🍁🌿No, it’s not autumn. It’s #spring, but the leaves are red and the wind blows strongly all day long. It has snowed in the mountains, and the air is crisp and lively.
An atmosphere worthy of Sibylla.
So I decided to dedicate my late-#March lesson to the German Baroque #poetess Sibylla Schwarz.

#poetry #youtubeposting #multimedia #videolessons #spring #germanliterature #italiantranslation #Sibyl #italianpoetry #march #april

http://youtube.com/post/UgkxPlOdxsYfwuRV0QCC0zbvzvOFYuiPQjP2?si=J0Mn8q1ImhbdSPH-

Poetry Reading in Honor of Sibylla Schwarz

Lettura poetica per Sibylla Schwarz

#Sibyl #poetry #readings #youtubeshorts #youtube #translation #books #graphicnovel #baroque #germanliterature #videolessons

https://youtube.com/watch?v=sffsU8ljenc&is=GAufgLkDvYK2bQMD

All sorts of things are wrong in my life, but all sorts of things are right too.

I can share an example of the latter. As I sit with a glass of White Horse, I am trying to decide which of these two books to read next:

Washington Irving -- Tales of the Alhambra

Franz Werfel -- The Forty Days of Musa Dagh

I'm lucky to be faced with such a choice.

#Books #TalesOfTheAlhambra #WashingtonIrving #AmericanLiterature #FranzWerfel #TheFortyDaysOfMusaDagh #GermanLiterature

"Effingers" by Gabriele Tergit is a novel well worth your time if you enjoy family sagas, have any interest in Germany between Bismarck and Hitler, or want to immerse yourself in the diverse lives of the German Jewish bourgeoisie prior to their uprooting and destruction.

"Effingers" is also a Berlin novel, one that provides a quite different picture of the city than that displayed in "Berlin Alexanderplatz". That contrast stems from the differing class settings of the two novels.

Towards the end of the novel, Zionism as an ideology and settlement in Mandatory Palestine as possible option emerge as themes . Those looking for straightforward prefiguring of their own beliefs on these matters will be disappointed, but those seeking a novel's sensitive treatment of the uncertainties, hopes, and fears of individuals and families under pressure will be rewarded.

#Books #Novels #Effingers #GabrieleTergit #GermanLiterature #20thCenturyLiterature #JewishLiterature

https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/deutsch/tergitg2.htm

I've recently finished Gabriele Tergit's 1931 "Käsebier Takes Berlin" (Käsebier erobert den Kurfürstendamm) in Sophie Duvernoy's translation.

I've got mixed feelings about the novel.

On the one hand, the organization of the narrative struck me as clumsy both on a large scale and in certain details. Overall, the journalistic satire that dominates the first half does not fit well with the property speculation plot salient in the second half. At times, the abundance of characters combines with some minimal attribution of dialogue to make parts of the novel difficult to follow. I can imagine impatient readers throwing the book aside.

Yet one should resist that impatient impulse, since the novel will reward the reader who perseveres. Anybody interested in Weimar Germany in general and Berlin in particular will profit from a reading. The flip side of the abundance of characters is Tergit's multiple snapshots of the cityscapes, media, interiors, outfits, and consumer goods as the 30s begin in Berlin. This aspect of the novel invites a contrast and compare exercise with "Berlin Alexanderplatz".

Tergit's background as a journalist helped her in both in the satire of the press and also in her acute observation of social climbing and pretension. This perspicacity coupled with her talent as a maker of fiction to create the loathsome Willi Frächter. This character will not only stick in the memory but, sadly, also be all too recognizable to observers of contemporary culture.

Readers today will inevitably have the coming of Hitler in mind as the novel unfolds. Of course, the journalists' mocking use of "Heil und Sieg und fette Beute", translated as "Heil and Sieg and catch a fat one", is now tinged with an irony that Tergit could not have grasped at the time of publication, although only two years later she fled Germany after a narrow escape from the thugs of the SA.

Today, we might do well to consider the parallels between the media of our own day and Frächter's gleeful transformation of the "Berliner Rundschau":

>> What you call dumbing down, Mr. Miermann, I call blooming. <<

I'm going to give Tergit's 1951 family saga "The Effingers" a try. The idea of a "Jewish 'Buddenbrooks' " I find hard to resist. I'm not expecting her to be another Thomas Mann, but it's not unreasonable to hope that her novelist's technique had developed in the two decades following "Käsebier Takes Berlin".

#Books #Bookstodon #GabrieleTergit #KäsebierTakesBerlin #KäsebierErobertDenKurfürstendamm
#Fiction #Novel #GermanLiterature #Berlin #20thCenturyLiterature #1930sLiterature #WeimarRepublic #Newspapers #Press #Media #Journalism

https://www.nyrb.com/products/kasebier-takes-berlin