimana komentar beliau bahawa tanpa Schopenhauer tiada Wagner mampu menggubah melodi Tristan Und Isolde.

Dan di sini kita perlu berbicara tentang sisi atau iklim intelektual Jerman yang begitu mempengaruhi dunia itu.

Jerman, sehingga abad 17 dan awal abad 18, seperti negara2 Eropah yg lain, masih terpesona dengan kebudayaan dan intelektualisme Perancis, serta praktis kesaksamaan hak politikal di British. Hanya bermula dengan penerbitan "On Germany" (De l'Allemagne) oleh budayawati Madame Germaine De Stael, seorang Francophile, baharulah Demam Jerman melanda dunia.

De Stael jugalah yg menitipkan nama 'Romantisisme' di dalam survei beliau ke atas gaya penulisan baharu di dalam puisi dan syair-syair Jerman ketika itu, yang disifatkan De Stael sebagai "meraikan keagungan dan kehebatan semangat kemanusiaan". Walaupun stereotaip Jerman sebagai suatu bangsa yg kasar atau celupar (berbanding dengan Perancis yg sofistikated dan á la mode) masih belum tergoncang, tetapi keaslian upaya akliah Jerman yg mana Kant merupakan dutanya, tidak tersangkal oleh sesiapa.

Malah untuk sesiapa yg mahu memahami cara pemikiran bangsa Jerman, banyak yg mereka boleh pelajari daripada Kant.

Kant paling terkenal dengan percubaannya untuk membina undang2 moral, dan seterusnya, konsep moraliti itu sendiri berdasarkan lojik. Bercakap benar adalah tindakan yg lojik kerana kalau semua orang bercakap bohong maka dunia akan menjadi huru hara justeru semua orang perlu bercakap benar pada setiap masa dan ketika - walaupun ia mungkin membawa kepada seseorang itu kehilangan nyawa.

Kaedah deontolojikal beliau adalah terlampau rigid dan bagi sesetengah orang adalah tidak berhati perut (ke aku seorang sahaja?). Bagaimanapun keampuhan falsafah Kantian ini diakui ramai dan ia begitu berpengaruh sehinggakan di samping Utilitarian Bentham/Mills, dua falsafah moral ini adalah sandaran utama kepada ilmu etika moden - paling terserlah di dalam perbincangan etika dan medikolegal di dalam bidang perubatan moden.

Di dalam menggali akar2 budaya yg membawa kepada falsafah Kantian, penulis tampaknya mengisyaratkan jawapannya kepada mazhab Pietism, salah satu mazhab Protestan yg ingin kembali kepada ajaran asal pengasas denominasi Protestan, Martin Luther (Protestan kuasa dua?).

Pietism lahir sekitar 1670-an dan berdasarkan seruan2nya, mereka tampak begitu terkesan dengan perkembangan mazhab Puritanisme milik Inggeris. Pietism ingin lari daripada kerahiban Katolik; penganut Pietist perlu berkerja keras di dalam kehidupan seharian di dunia kerana inilah cara terbaik untuk mengenal dan memahami Tuhan - melalui berkhidmat kepada makhluk2nya.

Perkembangan2 intelektual, budaya, dan sosial di Jermanmampu dibingkaikan lewat kerangka pemikiran ini: daripada 'penemuan' etika/moraliti Kant kepada pembentukan disiplin sejarah dan filologi moden (yg secara paradoksnya telah membawa kepada tradisi hermeneutik yg mengkritik Bible), seterusnya usaha pencarian 'kerja-tangan' Tuhan di dalam biologi moden oleh saintis-saintis dari sekolah Naturphilosophie, serta akhirnya kelahiran semangat/agama nasionalisme yg begitu ikonik dengan Jerman pasca era Bismarck disamping aktivisme politik yg radikal milik Belia Hitler.

Konsep Bildung terdapat banyak saham di dalam menggerakkan proses tadi. Istilah ini sukar diungkapkan di dalam bahasa yang mudah kerana tiada perkataan dalam bahasa Inggeris pun yang sinonim dengan Bildung. Komen Watson tentang Bildung

[...in essence it refers to inner development of the individual, a process of fulfillment through education and knowledge, in effect a secular search for perfection, representing progress and refinement both in knowledge and in moral terms, an amalgam of wisdom and self-realization.]

