Synopses & Reviews
“Even now,” wrote Christopher Isherwood in his Berlin Diary of 1933, “I cant altogether believe that any of this has really happened.” Three years later, W. E. B. DuBois described Germany as “silent, nervous, suppressed; it speaks in whispers.” In contrast, a young John F. Kennedy, in the journal he kept on a German tour in 1937, wrote, “The Germans really are too good—it makes people gang against them for protection.”
Drawing on such published and unpublished accounts from writers and public figures visiting Germany, Travels in the Reich creates a chilling composite portrait of the reality of life under Hitler. Written in the moment by writers such as Virginia Woolf, Isak Dinesen, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, William Shirer, Georges Simenon, and Albert Camus, the essays, letters, and articles gathered here offer fascinating insight into the range of responses to Nazi Germany. While some accounts betray a distressing naivete, overall what is striking is just how clearly many of the travelers understood the true situation—and the terrors to come.
Through the eyes of these visitors, Travels in the Reich offers a new perspective on the quotidian—yet so often horrifying—details of German life under Nazism, in accounts as gripping and well-written as a novel, but bearing all the weight of historical witness.
Review
“A very illuminating book which traces the pattern of the ‘creative dialectic’ into Karen Blixen’s essays on three significant currents of the twentieth century: feminism, Nazism, and colonialism. This study elucidates Blixen’s originality in dealing with these precarious issues.”
Synopsis
Even now, wrote Christopher Isherwood in his Berlin Diary of 1933, I can t altogether believe that any of this has really happened. Three years later, W. E. B. DuBois described Germany as silent, nervous, suppressed; it speaks in whispers. In contrast, a young John F. Kennedy, in the journal he kept on a German tour in 1937, wrote, The Germans really are too good it makes people gang against them for protection.
Drawing on such published and unpublished accounts from writers and public figures visiting Germany, Travels in the Reich creates a chilling composite portrait of the reality of life under Hitler. Written in the moment by writers such as Virginia Woolf, Isak Dinesen, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, William Shirer, Georges Simenon, and Albert Camus, the essays, letters, and articles gathered here offer fascinating insight into the range of responses to Nazi Germany. While some accounts betray a distressing naivete, overall what is striking is just how clearly many of the travelers understood the true situation and the terrors to come.
Through the eyes of these visitors, Travels in the Reich offers a new perspective on the quotidian yet so often horrifying details of German life under Nazism, in accounts as gripping and well-written as a novel, but bearing all the weight of historical witness.
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Synopsis
Best known for
Out of Africa and
Babette’s Feast, Karen Blixen—often writing under the name Isak Dinesen—was an iconic figure in Scandinavia and the Anglo-American world, celebrated as a literary star and a pundit in newspapers, radio, and lecture halls. Many of her topical pieces would later be published as essays, and in this book Marianne Stecher offers the first critical examination of them, exploring Blixen’s sagacious reflections on some of the twentieth century’s greatest challenges.
Stecher uncovers a “creative dialectic” in Blixen’s work, an interplay of complementary opposites that Blixen saw as fundamental to human life and artistic creativity. Whether exploring questions of gender and the status of the feminist movement in the middle of the twentieth century, the reign of National Socialism in Hitler’s Germany, or colonial race relations under British rule in East Africa, Blixen drew on a dialectical method to offer insightful, witty, and surprisingly progressive observations.Including the first English translation of Blixen’s essay “Blacks and Whites in Africa,” this book is an essential companion to the works of this original thinker and writer.
About the Author
Oliver Lubrich is professor of German and comparative literature at the University of Berne in Switzerland.
Kenneth J. Northcott is professor emeritus of German at the University of Chicago. He has translated a number of books for the University of Chicago Press.
Table of Contents
Journeys to the End of the Night, by Oliver Lubrich
About This Anthology
Editorial Pointers
Acknowledgments
1933 to 1939
Christopher Isherwood Goodbye to Berlin
Georges Simenon Hitler in the Elevator
Annemarie Schwarzenbach Why Could the Nazis Come?
Martha Dodd Hitler Needs a Woman
Gunnar Ekelöf The Sick Man of Europe
Jean-Paul Sartre A Sort of Simultaneity
Martha Dodd “Are You Still Alive?”—30 June 1934
Max Frisch The Miracle of Life
Virginia Woolf On the Rhine with Mitzi
Konrad Warner Harvest Festival, 1935
Denis de Rougemont The Dream of Sixty Million People
Martha Dodd A Party for Tom
Thomas Wolfe “I Have a Thing to Tell You”
Albert Camus Into the Bottomless Pit
W.E.B. DuBois Untitled
Samuel Beckett Uninterrupted HH
Jean Genet A Race of Thieves
John F. Kennedy Diary Excerpts
Maria Leitner A Visit to Heinrich Heine
Shi Min The Yellow Face
Richard Hillary Görings Cup
William Shirer A Demonstration against the War
René Juvet Kristallnacht—8 November 1938
Heinrich Hauser Berlin in the Summer of 1939
1939 to 1945
William Shirer Counterattack
Sven Hedin Audience
Meinrad Inglin Fevered German Dreams
Sven Hedin At Görings Table
Karen Blixen Half Moon and Swastika
Howard K. Smith The Germans Mood Swings
Harry Flannery In the Wild West Bar
Howard K. Smith Special Press Conference, 9 October 1941
Jacques Chardonne The Heaven of Nieflheim
József Nyírö The Enemy Is Listening!
Howard K. Smith At the Lions Tail
Gösta Block Dont Throw Stones at the Pianist!
Konrad Warner In the Dying City
René Juvet “Tomorrow I Have to Go Back to the Camp”
Konrad Warner “Will Exchange Skillet for Picture of the Führer”
Theo Findahl Carpet Bombing |
René Schindler Leipzig Is Dead!
Theo Findahl The Sky Is Red
Jacob Kronika Childrens Games
Theo Findahl Nineveh Is a Great City
Jacob Kronika “I Must Speak to the Führer”
Theo Findahl Crispbread from Stockholm
Wiking Jerk Twilight of the Gods
Jacob Kronika The Final Days
Virginia Irwin The First “Amerikanski” in Berlin
Wiking Jerk The Propaganda Minsters Corpse
Jacob Kronika Cry for Vengeance
Theo Findahl Eighth of May 1945
Chronology
Sources
Bibliography