It’s the first Tuesday of the month, which means – of course – it’s time to review this month’s Dabbler Book Club selection, Simon Winder’s Germania.
First, Dabbler regulars, Brit and Gaw, review their Teutonic trip. We then publish a few comments from an interesting California-British perspective by Dabbler Book Club member, Dona Foster.
Brit: Germania – Simon Winder’s ‘personal history’ of the ‘Germans Ancient and Modern’ – is the sort of genre-bending book of which you’d normally expect a reviewer to say “I can’t really describe the experience of reading this.” But in fact I can quite easily find an analogy: reading Germania is just like the experience of being guided by a very entertaining host around a very boring provincial museum.
All historical narratives are necessarily simplified and arbitrary constructs, but some histories lend themselves to the construction process more readily than others. 1066 and All That, for example, works as a satire of school history textbooks because historians had been able to mould Britain’s past into a comprehensible and linear plot, beginning with the Roman invasion of 55BC, ending with the collapse of the Empire and the ascendancy of the United States, and signposted along the way by comfortingly familiar episodes (the Armada, the Princes in the Tower) and a cheerful pantomime cast of heroes like Henry VIII or Good Queen Bess, and villains, generally called Cromwell.
German history, by contrast, is such a wholly bewildering mess that forcing it into a story arc would seem to be futile. For a start, there’s the problem of exactly what ‘Germany’ is or has been. Whereas the story of England can be told, more or less, as the story of London, and a biography of Paris could credibly stand for that of France, Germany is irredeemably provincial and decentralized: a boiling mass of principalities, small kings and infuriatingly fluid boundaries that expand and contract over an area that stretches north to the Baltic and incorporates swathes of modern-day Poland, Holland and Italy. An alternative definition is linguistic: the ‘Germans’ are those who speak German, which, untidily, includes the Austrians.
What Winder gives us then, is a jumbled history of ‘Germania’ – as Tacitus labelled the swarm of warlike forest tribes that first kicked the invading Romans’ effete arses, a few years after the birth of Christ and at the beginning of the movie Gladiator. He embraces the mess. Tacitus’ Germania has a lot to answer for, according to Winder’s, since German nationalists have continually returned to it in the centuries since; and it is the grinding together of provincialism and aggressive nationalism that has churned out much of what could be termed Germany’s ‘history’.
The point, however, is not to understand the storyline, but to be shown the picture. Or at least, a picture. We get no real sense of how today’s Germans live and think; instead, the aim is to expose the conceptual origins of ‘Germanness’. Winder’s approach is rambling, arch, and heavily focused on strange little museums, with which he is obsessed. Winder is never happier than when wandering, the sole non-German tourist with a bellyfull of Bratwurst, through some obscure Schloss, admiring its cabinets stuffed with “skulls, mummified frogs, weird charms, bottled goodies, and crocodile eggs” before heading off to the collection of miscellaneous torture instruments.
Winder is good company in these places, enthusiastic but highly irreverent, with a naturally funny conversational style. The anecdotes are often hilarious, beginning with a disastrous family canal holiday in Alsace-Lorraine, and including such gems as his account of being rather trumped by a German contemporary when discussing what they got up to on their sixteenth birthdays (Winder played his new Simon and Garfunkel record; the German rode his new motorbike and slept with his friend’s mother – ““I remember feeling out of my depth on hearing this.”) Frankly I might well have more enjoyed a straightforward memoir without all the German business – it would probably be not unlike Michael Wharton’s The Missing Will in tone – but such is the degree of Winder’s kraut fixation that the two are probably inextricable.
There’s one unavoidable issue. Nazism is foreshadowed over and over in Winder’s narrative (“soaked in the disaster of the Third Reich”), but the book stops when Hitler seizes power in 1933. Winder’s stated purpose at the start is to “get round the Fuhrer and try to reclaim a bit of Europe that is in many ways Britain’s weird twin”, because, he speculates, there is “a point at which this quarantine [of German history] becomes too mutilating to Europe’s culture, which in effect allows Hitler’s estimation of his own country to prevail.”
But by stopping in 1933, rather than carrying on through into the 20th Century, the Cold War and reunification, Winder only manages to increase its importance – as if Hitler really was the End of German History. It is also frustrating for the reader. To vary the ‘provincial museum’ analogy at the top of this review, Germania is also a bit like being guided by a very entertaining host around Madame Tussaud’s. Winder leads us giggling through the strangeness upstairs, but then bails out at the Chamber of Horrors, which is the bit we’ve really been waiting for all along.
