Thomas Mann

Jefferson S. Chase

Thomas Mann is widely acknowledged as the greatest German novelist of this century.

Death in Venice and Other Stories

Annotation Takes a cross-disciplinary approach to an examination of , a type of distinctively Jewish humor, written in German but deemed antithetical to the values of Mainstream German-language society of the 19th century. Focusing on the period from 1820 to 1850, Chase emphasizes a dual analysis of , both as stereotype and strategy, stressing throughout the importance of nonessentialism in the discussion of Jewish humor and 19th century German reactions to it. He discusses the humor itself and its role in identity issues, followed by detailed coverage of three Jewish humorists: Moritz Gottlieb Saphir, Ludwig B:orne, and Heinrich Heine. He then assesses the role of in literary history, discusses the "core myth" of German literary history, and evaluates the adaptation of the myth over time. A conclusion is followed by translations of the three humorists' writings. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

The Development of "Jewish Humor" in 19th Century German Culture

Inciting Laughter

Harald Welzer

Sönke Neitzel

The authors discovered 150,000 pages of transcriptions of secretly recorded conversations among German prisoners of war, of which approximately one third were made in P.O.W. camps in Britain, another cache was made by bugging prisoners in the Mediterranean theatre of the war (North Africa, Malta, Italy) and the remainder comes from the bugging of prisoners of war in the USA. These transcriptions are thus unmediated, uncensored, and unselfconsciously candid and that is what gives this book its historical significance and extraordinary impact. What emerges from these transcriptions and within these pages is a shocking and profoundly illuminating portrait of the typical German soldier of the time: their thoughts, their feelings and their ideologies. SOLDATEN is a book that explodes many of the myths that we hold on to about Germany and its people during the War.

Jefferson S. Chase

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