Germany: Memories of a Nation
 First edition | |
| Author | Neil MacGregor |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | History of Germany |
| Published | London |
| Publisher | Allen Lane; Penguin Books |
Publication date | 2014 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Pages | 598 |
| ISBN | 978-0-241-00833-1 (Hardcover) |
| 943 | |
Germany: Memories of a Nation is a 2014 book by British historian and then director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor. The work was published in conjunction with his BBC Radio 4 series and a major exhibition at the British Museum.
Background and synopsis[edit]
Germany: Memories of a Nation explores the complex and disjointed history of Europe's foremost power. MacGregor argues that "uniquely for any European country, no coherent, over-arching narrative of Germany's history can be constructed".
He also points to the changing borders of the German state:
- Königsberg, home to the greatest German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, is now Kaliningrad, Russia;
- Strasbourg, in whose cathedral Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's greatest writer, discovered the distinctiveness of his country's art and history, now lies within the borders of France.[1]
MacGregor focuses on objects and ideas, people and places which still resonate in modern Germany such as Johannes Gutenberg's printing press, the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm and Meissen porcelain.
Reception[edit]
David Blackbourn, an academic focusing on German history wrote in The Guardian that MacGregor's book was "immensely readable and sharply intelligent". Blackbourn wrote that MacGregor's choice of objects "serve to illustrate the historic fragmentation of the German lands". Blackbourn concluded that MacGregor "has written a remarkable set of reflections on the objects and places of German memory".[2]
Writing for The Independent Rebecca K Morrison praised Germany: Memories of a Nation. Morrison described the book as "an impeccably erudite cultural history of Germany". Morrison wrote that the "book is immaculately researched, timely and important".[3]
The Economist also received the book positively with the book described as "deeply felt, carefully conceived and an important addition to any consideration of the shape not only of modern Germany but of Europe as a whole".[4]
References[edit]
- ^ "Germany: Memories of a Nation by Neil MacGregor review – Germany's past is indeed another country | Books". The Guardian. Retrieved 2017-08-15.
- ^ "Germany: Memories of a Nation by Neil MacGregor review – bold, fluent and sharply intelligent | Books". The Guardian. Retrieved 2017-08-15.
- ^ "Germany: The Memories of a Nation by Neil Macgregor, book review: Past is another country". The Independent. Retrieved 2017-08-15.
- ^ "Germany at the British Museum". economist.com. Retrieved 2017-08-15.
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Review
Germany: Memories of a Nation by Neil MacGregor review – bold, fluent and sharply intelligent
This is an incisive account of how Germans have fashioned and refashioned their identity out of the materials bequeathed by the past
David BlackbournWed 24 Dec 2014
11
The Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago, an event followed more quickly than anyone expected by German reunification. The fears about a resurgent Germany expressed at the time in Moscow and Warsaw and by Margaret Thatcher turned out to be groundless. The worst thing to be laid at the door of today’s decision makers in Berlin is a stubborn pursuit of economic policies that have hampered European economic recovery. The new Federal Republic, like the old, remains an economic giant that refuses to throw its weight around politically. The reasons for that are historical. Germans have a special relationship with their own past because of a broken, discontinuous history. German borders have been fluid, expanding and contracting over time like a concertina. Entire polities, such as the Holy Roman Empire and the Prussian state, have disappeared – the latter abolished with a stroke of the pen by the Allied occupying forces in 1947. New, hyphenated states (Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia) have existed only since the postwar years, although they have gradually acquired their own patina of tradition. The central reason for the difficult German relationship to the past is, of course, the shadow still cast by the Third Reich.
Neil MacGregor’s immensely readable and sharply intelligent book is a progress report on where things stand today. Published in conjunction with his recent BBC Radio 4 series and a major exhibition at the British Museum, Germany: Memories of a Nation explores how Germans have fashioned and refashioned their identity out of the materials bequeathed by the past. MacGregor refers at one point to the “painful difficulty of constructing a German history, of the compulsion to recover – to create – memories that can nourish”. The passage in question gives a good idea of how the book works. It comes from a chapter on the great south German limewood sculptor, Tilman Riemenschneider, which is centrally concerned with a work called The Four Evangelists, part of a late 15th-century altarpiece and now in Berlin’s Bode Museum. MacGregor looks closely at these magnificent carved objects and brings in the director of the Bode to offer further commentary. He also uses the work as a jumping-off point for a history lesson in miniature on the Holy Roman Empire, the reformation and the peasants’ war of 1525, in which Riemenschneider found himself embroiled. Fast forward to the 20th century, and we find Thomas Mann making a speech to the US Congress that presents the sculptor as an example of the “good Germany” to set against the evils of National Socialism. Riemenschneider becomes, with some rearrangement of the evidence, a “fighter for liberty and justice”. MacGregor doesn’t stop there, but shows how both postwar German states tried to claim Riemenschneider as their own, putting him on coins or stamps.
This is the pattern of the book. MacGregor’s chapters move boldly and fluently across time, held together by his own assured but attractively conversational voice, supplemented by experts who elaborate on this or that point – historians and museum curators, for the most part, although historical novelists Daniel Kehlmann and Hilary Mantel also appear. The starting point is often something material, like Riemenschneider’s four evangelists, reprising the successful formula of MacGregor’s wonderful and much-imitated A History of the World in 100 Objects, a previous cooperative venture between the British Museum and the BBC. The objects considered in the present book include things you would expect: Gutenberg’s printing press, Luther’s German translation of the Bible, Meissen porcelain, a modernist cradle and ceramic vases from the Bauhaus, the Volkswagen Beetle. Other objects might be more surprising to readers. The coinage of the Holy Roman Empire and the no less impressive diversity of German sausages both serve to illustrate the historic fragmentation of the German lands, a major theme of the book. A chapter on the Iron Cross tells the story of a military decoration that symbolised the short-lived alliance between Prussian monarchy and liberal nationalists during the resistance to Napoleon, and it ends by pointing out that the name lives on in one of Berlin’s funkiest multicultural neighbourhoods, Kreuzberg (“Cross Hill”), which grew up around Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s 1821 war memorial. A later chapter is concerned with the aftermath of a different war. It shows us the scarred urban landscape of Germany in 1945 by focusing on the piles of rubble and the famous “rubble women” who cleared the cities, brick by brick.
