Prague in Danger: The Years of German Occupation, 1939-45: Memories and History, Terror and Resistance, Theater and Jazz, Film and Poetry, Politics and War [Hardcover]

Peter Demetz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0374281262 | ISBN-13: 978-0374281267 | Edition: First Edition

A dramatic account of life in Czechoslovakia's great capital during the Nazi Protectorate

 

With this successor book to Prague in Black and Gold, his account of more than a thousand years of Central European history, the great scholar Peter Demetz focuses on just six short years--a tormented, tragic, and unforgettable time. He was living in Prague then--a "first-degree half-Jew," according to the Nazis' terrible categories--and here he joins his objective chronicle of the city under German occupation with his personal memories of that period: from the bitter morning of March 15, 1939, when Hitler arrived from Berlin to set his seal on the Nazi takeover of the Czechoslovak government, until the liberation of Bohemia in April 1945, after long seasons of unimaginable suffering and pain.

 

Demetz expertly interweaves a superb account of the German authorities' diplomatic, financial, and military machinations with a brilliant description of Prague's evolving resistance and underground opposition. Along with his private experiences, he offers the heretofore untold history of an effervescent, unstoppable Prague whose urbane heart went on beating despite the deportations, murders, cruelties, and violence: a Prague that kept its German- and Czech-language theaters open, its fabled film studios functioning, its young people in school and at work, and its newspapers on press. This complex, continually surprising book is filled with rare human detail and warmth, the gripping story of a great city meeting the dual challenge of occupation and of war.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Demetz (The Air Show at Brescia, 1909) takes a creative approach to this account of wartime Prague, as another subtitle indicates: Memories and History, Terror and Resistance, Theater and Jazz, Film and Poetry, Politics and War. Interspersing political and cultural history with snippets of memoir of his own wartime experiences and those of other Czechs, Demetz, whose mother was Jewish, focuses on politics and culture to explain how the Nazis ruled his home country and how the Czechs tried to hang on to their vivid prewar cultural life. Without avoiding the issue of collaboration with the Nazis, Demetz takes great pride in Czech resistance, both political and cultural, such as honoring the late president Masaryk on Hitler's birthday, on April 20. Demetz also focuses on individuals like Milena Jesenska, Kafka's onetime lover turned political writer, who was sent to Bergen-Belsen for helping Jews and others escape from Czechoslovakia . This history is both vivid and compelling, especially Demetz's personal stories. Some of those passages, particularly how a young Demetz dealt with romance and sex in a country ravaged by war, are achingly beautiful. (Apr.)
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Review

"Prague in Danger is a compulsive read, and very finely done. There is by now a mass of more or less analytical commentary on the Protectorate, and of course we have powerful memoirs and personal testimony. But I haven't seen the two genres combined in this way, and with such great sensitivity to the interplay of public and private.

"Demetz conveys very poignantly, and with sharp insight, just what it was like to live day to day in occupied Prague, and moreover to live right at the intersection of the Czech, Jewish and German spheres. He embodies exactly what was destroyed by Nazi thuggery and then by Czech vengefulness. I enjoyed too the forays into cultural history--of jazz or film, for example, or about Orten and Jesenska; and I hope that they can be appreciated, even by those who know nothing of the background, as conveying a flavour of the period and place.

"The politics are likewise depicted with a sure touch and sound judgment, as well as with an eye for the unfamiliar vignette, even in the case of the best-known episodes. Demetz's book should sharpen many readers' sense of the peculiar tragedy of the very last phase of the old multicultural Prague whose downfall he chronicles."  —Robert Evans, Regius Professor of History, Oxford University

Praise for Prague in Black and Gold:

 

“A rich and intricate story . . . [Demetz] deftly tells the legends of the city’s origin . . . He deliberately avoids the sanitized and prettified guidebook approach to Prague in favor of a more somber register which acknowledges that conflicts were never far beneath the surface and could explode in the most brutal forms.” —R.J.W. Evans, The New York Review of Books

