 | The Turbulent World of Franz Goll: an ordinary Berliner writes the twentieth century Subjects: Göll Franz 1899–1984; Göll Franz 1899–1984 -- Diaries; Berlin (Germany) -- Biography; Men -- Germany -- Berlin -- Biography; German diaries -- Germany -- Berlin -- History and criticism; Germany -- History -- 20th century -- Biography; Germany -- Soci; In a time when public self-disclosure and blogging seem almost de rigueur, examining the diaries kept by a German everyman for the better part of the 20th century is both curious and refreshing. Born in 1899, Franz Goll chronicled everything from the years before the Weimar Republic to the Reagan era-telescoping between personal intimacies ("deeply entwined with his relations with women"), psychological analyses, family history (Goll wrote a complete memoir within his diary), and global change-without traveling much beyond his own borders. Though Fritzsche (Life and Death in the Third Reich) doesn't present extensive English translations of Goll's writings (the originals were impossibly voluminous), the quotations he includes are superb and include many of Goll's poems. He meticulously contextualizes them, convincingly argues the noteworthiness of their rediscovery, and reveals them as subjective attempts to fashion coherence out of increasingly violent times, as conflicting "ego documents" penned by a figure who decried his own passivity and seemed "caught endlessly between the fantasy worlds of poems and panties." Taken together, they are also a sobering record of modern life's impact. Goll's diaries, begun in 1916, when he was 17, and continued until his death in 1984, offer an invaluable and absorbing look at the preoccupations of a turbulent century. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. Fritzsche Peter : Peter Fritzsche is Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.. |