***
Gaw: Norman Stone in his characteristically stimulating The Atlantic and Its Enemies sees the postwar Federal Republic as the re-emergence of a ‘third Germany’:
…a world of petty duchies and prince-bishoprics that had been smothered in the imperial ventures of Prussia and Austria.
A popular history of this Germany, one that freed it from the smothering embrace of ‘the imperial ventures of Prussia and Austria’ would be very worthwhile. In fact, West Germany and its unified successor – whose politics are, as Stone remarks, ‘dull to the point of genius’ – deserve such a history, especially in English.
It would reach back from the latter twentieth century to a largely nineteenth-century Germany, whose image was romantic, idealistic, peaceful and somewhat eccentric. Prince Albert was probably Britain’s best known (and loved) German. One of the last glimpses we have of Germany’s one-time English reputation is through the Schlegel sisters in Forster’s Howards End, with their idealistic notions and romantic imaginings – their Beethoven’s Fifth is populated with ‘goblin footfalls’ and ‘dancing elephants’. This sympathetic, if quizzical, English view of Germany came to an end when their battleships started to loom larger than their bildungsromans.
As the excerpts in Brit’s review above suggest, Simon Winder’s Germania bills itself as a book that might pull off this historical re-imagining for a popular audience, an attempt to ‘get round the Fuhrer’. However, rather strangely, it turns out to do almost the opposite – as if seeking to demonstrate how impossible it is to write a history of Germany without mentioning the war.
Many a theme is introduced with a regretful nod to the Third Reich, or bid farewell with a wave heavy with premonitions of Nazism. From the very beginning (both of the book and German history) poor old Tacitus’s use of the phrase ‘pure blood’ is described as ‘catastrophic’ (despite it taking more than a millennium and a half for it to seem so). The Nazis appear fairly regularly, very distractingly and seemingly inevitably – rather like Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition.
By turns Germania reads like detailed narrative history, a series of impressionistic essays on cultural and historical themes, and personal travelogue. Some may find this pleasingly eclectic; others might find it combines to produce a book that’s a little too long, a bit uneven and with a tendency to ramble. In any event, it’s an entertaining read, full of interesting facts and insights – even if one feels an opportunity has been missed.
***
Dona: We recently moved to the US from England and reading Germania made me feel homesick for England as well as interested in visiting Germany. Simon Winder has a very British voice and humour which made the book fun to read even when the subject under discussion is pretty serious. It is difficult to explain how the tone of this book feels so English to someone who is no longer surrounded by irony, self-depreciation and gentle mockery as these attributes are not often found in this area of the US (Silicon Valley). Does make me wonder how the non-English view the book and whether they would enjoy it to the same extent that I did? Very tempted to take it the the book group I have started here with several Americans. I also wondered who the target audience for this book is: Top Gear viewers, German loving English people (are there many of those), your average bod?
As a product of 70’s comprehensive history my knowledge of Germany is limited – I was instead installed with history where the British won, usually against the French with the Spanish getting an honourable mention (the ‘O’ level history course started in 1509 and ended in 1815). The book was interesting about German history, especially religions and warring states, although I needed to refer at times to the other sources/internet as I got confused at times – it felt a bit jumpy and a time-line summary would have been helpful. More pictures would have been great as well. The comments on food were funny (especially living in California) although visiting Germany as often as he appears to, he must have found some good food somewhere. As someone who has dragged 4 children round lots of National Trust and English Heritage places, I can identify with the compulsion to see lots of old castles and churches so enjoyed this aspect of the book. Some of the passages describing massacres of Jews lead to a feeling of disquiet and a feeling that the Holocaust was inevitable based on history and character – was an explanation or an excuse being offered? The descriptions of SS rituals were both funny and disturbing.
Overall, there are lots of good stories in the book all linked in some way to ‘Germany’, some of which are very amusing. I was happy to spend time with the guide even when he was in ‘the interesting thing about this is’ mode and can imagine his slide show as being a great way to spend an evening.
Great reviews guys – and I can certainly see a pattern emerging in the reviews so far, which I can now add to! I must say I was very excited indeed to receive my copy of Germania – having a frau from Munich, I’m always on the lookout for books about Germany and the Germans (mostly so that I can impress the inlaws) and believe me, there are amazingly few non-Nazi themed books out there.
