Five Germanys I Have Known: A History & Memoir

ISBN-13: 9780374530860 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 576 str.

Fritz Stern

Opis

The "German question" haunts the modern world: How could so civilized a nation be responsible for the greatest horror in Western history? In this unusual fusion of personal memoir and history, the celebrated scholar Fritz Stern refracts the question through the prism of his own life. Born in the Weimar Republic, exposed to five years of National Socialism before being forced into exile in 1938 in America, he became a world-renowned historian whose work opened new perspectives on the German past.Stern brings to life the five Germanys he has experienced: Weimar, the Third Reich, postwar West and East Germanys, and the unified country after 1990. Through his engagement with the nation from which he and his family fled, he shows that the tumultuous history of Germany, alternately the strength and the scourge of Europe, offers political lessons for citizens everywhere--especially those facing or escaping from tyranny. In this wise, tough-minded, and subtle book, Stern, himself a passionately engaged citizen, looks beyond Germany to issues of political responsibility that concern everyone. Five Germanys I Have Known vindicates his belief that, at its best, history is our most dramatic introduction to a moral civic life.

O autorze

Fritz Stern, geboren 1926 in Breslau, ist em. Professor für Geschichte an der Columbia University. Obwohl seine Familie jüdisch war, wurde Fritz Stern, um seine Zukunftschancen zu erhöhen, getauft. Die Geschichte und das Schicksal des deutschen Judentums wurden für Stern zum Lebensthema. 1938 flüchtete er mit seinen Eltern in die Vereinigten Staaten und studierte deutsche Geschichte an der Columbia Universität, wo er Professor für Geschichte wurde. Er gilt als einer der besten Deutschlandkenner in den USA. 1999 wurde er mit dem Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels ausgezeichnet. Er lebt in Princeton und Washington.