Books of the Month – Culture

Simone de Beauvoir: Lovebirds

Among the great love affairs of Simone de Beauvoir’s life, the one with Jean-Paul Sartre in particular has gone down in the history of passions. This was only the second most important. In her autobiography, Memoirs of a Daughter from a Good Family, she wrote about Sartre with affection and respect. But the racy clips were aimed at her childhood friend Elizabeth “Zaza” LaQuinn. Now a fictional autobiographical novel has appeared in the property of the philosopher, which tells of this early relationship. You can also see there why de Beauvoir was not only one of the most influential thinkers of her century, but also in a class of her own as a fashion designer.

Read Here Detailed review by Felix Stefan.

Grit and Niklas Poppe: Locked Away

To understand society, it often helps to look at how it treats its children. A particularly dark topic is that of hostels in the early FRG and GDR. Author Grit Poppe wrote a critically acclaimed youth novel (“Blocked away”) on the subject. Now, together with her son Niklas, she made a documentary about re-education houses, special children’s homes and youth work centers in the GDR. Many of the interviewees speak of their lost childhoods, traumas that lasted for decades, and the indifference of a society that for a long time did not want to hear about the fate of these people who were locked away. In this way, the book reveals parenting styles and educational goals that not only long ago affected the children of the home. exciting.

Read Here Detailed review by Victoria Grossman.

Stefan Malinowski: Hohenzollern and the Nazis

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Five years ago, the Brandenburg government commissioned historian Stefan Malinowski to write a “Report on the Political Conduct of the Former Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia (1882-1951)”. The question was whether the crown prince had given a “big push” to the establishment and consolidation of the National Socialist system. The purpose of the report was to help evaluate compensation claims made by the Hohenzollern family for expropriation by Soviet occupation forces between 1945 and 1949. According to the Compensation Act 1994, these claims are only promising if the question is answered in the negative. Now Malinowski has published a basic book on Hohenzollern and the Nazis which supports his argument and is available to the general public.

Read Here Detailed review by Lothar Muller.

Emine Sevgi Özdamar: A space bounded by shadows

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You not only read Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s books, but you have experiences with them: those of starry loneliness, anger, desire, sadness. Their material is their life, the form of the novel, but also a collection of beloved poems and texts, a collection. Eighteen years had passed since her last novel, and in the meantime there was a literary scandal that stole her language. Now writing Emine Sevgi Özdamar is back. Legend.

Read Here Detailed review by Marie Schmidt.

Magnus Brechtken (Editor): Working on National Socialism

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What about a scientific reassessment of National Socialism? Where is the historical research now? This huge task was undertaken by the deputy director of the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich-Berlin, Magnus Brechtken, together with 29 famous colleagues. The 30 articles result in an impressive compendium that is second to none. National Socialism is examined in all its aspects, the difficult beginning of the process of coming to terms with it after 1945, the course of Holocaust research or the way the Third Reich is treated in books and films. Anyone who would like to know more information about the 1986 “Historikerstreit” is just as correct here as anyone looking for arguments for the current debate about the crimes of colonialism and the uniqueness of the extermination of Jews.

Read Here Detailed review by Knud von Harbow.