Sebagai penutur Bahasa Melayu, aku rasa perkataan paling dekat demi menggambarkan erti Bildung adalah 'pembentukan jati diri', walaupun perlu dititipkan di sini bahawa beberapa dimensi istilah Bildung masih tercicir apabila diterjemahkan sedemikian. Antaranya adalah aspek "inwardness" yg wujud di dalam proses Bildung di mana gerak-daya pendidikan tersebut mengambil tempat secara refleksi dan infleksi dalaman, dan hakikat bahawa Bildung bergerak pada lantai sekular tanpa bimbingan Langit.

Jika idea Bildung ini begitu akrab dengan apa yg kita fahami tentang matlamat pendidikan dalam konteks modeniti ia adalah bukti kepada betapa berpengaruhnya cara pemikiran Alam Jerman kepada dunia mutakhir.

Bildung adalah jauh sekali sumbangan terbesar Jerman. Sebaris dengannya adalah idea Kritik sebagai teras utama di dalam memajukan (mana2) bidang kesarjanaan; atau idea Wissenschaft yg menyatakan bahawa negara bertanggungjawab menjaga hal-ehwal rakyatnya melalui birokrasi dan polisi wajib; Gemeinschaft-vis-a-vis Gessellschaft yakni komuniti-vis-a-vis-sosial apabila berbicara tentang (mana2) fenomena kemasyarakatan; penggarisan antara ruang awam dan ruang peribadi bilamana kita berbincang mengenai tindakan yg mendatangkan kesan sosial; Kultur (high culture) sebagai pengukur tahap ketamadunan satu2 bangsa.

Semua ini adalah mod-mod kognitif yang begitu unik dengan modeniti. Sukar sekali untuk kita merenung dan membincangkan masalah mujtamak atau fenomena kemasyarakatan tanpa mengimpot kosa kata Habermas, tokoh2 pemikir sekolah Frankfurt seperti Adorno dan Erich Fromm yg cuba mengahwinkan idea Freud dan Marx di samping alumni New School For Social Research, dimana Hannah Arendt dan Leo Strauss adalah graduan mereka yang paling popular.

Dengan sumbangan idea yg begitu komprehensif sebegini, tentunya Alam Jerman mempunyai jasa yg banyak kepada cara manusia moden mamandang alam. Pada masa yg sama itu juga bermakna bahaya yg ditawarkannya adalah besar.

Ambil contoh penulisan sejarah dan metodologi penulisan sejarah (historiography) yg mana Jerman merupakan rumah kepada pelopor2 bidang tersebut. Gergasi sejarahwan Jerman seperti Leopold Von Ranke pun tidak mampu untuk menjarakkan bias pendirian politiknya dengan tanggungjawab objektiviti beliau sebagai sarjanawan, sehinggakan penulisan2 sejarah beliau diwarnai dengan tiga tema utama:

1) 'Negara' sebagai hadaf muktamad lantas lahirlah konsep Machtstaat dimana pemerintah perlu memegang kuasa mutlak tanpa kekangan undang2 perlembagaan
2) Menolak pemikiran normatif dengan menganggap bahawa negara berhak melakukan apa sahaja di dalam memastikah kemaslahatannya terjaga
3) Menolak pemikiran konseptual serta pemikiran abstrak

Von Ranke menulis ini sewaktu 1850-an. Secara retrospektif, susah untuk kita menyingkirkan korelasi antara idea beliau dengan nasionalisme ekstrem Empayar Prussia, seterusnya penolakan konsep objektiviti di dalam bidang kesarjanaan dan kritik ke atas modeniti ala Heidegger; ramuan2 yg akhirnya lengkap dengan penabalan Hitler sebagai Chancellor pada 1933.

Sedikit komentar berkenaan buku ini. Gaya penulisannya adalah jurnalistik moden - mungkin kerana latarbelakang penulis yg merupakan seorang jurnalis, bukan 'sejarahwan' dari menara gading. (Kerana itu juga aku fikir) Baris2 ayat beliau sentiasa disertakan disklaimer, setiap generalisasi akan dituruti dengan pengecualian. Pembaca mungkin nampak hal itu tanda penulisan yg cermat tapi aku nampak yg penulis perlu mencari seorang penyunting yg baik.