The author has obviously spent a very long time researching the book, as the level of detail is staggering, but this is where I failed to connect with Germania – like Brit, I approached this read with a hope that it would be similar in tone to 1066 and all that – a sort of 1866 and all that if you will, but I was disappointed with the downright boringness of medieval Germany, which seemed to plod along with various people making confederations and treaties, and a distinct lack of baddies and beheadings. Winder can’t help it that German history is a bit dull, but rather than giving us a straight up history book, I feel it would have worked far better as a more subjective work, with the author interweaving his own experiences and views of modern Germany with colourful historical snippets and vignettes of some of Germany’s more interesting historical figures – to better understand what and who germans are now. This history gives us an idea of what shaped their boundaries and led to the creation of their country, but gives us little appreciation of what they are like as a people, which I think was a missed opportunity.
In this respect Winder has obviously tried to avoid going down the well worn Bill Bryson style of facetious travel writing but I was particularly disappointed to find Germany’s frankly mind-boggling cultural legacy of the likes of Goethe, Wittgenstein, Beethoven and Wagner all footnotes to a story that instead mostly revolves around regional bigwigs arguing over catholic reform.
Germany is a truly fascinating country that seems cruelly shunned by the british and I had hoped that this book would be the kind of thing I could lend to my hun-sceptic friends as a fun way of showing them what a fascinating bunch Jerry can be, but unfortunately I think this particular tome would only reinforce the stereotype of Germany being bewilderingly boring. Which it most steadfastly isn’t – for instance, who but the germans would have a word like Vergangenheitsbewaltigung – which means ‘the sum total of difficulties a nation encounters in struggling to come to terms with a dodgy past‘?
Who indeed worm or even Bundesverfassungsgericht kippt Sicherungsverwahrung, from today’e sueddeutche, or put another way ‘Federal Constitutional Court tilts protection preservation’
Or put it another way, the Germans have just as much bother with the European human rights twaddle as the British.
All love is connected with presence, what is agreeable to us by its presence always shows itself to us when it is absent and constantly makes us want its renewed presence, and, when this wish is granted, is accompanied by lively delight, when this joy persists we are filled by an ever-equal happiness, this is what we really love, and this means that we can love everything that can enter our presence, indeed to formulate an ultimate statement : love of the divinity always strives to make what is highest present to us.
Written by a German….Goethe….Maxims and Reflections.
“If only the next three months were over”
Said by a German….Joseph Goebbels in conversation with Rudolf Semmler May 28th 1941, the eve of the invasion of Russia.
Many sided, the German character.
Und dann kam Pippa !
Said by a Geordie.
As an interesting and gossipy aside, wasn’t Simon Winder involved in the Amazon “historians slagging off each other’s books” scandal?
I enjoyed the book a lot although I agree with Worm that it did a times become “facetious travel writing”. I did however enjoy some of the anecdotal material – eg John of Leiden and his gory demise in Münster.
Trying to write a book about ‘Germania’ was always going to be an challenge because Germany (like Italy) is largely a product of 18th/19th Century romantic nationalism rather than a deep-seated and innate national identity. However, I thought that Winder did a good job of picking out interesting common strands.
This is great! I’m always on the look out for new German Literature ! I love to visit your site and get ideas on great books to read next!
These excellent reviews leave little more to be said. I found the book entertaining on the whole, extremely funny in parts but with too many visits to museums to hold my interest completely. I share Dona’s disquiet that the portrayal of history and national character could be seen as an explanaton or justification for the Holocaust and other atrocities. I would have happily sacrificed 100 or so pages of medievalism and militarism to hear what he had to say about Nazism.
There is really everything wrong with this book (unless it turns into a choose your own adventure after page 260, where I stopped).
If it does turn into a choose your own adventure then I will choose to concentrate on many of the potentially interesting things that are bypassed in favour of a ‘droll’ description of a visit to another dowdy regional museum.
I was caught off guard by the glib autobiographical tone of the intro and was then jarred when the first few chapters got stuck into the facts. I chalked this up as the editors telling him to Bryson it up a bit. However, having now read over half of this book it seems less misleading than I thought- the only information I can remember from hours of fighting with tedium are the irritating travelogue pieces which were my 2nd least favourite element of the book.
My number one least favourite part was the style. The potential was there for a complicated story told well and therefore made interesting and though provoking, what actually occurred was a nebulous collection of disparate vignettes shoehorned together where the baroque sentence structure seems to intentionally disrupt the flow. The point of much of the language seemed to be not to further his argument but to act as a small flag to make you stop and say ‘hey, this is interestingly written. Aren’t I clever for reading this intelligent book’.
