Originally written in German, so the translation is OK as an understated recitation of facts. Heavy on the Germans (there were quite a few notable ones that year).
A sophisticated reader will enjoy this.
This is a translation of the German first edition of 2012. While waiting at the local LA County regional library, I spotted this on the shelf and checked it out with the idea it could be used as collateral reading for interested students in Eleventh grade US history when the Wilson administration is being studied. For example, Discuss in a group the chapter you choose to read (each student selecting one chapter) 10 pts.
However, the chapters I read (January and July) require a considerable amount of background knowledge about the largely German (some others, almost all Western European) artists and writers included. There are few politicians. There are anecdotes about these luminaries' daily activities, garnered from letters, diaries, and biographies for the most part. The selected âentries' do offer an interesting and human view of their lives.
Kafka, painters of Die Brucke, Junger, Karl Krau, âElse Lasker-Sholer, F4ranz Marc, Freud, Adorno, Proust, are included in January. The founding of the first Aldi market is mentionedâthe West German supermarket chain is now expanding into the USA.
Joe Stalin was in Vienna for four weeks, his longest trip abroad until Tehran during the war, and he stayed near the park of Schonbronn Palace, where he liked to take a walk, as did Hitler in that same month.
July includes Macke, Ernst De Chirico, Rosessler, Schiele, Eva Gruel, Musil, Spengler, Rilke, and Koroschka.
A handful of Americans are mentioned, Louis Armstrong being sent to the Colored Waifs Home for Boys and being given a trumpet (January chapter). I suspect they might have been added for this edition. There is a bibliography, but no index, so a student working on a term paper cannot readily find information to offer a lighter touch on, for example, the critic Alfred Kerr giving a bad review to Thomas Mann's play Fiorenza. Mann's train trip from Munich to attend the opening in Berlin and the effect on him is covered in detail.
This is a translation of the German first edition of 2012. While waiting at the local LA County regional library, I spotted this on the shelf and checked it out with the idea it could be used as collateral reading for interested students in Eleventh grade US history when the Wilson administration is being studied. For example, Discuss in a group the chapter you choose to read (each student selecting one chapter) 10 pts.
However, the chapters I read (January and July) require a considerable amount of background knowledge about the largely German (some others, almost all Western European) artists and writers included. There are few politicians. There are anecdotes about these luminaries' daily activities, garnered from letters, diaries, and biographies for the most part. The selected âentries' do offer an interesting and human view of their lives.
Kafka, painters of Die Brucke, Junger, Karl Krau, âElse Lasker-Sholer, F4ranz Marc, Freud, Adorno, Proust, are included in January. The founding of the first Aldi market is mentionedâthe West German supermarket chain is now expanding into the USA.
Joe Stalin was in Vienna for four weeks, his longest trip abroad until Tehran during the war, and he stayed near the park of Schonbronn Palace, where he liked to take a walk, as did Hitler in that same month.
July includes Macke, Ernst De Chirico, Rosessler, Schiele, Eva Gruel, Musil, Spengler, Rilke, and Koroschka.
A handful of Americans are mentioned, Louis Armstrong being sent to the Colored Waifs Home for Boys and being given a trumpet (January chapter). I suspect they might have been added for this edition. There is a bibliography, but no index, so a student working on a term paper cannot readily find information to offer a lighter touch on, for example, the critic Alfred Kerr giving a bad review to Thomas Mann's play Fiorenza. Mann's train trip from Munich to attend the opening in Berlin and the effect on him is covered in detail.
Well written!
