Germania:
In Wayward Pursuit of Germans and their History
by Simon Winder
I have this in my iPad book library and the biggest thing it’s taught me so far is how absolutely pathetic my grade school history lessons were. The history of Europe in the middle ages I was taught, was exclusively that of England, and not really very much of that. We didn’t get to the rest of Europe until the Renaissance and even that didn’t cover much of Europe. I knew nothing of this thing called The Holy Roman Empire (which actually bore very little relationship to the Roman Empire of the Cesars) until I started reading this book.
I’m finding that individuals engaged in a personal exploration of their world tell a Much more satisfying tale of history then academics, although their accounts need to be paid attention to as well. That “street level view” of history often provides you with so many little telling details the high level view does not. Case in point being Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler, which just completely floored me as to how little I really knew about that period of time, despite having World War II history drummed into me throughout my childhood in school and on TV, in comic books and the movies.
In this case, Winder, an Englishman who became fascinated by Germany for somewhat different reasons then I did (I, after I reconnected with my first high school crush who is German, Winder after his father took his family to the Continent one vacation and he had his eyes opened to a whole ‘nother world), tells us about the history he meticulously, even obsessively uncovered for himself. And we sense that history in his retelling of it as one interesting or puzzling or amazing discovery after another after another after another. Text books so often, and tragically, kill that sense of learning something new as an adventure.
His book engages you. But also, and this is what makes a personal reading of history so worthwhile, you see how digging up the history of another land and its people brings him some insights on the history of his own native land for him. So here in this book I am getting insights into both German and British people and their histories and their relationship past and present to each other. A different teller would tell it a tad differently, but still authentically, and that would give you, the reader, a few more telling details that the high level histories would have overlooked, because that is not where they go.
I’m glad I stumbled on this book. Yes, sometimes Winder tries a little too hard to be humorous and it comes off just flippant. But better that then dry and boring. And he’s completely wrong about German food. At least what makes it across the ocean here is just wonderful. But I suppose that’s true of all local eats. The lousy stuff tends to get left back home.
And…gosh…I can’t believe I went through a pretty decent U.S. public school education and walked out still being so ignorant of so much history.