This book is filled not just with objects, but with places of memory. There is a fine chapter on the forest and its place in the German imagination, which draws on the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm and the work of Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, and takes the story up to the present day and the new meaning of the forest within a green Germany. MacGregor writes especially well about monuments, such as the Brandenburg Gate and the Victory Column in Berlin. He is adept at showing how monuments bear witness to the constant reworking of German history – the work of salvaging, even. The Victory Gate in Munich, for example, was built in the 1840s and dedicated “to the Bavarian army”. In form and purpose it closely resembled the Arc de Triomphe and the Wellington Memorial Arch at Hyde Park Corner. But after it was damaged in the second world war, the Victory Gate received a new inscription: “Dedicated to victory, destroyed by war, urging peace.” Not surprisingly, the memory of war plays a large part in the book, from the destruction caused by the thirty years’ war of the 17th century to the flight and expulsion westward of millions of Germans in 1944-47, eloquently represented here by a simple object, a handcart of the kind pushed by many refugees. An early chapter looks at two “lost capitals”: Prague, seat of the oldest German-speaking university, and Königsberg, the city of philosopher Immanuel Kant, today Russian Kaliningrad, both reminders of the centuries-long German presence in central and eastern Europe. Another chapter is devoted to Strasbourg, a centre of German Renaissance humanism and the city where Goethe studied. Strasbourg changed hands many times, going back to Louis XIV’s time, until it became definitively French after 1945. As one of MacGregor’s historical experts tartly observes: “It is often said that the Germans achieved in four-and-a-half years what the French had failed to achieve in the previous 20 years, which was to turn the population of Alsace into Frenchmen.”
Many chapters lead through the Third Reich, but MacGregor’s light touch means that we never feel as if we are being hurried along to a predetermined destination, not even in the section called “The Descent” that takes us from Bismarck to Hitler. There is some artful foreshadowing in earlier chapters. One, which examines German expertise in the making of precision instruments, is called “Masters of Metal”. I made a note that the phrase called to mind a famous line from “Death Fugue”, the Paul Celan poem: “Death is a master from Germany.” Sure enough, 150 pages later, MacGregor quotes the line, with a reference back to the earlier chapter. He devotes two chapters directly to the Third Reich. One looks at the exhibition of “degenerate art” that the Nazis organised in 1937, the other focuses on Buchenwald, the concentration camp constructed just a few miles outside Goethe’s Weimar. Once again, MacGregor shows his skill at making objects speak. He wants us to look at the camp gates, which bore the slogan “Jedem das Seine” (“to each what they are due”), pointing out the noble lineage of words that had once signified an ideal of justice, words that Bach used as the title of a cantata. As he notes, here we come up against a central question of modern German history: how can we fit the great humanistic traditions of Germany into the same picture with Nazi barbarism? MacGregor also points to something else: the clean, elegant lettering of the words above the gate was a result of their being designed by an inmate, the Communist and former Bauhaus student Franz Ehrlich, and could be read by fellow inmates as a subtly subversive message that the SS would eventually receive what was due to them.
There are many brilliant vignettes in this book, too many to mention in a review. Different readers will regret the absence of one thing or another. Music has a surprisingly small place – there is no score, no musical instrument, no bust of a musician, none of the many German paintings that depict music-making. MacGregor’s emphasis is on the modern and urban, from the cities of the Hanseatic League and Dürer’s Nuremberg to 20th‑century Berlin. He has less time for the rural and provincial or what the Germans call spiessig – the philistine. That is perhaps in keeping with the high-minded, cosmopolitan tone of this beautifully illustrated book. MacGregor is an engaging guide who never talks down to readers. He has written a remarkable set of reflections on the objects and places of German memory.
To order Germany for £22 (RRP £30) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846
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Germany: Memories of a Nation Hardcover – 6 November 2014
by Neil MacGregor (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 1,331 ratings
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For the past 140 years, Germany has been the central power in continental Europe. Twenty-five years ago a new German state came into being. How much do we really understand this new Germany, and how do its people now understand themselves?
Neil MacGregor argues that, uniquely for any European country, no coherent, over-arching narrative of Germany's history can be constructed, for in Germany both geography and history have always been unstable. Its frontiers have constantly floated. Königsberg, home to the greatest German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, is now Kaliningrad, Russia; Strasbourg, in whose cathedral Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's greatest writer, discovered the distinctiveness of his country's art and history, now lies within the borders of France. For most of the five hundred years covered by this book Germany has been composed of many separate political units, each with a distinct history. And any comfortable national story Germans might have told themselves before 1914 was destroyed by the events of the following thirty years.
German history may be inherently fragmented, but it contains a large number of shared memories, awarenesses and experiences; examining some of these is the purpose of this book. Beginning with the fifteenth-century invention of modern printing by Gutenberg, MacGregor chooses objects and ideas, people and places which still resonate in the new Germany - porcelain from Dresden and rubble from its ruins, Bauhaus design and the German sausage, the crown of Charlemagne and the gates of Buchenwald - to show us something of its collective imagination. There has never been a book about Germany quite like it.
Praise for A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor
- 'A triumph . . . rightly lauded as one of the most effective and ambitious initiatives in the making of 'public history' for many decades. John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph
- 'Neil MacGregor has set the seal on his vision of the British Museum as the world's supreme memory palace.' Tom Holland, Observer
- 'MacGregor offers a sense that, just as every word in a poem has its place, so history is not merely a record of destriction and death, but something to which we can, in some puzzling fashion, give meaning.' David Wootton, Times Literary Supplement
LanguageEnglish
PublisherAllen Lane
6 November 2014
Product description
Review
Neil MacGregor is our greatest cultural polymath ... an excellent book ... Anyone who wants to understand Germany should read this (Antony Beevor Observer)
His method is memory. His way in is through objects and people, places and buildings ... MacGregor knows unerringly which objects to select and which chapters of Germany's 'enrichingly and confusingly fragmented history' to bring to life through them ... This book is immaculately researched, timely and important (Rebecca K Morrison Independent)
This impassioned project will bear the scrutiny it invites ... Germany: Memories of a Nation is deeply felt, carefully conceived and an important addition to any consideration of the shape not only of modern Germany but of Europe as a whole (Economist)
Magnificently illustrated and superbly edited ... It's hard to imagine a method more successful than MacGregor's - the careful juxtaposition of singular objects with their surrounding history - for conveying the complexities of Germany's continuing journey away from its past (Miranda Seymour Telegraph)
MacGregor ... dips and weaves from one entity to another ... It is an enjoyable, switchback ride - we never know where we are going next (Peter Watson The Times)
About the Author
Neil MacGregor was Director of the National Gallery, London from 1987 to 2002 and of the British Museum from 2002 to 2015. His previous books include A History of the World in 100 Objects, Shakespeare's Restless World and Germany: Memories of a Nation, all available in Penguin and now between them translated into more than a dozen languages. For his work on the BBC Radio 4 series, British Museum exhibition and book Germany: Memories of a Nation, he was awarded (in Germany) the Friedrich Gundolf Prize, the Goethe Medal and the German National Prize and (in the UK) the British Academy's Nayef Al-Radhan Prize for Transcultural Understanding. In 2010, he was made a member of the Order of Merit, the UK's highest civil honour. He is now Chair of the Steering Committee of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin.
Product details
Publisher : Allen Lane; 1st edition (6 November 2014)
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From Australia
Mat
5.0 out of 5 stars What a fantastic book. Neil MacGregor is a gifted storyteller and ...
