Useful links and tips

Goethezeitportal

Information about Goethe and the art and culture of his time, a project by scholars at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

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Theodor Fontane

When Henri Théodore Fontane was born in Neuruppin in 1819, his Huguenot family had already lived in the Margraviate of Brandenburg for several generations. In 1849, he gave up the profession of pharmacist he had learned and established himself as a journalist and freelance writer. He was a war correspondent, travel writer, theatre critic, and author of novels. He died in Berlin in 1898. Entdecken Sie Geschichten über Fontanes Leben, Arbeitsweise und Werk auf dem Informationsportal des Hauses der Brandenburgisch-Preußischen Geschichte in Potsdam. Basis sind die beiden Fontane-Ausstellungen im Jahr 2019.  / “Whether it is red brick or stony grey, you transfigure it, Havel, in your blue.” Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg, volume 3, Havelland, 1873

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Kurt Tucholsky

Kurt Tucholsky, born in Berlin in 1890, was a pacifist and humanist, an important writer, and a journalist in the Weimar Republic, who warned early on against the rise of the political right. He published most of his texts under the pseudonyms of Ignaz Wrobel, Kaspar Hauser, Peter Panter, and Theobald Tiger. In 1929 he went into exile in Sweden and from there continued to criticise developments in Germany. He died in Sweden following an overdose of painkillers in 1935. “Language is a weapon. Keep it sharp.” Castle Gripsholm. A Summer Story is the title of a story he published in 1931. This cheerful yet melancholy love story is one of his most famous works and recalls his 1912 debut novel Rheinsberg: A Storybook for Lovers. “Anyone can manage to be happy for a brief time. A brief happiness: none other is conceivable.”

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Hans Fallada

Als Rudolf Ditzen 1893 in Greifswald geboren, gestorben 1947 in Berlin, Schriftsteller im Stil der „Neuen Sachlichkeit”, große Erfolge mit gesellschaftskritischen Themen „Kleiner Mann – was nun”.  Sein Roman „Jeder stirbt für sich allein” (1947) über deutschen Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus ist 2010 neu übersetzt erfolgreich in den USA und Großbritannien.

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Herta Müller

Born in Nițchidorf, Romania, in 1953, she was part of the German minority as a Banat Swabians, and emigrated to Germany in 1987. A Germanist and author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009. Confronting dictatorships and the importance of language are her key themes.

“Freedom is the opposite of despotism. It is how a writer resists oppression using language.” A eulogy to Herta Müller by Caroline Fetscher, Der Tagesspiegel, 28 March 2010.

“Each language has different eyes sitting inside its words.”
Herta Müller in conversation at the 2018 Salon Sophie Charlotte organised by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

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Lyrikline

Project run by the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin on poetry collections read by their authors, e.g. Otto’s Pug, Ernst Jandl, Austrian lyricist (1925 -2000)

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German lyric poetry

Over 1,400 poems by 112 German-language authors to listen to.

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German Digital Library

The German Digital Library (DDG) is a project jointly operated by federal, state, and local government in Germany. As a central national portal, its goal is to give everyone free internet-based access to Germany’s cultural and scientific heritage, i.e. to millions of books, archival materials, images, sculptures, pieces of music and other audio documents, films, and sheet music. 

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Project Gutenberg

Launched in 1994, Project Gutenberg-DE offers a large German-language full-text literature collection free of charge.