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Travel Literature
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To get you in the mood for your trip, consider reading some of these titles written by travellers who have visited Germany before you:
A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain is a literary classic that includes keen and witty observations about Germany garnered by the author during two visits in the 1880s. Twain’s postscript ‘The Awful German Language’ is a hilarious read.
Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K Jerome, the sequel to the even funnier Three Men in a Boat, is a classic comic tale that follows three English gentlemen on their cycling trip through the Black Forest in the 1890s.
Deutschland: A Winter’s Tale by Heinrich Heine is a poetic travelogue about the author’s journey from Paris to Hamburg. It also packs a satirical punch and strong criticism of Germany’s mid-19th-century political landscape. It was censored immediately.
Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin are by Christopher Isherwood, who lived in Berlin during the Weimar years and whose stories inspired the movie Cabaret. The books brilliantly and often entertainingly chronicle the era’s decadence and despair. For a different take on the same era, also try What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920–1933 by Joseph Roth, a dynamic and insightful chronicler. Finally there is The Temple, an autobiographical novel by one of Britain’s most celebrated 20th-century poets, Stephen Spender. It is based on his travels to Germany in the late 1920s and his encounters with, among others, Isherwood.
In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield is a collection of satirical short stories written after Mansfield’s stay in Bavaria as a young woman. Her ability to inject meaning into vignettes makes it an especially worthwhile read.
The Bells in Their Silence: Travels Through Germany (2004) was written by Michael Gurra, an American literature professor who spent a year living and travelling around Germany in the early 1990s. This travelogue combines a literary tour of the country with impressionistic observations about daily life.
From Berlin is by Armando, a Dutch writer, artist and (since 1979) Berlin resident, who has turned his observations about the city and the people who lived through WWII into a collection of snappy vignettes – from humorous to touching to heart-wrenching.
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