Walaupun Watson tiada audasiti seorang penulis original, tetapi pengetahuan ensiklopediknya sudah cukup untuk menebus mana2 kekurangan yg wujud. Aku jangkakan German Genius bakal menjadi bahan bacaan klasik untuk sesiapa yg ingin mengenali latar sosio-budaya Jerman dalam satu jilid.

[William Shep · Rating 4 out of 5]

Britain’s Peter Watson is a former journalist who has written several provocative tomes on the history of ideas. His most recent work, The German Genius, is a massive survey of German history and culture from the Age of Bach to the present. His primary purpose is to address what he views as British and Americans ignorance regarding the enormous cultural impact that Germans have had on the world. He argues that British obsession with their heroic role in defeating Hitler, combined with the American idée fixe on the Holocaust, has blinded both countries to German accomplishments both before and after the Nazi era.

Watson explores the concepts of ‘Bildung’ and ‘Sonderweg.’ The former, ‘Bildung,’ is a term with no equivalent in English and that is difficult to explain even in German. It signifies something akin to education combined with spiritual formation in not only achieving knowledge but also in learning values. The latter, ‘Sonderweg,’ describes the contentious theory (propounded especially by Daniel Goldhagen’s 1996 book Hitler’s Willing Executioners) that the Germans have made a unique historical journey from aristocracy to democracy, but on a path of abnormal cultural development, in comparison with western nations, which virtually ensured the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich.

Watson, in effect, argues in favor of ‘Bildung’ and against the ‘Sonderweg’ by highlighting a long litany of German accomplishments in, among other things, music, philosophy, theology, science, medicine, and literature. He presents a series of mini biographies, (almost a biographical encyclopedia) of the notable Germans that created or drove these wide ranging endeavors. Among these luminaries are, to name just a few, physicist Heinrich Hertz, philosopher Immanuel Kant, composer Richard Strauss, writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and historian Leopold von Ranke. Watson states that while America and Britain speak English both countries think German due to the immense and largely hidden impact of the German inspired higher education system that operates in both countries.

This is an important book well worth the reading though the immense length of over 800 pages can be daunting. One comes away with the thought that one more edit might have made the same points while producing a slimmer, more palatable volume. This German-American reader also came away with the notion that despite Watson’s best efforts to discredit the ‘Sonderweg,’ he ironically reinforces it as any in depth exploration of German accomplishments (and they are immense) can not gloss over the underlying negativity of both thought and deed that so often burdens German culture and history.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part of my fascination is language. All the profs say English is descendant of one kinda Deutsche or another; a word like Bildung comes along. It is not just a word: it is a concept, very important to understanding Germany. Which is important and really needs to use a lot of pp to tell you why. One word does not equal one word in another language. Several word/concepts like that. When you see italics, start paying attention.

Watson's basic tenet is this: from 1750 -1933 it was the Germans. They transformed themselves, assembled a country, and dominated the cultural and academic worlds. Ask the average citizen to name 3 ‘classical’ composers: chances are they will mention at least 2 German musicians. Sociology. Psychology. Painters: who knew there were German artists?? My old Penguin pb copy of Also Sprach Zarathustra uses Friedrich’s "Wanderer above a sea of fog" on the cover. That is the sole piece of German art I can recall. Well xcpt Bierstadt, but he was American. They invented Expressionism… 849 pp, plus a list of “35 Underrated Germans”; goes quick in spots. Watson is thorough in his coverage of German culture ( and Kultur); of course, being Germans, there is a difference. I was looking forward to the post war sections, and was rewarded. We learn why 1968 was an important year for modern Germany. I enjoyed reading about science and chemical industries; copious notes with bibliographic citations can help one pursue topics. Dyes. IG Farben, which is Thomas Pynchon country. Rocket science, theoretical physics. How the Germans invented the seminar and research institutionalized by the universities with the development of the modern PhD. It is all in there. Dealing with WW2. Why Germans are such good recyclers.

