by finn ballard | Oct 15, 2020 | Blog
This month, I would like to step back from our prevalent twentieth-century themes and recommend to you ‘Measuring the World’ by Daniel Kehlmann. In case a narrative of German mathematician Alexander von Humboldt’s efforts to circumnavigate much of...
by finn ballard | Oct 8, 2020 | Blog
This month, I am thinking of Elise and Otto Hampel, a working-class couple who lived on Amsterdamer Strasse in the Northern district of Wedding. Increasingly disillusioned with life in Germany under Nazism, they began in 1940 to write postcards denouncing Hitler and...
by finn ballard | Oct 1, 2020 | Blog
This month, it has to be ‘The Death of Adolf Hitler: The Final Word’ by Jean-Christoph Brisard and Lana Parshina, which you might well read in one sitting. At last the myths surrounding Hitler’s suicide – and his corpse – are dispelled in...
by finn ballard | Sep 24, 2020 | Blog
This month, let’s think about Julius Leber (born in 1891, executed on January 5th 1945). Leber worked as a journalist and teacher before volunteering for military service. Wounded during WWI, he remained in the German Army until 1920, when he resigned in the...
by finn ballard | Sep 17, 2020 | Blog
This month, I’d like to recommend ‘A Nazi in the Family’ by Derek Niemann. From the first sentences – the author’s memories of wintertime gingerbread and other German delicacies – this story of a very Scottish family with Nazi...
