Suhrkamp Insel

Artur Klinau

Minsk

Anyone arriving in Minsk for the first time is likely to be confused and overwhelmed by the enormous boulevards, the endless parks downtown, and the numerous places adorned with curious décor.

Alexander Kluge

The Air Raid on Halberstadt on 8 April 1945

Alexander Kluge’s account The Air Raid on Halberstadt on 8 April 1945 first appeared in 1977. Exactly twenty years later, it became one of the most important points of reference in that discussion which freed the air war on German cities and the civilian population from being anathema. Such a literary depiction of the air raids and their effects were not entirely without precedent, but Kluge was the first to give a cool, analytical presentation of the work of destruction and from the bowels of the inferno probe that remainder of autonomy and rationality which allowed the connections of the catastrophe as well as potential ways out to appear.

Claus Leggewie

Anti-Europeans

The Greek crisis and the lack of willingness to act when dealing with refugees have shown clearly that the European Union is troubled. Additionally, there are more and more voices of various degrees of provenance that attack Europe and question European values: identitarians like the mass murderer Anders Breivik, jihadists like the Syrian Abu Musab al-Suri, »Eurasians« like Putin-advisor Alexander Dugin, but also some left-wing populists associated with Syriza and Podemos.

Ulrich Menzel

The Order of the World

The order of the world is one of the major problems that nations find themselves confronted with. Who creates order in the anarchy of the international system if the relationships between nations become increasingly dense and the need for an international order is growing as a consequence of globalization?

Bodo Mrozek

Youth – Pop – Culture

Clamorous sounds, unruly behavior, and colorful fashions: the sonic vocabulary used by contemporaries to describe the new youth scene in the mid-20th century mark a cultural dividing point. Aesthetic conflicts culminated in street riots and produced police measures, censorship, and laws. Spectacular court cases against youths led to negative social clichés of male urban youth: the American juvenile delinquent, the British teddy boy, the French blouson noir and the German halbstarke.

Heiner Müller

»Not Enough for Everyone«

The reception of the works by this author of poetry and prose, director of plays and theatres has changed: while in the early nineties, some considered his statements to be not in keeping with the times, the »lover of catastrophes« is now considered an oracle: »One needn’t worry about the anti-capitalist alternatives, because capitalism has no other enemies than itself now. […] This holds the promise of an interesting development. Connected to poverty and suffering in many parts of the world, to the explosion of population, to ecological catastrophes. One needn’t worry about utopias, only about apocalypses, if that.« This is what Müller said in 1991 – ten years before 9/11, sixteen years before the financial crisis.

Jan-Werner Müller

Where Europe Ends

»As far as democracy and the rule of law are concerned, Europe shouldn’t leave anything to chance.«

Norman M. Naimark

Stalin’s Genocides

Many millions of innocent people died under Stalin’s rule. They were shot, starved or died during imprisonment or exile. In his extended essay, Norman M. Naimark narrates the devastating stories of systematic destruction.

Uwe Nettelbeck

Trials

During the 1960s, the German Federal Republic is living through its most radical change to date: traditional values lose their cogency, the bourgeois family only represents constraint to many people, students bring their protest from the universities onto the streets, and the first RAF-generation forms itself. As a court reporter for DIE ZEIT, Uwe Nettelbeck is in the thick of it. He reports on common fates, but also on some of the most spectacular trials in post-war Germany, such as that of the »funfair killer« Jürgen Bartsch, or the Arsonist-Trial against Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and others in Frankfurt.

Volker Perthes

The End of the Middle East As We Know It

In many ways, the area between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf has ceased to be the »Middle East we know« – or believed to know. We cannot foresee future developments in the area, but can definitely try to identify relevant trends. The biggest trend here seems to be the disintegration of regional order – without anyone there to restore it.

Oliver Polak

Stop hating Jews

Oliver Polak is a well known German-Jewish stand up comedian. In this autobiographical book he describes the recent rise of antisemitism in Europe from his own personal perspective. And it is not about the encounter with the easy to identify, Doc Martens wearing skinhead.

Alois Prinz

Teresa of Avila

»An important, unique, extremely human and attractive person,« Pope Paul VI called her when recognizing Teresa of Ávila as the first woman »Teacher of the Church« in 1970.

Doron Rabinovici

Instan­zen der Ohnmac­­ht

The question of the collaboration of Jews with the Nazi regime during the persecution and extermination of European Jewry is one of the most difficult and sensitive issues surrounding the Holocaust. How could people be forced to cooperate in their own destruction? Why would they help the Nazi authorities round up their own people for deportation, manage the 'collection points' and supervise the people being deported until the last moment?

Erich Rathfelder

Kosovo

Kosovo, the autonomous province in former Yugoslavia fought over by the Albanians and Serbs, declared its independence in 2008 despite Serbian opposition.

Martin Reichert

The Capsule

»Don’t give AIDS a chance« – almost every German will recognise the slogan of this 1987 campaign from the Federal Centre for Health Education. »Truvada« was the name of the wonder drug that was supposed to fulfil this call to arms. The capsule, which for some time had already been prescribed to those infected with HIV, in the meantime is also used for its prevention. What the majority of Germans remain unaware of, however, is the pain and isolation that many people had to experience prior to AIDS education and prevention as well as the development of effective medicines.

Christoph Ribbat

Germany for a Season

Only one »foreigner« per team: in 1977 that’s the limit in the Federal Basketball League. The foreigner in Göttingen is named Wilbert Olinde and has just arrived from Los Angeles. The Germans are surprised by him, and he in turn is surprised by the Germans. He only intends to stay for a year. But then things turn out quite differently indeed.

Martin Rupps

The Survivors of Mogadishu

»And who else has had to stare down the barrel of a gun, at two hand grenades, and – in the case of the ultimatums – two bombs, twenty-four hours a day for five days and five nights, who else was there to witness the brutal abuse of women, mock executions, and a person kneeling with his hands in the air being shot point blank!« Karl Hanke, Passenger

Carlo Strenger

Israel

Israel: Torn between Democracy and Theocracy

Philipp Ther

Europe After 1989

In 2014, Europe is in the grip of concerns and crises that have caused the optimism of 1989’s new beginnings to fade into distant memory. The New Order on the Old Continent explores correlations between the current situation in Europe and the new dawn arising after the fall of the Iron Curtain by shedding a different light on the end of communism, the revolutions of 1989-91 and the subsequent political and social transformations that gave rise to the »new Europe«. Current transformations are analyzed, not within the confines of Eastern Europe, but as a phenomenon affecting all EU Member States.

Bruno E. Werner

The Slave Ship

Dispassionate and, for that very reason, moving: a newspaper editor documents how the German intelligentsia – academics and artists, novelists and editor-in-chiefs – cringe and writhe following the Nazi’s seizure of power, but also how they create space to continue their pursuit of a good life and a moral good. In the end, however, they too are helpless in the face of the dictatorship. The narrative arc spans from the day of the Nazi’s seizure of power through the bombings of Berlin and Dresden and up to capitulation.