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The Week in Germany: Culture

October 20, 2006

Bestsellers - a look at what Germany is reading

Joachim Fest was known primarily as Hitler's biographer, but he also had an enormous impact on the intellectual culture of the Federal Republic of Germany as an Editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He passed away this September, but not before finishing his Biography, "Not Me." A singular tale of a figure who both inherited and cultivated an outsider identity from his early boyhood, the memoir picks up when Fest's father was dismissed from his job as a civil servant by the Nazi's for his involvement with the Reichsbanner, an organization of World War I veterans who sought to protect the fragile Weimar Republic from its political enemies on the far right and left.

Shaped by this experience of exclusion and the resulting poverty his family faced, Fest developed a sense of resistance to the base and common conformity that prevailed under the Nazis, which was reinforced by his status as a member of the educated bourgeoisie and a Catholic in Protestant Prussia. Eventually, Fest was expelled from the Leibniz Gymnasium for scrawling a caricature of Hitler into a desk.

When Fest received an offer to compose radio broadcasts on the recent history of Germany after the war, his father objected, calling the Nazis a "gutter topic" not worthy of scholarly attention. Despite his father's advice, Fest became intensively occupied with the history of National Socialism for the rest of his career. His biography of Hitler has become a standard work.

Author, title, English title, and publisher follow. (If an English title is unavailable, a translation will be provided).

FICTION

Author		German Title	English title	Publisher
1.	Daniel Kehlmann	Die Vermessung der Welt	Measurement of the World*	Rowohlt
2.	Charlotte Link	Das Echo der Schuld	The Echo of Guilt*	Blanvalet
3.	Günter Grass	Beim Häuten der Zwiebel	Peeling the Onion*	Steidl
4.	Susanne Fröhlich	Treuepunkte	Points for Faithfulness*	W. Krüger
5.	Francios Lelord	Hector und die Entdeckung der Zeit	Hector and the Discovery of time*	Hanser
6.	Ildikó von Kürthy	Höhenrausch	Vertigo*	Wunderlich
7.	Kathy Reichs	Hals über Kopf	Break No Bones	Blessing
4.	Tommy Jaud	Resturlaub	Vacation Days Left*	Scherz
9.	Philip Roth	Jedermann	Everyman	Hanser
10.	Katharina Hacker	Die Habenichtse	The Have Nots*	Suhrkamp

NONFICTION

Author		German Title	English title	Publisher
1.	Hape Kerkeling	Ich bin dann mal weg	I'm Gone a While*	Malik
2.	Joachim Fest	Ich Nicht	Not Me*	Rowohlt
3.	Bernhard Bueb	Lob Der Disziplin	In Praise of Discipline*	List
4.	Dietrich Grönemeyer	Lebe mit Herz und Seele - Sieben Haltungen zur Lebenskunst	Live with Heart and Soul - Seven Takes on the Art of Life*	Herder
5.	Frank McCourt	Tag und Nacht und auch im Sommer	Teacher Man	Luchterhand
6.	Henryk M. Broder	Hurra, wir kapitulieren	Hurray, we are capitulating*	WJS
7.	Sabine Kuegler	Ruf Des Dschungels	Call of the Jungle*	Droemer
8.	Eva Herman	Das Eva-Prinzip - Für eine neue Weiblichkeit	The Eve Principle - For a New Femininity*	Pendo
9.	Gabor Steingart	Weltkrieg um Wohlstand - Wie Macht und Reichtum neu verteilt werden	World War for Wealth - How Power and Wealth are being Redistributed*	Piper
10.	Paul Kirchhof	Das Gesetz der Hydra. Gebt den Bürgern ihren Staat zurück	The Law of the Hydra. Give the Citizens their State Back*	Droemer

*These books were not originally English-language books or have not yet been translated into English

Der Spiegel's bestseller list is compiled by an electronic data collection system that surveys the weekly sales of 250 book stores in Germany. It is divided into fiction and nonfiction, and does not include paperbacks, special editions, reference works, guidebooks, and children's books.

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Bestsellers from the week of October 6, 2006

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