Five Germanys I Have Known (Fritz Stern, 2006)

I would highly recommend this book - it was unexpectedly personal, interesting, even moving. Also unexpectedly helpful for me in piecing together some threads of German history.

Stern lived through "five Germanys": a few years as a youth in Weimar Republic; Third Reich; postwar West and East Germany; unified Germany after the Berlin wall came down.

But he also wrote interestingly about pre-World War I Germany. About how political immaturity of the area compared to at least some other nations - Germany didn't come together until 1870 - persisted into 20th century. Germany energy went into Bildung (self-formation and education) (Bildungsroman stories popular to this day) and Wissenschaft (science); if at risk of Bildungsphilister (cultured philistine); at any event, not much opportunity to put energy into politics. ( This resonated with themes in the Goethe and the Holy Madness book, among others.)

Stern's family included a line of eminent physicians. Had converted away from Judaism a couple generations back. Plenty of interesting family connections, including Einstein. The religious conversion, such as it was, didn't help in the Third Reich. The family emigrated to NYC just in time; Stern ended up as a student and long-time professor at Columbia (along with many other roles).

Some items:

1. He had a great relationship with Jacques Barzun (whose recent book I like so much) - who also was at Columbia.

2. Had a good way of writing about how Jews and liberals were scapegoated for the WWI defeat.

3. Interesting to think about how Jews converted to Christianity in Germany and elsewhere . . . we had touched on this when performing "Elijah" by Felix Mendelssohn. Pressures everywhere . ..

4. His retelling made the Nazi dangers seem more personal - folks losing positions in universities, etc. Hiding books in home library. Watching conversations. Even in the early days before Nazi power had been consolidated.

5. What an interesting, difficult idea - shifting borders - Stern's family was in Breslau -which ended up in Poland (as "Wroclaw") after the war - some pretty hard feelings about this which took awhile to resolve.

6. A big focus was the lingering question about why the Germans stood by in the face of Nazi behavior; Stern referred to National Socialism as a "temptation" - it's hard to imagine the depth of Nazi participation (whether as enthusiasts, "mere collaborators", or whatever) that ran through Germany in the 1930s and 1940s; how possibly to address this in the postwar era? Fritz Stern - an American - as an unlikely but effective voice in framing the issue.

There was a lot in this book.