Reviewed in Australia on 23 January 2015
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What a fantastic book. Neil MacGregor is a gifted storyteller and manage to turn a history lesson into something as captivating as a fairytale would be to a kid.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars The best
Reviewed in Australia on 2 June 2016
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The best book on Germany I have read.
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ian dwyer
4.0 out of 5 stars Most fascinating history. Will repay revisiting I warrant -much to reflect upon
Reviewed in Australia on 29 June 2016
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reflect upon. Not comprehensive by any means but a really useful opening gambit in looking at German history in a more comprehensive form
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Keen Bean
5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling
Reviewed in Australia on 6 February 2015
i've read and re read this - fascinating, captivating, compelling book that brings Germany and German history to life. I'm not a great non-fiction reader, yet I found this completely absorbing. The book uses objects (such as, say, the Volkswagen car) as a stepping point to tell a bigger story about one strand of German history - so it's not "this happened then this then that leader did whatever" but rather brings together everyday life and bigger events, and talks to much of what has made Germany what it is. It goes fabulously well with the BBC4 Podcast of the same name. However, it has a lot of pictures, maps etc and it's the kind of book you'll want to dip in and out of and jump around, so for this one, I think the hard copy book is a better buy than the Kindle.
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From other countries
Anwar
4.0 out of 5 stars Readable
Reviewed in India on 20 October 2016
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Great book. But something is missing which does not let it fall under the category of history - especially as compared to Peter Watson's The German Genius
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Greg Polansky
5.0 out of 5 stars German History At Its Best
Reviewed in the United States on 4 March 2016
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To say that I loved this book would be an understatement. As a student of German and Austrian history, I have read many of the books that the author used for this book but the author synthesizes that information in such a way that he makes it seem even more interesting than it is. Perhaps that is because of the visuals included in the book. Excellent photographic reproductions of art and architecture and books are produced here that allow one to visualize German history. The author's beautiful prose adds to the appeal of the book as well. In short, this is a superb book to read if one wants to understand the paths of German history.
MacGregor uses art and architecture to narrate the history of Germany. The photos in this book are truly sublime. In thematic sections divided into chapters, the author takes the reader on a journey into the many Germanies' past. Yes, more than one Germany because until 1871, there was no one German nation. We now think of Prussia as Germany but that is not the only Germany. This was also the area of Saxony and the Hanseatic League and of the Holy Roman Empire and a host of micro German states.
The book is mostly written in in chronological order though there are jumps from the present to the past and back to the present again. Beginning with a geographical placement of Germany, the author then moves on to the idea of Germany, its history, its arts and sciences, its Fall, and ends with it's present.
This is one of the best histories of Germany you will ever read. I cannot recommend it more. It's a book that you will finish and wish to reread it again because that's how good it is.
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Enrique Munoz
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent introduction to German history
Reviewed in Spain on 28 September 2016
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Gives a great insight into Germany and how German see themselves. For an introduction, much better than reading a history book. I would recommend it to anyone before visiting Germany, specially Berlin.
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KWON
5.0 out of 5 stars Well constructed to understand modern Germany
Reviewed in France on 4 February 2021
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Absolutely indispensable to understand people, history, culture, mind, tragedy, consciousness of Germany. Many thanks to the author. Impressive and moving.
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Katharine Kirby
5.0 out of 5 stars Radio may have the best pictures, but these illustrations are worth a thousand words...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 November 2014
This review is written about the hard back copy of 'Germany: Memories of a Nation'.
Having listened to every episode of the Radio 4 series I just had to see this wonderful book. I was enthralled by the programmes, learned so much and here it is all in solid form. Very solid in fact, as big as the bricks those stoical rubble women, one of whom is immortalised in the very pieces she picked up, the Trummerfrauen, women who day after day brought order to the ruins of Dresden and other German cities razed to the ground by bombing.
The history of the last 25 years is quite fascinating. I was introduced to this period reading The Aftermath recently which gave a whole new angle on post war Germany, seeing it from another viewpoint.
This book opens with nine useful educative maps of the area from 1500 until the present day. Almost every page has a photograph, a map, a painting, a sculpture, art reproductions, posters, lithographs, everyday objects (a manhole cover!) that reach out in their ordinariness. They are collectively and singly haunting, evocative, grounding. These objects and images speak for themselves, the Refugee handcart, the dreadful gallows in use, a hundred million mark note, books being burned, grand monuments and buildings, fabulous porcelain. The stories are all generously given and attributed with detailed conscientiousness.
In theses days of e books, kindles and podcasts, there is still a strong need for a solid hardback copy such as I have bought, to inform, expand and lay bare the bones of a country and a time that deserves the greatest scrutiny, remembrance and general understanding. Such suffering on all sides, determined renewal and sometimes deeply hidden, almost forgotten talent is worthy of a proper book such as this to keep to hand, lend, revisit and value. Thank you Neil MacGregor for putting it all together in such a transparent, straightforward, creditable fashion.
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Corrado Bigontina
5.0 out of 5 stars To read
Reviewed in Italy on 14 June 2021
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Gorgeous. Where the usual Anglo-Saxon clarity and the exorbitant, but never supposonent, culture merge into a gift to the reader.
Really, read it!
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Lidia Bonilla
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended
Reviewed in Mexico on 14 March 2018
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Great book! Not just narrative, but a deep analysis of Germany's history. Very interesting with a real point of view.