Each chapter is like another term paper: Watson uses tons of direct quotes, and not always in a supportive of his thesis role. He will occasionally use a quoted adjective; I found this irksome. It gets slow at the philosophy; Germans have been at work there too. Never knew of the philosophical link to the music, the notes, of Wagner, who frequently (along with his erstwhile pal Nietzsche) pops up. The section on German film was satisfactory for a book of this size. I never quite wanted to put it down. Watson has a conversational style; a plus over the long haul. One has to be interested in Germans, very much, or in intellectual/scientific history to read this. I am glad I did.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I spent my Christmas break years ago making my way through Peter Watson's The Modern Mind, and then took up Ideas, his time-busting chronological survey of pretty much everything, before more recently studying his The Age of Atheists. All three books share with the German Genius a forgivable flaw. They stuff the pages full of names, dates, and knowledge. They cram immense learning into a relatively smaller space, if one that still nears a thousand pages in some of his chronicles. They can weary the reader, so short stints of a chapter or two are recommended. They strive to say everything. However, this ambition is forgivable, given the payoff that must be sought slowly, as the pages accumulate and his argument about why his fellow British, like so many other nations whose past is not untarnished when it comes to human rights and the assumption of peace and goodwill towards all, must come to terms with a nation that has confronted its past, dealt with it as best they could, being on both the long and short ends of the stick, so to speak, last century.

Watson is fair. He acknowledges the gains and losses, and tallies the balance sheet adroitly. Like Simon Winder's Germania (which I reviewed right after this), he also challenges us to exhibit a more mature and informed view of today's German culture, and to stop peddling facile caricatures.

Yes, in a diminished age of attention span, the effort required to follow this study pays off richly. He can seem like a dutiful encyclopedist at times, one darn thinker after another. But step back, consider his intro and conclusion, carefully reflect on his thesis, and the evidence he marshals for the fact that the turn away from the material and empirical towards the ideal and the individual, while maybe not the first qualities the uninformed (as was I) think of when judging the German quality of intellectual endeavor, account for both weakness in cohesion and strength in persistence.

[Roger · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thorough research, and a strong statistical approach to observations, help make this book compelling. At times it does read like "The Book of Lists" by the Wallenchinsky/Wallace family. The book requires the patience of Job, to sift through the author's volume of evidence to support his hypothesis that without the tireless innovation of the German speaking cultures, the modern world as we know it would be less enlightened. However, Peter Watson's ability to call out connections between German achievements and our modern-day innovations, makes the book a very "readable" piece.

For lovers of German culture, it's a good addition to the library.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is impossible to capture this comprehensive and so well balanced book on German intellectual and cultural history on a single page.

I will say this in summary: I agree! It, in a much more factual and researched manner than I could ever hope to encapsulate, confirmed my gut instincts and fuzzy ideas that I've held since I was introduced to Germans and German culture in the late 1990's.

Educated, cultured (in the best meaning of the word), inward, conflicted, successful in the modern world but never comfortable in it… these are the Germans. While they often frustrate my American pragmatism and plebian beliefs, I still love them for who they are and what they give us.

[Karl-Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

... for all we have been told and thought, Germans have only one history, the third reich, reading this book makes Germany more exciting and much more valuable to the world... but if only we are ready to dump what they have said about the Germans and look further into the past and then look further into the future, can we see the genius.

The present moment counts...

Fantastic read. Peter Watson asks the question why is germany the villan rather than the saviour of civilization or rather most importantly why can we not see them all part of humanity rather than just the villan.

[Dagmar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is something special. Really well written and conveying so much information in - relatively - few words. I am considering whether I should explore some of the people he describes in more detail.

While it was a joy to read, it was still more challenging to finish than perhaps a John Irving book of the same length...

[Richard Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fine book which does much to correct the Anglo Saxon stereotyping of Germany and the German people. It is filled with ideas, facts and interpretations which were if not new then newly presented. It is the sort of book that British europhobes should read, learn and inwardly digest if they had the intellectual honesty to do so.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it... just loved reading it.

[Saz Gee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, Germany, I love you and this is why.