Four free reads on the Net: The Germany one

I remember exactly where I was when I heard that the Berlin Wall had come down. In a staffroom in Japan, my colleagues switched on a TV and translated the news for me, sensing that this was going to matter. The pictures were enough. I cried at the sight. It was the end of a divided Europe, a cold war that had been going on for as long as I’d been alive.

The following year, I took trains around an Eastern Europe that felt like it was emerging from a deep sleep, ending in Berlin - a city I fell in love with at once. That was 25 years ago and with the flurry of programmes and articles in the run up to the commemoration, I’ve been spending a lot of time this month (re)- acquainting myself with Germany. As my German studies ended at O level, it must necessarily be in translation or through the eyes of English writers but these are the free reads I enjoyed this week on the net.

Short Story

Delicate short tale, told through the eyes of an East German child, by Julia Franck in an award winning translation by Eleanor Collins.

The Family Friend

Poem

Is this the most beautiful German poem?

My German stopped at O Level and was only ever conversational, so perhaps difficult for me to judge the beauty of the original but Franz Schubert liked it enough to set it to music too.

Novel

Three Men on The Bummel by Jerome K Jerome

Highly enjoyable and very funny (especially if you are a history geek) comic novel that satirises beautifully the Edwardian craze for cycling, as well as giving a fascinating insight into how the English viewed the new young state of Germany. The book is really a series of sketches and observations, some like the throwing things at cats and the German attitude to grass are laugh out loud moments, others strike you as wry and strangely modern observations on such things as young children's habit of getting up at the crack of dawn or the limitations of journalism. I also learned after whom the cartoon cat and mouse Tom and Jerry were named thanks to a line in this book.

Near the end, there is a chill for the modern reader on reading JKJ's warning about the direction Germany could go in if they were governed by bad rulers.

A good piece of Edwardian comic writing well worth whiling away an autumn afternoon reading.

Download a free copy here

Essay

Will Self walks the route of the  Berlin Wall

Will sidles and plods 50km along the old route of the wall and reports his impressions

Compare with this article from the Spiegel in English on how East Germany shaped the modern Germany.

Bonus link - The BBC are running an excellent series on 600 years of German history narrated by Neil McGregor - Germany: Memories of a Nation . Team that with this selection of German Literature on BBC Radio4 Extra including Christa Wolf, Herman Hesse and Thomas Mann.

Photos: A postcard from I bought at the Wall; my own grainy pic taken at the remains of the wall, November 1990