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Sirisee 5.0 out of 5 stars Book of the Year 2014. Belongs in every household Reviewed in Germany on 15 November 2014 Verified Purchase Anyone who has visited the small, fine and yet magnificent London exhibition at the British Museum with open eyes and an open heart knows the content and will not want to miss this book. Germans who cannot make the pilgrimage to London by January 2015 (such an exhibition would still be unthinkable here) can get the podcasts from BBC Radio 4 (found under: "Germany - Memories of a Nation"). But even without having seen the exhibition, this book is, in my opinion, the best, most original and most worthwhile overview of German history and culture currently on the market, making it an ideal Christmas present. Why is that? The content is clear from the title: It is about historical events and cultural developments that have shaped the collective consciousness of the Germans and therefore make up the identity of this country. The book is divided into six parts (the exhibition visitor already knows them): Where is Germany? Imagining Germany? The Persistant Past? Made in Germany? The Descent Living with History An ambitious project, as the book always emphasizes, Baden, Franconia, Pomerania, Westphalia, etc. are quite different in terms of regional history, linguistic and regional identities, and a project that is also approached in an unbiased, almost heretical, way: The topic is developed according to the "Momentums and Memories" approach using individual objects beautifully illustrated in the book that were on display in the exhibition and are the central subject of 30 self-contained chapters, each supplemented by further photographs, pictures, graphics and illustrations. The oldest object is a Gutenberg Bible (16. In the beginning was a printer), the youngest is the Berlin Reichstag (30. Germany Renewed). So it covers a span of almost 600 years. There are unusual things, things that have never been seen before and many things that you would overlook (e.g. a magnificent amber jug) or would never see, and things that are neglected in the mainstream, e.g. the importance of fairy tales during the French occupation (7. Snow White vs. Napoleon), the Hanseatic League (13. The Baltic Brothers), the development and state culture of Prussia (14. Iron Nation), Luther's contribution to the German language (6. A language for all Germans), German technology (19. Masters of Metal, 18. The White Gold of Saxony), aesthetics (20. Cradle of the Modern) and amusing facts about eating and drinking habits (10. One People, many sausages). For every German, the book is a journey of discovery into their own history and the cultural and social achievements of our ancestors. It addresses with impartiality issues which in this country - for our own good, of course - only appear in the small print at best. This begins in the first part, which shows the "floating frontiers" from 1500 onwards, with maps and without the otherwise always-present "Prussia is dangerous, Wagner is evil, Bismarck is evil, Willem two is stupid, that's why everything's OK" litany. The special features and achievements of the constitutional structure of the Old Empire (-1806) and its formative influence up to the present day are repeatedly highlighted. The chapter on coins (5. Fragments of Power), for example, is illuminating in this regard; in normal terms - forgive me, the numismatist - this is more of a marginal topic. The fact that Prague, Königsberg and Strasbourg were German cultural centres for centuries and, for example, were the main centres of German history, is not an important issue. B. Kafka, a German-speaking author, is not left out (3 Lost Capitals, 4 Floating City), nor are the wars of conquest by Louis XIV and Napoleon (11 The battle for Charlesmagne), which are only mentioned in passing in the school canon, and the wars of liberation, along with the tragic Louise (14 Iron Nation), who is probably only known to people from Berlin and Brandenburg today. The special contributions of Germans to European culture are shown above all in the areas of book printing (16 In the Beginning was a Printer), graphics (17. An Artist for All Germans), sculpture (Riemenscheider, 12. Sculpting the Spirit) and other chapters already mentioned. I made many (re-)discoveries. Since physical objects are presented, topics such as music and philosophy naturally take a back seat; so if you are only interested in Bach, Mendelssohn, Nietzsche or Wagner and, for example, Anyone who doesn't like a beautiful Bauhaus cradle (20 Cradle of the Modern), in short, everyday culture, can at least enjoy the illustrations. All of this is explained in a knowledgeable, calm, humorous and understandable way for everyone, from the perspective of a Brit, i.e. also with an outside view, completely free of ideology and cultivated, full of respect and sympathy for the cultural achievements, with interspersed interviews with other experts (e.g. Christopher Clark). Such a cultivated and effortless tone is in inclusive
My favourite chapter is the one about Käthe Kollwitz (22 the suffering wittness), in which the author paints a vivid picture of this great artist and the circumstances of her time with great knowledge and empathy. This alone makes the purchase worthwhile. I still remember the shabby polemic against the sculpture "Mother and Son" in the Neue Wache. I also found the chapters about Walhalla (9. Hall of Heros), a Bauhaus vase that Goebbels personally condemned (24 Purging the degenerate), a sculpture of women clearing rubble (27 Beginning Again), a small ladder wagon (the treasured possession of a family expelled from the German eastern territories, 26 The Germans expelled) and the "Floating Man" by Barlach from Güstrow (29 Barlach's Angel), which can be admired at the end of the exhibition, particularly impressive. The author and his team have masterfully managed to put together objects that illustrate complex statements in German history and whose levels of meaning are overlooked when viewed superficially. The book also gives the (at least) 14 million displaced persons, the women who cleared up the rubble and those shot at the inner German border (2 Divided Heaven) back a voice and dignity that is still denied to them. Just think of the disgusting theft of the white crosses for the victims of the Wall (mentioned right at the beginning of the book) or the shameless exploitation of the "miserable remainder" (Biermann) of the SED in the Bundestag. The subject of expulsion in particular is hardly known in Great Britain, as the author writes.
Just as our ancestors once bought the Luther Bible, even if it was their only meager possession, in order to free themselves spiritually from tutelage, you should definitely get this wonderful book in order to rediscover your own culture. It is in English but well written and easy to read. Thank you to the author Neil MacGregor, the British Museum, the lenders of this wonderful exhibition, and the publisher, thank you so much.
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cpestieau
5.0 out of 5 stars Multiple small states can offer more opportunities than one big nation state
Reviewed in Canada on 15 January 2020
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The history of the German people is shown in a new light revealing advantages of a system of many small states within the Holy Roman Empire compared to the centralised nation states of France and Britain. The history of German ideas of a nation is useful. The issue of memories of the Holocaust is dealt with wisely. The section on craftsmen and discovery was new to me and was valuable
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Paulo Roberto Martins Cunha
5.0 out of 5 stars Superb prose by a fantastic writer!
Reviewed in Brazil on 29 January 2022
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I bought the book as I listened to the BBC podcast with the same title and author, and was a splendid pleasure to reshape de images I created listenig, now reading and observing some of the printed pictures in this fantastic work of research wich took me to understad, for the first time, how diverse German is in its roots in the Holy Roman Empire. Fantastic book if you like history, art and a superbly well wrintten book, with such a prose only an englishman could produce!
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Jennifer Gray
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 July 2016
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I have really enjoyed this journey through German history. I am someone who normally doesn't pay a lot of attention to history - a flaw I know! - but I needed information for some research I'm doing. The book was a delight to read. Factual, informative and written in a style that easily takes the reader along. Packed with information and pictures to illustrate, I have come away with all the information I need and a better understanding of how Europe got to where we are today. I was particularly moved by the illustration of how Germany has dealt with the legacy of 2 wars. We have much to learn from the example. The story of the south side of the Siegestor in Munich says so much. I would highly recommend the book. I read it in the run-up to the EU referendum in the UK, and would have had it as prescribed reading for all involved. I hope we don't have to relearn the lessons of history! And yes, I'm now converted to paying more attention to history...at least as told by Neil MacGregor, through memory, objects and people!
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MJ
5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely interesting
Reviewed in Canada on 6 October 2015
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I am thoroughly enjoying the interesting way the author has used art, design, objects etc. to tell the history of Germany. I can't wait to travel to Germany not only to see the various items he has shown in pictures throughout the book but, also, to understand some aspects of history that may not have made sense to me without first reading this book.
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Hartmut Wolf
5.0 out of 5 stars Exciting and liberating
Reviewed in Germany on 8 January 2015
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The book begins with maps of the expansion of Germany – what is that? – The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation around 1500, at the time of the Reformation in 1560, Central Europe 1648, 1786, Napoleonic Germany 1810, the German Empire 1864-71, Europe at the peak of German dominance in Europe in November 1942, and modern Germany with its federal states.
