Dreams & Delusions

by Fritz Stern

Book Overview

This highly praised collection of essays by eminent historian Fritz Stern ponders the monumental promise and catastrophe of twentieth-century German history. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394559959
• ISBN13: 9780394559957
• Release Date: September 1987
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 331 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.1" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Emigrants and Returners: Einstein, Haber, Reuter. And was AH an atheist?

Reflections on German history of the 20th century, from Kaiser Wilhelm to the years immediately preceding the re-unification, by a liberal Columbia historian with the background of a Jewish German refugee. For me the core of the book, apart from the essay on the temptations of nazi-ism for normal people, is the trio of bio essays on 3 emigrants, only one of whom returned and made his name 'at home'. Einstein is well known as a non-conformist, a pacifist, a complex genius with his own political mind. He was a double emigrant, literally, insofar as he had already left Germany for Switzerland as a very young man, because he found life and schooling there unbearable. What lured him back after some years was the appeal of the great science center of Berlin. He got there just in time for WW1. He was never comfortable outside his inner circle of science friends. He left later and he never came back. Fritz Haber is nowadays not so well known outside science and chemical industry. He was the prototype of the assimilated Jew who made a deal with power and became the German Oppenheimer of WW1. Ironically and tragically, the Nazis didn't give a damn for his merits for the fatherland, forced him out of his leading position in the science world and into exile, where he died within a year after the Machtergreifung, while in Switzerland in transit from the UK to Palestine. Reuter was a different kind of man: a prodigal son from a well to do bourgeois family, he became a socialist, later a social democrat, had to emigrate, spent his exile in Turkey, and came back to become a leader of the SPD after the war. His main claim for fame is his role in the Berlin Air Bridge, while he was Berlin Mayor. He was the mentor of Willy Brandt, another returner from exile, he in Norway and Sweden. (Since Brandt is my main hero in the post war Germany, Reuter collected plenty of merit points there.) The essay on why 33 happened has a few interesting paras on Hitler's religion. This is interesting because during last year's debates over Dawkins/Hitchens/Harris, some claimed that Hitler was a proof of the evil of atheism. Well, I think he hardly was, though he surely was not a good Austrian Catholic, as he should have been, and for sure on the bottom line his work was un-Christian, but was he an atheist? Absolutely and emphatically: no! Stern later was awarded one of Germany's highest literary prizes for his books on German history, the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels, sort of the Nobel Peace Prize for writers. Well earned.

This is a brilliant, original work of history.

Stern is almost unique in his grasp of European and German history, from Rilke to Rommell. He is one of the best historians I have ever read, on any subject

A brilliant, original book

Stern has a uniquely personal grasp of the rise of the Nazis -- he himself was a refugee -- yet his insight and his presentation is grounded in work of a brilliant and original historian. Stern cites extensively from Eintstein , Fritz Haber, and other prominent intellectuals of the time. He has a deep love and sympathy for Germany. The ramifications of his book go far beyond the time and country that is his subject. I have rarely read a better book, on any subject.