Years after reading Mr. Winders subsequent book, Danubia, I finally located a copy of Germania. Winder is a quirky person and this book is at times hilarious, at other times horrific and sometimes hateful about Germans. I coud not stop reading. Now I have to read the third book in this group, Lotharingia. ( )

A book about German history that doesn't take itself too seriously, and on the whole, focuses on the local and specific rather than any broad lines, reflecting the reality of German-speaking lands well up into the 19th century, drawing on the author's personal experiences and travelling. ( )

UPDATE: I picked this book back up in 2021, got about 150 pages into it, then got distracted by other books and sort of forgot that I was reading it. Not a great endorsement for a book. I'm marking it as abandoned and moving it from the pile of stuff on the end table back to its place on the bookshelf; my instinct is to toss it out but I'll keep it for awhile and see if the mood strikes me again.

Gave this a start in June 2018, and then moved it back to my to-read list. While I enjoyed the writing, my knowledge of German history is too weak to follow along. I plan to read a more cut-and-dry history of the nation in order to get the basic facts down, and then come back to this book for the fun stuff.

In this delightful romp through German culture and history, Simon Winder does two unexpected things: admits that he can’t speak German; and ends the narrative in 1933. Winder overcomes these potentially fatal handicaps, and his book Germania gives a solid overview of the history and culture of the Germans.

Winder, an Englishman and frequent traveller to Germany, naturally takes a travelogue approach. It’s a personal story of discovery as much as anything. I was put in mind of A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson, or Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz (both of which I also thoroughly enjoyed). There is humour throughout, but Winder also skilfully includes the serious side of things, and even hints at the dark side of German history. His choice to end the narrative when he does allows him to only ever hint at *that* dark part of the country’s history.

The great success of this book is that it brings all the incredible stories of German history to light for English-speakers in an accessible and enjoyable book.

Winder has actually done a “central European” trilogy, and I must get on to the other two volumes, which deal with the former Habsburg Empire and the Benelux nations respectively. ( )

Germany. The industrial and economic behemoth of the modern Europe. But it hasn’t always been that way. In this book Winder takes us way back into Germanys past, as far as the Romans even, before bringing up to the relatively modern age. The Germany of this age was a frontier of the Roman empire, similar to the far north of England; over the line were the barbarians. There is still architecture from those days too, that has survived countless wars and skirmishes.

Until relatively recently, 1871 in fact, Germany was a patchwork of princedoms, mini states and bigger empires, some really tiny too. Sometimes they all got along, but frequently they didn’t. As he travels around the country he reveals snippets of history about the places he visits. There are tales of battles, disputes, religious leaders whose remains were displayed in gibbets around the town (the gibbets are still there too), of aristocrat princes and barons and the castles and cathedrals that they built.

He does avoid recent World War 2 history, partly because the history that the Germans prefer is prior to that too, and also that they are countless other books on that conflict. He does brush gently against it, looking at the events that lead to Hitler and the Nazis seizing power in the 1930’s.

I was quite looking forward to this one, as I had enjoyed reading another of his called Danubia. That book was interesting, and also witty and fairly often really funny. Sadly this one didn’t seem to have that lighter humour that it really needed to lift it. IT is stuffed full of fact and anecdotes, and come across as being fairly well researched. Worth reading if you have a fascination with Germany, but may not be for everyone. 2.5 stars ( )