Customer Reviews

Germany: The Empire Within

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This is a charming and wonderfully informative book by an American looking at Germany at the moment of its "reunification", largely by examining German consciousness by those who were in some ways, Germany's "fringe":

both the long arrived and newly arriving "Germans" from Poland, Czechoslovakia, the USSR and East Germany; the supra-German identity held by the the long-heralded noble families (Hapsburg and Schwarzenberg) creating a new Europe; the awkwardness toward and by the (newly arrived and sparse) Jewish community; those hangers-on in Berlin for a quarter century who would see the eastern wall of their pampered, long-accustomed home blown off; the confidence of the competitive Bavarians; the indefatigably devoted aristocrats serving as their Hamburg newspaper's "Barbara" to fill the peculiar needs of the newly arrived "Germans".

The stories are told quite personally - and quite fascinating.

The accounts are made far more intriguing by Ms. Shlaes' telling observations and personal involvement. She was the scholarly girl from Chicago who'd become infatuated (bizarrely, to acquaintances and her non-religious Jewish family) with the German language, and made repeated trips there, spending a year in Berlin for academic study in the early 1980s - and later returning time and again to live and to report for either the Wall St. Journal or Financial Times.

Ms. Shlaes' telling detail, understatement, fascination with people and their circumstances - oh and also her humor (I can't get out of my head the alarm of tourists in the Reichstag cafeteria as Ms. Shaes clamored loudly (and facetiously) for "TOTAL WAR!" in the early 1980s!). She has a way of igniting and then enlisting our own wonder as she conveys the marvelous sights and sounds of a Germany in rapid change.

The book is so very worth your while. It's not a scholarly study of aspects of modern German history. It's better.