The 30 chapters are grouped in groups of five – corresponding to a week of broadcasts on BBC Radio 4 – into the following parts:
I. Where is Germany?
II. “Imaging Germany” I translate it like this: “What makes Germany what it is”
III. The persistent past
IV. Made in Germany
V. The decline
VI. Living with history
With a friendliness unexpected from a British author, he speaks about Germany's cultural, technical and economic achievements, but also about German guilt and also (!) German suffering. He sees positive aspects in German small-state politics - which was only referred to negatively in my school lessons - such as tolerance, the ability to balance and diversity. He particularly admires the way Germans deal with history, and asks: where could a nation erect a monument to its own shame in its capital? And by that he means the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.
This is his method: starting with an object, the Gutenberg Bible, the replica (!) of the German imperial crown of Otto the First, the Walhalla, the VW Beetle, an unsuitable, homemade swimsuit for fleeing the republic, a porcelain figure based on Dürer's woodcut of an unseen rhinoceros, an amber beer mug, an Iron Cross, the inscription facing inwards towards the camp on the entrance gate to Buchenwald, a manhole cover with a German inscription in Kaliningrad, a handcart for the last belongings of those expelled from the former German East, the modern Reichstag dome, he tells exciting stories about German history and culture. From Georg Gieße's painting of Hans Holbein he develops the meaning of the German Hanseatic League, using Ernst Barlach's "Floating Angel" he not only shows the suffering of war in memory and inner vision, which, because it was not heroic, was destroyed in the Third Reich, but also how friends managed to steal the mold from Nazi authority, a new figure was cast for the Cologne Antoniterkirche, from which a replica was cast - in 1953, in the middle of the Cold War - for the old place in the church in Güstrow in the GDR.
For the pictures alone I recommend the Kindle version, which can be viewed brilliantly on the PC or in the Kindle app on the tablet.
The author already used this method in his older book (and exhibition) "A History of the World in 100 Objects". That one gives a cultural-historical view of human history. I got it straight away after I finished "Germany". This is also a brilliant work!
I wish I had had books like this when I was at school.
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Gurjit Singh Cheema
4.0 out of 5 stars Really good. Highly readable
Reviewed in India on 10 June 2015
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Really good. Highly readable; the illustrations are very good, and relevant. Of course, based as it is on a TV series, it is episodic, a series of vignettes with comments, but the vignettes are relevant, interesting, and well selected.
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Guillaume
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential read to understanding Europe today.
Reviewed in France on 3 August 2017
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Amazing book that clearly explains what Germany has gone through over the last centuries. Fascinating and essential to understand the Europe of today and why we must always be aware of the past - both to continues its traditions but most importantly to learn from it. Highly recommended and highly readable.
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Stanley
5.0 out of 5 stars Top Notch Cultural Memoir
Reviewed in the United States on 20 January 2015
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Author Neil MacGregor has also done the book "History in a 100 Objects" and this offering is done in a similar fashion. Now MacGregor notes in his introduction that this is not a history book. I agree. It's really a cultural memoir. The author notes that finding Germany on the map can be a bit of a problem. Strasburg is now part of France and Konigsberg is part of Russia. I might add that Pomerania where members of my family originated is part of Poland. According to MacGregor the key to Germany is language. Germany is where German is spoken, OK except for Switzerland.
With his ties to the British Museum, MacGregor focuses on things like the Hohenzollern crown and Charlemagne's sword, sorry, make that Karl the Great's sword. It's really interesting stuff, things not normally thought of. There are also, for example,chapters on clocks and bibles, equally interesting. In fact a whole bunch of cultural stuff is covered.
As for history, MacGregor is a court historian and by no means a revisionist. He holds the whole German nation responsible for World War II atrocities. He further notes that Germany may be the only nation working to make sure its future does not reflect its past. Now personally I've become a revisionist so I should dislike the book. While small parts of "Memories of a Nation" might sound Germanophobic, and this is the curious thing about the book, MacGregor has nothing but very high praise for things distinctly German. It's this cultural greatness and innovative past that is covered in most of the book. So do I dislike the book? Heck no. It touches on things generally never thought of. It is a very interesting book and a fun read.
A couple final notes. Not surprisingly the book is printed on slick paper and the many illustrations are excellent. It's a big book weighing about three and a half pounds but with good sized print, important to someone like me who wears tri-focals.
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Stefano Marzeddu
5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting
Reviewed in Italy on 13 September 2020
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Very interesting book for German history enthusiasts.
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loew
5.0 out of 5 stars Experience German cultural history sensually
Reviewed in Germany on 16 June 2017
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Let us assume that MacGregor is an expert in German studies and, as former director of the British Museum, had a world-class team of experts at his disposal. However, this book stands out from all other very good books on German history because of its content, its structure and its language:
As museum director, MacGregor's focus is on the exhibit: concrete and tangible. The British Museum has made thematic exhibitions out of many of its exhibits, for example "A History of the World in 100 Objects" or "Skakespeare's Restless World", where it describes the exhibits in detail, explains how they work, places them in a historical-concrete and global context and examines their impact on the present day. The next step was to turn the exhibitions into radio series for the BC, with a 30-minute program on each exhibit. MacGregor's most beautiful books were ultimately created from the scripts of these BBC radio programs. They are therefore very sensually descriptive, and in keeping with the medium, the lightness of the language makes them poetic. Explained for the non-expert, equipped with a high narrative content for the auditory-oral method of communication, written in appetizingly small, independent chapters, this book is a scientific, but above all a methodological masterpiece of a very special kind.
MacGregor's intention with this work was to bring German culture closer to the British and to take away their fear of German superiority, born out of dramatic impressions from the Nazi era, to bring German culture closer to his British compatriots in an enriching way, from the perspective of the knowledgeable Scotsman. Germany viewed from the outside, so to speak.
This is the first book in English that I have read in 50 years and understood straight away. I was also deeply impressed by the diversified and dialectical approach and his British humor made me smile a few times.
As a Frankfurt sweet tooth, I found the chapter "One People, Many Sausages" extremely appetizing. The author demonstrated impressive detailed knowledge by presenting the Frankfurt beef sausage (kosher!), even though the rest of the world mistakenly believes the Frankfurt sausage is the local hit. MacGregorr celebrates beer in detail in an entire chapter, but unfortunately does not address alcoholism in Germany or German wine culture. He rightly praises the variety of German sausages, but I (sweet tooth!) miss firstly the German bread baking art (on the national list of intangible world cultural heritage!) and secondly the German-Austrian fine baked goods (cookies, pieces, cakes, tarts), regionally, seasonally and culturally diversified, of world class and as "coffee and cake" part of a special guest ceremony. A Brit, after all!
What a pity - MacGregor's book on German cultural history could unfortunately not prevent Brexit!