“[Demetz] writes with the ease and authority of a man showing us his old neighborhood. He seems to be on speaking terms with the many poets, chroniclers, rabbis, and clerics who lived and wrote in Prague, and allows us to read history through their lives and words . . . Reading Demetz is more like taking a graduate course with a master teacher: You know you are in the hands of an authority.”—Helen Epstein, The Boston Sunday Globe

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (April 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374281262
• ISBN-13: 978-0374281267
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,179,755 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #26 in Books > History > Europe > Slovakia
  • #72 in Books > History > Europe > Central Europe

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Insider's View of the Nazi Absorption of Czechoslovakia, June 17, 2009

By 

Ronald H. Clark (WASHINGTON, DC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Prague in Danger: The Years of German Occupation, 1939-45: Memories and History, Terror and Resistance, Theater and Jazz, Film and Poetry, Politics and War (Paperback)

This is quite an unique study of the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia in general, and Prague in particular, in that the author, a renown Yale professor of Germanic studies, lived through the events he describes as a child and young man. For those who have visited Prague, a truly remarkable city, it is nothing short of a miracle that so much of its pre-war architecture has survived until today in the Czech Republic. One bonus of the book is the author fills us in on the combined Czech-Jewish-German dimensions of the pre-way city [including Kafka of course]. Fortunately, the Allies did little damage to Prague, for it never was a central target. So much of the terrain the author describes still remains.

So the book proceeds on several tracks simultaneously. The primary focus are the historical events stemming from the Munich fiasco and the return of the Sudenten Germans to Germany, and the eventual "agreement" whereby the entire country became a German protectorate in 1939. In this regard, the author discusses resistance groups, anti-Jewish laws that were imposed, the German effort to subplant Czech cultural life, Reinhard Heydrich during his period as Protector until he was killed by British commandos (leading to the horrendous destruction of Lidice), Heyrich's successor Karl H. Frank, and the Prague uprisings at the end of the war and the displacement of the German authorities. In addition, the author educates us about one of the most fascinating places I visited in the Czech Republic, the former concentration camp at Terezin, where he lost his mother and several of his relatives were imprisoned. We hear relatively little about these historical episodes, and this important book helps restore the balance.

The other track, implemented through discrete sections inserted into the main text, is the author's own life and experiences. The reader really can begin to understand the effectiveness of German control of the country during this period from his own experiences. It is somewhat chilling stuff to read. The author also has first-hand experience with the de-Germanization retributory actions taken after the war and how one unfortunate result was to destroy much of Prague's important German language culture and university education. On a happier note, the author also recounts Prague jazz and movies during the war; interestingly, Goebbels in 1944 tried to shift most German film production to Prague due to the damage done to UFA by Allied bombing.

So, there is much important central European history included in the book. The author also has contributed an excellent 19 page bibliography, though most sources (as is to be expected) are in German and Czech, as well as an extensive index. To understand today we must understand the past, as the historians tell us. This excellent book helps us do just that.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Peril in Prague, May 24, 2008

By 

Christian Schlect (Yakima, Washington/USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Prague in Danger: The Years of German Occupation, 1939-45: Memories and History, Terror and Resistance, Theater and Jazz, Film and Poetry, Politics and War (Hardcover)

A selective history, interwoven with personal reminisces by the author, of a great European city under the thumb of the Nazis. Highly recommended.

Peter Demetz is both a cultural scholar and a witness. His compelling personal story, as a youthful civilian in and around wartime Prague, unfolds in scattered places throughout this book in beautiful, truthful, and understated prose.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, September 22, 2009

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etr - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Prague in Danger: The Years of German Occupation, 1939-45: Memories and History, Terror and Resistance, Theater and Jazz, Film and Poetry, Politics and War (Hardcover)

Writing style is all over the place and hard to follow. He jumps back and forth in time and mixes stories and facts in an odd way that is best described as choppy.