I wanted to like this book, some of the sections on the reformation even managed to engage me but I am now just keen to go and read about the topic else where. It’s unfair to judge an unfinished book but I rather do that than finish it. The most telling judgement I can make is that it made me read less; less frequently, shorter duration, less intently.
If this doesn’t win the whisky then I’m off to the Richard and Judy book club!
Ah, but what’s their whisky like?
Hmmm, I just checked. What’s “Top Deck Shandy”?
You may have to refer that one to Jonathon Green – sounds obscene.
I’m on holiday and grabbed the book to read on the train. I’ve found it thoroughly enjoyable, in the same gossipy way that Bill Bryson is enjoyable, and like BB, touching on larger concerns. I especially like the theme that a little history is a dangerous thing – witness the BNP, for instance, or jihadism, for the way a few scraps of history can be used to bolster vanity, fear and cruelty.
I like the idea of a book about Germany that does not deal with Nazis. I heard an outgoing German ambassador complain that German history is Nazis or nothing on the British telly, which is obsessed by the subject. As some commenters say, though, it’s a hard subject to avoid.
I don’t think I’ll follow up on reading more German history, though. As others have said, it is far too fragmented, like doing British history via various cities’ corporations and guilds.
It was with a wry smile that I noted that Winder is more usually employed as an editor as his book Germainia reads like some turgid first draft in need of a thorough going over with a red pen. One of the great things about combining history and travel writing should be that the job of the writer is essentially the same- to contextualise the unfamiliar. However I lost track of how many times Winder describes things as “odd” and leaves it at that. This combined with his reluctance to come to any real conclusions about anything that does not lead straight to the Nazis makes for a monotonous and unsatisfying read which, although containing a lot of information, delivers very little insight. Perhaps part of this is also down to Winder’s irreverent manner. I don’t doubt that some people may find it amusing but it struck me as rather haughty and more than once I was forced to wonder why he had even bothered to write the book in the first place. There was a moment when reading Germania that it struck me I was perhaps making my way through some sort of post-modern masterpiece. A synergy of form and subject; at once fractured and, almost gleefully, convolute. If that was the author’s intention then long may it sit with the other smug follies of the age. If however this is not the case, then it’s just not a very good book.
Ouch, tough crowd, the Dabbler Book Club, it seems.
Let’s hope Tim Binding fares a little better….
I’ll say!
Interesting to note that I thought Binder was trying to avoid being too Brysonesque, whereas others thought he was too Brysonesque! Goes to show how differently everybody approaches a book
Sadly, the book hit my doorstep the day after I left on a longish trip, so I only just got started as everyone else was writing their reviews.
Most countries have a deep history with which we are at least vaguely familiar. Britain: pagan tribes whose sense of humor must have included the satisfaction to be had from thinking of future generations pondering why oddly shaped rocks are stuffed into the land scape, then Romans, Vikings, etc, etc.
Russia: lousy climate, misery, Mongol invasion, more misery, then some really bad misery, then, the same misery made worse by communism.
In contrast, there is Germany: [nothing], two front war in Europe, two front war in Europe made even worse by nonsense spouting sociopaths.
Germania’s precept is to fill the blank, and in the process show how the contortions required to make a shambolic history mythical — with Binder using the travelogue format to show how one became the other — was instrumental in leading to the Third Reich.
Great idea, but oddly executed. In particular, his choice of compare-and-contrasts focuses so thoroughly on the British as to leave me wondering is Binder viewed them as being such slow learners as to require a special effort aimed solely at them.
Beyond that, though, his writing is often outstanding, with entire paragraphs perfectly poised and often funny in the way that is largely unique to the English and, as is seemingly true with all humor, completely alien to the Germans.
Unfortunately, those moments are marred by an editor seemingly asleep at the switch, letting some truly odd word choices go by unstruck. At one point, Himmler “processed” through a town to dedicate some jumped-up old hulk to the SS; “proceed” is seems the far better choice.
Then an idea during the crusades is termed “delusive”. The usage is correct, but not common, a short coming which Binder seems determined to correct in the next half dozen pages.
I know this risks pettiness, but his writing is otherwise so good that even small flaws stand out.
His approach to writing this history is unique — non linear, relying far more on his idiosyncratic travels for its structure than the flow of time.
The result is certainly entertaining; I’m not yet sure whether it will be equally informative.