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David
4.0 out of 5 stars Great book for a background of Germany
Reviewed in the United States on 29 December 2019
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My daughter is going to Germany in 2020 to study at Bauhaus in Weimar, and we are planning a family vacation in Germany, so I was looking for one book to capture the thoughts, ideas, and history of Germany, when I stumbled upon Neil MacGregor’s book Germany: Memories of a Nation. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, as it was everything I was looking for: it gives a great background around how Germany came to be... the mindset of the people... how the past influences and shapes the future. The book is well researched, with great maps and artifacts (paintings, pictures, posters, drawings) to emphasize the points the author is making. I enjoyed the structure of the book... and how the author broke up the book into Parts. Each of the Parts could be its own book, but I appreciate how the author concisely summarizes each era, and how each era builds on the previous era, to explain the thoughts and national identity at many key points in time (e.g., Four Great Traumas, the Holy Roman Empire, the Thirty Year War, Conquest by Napoleon, the run up to WW1 and WW2, and the present).
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Gerda Kopp
5.0 out of 5 stars exciting, very erudite
Reviewed in France on 29 October 2019
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This is an extremely interesting book, I can only recommend it to all those who are interested in history and in particular that of Germany.
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Ionadark
4.0 out of 5 stars As expected
Reviewed in Canada on 16 September 2022
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Smaller text than I thought but ok
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Maribelle
4.0 out of 5 stars Stimulating introduction to German cultural identity
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 May 2016
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If you don't like squinting at small font type or you don't like pictures that disappear down the spine of the book, then the paperback edition is probably not for you, but if price is the deciding factor, then you get a lot of reading for your money. It's an interesting book, that tries to juggle German history with literature, art and architecture and is probably strongest (most interesting, most daring) on individual art pieces. It seems to be written to address a British reader who would otherwise equate Germany with Nazis and doesn't know much else about its cultural history. The book has no referencing, not even for quotations, but is probably overall the more serious end of popular-accessible. It is quite heavy on history, and its a fairly bog-standard history at that, but what will stay in your mind are some of the art and artefacts introduced. The selection of maps, monuments, objects and art is consistently interesting.
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Secret Spi
4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful!
Reviewed in Germany on 16 March 2018
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I have been living in Germany for 22 years now and am pleased to say that this book has filled in one or two gaps in my knowledge as well as deepening my understanding of my adopted homeland and its people. It's intelligently written, not at all dry, and well-illustrated throughout with illustrations of the objects, buildings and art-works described. I did the right thing to get a paper copy as I believe the Kindle experience wouldn't be so good.
The approach is to examine the German collective consciousness over the centuries via objects, monuments, buildings and ideas. The book proceeds broadly chronologically, with a few theme-based detours. It doesn't pretend to be a comprehensive history, which is interesting in view of what is included as well as what is left out.
An observation, rather than a criticism, is that this is very much a view of Germany from the UK, albeit an informed and educated one. Many of the objects described are from the collection of the British Museum, no surprise considering the author and the origins of the book. It is worth bearing this perspective in mind when reading.
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Anthony horton
5.0 out of 5 stars A profound but easily read history of the Germanic speaking race
Reviewed in France on 21 January 2016
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An excellent book that I couldn't put down. Whilst the history of Germany has interested me for some time, this book provided an analysis of the Germanic culture that I had not previously considered.
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Tommy
5.0 out of 5 stars History at its best
Reviewed in Canada on 17 October 2015
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Excellent book - what a great way to learn history! Logical, authoritative, insightful and easy to read. The illustrations, mostly in colour, are high quality and essential to understanding the thesis behind each chapter. I bought the hard copy - well worth it. A facinating read.
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Peter M. Beck
5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterful Exploration of German Identity
Reviewed in the United States on 16 January 2019
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When "Germany" arrived, I was taken aback by its girth, but the captivating images and accessible text instantly pushed it to the top of my long reading list.
What does it mean to be German? I thought this would have a straight-forward answer until MacGregor explained (with the help of wonderful maps) the patchwork of principalities and city-states that were melded into Germany less than 150 years ago. I consider myself "German-American," but most Germans came to the U.S. before Germany was actually a country. I didn't realize that Germany is as much an "imagined community" (Benedict Anderson) as the Southeast Asian nations created by Europe in the 1800s. Of course the German identity that emerged after 1871 was shattered by two devastating wars.
Instead of being the German sequel to "A History of the World in 100 Objects," MacGregor explores German identity, focusing on the key buildings/monuments, objects and quintessential artists. Even though MacGregor cannot go into great detail about individual examples, I still learned new information about even the most familiar objects. My first car was a VW Bug, but I didn't know the first ones were made by the British.
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Ilse
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May 20, 2020
Every moment spent reading this, was worthwhile. The thematic approach of MacGregor is highly entertaining and his lucid and witty prose is a delight to read. Instead of attempting comprehensiveness, Macgregor stitches a colorful patchwork quilt out of 30 intriguing and incisive miniature essays, illustrating masterfully Germany’s complex and fraught cultural history.
The book is a remarkable encomium to modern Germany and the sensible way it gets on with his troubling past, contextualizing and cross-connecting brilliantly typically German matters like sausages with highlights of German culture by idiosyncratically chosen (sometimes apparently trivial) objects, artefacts, monuments. and key figures like Luther and Goethe. MacGregor convincingly demonstrates his point that there is more to Germany than the wars and the obscene Nazi horror, without sweeping its encumbered past under the carpet.
I admit my inadequate knowledge on Germany is a hotchpotch of shattered fragments and outlines, for the greater part limited to the 19th and 20th century (most of the time I was asleep at school, until our history lessons reached the 19th century). The book didn’t help much to clear that perennial chaos. MacGregor is a great storyteller, but like Germany’s history itself, his book does not supply a coherent framework. Given the complexity of German history however, It would not be fair or reasonable to expect that reading a single book would suffice.
Obviously one could discuss MacGregor’s choices, e.g. that he is treating the apexes of the German cultural heritage, music, literature (apart from Goethe) and philosophy, as a Cinderella. Whatever, what is the point of deploring the apparent omissions and grumping on the topics an author did not include in a book? Our illusive longing for the ultimate, comprehensive book that makes all other redundant? By the way, let’s take another promising book on the subject, Frits Boterman’s doorstopper Cultuur als macht: Cultuurgeschiedenis van Duitsland, 1800-heden which is - unlike Macgregor’s - elaborately annotated (with Germanophone sources too): it largely skips music likewise (according to my partner who has just read it).
Most captivating and poignant are MacGregor’s observations on the profound and disconcerting self-reflectiveness of German art and literature regarding the suffering brought by the world wars and the Third Reich. The meditative work of Käthe Kollwitz mourning her fallen son, the paintings of Anselm Kiefer inspired by Paul Celan’s Death Fugue, the Hovering Angel by Ernst Barlach are all immensely powerful works of art inspired by and echoing the darkest pages in Germany’s history, perhaps even better than words can.
