Gelesen: "Germany - Memories of a Nation" von Neil MacGregor

 

Autor: Neil MacGregor

Titel: Germany - Memories of a Nation

Veröffentlichung: 07.04.2016

ISBN: 9780141979786

624 Seiten

Preis: £16.99

Verlag: Penguin Books

Klappentext:

For the past 140 years, Germany has been the central power in continental Europe. Twenty-five years ago a new German state came into being. How much do we really understand this new Germany, and how do its people now understand themselves?

Neil MacGregor argues that uniquely for any European country, no coherent, over-arching narrative of Germany's history can be constructed, for in Germany both geography and history have always been unstable. Its frontiers have constantly floated. Königsberg, home to the greatest German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, is now Kaliningrad, Russia; Strasbourg, in whose cathedral Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's greatest writer, discovered the distinctiveness of his country's art and history, now lies within the borders of France. For most of the five hundred years covered by this book Germany has been composed of many separate political units, each with a distinct history. And any comfortable national story Germans might have told themselves before 1914 was destroyed by the events of the following thirty years.

German history may be inherently fragmented, but it contains a large number of widely shared memories, awarenesses and experiences; examining some of these is the purpose of this book. Beginning with the fifteenth-century invention of modern printing by Gutenberg, MacGregor chooses objects and ideas, people and places which still resonate in the new Germany - porcelain from Dresden and rubble from its ruins, Bauhaus design and the German sausage, the crown of Charlemagne and the gates of Buchenwald - to show us something of its collective imagination. There has never been a book about Germany quite like it.

Meine Meinung:

Es ist sehr interessant zu lesen bzw. zu hören, wie ein Brite seinen Lesern bzw. ursprünglich seinen Zuhörern die Geschichte der Deutschen erklärt. "Germany - Memories of A Nation" war nämlich ursprünglich ein Podcast der BBC. Ich habe das Buch teilweise gelesen und teilweise den Podcast gehört, je nachdem, was gerade sonst so um mich herum los war. Ich habe vieles, was ich in der Schule gelernt habe, wiedererkannt. Manches habe ich sogar neu dazu gelernt, z.B. dass Gutenberg bei seiner Erfindung von der Weinherstellung inspiriert wurde. Neil MacGregor hat sehr viel Verständnis für die Deutschen und ist gleichzeitig sehr selbstkritisch in seiner Eigenschaft als Brite, das ist sehr sympathisch.

Tipp:

Eine funktionierende Leseprobe habe ich leider nicht gefunden, aber es gibt den kostenlosen Podcast bei der BBC.