Bookworld
The German Non-Fiction Market in 2024
An overall political climate marked by acute crises and war as well as a number of key anniversaries shaped the German non-fiction market in 2024.
by Catherine Newmark
The year began somewhat philosophically in the run-up to the 300th birthday of Immanuel Kant (with Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, no less, holding a celebratory speech in which he personally resisted Russian attempts to appropriate the Königsberg-born Enlightenment thinker as one of their own). Omri Boehm and Daniel Kehlmann carried on a reader-friendly conversation about the indisputably most important German philosopher of all times in Der bestirnte Himmel über mir. Ein Gespräch über Kant (“The Starry Skies Above Me: A Conversation about Kant,” published by Propyläen). There was also a wealth of useful new introductory works, e.g., Claudia Blöser’s pleasantly concise Immanuel Kant. Wissenswertes über Leben und Wirken des großen Philosophen (“Immanuel Kant: Things Worth Knowing about the Life and Work of a Great Philosopher,” published by Reclam), or Marcus Willaschek’s very readable and enriching Kant. Die Revolution des Denkens (“Kant: The Revolution of Thought,” published by C.H. Beck), which came out in the fall of 2023.
As in the previous year, there were also attempts to understand an unabatedly aggressive Russia – less so, of course, because of it claims to Kant than in light of its designs on Ukraine – whether by veteran journalists such as Sabine Adler (Was wird aus Russland? Über eine Nation zwischen Krieg und Selbstzerstörung / “What Will Become of Russia? A Nation Poised Between War and Self-Destruction,” Ch. Links) or Julian Hans (Kinder der Gewalt. Ein Portrait Russlands in fünf Verbrechen<(i> / “Children of Violence: A Portrait of Russia in Five Crimes,” C.H. Beck), or by academic historian and Russia expert Jörg Baberowski, who attempts in more than a thousand pages to depict the history and continuity of autocratic traditions (Der sterbliche Gott. Macht und Herrschaft im Zarenreich / “The Mortal God: Power and Rule in Tsarist Russia,” also published by C.H. Beck).
Already early in the year, publishers reacted quickly and massively to the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, first by republishing some relevant classics (Jean Améry: Der neue Antisemitismus / “The New Antisemitism,” Klett-Cotta; Theodor W. Adorno: Zur Bekämpfung des Antisemitismus heute / “Fighting Anti-Semitism Today,” Suhrkamp), followed by a multitude of present-day analyses of anti-Semitism (Michael Wolffsohn: Nie wieder? Schon wieder! Alter und neuer Antisemitismus / “Never Again? Once Again! Old and New Anti-Semitisms”, Herder; Michel Friedman: Judenhass. 7. Oktober 2023 / “Anti-Semitism: October 7, 2023,” Berlin Verlag; Philipp Peyman Engel: Deutsche Lebenslügen. Der Antisemitismus, wieder und immer noch / “German Grand Delusions: Anti-Semitism, Again and Still”, dtv), but also with works on conflict in the Middle East or the history of German-Israeli relations (Joseph Croitoru: Die Hamas. Herrschaft über Gaza, Krieg gegen Israel/ “Hamas: Rule Over Gaza, War Against Israel,” C.H. Beck; Daniel Marwecki: Absolution? Israel und die deutsche Staatsräson / “Absolution? Israel and the German Raison d’État,” Wallstein).
The widely debated question of recent years whether left-wing liberal intellectual and activist circles are still progressive in any meaningful sense of the word or are simply becoming destructive, in short the entire so-called “wokeness” or “identity-politics” complex, was also affected by the events of October 7 and some rather disconcerting Western displays of solidarity with Hamas. The slender book-length essay After Woke by Jens Balzer (Matthes & Seitz) offered a precise reckoning with aberrations in (his own) leftist camp, complementing as it were the more substantial, empirically-rich analyses of Yascha Mounk (whose The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time was published this year in German translation by Klett-Cotta) and Philipp Hübl (Moralspektakel. Wie die richtige Haltung zum Statussymbol wurde und warum das die Welt nicht besser macht / “A Moral Spectacle: How the Right Political Stance Became a Status Symbol, and Why It Doesn’t Make the World a Better Place,” Siedler).
Concerns about the state of democracy proliferated in the book market in the second half of 2024, given U.S. elections on the other side of the Atlantic and the successes of the right-wing populist AfD party closer to home in eastern Germany. Lawyer Maximilian Steinbeis posed the question of how immune Western democracies are to the enemies of democracy (Die verwundbare Demokratie. Strategien gegen die populistische Übernahme / “Vulnerable Democracy: Strategies Against the Populist Takeover,” Hanser), historian Eva Kienholz authored Eine kurze Geschichte der AfD. Von der Eurokritik zum Remigrationsskandal (“A Brief History of the AfD: From Euroscepticism to the Remigration Scandal,” Rowohlt), and human geographer Daniel Mullis took an interest in the swing to the right in Germany as seen from the so-called “centrist” perspective (Der Aufstieg der Rechten in Krisenzeiten. Die Regression der Mitte / “The Rise of the Right in Times of Crisis: The Regression of the Center,” Reclam).