MacGregor’s reflections on the impact of Luther on the German language, the third official language of my country are insightful too:
For 500 years, all great German writers –Goethe, Nietzsche, Brecht, Mann, - have honed their language on, and against, Luther’s. Luther didn’t just catch the way ordinary German people spoke, he also shaped the way they would speak. In the hands of story tellers over the following centuries, and in the pages of Goethe, Luther’s German became one of the great literary languages of the world.
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Also the tale about the communist Bauhaus artist Franz Ehrlich and the subversive touch he smuggled into the well-known Jedem das Seine (“To each what they are due”) motto he had to design for the gate into the hell of Buchenwald where he was imprisoned, is memorable and recalls the eternal questions on the problematic juxtaposition of Germany’s traditional high cultural and humanistic standards, symbolized by Goethe’s and Schiller’s Weimar, and Nazi barbarism. This Janus-faced Germany, Germany as “Jekyll & Hyde” (Sebastian Haffner) which continues to fascinate is not really discussed thoroughly in this book, but of course there is plenty of other literature that does. I bear in mind the intricate connection Jorge Semprún, the Spanish former communist and minister of culture, revealed between Goethe and the Buchenwald horror in his autobiographical account on his internment in Buchenwald Quel beau dimanche !, intermingling fictionalized conversations with a Goethe observing the death camp with the ones noted down by Eckermann.
As MacGregor implicitly traces back the origins of the derailment of German nationalism to the French and of course Napoleon, I was wondering if this is a typical British reflex (Napoleon, that villain!). Probably, Christopher Clark’s Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947 would be a great next read.
Ruminating on my personal lengthy journey of coming closer to Germany, I cannot discern if this book, with its palpable admiration for German culture and optimistic, positive attitude towards the present country, could affect one’s opinion and attitude on Germany fundamentally, or could merely reach its goal when it can reinforce some constructive seeds on the idea of Germany already present in the reader. I can imagine there still is a sense of sensitivity on all things German to some Europeans, particularly those living in the countries that were occupied, still feeling somewhat uncomfortable and ambivalent with Germany and its past nowadays, due to war memories.
For me neither, it was a coup de foudre with Germany. Frankly, it took a long time to surmount my petty and immature preconceptions on German culture. At the end of primary school, I had this period of fanatically reading on the wars and the Holocaust. In my rebellious teens, apart from a fascination for the Berlin underground scene, bands like Einstürzende Neubauten and the book and film about Christiane F. ,Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (largely inspired by friends who swore I could act as her lookalike), the idea of Germany was not very appealing – it stood for terror in the past and insipidness in the present (The heavy food. The schmalzy songs on the German television. The syrupy Christmas songs by Roy Black my mother played).
Generally, I happen to fall in love with a country by reading its literature. The first “serious” German author I attempted to read at 17, was Gunter Grass, which killed my appetite for German literature for a long time. This was a false start. Getting older, I even more associated German culture with highly hermetic thinking and artistic expression, recalling getting an exhausting headache coming home from work by listening courteously to my spouse who was in the mood for talking about Heidegger or playing –aargh- a Mahler Symphony while cooking (at home, mixed with all the household noises, Mahler’s symphonies sound to me like a stampede by a herd of elephants - alright, I was and probably still am an ignorant philistine, at least in some respects; however, one of my philosophy professors spoke about Mahler’s music as ‘convoluted moaning’ :-)).
A second and more rewarding entrance to the country went through art, visiting Documenta in Kassel, the Sculpture Project in Münster, which is held every 10 years, and Berlin’s museums. However, this artistic trip being highly internationally orientated, I could barely allege I have tasted some of the essence of Germany then. Anyway, encountering this fascinating visage of modern Germany broadened my awareness - I was very happy to get in touch with German expressionist painting. At last I came to read and greatly appreciate Mann, and postwar German literature like Sebald, Wolf, and Böll. Recently, I embarked on Döblin, Kästner and Fallada, and was enthralled. I became a Bach and Beethoven aficionada and attended some Wagner opera’s, even named our daughter Senta after the heroine in The Flying Dutchman. So very slowly Germany’s allure grew, essentially through literature and music. Matters can change!
Praiseworthy food for thought, stimulating further reading and helpful to understand current events in Germany, like Dresden buying back a Kirchner painting seized by the Nazis as ‘degenerated art’, on the news only a few days ago.
‘Strassenbild vor dem Friseurladen.’
January 28, 2016
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October 15, 2020
Years ago when yet another hour of Hitler programming chugged on to the TV screen I'd wonder if perhaps we could have a documentary on Biedermeier era furniture just to suggest that there could be something else German that might interest the wider world than just the Third Reich. MacGregor's radio series, is in a similar style as his earlier History of the World in a Hundred Objects, making objects the starting point of a wider enquiry, may be part of a tentative thawing in the British conception of Germany, one of several signs that the pendulum is swinging back towards the mid nineteenth century view of Germany as the home of positive inspiration, even if it is not given over to Biedermeier design but more generally to a series of topics from German cultural history.
The radio series
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/... has now been decanted into book form. I'm still dubious about it as a book. At first glance each chapter looked to be a word for word transcriptions of the radio series, but looking again, there definitely has been some has been some editing. Each fifteen minute radio episode has been transformed into a correspondingly short chapter. The book is lavishly illustrated, with each of the thirty chapter given over to a different theme ranging from Bauhaus to Walhalla not to be confused with Valhalla, the home of the Norse gods, which remains closed to the visiting public via renaissance lime wood sculpture (for the complete list see the spoiler above).
I found that reading the chapters of this book, each as brief as the radio programmes, was less satisfactory than listening to them. I don't know if this is because MacGregor's language and presentation is really better suited to radio than to writing, or if I am simply more critical of the written word and accepting of speech, or if I am in a more critical state of mind at present. But why be narrow minded about it - all these things and more can be true.
Some reviewers have given this book a five star rating. I think bearing in mind the breath of the selection of topics a case can be made for this. In terms of scope it would be hard to beat this as a one volume set of essays on German cultural history. At the same time the thirty topics selected are idiosyncratic, I suspected given the chapter on coins of the Holy Roman Empire that what MacGregor could lay his hands on for the exhibition at the British museum was the decisive issue. There is nothing for example on music, Goethe is the only writer to get in, while artists are better served (Durer, Kollwitz, Bauhaus, Barlach).
MacGregor's book isn't a work of original scholarship - in this it reminds me very strongly of Freakonomics in which the authors essentially presented titbits from sociology journals with a bit of editorial comment. This was great in that most of us don't have access to libraries full of academic journals, but the authors' spin on the original story was not always worth while. Similarly MacGregor here, possibly in a hang over from the radio format, rounds off every chapter to a neat conclusion but these can sound trite and don't always reflect the richness of the discussion in the chapter.
