New Books in German Studies

Wings of Desire (1987) is a film that stays with the viewer; part of how it works is to flood the viewer’s mind with images that seem, at first, disconnected but which also take root and then resurface a day or week later when one isn’t suspecting to think about a trapeze artist or Peter Falk. More like a painting than a film, Wings of Desire flips the usual extolling of the spiritual world over the material one and asks what our lives could be like if we could see the material world as an angel. It’s a film universally loved for reasons that are difficult to articulate but certainly strong. The Pixels of Paul Cezanne is a 2018 collection of essays by Wim Wenders which he presents his observations and reflections on the fellow artists who have influenced, shaped and inspired him. Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at [email protected] with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

Refugees from Nazism to Britain in Trade, Industry, and Engineering (Brill, 2025) is a book in German Studies that explores the intricacies and impacts of refugees on British industry and engineering, through which new technology, business ideas, and strategies were imported to Britain. The book has fifteen chapters, detailing individual stories of fifteen different contributors, including Tony Morgan, whose contribution is a survey of the impact of refugees on the social and domestic life in Britain. Refugees’ contributions in this regard include various spheres of activity, such as making toasters and organising group travels. Apart from Morgan’s contributions, Anna Nyburg notes the importance of each individual story in understanding the broader impact of refugees on trade, industry and engineering. The book emphasises the importance of mobility and development in society, and how this was facilitated by the efforts of the German refugees in Britain. Among such efforts was the development of a corrosion-resistant substance by Shell. The book also highlights wartime challenges faced by refugees during the Second World War, including bombing and shortages. The book emphasises that the refugees’ experiences are same as the challenges of the British population, such as rationing and material shortages. The book reflects on how many refugees diversified their businesses to contribute to the British war effort, such as producing parachute silk. As part of the war experiences of the refugees, the book also accounts for the alien internment of refugees in Britain. Mariam Olugbodi is a university teacher and a writer, she is the author of the monograph titled: Stylistic Features in the 2011 and 2012 Final Matches Commentaries in the UEFA Champions League, published by Grin Verlag. Mariam’s greatest dream is seeing a world where knowledge is accessible to all. She does this through her volunteering roles on open knowledge platforms as a host and an editor. As part of her effort to maintain inclusion and diversity in knowledge transmission, she volunteers as a teacher in crises contexts and a podcast host on NBN. Learn more and connect with Mariam through her social links @ (22) Olugbodi Mariam | LinkedIn, Mariam Olugbodi (0000-0001-5027-6644) - ORCID and User:Margob28 - Meta Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

Patricia Anne Simpson joins Jana Byars to talk about Early Modern Women's Work: Kinship, Community, and Social Justice (Routledge, 2025). The book examines the contributions of female writers, artists, scientists, religious leaders, and patrons who engaged in entrepreneurial, intellectual, and emotional labor in German-speaking Europe. Through individual and collective authorship, the women analyzed in this study assert a claim to kinship and community, often beyond the hegemonic, heteronormative relationships to family, religion, and monarch. The contributions of early modern women to the construction of productive work spaces and the establishment of intellectual and actual communities are often overlooked or underestimated in scholarship on this period. This book serves as a cultural corrective to suppositions of gender-coded work, because alongside the dominant history of the private sphere as a feminine domain, a counter-narrative emerges with collective authorship. Despite the disparities in their biographies, the women whose work Simpson foregrounds highlight a range of early modern concerns, primarily but not exclusively in German-speaking Europe. These include debates about women's education and erudition; migration and displacement in search of religious or professional freedom; a persistent but varied discourse about female authorship and creative agency; and the assertion of subjectivity against the violent, fractious history of the Thirty Years' War and beyond. This book will be an ideal resource for students, scholars, and all those interested in German and European studies, women and gender studies, and the history of early modern work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

An interview with Sebastian Truskolaski

In the West, World War II is commonly understood as the Allies’ struggle against Nazism. Often elided, if not simply forgotten, is the Soviet Union’s crucial role in that fight. With this book, acclaimed historian Jochen Hellbeck rectifies this omission by relocating the ideological core of the conflict. It was not the Western powers but Communist Russia that Nazi Germany viewed as an existential threat—in fact, “World Enemy No. 1.” Jewish revolutionaries, the Nazis believed, had seized power in 1917 and were preparing the Soviet state to destroy Germany and the world. And so, on June 22, 1941, a German army of three million attacked the Soviet Union to exterminate “Judeo-Bolshevism,” Hitler’s cardinal obsession. While Europe’s Jews were expelled, exiled, and persecuted by the Nazis, Soviet Jews were immediately slated for elimination. The Soviet lands thus became ground zero for systematic extermination, which was only later extended to all Jews, igniting the Holocaust.Hellbeck plumbs newly declassified archives and previously undiscovered sources—testimonies, diaries, and dispatches from soldiers and civilians, Soviet and German—to offer a unique history that takes account of both sides. He reconstructs the years leading up to the war when “Europe against Bolshevism” was the Nazis’ most fervid rallying cry, and documents their annihilatory ambitions on the battlegrounds in the East. Widely disseminated accounts of German atrocities mobilized millions of Soviet citizens to join a people’s war against the hated invaders. Hellbeck tracks the desire for revenge that drove the Red Army on its path of reconquest, an advance that further inflamed the belief in a murderous “Bolshevik Jew,” stirring the Germans to fight to the bitter end. Recounted here in vivid detail are the events at Babi Yar, the Battle of Stalingrad, the liberation of the concentration camps, and the arrival of the Red Army in the Nazi capital. Finally, Hellbeck reckons with the West’s persistent disregard of the Soviet Union’s incalculable contribution to winning the war—and its sacrifice of twenty-six million citizens—as anti-communism and the Cold War turned erstwhile allies into mortal enemies.Hellbeck’s eye-opening work is an astonishing new reading of both the Second World War and how its history has been told. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies