Synopses & Reviews
A dramatic account of life in Czechoslovakias great capital during the Nazi Protectorate With this successor book to
Prague in Black and Gold, his account of more than a thousand years of Central European history, the great scholar Peter Demetz focuses on just six short yearsa tormented, tragic, and unforgettable time. He was living in Prague thena first-degree half-Jew,” according to the Nazis terrible categoriesand here he joins his objective chronicle of the city under German occupation with his personal memories of that period: from the bitter morning of March 15, 1939, when Hitler arrived from Berlin to set his seal on the Nazi takeover of the Czechoslovak government, until the liberation of Bohemia in April 1945, after long seasons of unimaginable suffering and pain. Demetz expertly interweaves a superb account of the German authorities diplomatic, financial, and military machinations with a brilliant description of Pragues evolving resistance and underground opposition. Along with his private experiences, he offers the heretofore untold history of an effervescent, unstoppable Prague whose urbane heart went on beating despite the deportations, murders, cruelties, and violence: a Prague that kept its German- and Czech-language theaters open, its fabled film studios functioning, its young people in school and at work, and its newspapers on press. This complex, continually surprising book is filled with rare human detail and warmth, the gripping story of a great city meeting the dual challenge of occupation and of war.
Peter Demetz is the author of many books, including
The Air Show at Brescia,
1909 and
Prague in Black and Gold. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In this book, a successor to
Prague in Black and Gold, Peter Demetz's account of more than a thousand years of Central European history, the scholar focuses on just six short yearsa tormented, tragic, and unforgettable time in Prague's history. He was living in the country thena first-degree half-Jew,” according to the Nazis categorization. In
Prague in Danger, he joins his objective chronicle of the city under German occupation with his personal memories of that period: from the morning of March 15, 1939, when Hitler arrived from Berlin to set his seal on the Nazi takeover of the Czechoslovak government, until the liberation of Bohemia in April 1945, after long seasons of constant fear and loss.
Demetz interweaves a clear, thorough account of the German authorities diplomatic, financial, and military machinations with a description of Pragues evolving resistance and underground opposition. Along with his private experiences, he offers the heretofore untold history of an effervescent, unstoppable Prague whose urbane heart went on beating despite the deportations, murders, cruelties, and violence: a Prague that kept its German- and Czech-language theaters open, its fabled film studios functioning, its young people in school and at work, and its newspapers on press. This complex book is filled with rare human detail and warmth, the story of a great city meeting the dual challenge of occupation and of war.
"Who remembers that for six terrible years, from 1939 to 1945, Prague became one of the crown jewels of the German Reichnot just another occupied European city? Demetz, a longtime Yale professor of German and comparative literature, was actually there as a young man, and here he blends memory with meticulous scholarship to produce a portrait of this strange episode in the history of one of Europe's most vibrant and beautiful places. A new look into a neglected corner of life in the Third Reich, this bookwhich elucidates the extraordinary hubbub of activity in theaters, film studios, and other artistic realmsreminds us that even in the darkest periods of history, there are unexpected shafts of light."The Atlantic Monthly
"While the Holocaust is universally known, and the death and destruction inflicted on Poland during World War II widely so, the wartime fate of today's Czech Republic, known then as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, is less familiar. With his new book, Peter Demetz has given us an informative and personal history of the protectorate, one that makes evocative reading. Demetz, a professor emeritus of Germanic literature at Yale University and author of the highly regarded Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City, has fashioned an erudite combination of history and memoir, with memories of his youth alternating with the narrative of the political and cultural events of those turbulent years. Demetz's narrative shows a historian's attention to detail, and his treatment of familiar charactersReichsprotectors Konstantin von Neurath and Reinhard Heydrich and Kafka's translator Milena Jesenská among themreveals psychological insight. But Demetz truly shines in resurrecting less well-known characters, like Jirí Orten, the most promising poet of his generation, who died a tragic death in 1941 when a hospital refused to treat him (after he had been run down on the streets of Prague) because he was a Jew; and arch-traitor Emanuel Moravec, the protectorate government's minister of education and popular culture,known as the 'Czech Quisling' . . . He provides bibliographical notes that show his familiarity with current Czech historical research as well as his knowledge of more dated works . . . Demetz did not set out to write the complete history of the protectorate, and what he has given us is undoubtedly successful. His personal story is gripping . . . What makes the book compelling is how well Demetz places his own unique experience against the backdrop of Prague and the catastrophe of World War II."Bradley Abrams, The Washington Post Book World
"For many years the cornerstone of Yale's distinguished Comparative Literature Department, Peter Demetz was a superb literary critic in the classroom and lecture hall and on paper. When, some years ago, he wrote Prague in Black and Gold, 'a history of my hometown from the sixth to the early twentieth century,' he proved to be a superb cultural historian as well. In Prague in Danger, he focuses on a mere six years of its history when it fell under the iron heel of Nazi rule as part of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia within Hitler's Third Reich. And once again, he shows those twin qualities of punctiliousness and passion which are his hallmark as he explores many aspects of life in those terrible years: Artistic, political, social and, above all, personal. Because he was actually there in Prague as observer and sometimes as participant in the eddies and crosscurrents of that tumultuous time. This intensely personal side to the book does not distract in the least from those sections which are detailed cultural history, beautifully and factually laid out. Indeed, Mr. Demetz's intimate knowledge of some of the places described and of the unique atmosphere of that period enhance every page. But the heart of the bookwhat makes it such a special and above all valuable document and testamentare those sections (printed in a different typeface) which are straight autobiography. So while it is fascinating to read how theater and moviemaking managed to continue even under the rigid Nazi occupation and other aspects of normal life persisted for so many in Prague, what one takes away in the final analysis are those first-person accounts . . . This book is imbued with a sense of loss intensely personal although surrounded by so many echoes of others. Fortunate enough to survive the war in a labor battalion after various other occupations, and adventures across the Reich, all vividly described in Prague in Danger . . . the young Czech was able to return to his birthplace, eager at twenty three to begin his university studies. But after harrowingbut mercifully ultimately anodyne brief encounters with Auschwitz and with Gestapo interrogation, Mr. Demetz returned to a land increasingly haunted by the specter of a new totalitarian tyranny which was to hold sway over it for four decades . . . One of the virtues of Mr. Demetz's book is his reminder that many of those German-speakers fellow citizens who maintained the city's Germanophone cultural institutions were in fact anti-fascist, many, but not all of them by any means, Jews . . . What a fine man, what a fine book, we have here."Martin Rubin, The Washington Times
"Peter Demetz, the Czech-born Yale professor whose Prague in Black and Gold covered a thousand years of Bohemian history, literature, and art as if it were Finnegans Wake, returns in Prague in Danger: The Years of German Occupation, 1935-45Memories and History, Terror and Resistance, the Theater and Jazz, Film and Poetry, Politics and War to finish what he started, discarding the wide-angle for the close-up. He was a boy when Hitler arrived from Berlin on March 15, 1939. He lived through the occupation, 'first-degree' half-Jewish and the rest of him literary/cinematic, thanks to a resourceful mother, good luck, and quick wits. He survived the death camps; his mother didn't. We eavesdrop on his personal story in fleeting italics interpolated on the run between chapters of a bigger picture of accommodation and resistance of hypocrisy and wishful thinking, of going-along-to-get-along and a denial almost catatonic. In this erstwhile multiculture, now gone the fratricidal way of Sarajevo, there had been two languages, German and Czech, many more dialects, thousands of exiles and refugees, very long memories, Kafka of course but also Brecht and Yiddish theater, and Arthur Schnitzler, Frank Wedekind, and Max Brod, even the poems and essays of Heinrich Heine, until all of a sudden there weren't. Demetz names namesof the ultraright nationalists who thought they could outsmart 'Czech Gestapism'; the liberal leftists incapable of appreciating the death of reason; the writers, actors, editors, and musicians who tried to behave as if art would go on while politics couldn't; the Stalinists biding their time and waiting their turn; the feckless young with their bicycles and their hormones. All of this is brilliantly evoked, only to break our hearts. We are once again stupefied by just how busy the Nazis were, with their fantasies and lists. How proud their mothers must have been when they banned Prague's Jews from buying first tobacco and apples, then cheese and fish, then coffee and onions." Harper's Magazine