The bibliography tells it's own story about this book some student practises live on, apparently even after the degree is confirmed . All of the books listed are in English, very few of them are in translation. So MacGregor is apparently largely basing his knowledge of Germany on Anglophone writers. The bibliographies for some chapters name two or even only one book. The snippets we are being fed, as tasty as they are, can have but a single source(or sauce) in some cases. This could be an intellectually respectable Reader's Digest that you can dip in and out of. It could pleasantly flavour a trip to Germany, or inform some other German related reading or music listening, or theatre visiting without ruining your appetite or consuming all your time. Maybe this is the literary equivalent of a street corner sausage and in the German context that is not necessarily a bad thing.
Memories of a Nation is messy and perhaps embracing messiness is the best thing to do in a cultural history of Germany. The first problem is one of definition - what is and what is not Germany: Strasbourg, Kalingrad (Königsberg) and Prague are in this book while Vienna and Zurich are out.
Also whose memories are these? A nation does not have a memory while the collective memory within a nation can be contested. There might be dominant narratives and forgotten voices. The stories we tell about ourselves change. One of the themes here is the multitude of different people's memories and impressions. Things are remembered for different reasons by different groups, or deliberately not memorialised as in the case of the refugee handcart.
Implicitly the sense I get is of the diversity of memories and of acts, occasionally intentional, that create a sense of nation. These can overlap, reinforcing each other, or feed off each other - a curious example is that the nineteenth century in Germany was apparently a great age of reforestation the other example of a re-enforcing feedback loop that slops into consciousness is beer - Tacitus wrote that the Germans drank beer, therefore drinking beer is German and Germanness can be displayed through bierhalls and tankards and brew-culture. Fluidity extends beyond any boundaries that MacGregor tries to impose upon himself in other ways too, the relentless editing and altering that the Brothers Grimm imposed on the stories they collected - changing mothers into step-mothers and stripping out references to pregnancy as well as to pre-marital sexuality since in the world of Victorian values no true mother desires the death of her children and despite the existence of many of us apparently life consists of only two states: chastity and wedlock shows as much as competing Franco-German claims over Charlemagne that culture has its own boundaries that happily ignores the lines drawn on maps.
Overall the book is the inverse of a mosaic. Each tiny piece is a complete and colourful picture that doesn't come together into a coherent whole, instead forming a massy blob made up of Bismarck, Luther, Bavarian beer brewing regulations and Volkswagen Beatles. In the context of British awareness of Germany this is a significant book, but Macgregor doesn't display here the skill necessary to make this a significant contribution to cultural history outside of that context.
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Anthony
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January 27, 2024
Physical Germany.
If you want to learn about the soul of Germany then Neil MacGregor’s book if for you. Taking a thematic approach MacGregor gives a biography of the heart of Europe through, art, culture, objects, buildings and movements. All of which have had a profound effect on shaping the country and people we know today. There hasn’t always been a notion of German nation, though. For nearly a thousand years it fell under the yoke of the Holy Roman Empire, a collection of principalities, counties, bishoprics and free cities. All competing and pushing against one another. Then Napoleon came and in 1806 abolish the Reich. Following the Wars of Liberation against him, an idea of a Germany was born and then solidified in the Revolutions of 1848. But the Germany that was forged, was not the one idealised in the liberal minds of the revolutions. It was Bismarck’s creation, forged in ‘blood and iron’ as he famously said. After a humiliating defeat in the First World War, German went on a dark path to Nazism and then destruction. It was split in two, only to be joined again at the end of the Cold War. Now one of the richest and most successful European states once again.
MacGregor tells this story and looks at what makes German’s German. He shows how Marin Luther created this sense of identity through language, as he wrote the first bible in German language that the masses could understand. Others such as Goethe whose high mind created literature, which is to Germany as Shakespeare is to the English. National landmarks such as the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate are discussed, where so much has been made, alongside important movements like Bauhaus and huge brands such as Volkswagen. Forests play so much in the story of Germany, The Brothers Grimm fairytales are often set in them, and it was here that famously Germany retained independence from the Roman Empire by destroying three legions in the Teutoburg Forest in 9AD. Interestingly there are sone surprising admissions, such as Beethoven or Frederick the Great, who both take sideshows. However, this does not take away from the information there is to tell in this book. Supplemented with a vast catalogue of photographs, exhibits and prints, the reader can really understand what MacGregor is talking about, the things he is describing and why they are significant.
Overall this is a good book and I would recommend it to anyone as it has a lot to offer. I believe that even most German’s would learn from the content of this book. Of course it is limited with size and artefacts to back up chapters and as such in sure there are many who will point out important cultural movements, people, landmarks and events which have been missed out. It would be good to see this for other countries too, as it has provided me with areas of interest for future reading.
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October 15, 2016
A nation's culture molds every citizen's inward soul whether or not they agree with what it expresses. Like it or not, those various ingredients of culture also fashion a nation's outward history.
Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum since 2002, has loaded his painter's brush from the broad palette of German culture with vivid colors from Charles the Great (Charlemagne) to Chancellor Angela Merkel, blending together an almost cubist portrait of the German soul under the title, "Germany - Memories of a Nation."
Some may argue MacGregor's omissions, but he has thrown together enough eccentric pigments from literature, theatre, art, music, architecture, beer, sausages, the Gutenberg printing press to Volkswagens and and the graphic art of emergency currency notes, splashing them across a broad canvas of time, to captivate most any discerning audience.
This is a breezy, informative, compelling read. Just when I thought it was going to take a wrong turn with the chapter on Bismark and devolve into an historical tract cobbled together by a rank outsider, Mr. MacGregor dragged me back inside the interior soul of Germany with the very next chapter on the artist, Käthe Kollwitz.
Käthe Kollwitz is probably best known for her sculpture of two grieving parents in the military cemetery at Roggevelde, Belgian. They are separate sculptures of a mother and father kneeling in grief next to, but oblivious to, one another. Each is too consumed with their own personal agony to be aware of anyone or anything else.
Her other well-known work is a Pietà located in the Neue Wache. It is the National Memorial to the Victims of War and Dictatorship. In contrast to Michaelangelo's masterpiece, Kollwitz's humble mother seems to be protecting the corpse of her dead son from any further assault by drawing it closer towards herself.
I have stood before Michaelangleo's Pietà, appropriately, after the conclusion of an Easter Mass. It did not speak to me with anything near the brute force of Kollwitz's Pietà.
Käthe Kollwitz was reaching deep inside her own wounded heart with this moving sculpture. Her son was too young to enlist during WWI without parental permission. Käthe pleaded with her husband until he agreed to give the boy consent to enlist. He was killed a few months later.
Although I may complain about the omission of Weimar giants such as George Grosz and Otto Dix, the chapter on Käthe Kollwitz alone, is worth the price of admission.
I especially recommend this book as an intellectual guidebook for any Americans making their first trip to Germany.
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