Berlin in Lights: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler (1918-1937) [Paperback]

Charles Kessler (Editor), Ian Buruma (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 2002

Berlin in Lights, chosen as a New York Times Notable Book, is the collection of German aristocrat Harry Kessler's diaries between the two world wars. Count Harry Kessler (1868-1937), the son of a German banker and an Irish beauty, was a diplomat and publisher who moved easily among the worlds of art, politics, and society. He lived in Berlin but traveled throughout Europe, always with a keen eye to the political climate of the times. His diaries encompass an extraordinary variety of people: Einstein engages him in long discussions on his theories, and Josephine Baker dances naked in Kessler's drawing room. Kessler had lunch with Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, and Erik Satie, and dinner with Max Reinhardt, George Grosz, Virginia Woolf, Jean Cocteau, and Andre Gide, to name a few. His diaries encapsulate this tumultuous time frame, recording at first hand the agonizing collapse and death of Weimar Germany and the arrival of the Nazis. Beautifully written, the diaries provide rare insight into the frenetic, constantly changing mood and give us a brilliant portrait of Germany and Europe between the wars. "What distinguishes his diary is Kessler's distanziert tone -- its elegance, precision and shrewdness." -- Iain Bamforth, The New York Times Book Review

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

"Were it not so tragic," confided Count Harry Kessler (1868-1937) in his diary in June 1932, "it would be grotesque." The inevitability of Hitler's ascendance had grown increasingly apparent, and the "Red Count," a publisher, art collector, and prominent Social Democrat, had reason for apprehension. Within a year, the Weimar Republic would give way to the Third Reich, and Kessler would flee to France, where he was to die without ever returning to his native Berlin. His diaries, which begin with the Armistice of 1918 and end with his death in 1937, form a lens through which the turbulent Weimar years come vibrantly to life. The Kaiser's abdication, the Spartacist Revolt, and Walther Rathenau's assassination are dissected here by an astute, if resigned, observer, yet readers will be equally impressed by his circle of friends: those who passed through his life include Albert Einstein, Bertolt Brecht, Andr Gide, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Virginia Woolf, and Erich Maria Remarque (whose All Quiet on the Western Front Kessler published), among others. Though occasionally disappointing in its omissionsDthe exile years are skimpy (there are no entries for 1934), and Kessler's homosexuality is revealed only in Ian Buruma's fine introductionDthe diaries are a welcome addition to any academic library.DRichard Koss, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (January 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080213839X
• ISBN-13: 978-0802138392
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #73,180 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #29 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > European

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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating wide-angle snapshot of Europe between the wars, January 30, 2003

By 

Max W. Hauser (Silicon Valley, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Berlin in Lights: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler (1918-1937) (Paperback)

Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel, in Tom Lehrer's facetious 1964 tribute ballad _Alma,_ is credited with marrying most of the creative men in early 20th-century Europe. (Lehrer was ungenerous, not to Alma but to Europe, since some creative Europeans did live outside Vienna in those days.) In contrast, Harry Kessler's range of contacts, if less intimate, was mind-bogglingly wider. Easton, in his sweeping and eloquent new biography of Kessler (cited below), quotes an estimate that over 40000 names appear in Kessler's complete diary. That surpasses even Dumas's 37267 fictional characters, and Kessler's people were real. Kessler was a learned, aristocratic German diplomat and arts patron with international roots and upbringing, in touch with many leading figures of his day. This book is a portion of his diary, opening in 1918 just before the armistice, and lasting, like Kessler himself, until 1937. Something of a Pepys of inter-war Europe, therefore, though Kessler focuses on ideas, or people of ideas. Kessler observes concisely and often penetratingly the changes in Europe after the Great War, and many historical figures whom he meets either in Germany or during his travels and later exile. The book is thus peopled with politicians and artists from Rosa Luxemburg and Jozef Pilsudski to Diaghilev and Isadora to Erich Maria Remarque who, Kessler reports, knocked out _All Quiet on the Western Front_ in six weeks. Included also are some of that small club of celebrities that surface so reliably in New York book-review periodicals in recent decades (people like Virginia Woolf, the Sackville-Wests, and various Nabokovs; Scott and Zelda however are missing).

Which leads me to more on this edition, good and bad. It is a reprint of the 1971 English translation by Charles Kessler (no relation), reissued by its British publisher, with a new introduction by Ian Buruma (also published separately in the _New York Review of Books_). The 1971 translation includes high-quality notes, locating events and personalities in context. The cold-war-era time frame of the notes is evident. This recent reprint however reflects lost opportunities. The introduction describes the milieus (omitting Vienna among culturally important venues -- revenge for Tom Lehrer?) and speculates on Kessler's personality. But it has little of the basic factual background that would help a general reader to make sense of the rest of the book. We must look to the Library of Congress data on the copyright page, for example, to see Kessler's life dates and therefore that he was 50 years old when the book opens. What was Kessler's career before 1918; what was his military service, to which he often alludes in the diary. Most glaringly, Kessler refers internally to the diary as beginning many years before 1918; why does the introduction fail to address the missing parts? It's as if we entered a show at curtain time only to find that we joined the last half in progress, and without explanation.

Laird Easton, Kessler's recent biographer (_The Red Count,_ ISBN 0520230353, recommended if the diary interests you), informs me that pre-1918 Kessler diaries surfaced in Mallorca in 1983, after the 1971 edition but long before this reprint. Also found slightly earlier were entries from most of 1923 and 1924, including remarks on US life and culture, from two extensive trips to America. (Recalling not just Tocqueville but, from Kessler's own time, Voegelin's 1928 _Über die Form des amerikanischen Geistes_ -- Vienna again. The latter is now in English translation as ISBN 0807118265.) Easton's biography addresses the American interludes and mentions a CD-ROM edition of the entire diary, pending in Germany. The current diary reprint could have been stronger with the restoration of the long-rediscovered material, or with a more practical introduction, but what it has is still very good. Here is history from a primary source, in all its complexity and individuality. Filtered, it's true, through some editing, but nothing like the parochializing and dumbing-down that characterize US popular sources on modern history today. Which reminds me of Jacques Barzun's comments (ISBN 0819562378 p. 37) on the "Alexandrian" phase of civilizations, the flowering of indirect, reference-book information (also, by the way, of lawyers) preceding collapse.

10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I LOVE BERLIN 1918-1929, April 3, 2000

By 

Tosh Berman/TamTam Books - See all my reviews

This review is from: Berlin in Lights: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1918-1937 (Hardcover)

Berlin in Lights is a fascinating piece of history. Here we get a first-hand look at the Nazi's gaining power in Germany mixed in with lunches with Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau. So from the high (great culture and artists) to the very low (the rise of Hitler). Count Kessler kept a great journal and had ...interesting friends.