"Prague in Danger is a compulsive read, and very finely done. There is by now a mass of more or less analytical commentary on the Protectorate, and of course we have powerful memoirs and personal testimony. But I haven't seen the two genres combined in this way, and with such great sensitivity to the interplay of public and private. Demetz conveys very poignantly, and with sharp insight, just what it was like to live day to day in occupied Prague, and moreover to live right at the intersection of the Czech, Jewish and German spheres. He embodies exactly what was destroyed by Nazi thuggery and then by Czech vengefulness . . . the forays into cultural historyof jazz or film, for example, or about Orten and Jesenska . . . [convey] a flavour of the period and place. The politics are likewise depicted with a sure touch and sound judgment, as well as with an eye for the unfamiliar vignette, even in the case of the best-known episodes. Demetz's book should sharpen many readers' sense of the peculiar tragedy of the very last phase of the old multicultural Prague whose downfall he chronicles."Robert Evans, Regius Professor of History, Oxford University
"Prague-born historian Demetz covers a vast amount of political and cultural material, veering between scholarly and autobiographical approaches. [An] academic analysis . . . with rich, balanced profiles of significant figures ranging from Konstantin von Neurath, the Nazi-installed leader of Bohemia and Moravia, to Franz Kafka's beloved Milena Jesenska, an essayist who was active in the resistance movement. The half-Jewish Demetz, who lost several family members in concentration camps, also includes detailed descriptions of the impact on Jews' daily lives of Nazi racial policies, which could be as petty as bans on the purchase of fruit and coffee. On the cultural front, Czech films, literature and music are viewed mainly through the prism of the era's political climate; Demetz discusses at length, for example, the role jazz played in inspiring members of the resistance . . . The book really shines, however, in the haunting accounts of the author's childhood and youth, including a 1944 stint in Prague's Pankrac prison: 'In the morning, when the guards banged on our door, the oldest of us had to shout "Alles gesund [All are healthy]," but that did not stop the guards from rushing in to dunk our heads in the toilet bowls or taking us out to the corridor to do special gymnastics.' Deftly mingling subjective and objective material, Demetz shines a bright literary light on an important piece of political and cultural history."Kirkus Reviews
"Demetz takes a creative approach to this account of wartime Prague . . . Interspersing political and cultural history with snippets of memoir of his own wartime experiences and those of other Czechs, Demetz, whose mother was Jewish, focuses on politics and culture to explain how the Nazis ruled his home country and how the Czechs tried to hang on to their vivid prewar cultural life. Without avoiding the issue of collaboration with the Nazis, Demetz takes great pride in Czech resistance, both political and cultural, such as honoring the late president Masaryk on Hitler's birthday, on April 20. Demetz also focuses on individuals like Milena Jesenska, Kafka's onetime lover turned political writer, who was sent to Bergen-Belsen for helping Jews and others escape from Czechoslovakia. This history is both vivid and compelling, especially Demetz's personal stories. Some of those passages, particularly how a young Demetz dealt with romance and sex in a country ravaged by war, are achingly beautiful."Publishers Weekly
Review
"Prague in Danger is a compulsive read, and very finely done. There is by now a mass of more or less analytical commentary on the Protectorate, and of course we have powerful memoirs and personal testimony. But I haven't seen the two genres combined in this way, and with such great sensitivity to the interplay of public and private.
"Demetz conveys very poignantly, and with sharp insight, just what it was like to live day to day in occupied Prague, and moreover to live right at the intersection of the Czech, Jewish and German spheres. He embodies exactly what was destroyed by Nazi thuggery and then by Czech vengefulness. I enjoyed too the forays into cultural history--of jazz or film, for example, or about Orten and Jesenska; and I hope that they can be appreciated, even by those who know nothing of the background, as conveying a flavour of the period and place.
