Germania [antikvár]

Introduction'Bound with chains of flowers'I have spent many years chewing over German history and this book is an entirely personal response to it. Dozens of visits to Germany and Austria form the core of Germania. It is an attempt to tell the story of the Germans starting from their notional origins in the sort of forests enjoyed by gnomes and heroes and ending at the time of Hitler's seizure of power, by way of my own thoughts about what I have seen, read and found interesting. Of course people travel for different reasons and what I find bewitching someone else may well find stupefying. If, for some, travel is a chance to admire Counter-Reformation altarpieces and for others a chance for a one-on-one roughhouse with a Dortmund transsexual, then these are possibly irreconcilable priorities - although they could intersect in some of the less bustling regional museums. It is therefore built into this book that I will bore or alienate some readers - but I hope not too many. Germania is designed to be an entertainment - although I hope the implications of some of what I am saying are reasonably thought-provoking.Germany is a sort of Dead Zone today. Its English-speaking visitors tend to be those with professional reasons for being there - soldiers, historians, builders. One of the amusements at Frankfurt airport is seeing baffled little clumps of British recent ex-students in special dark suits waiting for planes - given jobs by German banks purely because they are part of, in evolutionary terms, an alarmingly un-diverse band who had happened to study German at university, their career choice based on a facility with languages rather than being able to, say, count, flatter clients or take smart decisions.