Showing titles in German

When Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their Children's and Household Tales in 1812, followed by a second volume in 1815, they had no idea that such stories as "Rapunzel", "Hansel and Gretel", and "Cinderella" would become the most celebrated in the world. Yet few people today are familiar with the majority of tales from the two early volumes, since in the next four decades the Grimms would publish six other editions, each extensively revised in content and style.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, read by Max Deacon and Dan Stevens. At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex...

Walter Benjamin was an icon of criticism, renowned for his insight on art, literature, and philosophy. This volume includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and Brecht’s epic theater. Illuminations also includes his penetrating study “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and his theses on the philosophy of history.

A stunningly beautiful youth and the city of Venice set the stage for Thomas Mann’s introspective examination of erotic love and philosophical wisdom.

Faust is a tragic play in two parts that reworks the late medieval myth of a brilliant but disillusioned scholar who makes a deal with the devil. Faust is considered by many to be Goethe's masterpiece and the greatest work of German literature. Part I sets out Faust’s despair, his pact with Mephistopheles, and his love for Gretchen. Part II deals with Faust’s life at court, the wooing and winning of Helen of Troy, and his purification and redemption.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe was a colossus of German literature and a true Renaissance man. A novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher, he wrote the first international bestseller, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and his epic masterpiece Faust is one of the most famous and celebrated dramas of all time.

Paul Celan (1920-70) is one of the best-known German poets of the Holocaust; many of his poems, admired for their spare, precise diction, deal directly with its stark themes. Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-73) is recognized as one of post-World War II German literature’s most important novelists, poets, and playwrights.

One frozen January morning at 5am, Inspector Wallander responds to what he believes is a routine call out. When he reaches the isolated farmhouse he discovers a bloodbath. An old man has been tortured and beaten to death, his wife lies barely alive beside his shattered body, both victims of a...

Rainer Maria Rilke has been called the most significant and compelling poet of spiritual experience of the 20th century. His exploration of the struggle between life and art and the supremacy of divine love over personal love has touched the hearts of men and women everywhere. The poems in this reading are from the selected poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell.

The poems of the Poetic Edda have waited a long time for a modern English translation that would do them justice. Here it is at last (Odin be praised!) and well worth the wait. These amazing texts from a 13th-century Icelandic manuscript are of huge historical, mythological, and literary importance, containing the lion's share of information that survives today about the gods and heroes of pre-Christian Scandinavians, their unique vision of the beginning and end of the world, etc.

This book is intended for readers who are looking for an introduction to the confusing diversity of German literature. The chronological order chosen is best suited for this purpose because, in contrast to topic- or genre-oriented ordering procedures, it shows a genesis and traces the genealogy of German literature. The fact that Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre would most likely have looked completely different without Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus can be shown most easily and effectively in the context of a chronologically presented journey through time.

Bodies are discovered in one of the excavated houses at a volcanic tourist attraction dubbed 'The Pompeii of the North'. Markus Magnusson, who was only a teenager when the volcano erupted, falls under suspicion and hires attorney Thora Gudmundsdottir to defend him—but when his childhood sweetheart is murdered, his case starts to look more difficult, and the locals seem oddly reluctant to back him up.

Concerned with questions of aging and mortality, A Second Space furthers 93-year-old Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz’s reputation as “arguably the greatest living poet” (Edward Hirsch, New York Times Book Review). “Milosz continues exploring his own version of the meditative lyric...

In seinem ersten Roman »Buddenbrooks« erzählt Thomas Mann nur wenig verschlüsselt die Geschichte seiner Familie und ihrer Stellung in der Vaterstadt Lübeck, soweit er sie nachvollziehen, in Einzelheiten überblicken konnte, ja sogar noch miterlebt hat. Verwandte, Honoratioren und markante Persönlichkeiten seiner Jugend werden integriert. Es ist die Geschichte des langsamen Niedergangs einer reichen Kaufmannsfamilie über vier Generationen hinweg. Gert Westphal liest diesen epochalen Roman in ganzer Länge.

Welche Rolle spielen die Klassiker heute? Rüdiger Safranski im Gespräch mit Michael Krüger und Martin Meyer - Live aufgezeichnet im Literaturhaus München. Goethe und Schiller, Hölderlin und Nietzsche: Wie steht es um die Klassiker? Wie bewähren sie sich in einer Zeit, die einstige Gewissheiten unserer Kultur radikal in Frage stellt? Welche Rolle spielen sie noch auf dem Theater, für die private Lektüre? Fragen, die man am besten Rüdiger Safranski stellt.

The Green Cockatoo is a short play set in a busy tavern on the night of the storming of the Bastille. Rich Parisian nobles come to watch some actors play at being rogues, thieves, and other criminals, but they quickly find reality and fantasy blending together in the most alarming of ways.

This play forms part of a tetralogy which focuses on one of Wedekind's obsessive themes: the destructive interplay between primal sexual urges and social convention. Each play revolves around a powerful young female character, who has the power to control and captivate men, but who in turn is destroyed by the exercise of that power. In this play, the dominant female is Fräulein Elfriede von Malchus, an idealistic crusader who visits a brothel operated by the cynical impresario Casti-Piani in order to rescue a young woman who has fallen into his clutches.

Meinem Mann war es wichtig, die Gedichte hörbar zu machen.“ Hildegard Kempowski. Zu seinem 80. Geburtstag, das hat Walter Kempowski kurz vor seinem Tod verfügt, soll der Gedichtzyklus "Langmut" erscheinen...

In this Very Short Introduction Ritchie Robertson covers the life and work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832): scientist, administrator, artist, art critic, and supreme literary writer in a vast variety of genres. Looking at Goethe's poetry, novels, and drama pieces, as well as his travel writing, autobiography, and essays on art and aesthetics, Robertson analyzes some of the key themes in his works: love, nature, religion, and tragedy.

The poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke addresses the issues of God, death, and "destructive time." Rilke tries to transform these problems into an inner world, what he calls "a whole inner world as if an angel, comprehending all space, were blind and looking into himself." Eminent author and translator Stephen Mitchell brings these ideas vividly to life in this new translation of Rilke's most transcendent works.