"The politics are likewise depicted with a sure touch and sound judgment, as well as with an eye for the unfamiliar vignette, even in the case of the best-known episodes. Demetz's book should sharpen many readers' sense of the peculiar tragedy of the very last phase of the old multicultural Prague whose downfall he chronicles." —Robert Evans, Regius Professor of History, Oxford UniversityPraise for Prague in Black and Gold: “A rich and intricate story . . . [Demetz] deftly tells the legends of the citys origin . . . He deliberately avoids the sanitized and prettified guidebook approach to Prague in favor of a more somber register which acknowledges that conflicts were never far beneath the surface and could explode in the most brutal forms.” —R.J.W. Evans, The New York Review of Books
“[Demetz] writes with the ease and authority of a man showing us his old neighborhood. He seems to be on speaking terms with the many poets, chroniclers, rabbis, and clerics who lived and wrote in Prague, and allows us to read history through their lives and words . . . Reading Demetz is more like taking a graduate course with a master teacher: You know you are in the hands of an authority.”—Helen Epstein, The Boston Sunday Globe
Review
"Prague in Danger is a compulsive read, and very finely done. There is by now a mass of more or less analytical commentary on the Protectorate, and of course we have powerful memoirs and personal testimony. But I haven't seen the two genres combined in this way, and with such great sensitivity to the interplay of public and private.
"Demetz conveys very poignantly, and with sharp insight, just what it was like to live day to day in occupied Prague, and moreover to live right at the intersection of the Czech, Jewish and German spheres. He embodies exactly what was destroyed by Nazi thuggery and then by Czech vengefulness. I enjoyed too the forays into cultural history--of jazz or film, for example, or about Orten and Jesenska; and I hope that they can be appreciated, even by those who know nothing of the background, as conveying a flavour of the period and place.
"The politics are likewise depicted with a sure touch and sound judgment, as well as with an eye for the unfamiliar vignette, even in the case of the best-known episodes. Demetz's book should sharpen many readers' sense of the peculiar tragedy of the very last phase of the old multicultural Prague whose downfall he chronicles." Robert Evans, Regius Professor of History, Oxford UniversityPraise for Prague in Black and Gold: “A rich and intricate story . . . [Demetz] deftly tells the legends of the citys origin . . . He deliberately avoids the sanitized and prettified guidebook approach to Prague in favor of a more somber register which acknowledges that conflicts were never far beneath the surface and could explode in the most brutal forms.” R.J.W. Evans, The New York Review of Books
“[Demetz] writes with the ease and authority of a man showing us his old neighborhood. He seems to be on speaking terms with the many poets, chroniclers, rabbis, and clerics who lived and wrote in Prague, and allows us to read history through their lives and words . . . Reading Demetz is more like taking a graduate course with a master teacher: You know you are in the hands of an authority.”Helen Epstein, The Boston Sunday Globe Page Traynor - Brian Lehrer, host of On the Media, National Public Radio - James McBride, author of The Color of Water and Miracle at St. Anna - Kevin J. Anderson - Dorothy Allison - Philip Lopate - Clive Cussler - Jon Winokur - Tony Hillerman - Jonathan Kellerman - W.E.B. 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Synopsis
A dramatic account of life in Czechoslovakias great capital during the Nazi Protectorate With this successor book to Prague in Black and Gold, his account of more than a thousand years of history in the great Central European capital, Peter Demetz focuses on the six years that Prague was under German occupation in World War II: from the bitter morning of March 15, 1939, when Hitler arrived from Berlin to set his seal on the Nazi takeover of the Czechoslovak government, until the liberation of Bohemia in April 1945. Demetz was a boy living in Prague then, and here he joins his objective chronicle of the city under Nazi control with his personal memories of that period, expertly interweaving a superb account of the German authorities diplomatic, financial, and military machinations with a brilliant description of Pragues evolving resistance and underground opposition. The result is a complex, continually surprising book filled with rare human detail and warmth, the gripping story of a great city meeting the dual challenge of occupation and of war.
Synopsis
Demetz joins his objective chronicle of a city under German occupation with his personal memories of that period: from the bitter morning of March 15, 1939, when Hitler arrived from Berlin until the liberation of Bohemia in April 1945.
About the Author
Peter Demetz is the author of many books, including The Air Show at Brescia, 1909 (FSG, 2002) and Prague in Black and Gold (H&W, 1997). He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.