Developments in the former East Germany, for years the subject of heated debate, were likewise widely discussed in 2024. Historian Christina Morina, whose Tausend Aufbrüche. Die Deutschen und ihre Demokratie seit den 1980er Jahren (“A Thousand Transformations: The Germans and Their Democracy Since the 1980s,” Siedler, 2023) offered an East-West comparison of how Germans understand democracy, bagged the 2024 German Non-Fiction Prize. Sociologist Steffen Mau served up a thoughtful analysis of the discourse surrounding eastern Germany and the realities there on the ground in Ungleich vereint – Warum der Osten anders bleibt (“Unity Without Equality: Why the East Is Still Different,” Suhrkamp). Historian Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk not only saw the publication of the second volume of his Walter Ulbricht biography, but also Freiheitsschock. Eine andere Geschichte Ostdeutschlands von 1989 bis heute (“Freedom Shock: An Alternative History of East Germany from 1989 to the Present,” C.H. Beck), a socially engaged, self-critical and sometimes polemical look at eastern German identities and self-conceptions. Susan Arndt presented a different take on the same topic with Ich bin ostdeutsch und gegen die AfD. Eine Intervention (“I’m East German and Oppose the AfD: An Intervention,” C.H. Beck), while Annett Gröschner, Peggy Mädler and Wenke Seemann had an amusing yet serious discussion of clichés, stereotypes and personal recollections in Drei ostdeutsche Frauen betrinken sich und gründen den idealen Staat (“Three East German Women Get Drunk and Found the Ideal State,” Hanser). Finally, Uta Bretschneider and Jens Schöne offered a very unique form of historical reappraisal in Provinzlust. Erotikshops in Ostdeutschland (“Lust in the Provinces: Sex Shops in Eastern Germany,” Ch. Links).
Historical works about the Nazi past are a mainstay of the German book market. Particularly impressive contributions this year were Ruth Hoffmann’s Das deutsche Alibi. Mythos „Stauffenberg-Attentat“ – wie der 20. Juli 1944 verklärt und politisch instrumentalisiert wird (“The German Alibi: The Plot to Overthrow Hitler and How ‘July 20, 1944’ Is Romanticized and Exploited for Political Ends,” Goldmann) as well as Tatjana Tönsmeyer’s detailed study Unter deutscher Besatzung. Europa 1939-1945 (“Under German Occupation: Europe, 1939-1945,” C.H. Beck). Other authors were able to link this topic to current fears about the fragility of our democracy by focusing on the early years of the Nazi era, e.g., Volker Ullrich’s Schicksalsstunden einer Demokratie. Das aufhaltsame Scheitern der Weimarer Republik, (“The Fateful Hours of a Democracy: The Avoidable Failure of the Weimar Republic,” C.H. Beck) and Jens Bisky’s Die Entscheidung. Deutschland 1929 bis 1934 (“The Decision: Germany, 1929 to 1934,” Rowohlt). Somewhat more peripheral but nonetheless fascinating is a work by the recently deceased Lutz Hachmeister: Hitlers Interviews. Der Diktator und die Journalisten (“Hitler’s Interviews: The Dictator and Journalists,” Kiepenheuer & Witsch), which concludes, rather topically, that interviews with autocrats are always less insightful to the general public than useful propaganda for dictators.
Very undictatorial, by contrast, are the autobiographies of living politicians. Much praised were the memoirs of Wolfgang Schäuble: Erinnerungen. Mein Leben in der Politik (“Remembrances: My Life in Politics” Klett-Cotta). But perhaps the most anticipated publication of the year, the tentative non-fiction highlight of 2024, were the memoirs of Angela Merkel (co-authored with Beate Baumann), published in late November: Freiheit. Erinnerungen 1954-2021 (“Freedom: Memoirs, 1954-2021,” Kiepenheuer & Witsch) – a mixture of sensitive childhood memories and insufficient political self-critique, as Navid Kermani noted in Die Zeit.
And otherwise?
The warm-up to the 150th anniversary of Thomas Mann’s birth in 2025 began in the fall of 2024 with Kai Sina’s Was gut ist und was böse. Thomas Mann als politischer Aktivist (“What Is Good and What Is Evil: Thomas Mann as a Political Activist,” Propyläen), Heinrich Breloer’s Ein tadelloses Glück. Der junge Thomas Mann und der Preis des Erfolgs (“Perfect Happiness: The Young Thomas Mann and the Price of Success,” DVA), and Oliver Fischer’s «Man kann die Liebe nicht stärker erleben». Thomas Mann und Paul Ehrenberg (“‘There Can Be No Stronger Experience of Love’: Thomas Mann and Paul Ehrenberg” Rowohlt).
A host of interesting and critical observations concerning the environment once again found their way into print, even in the face of an ever-growing sense of powerlessness, among them Jens Beckert’s Verkaufte Zukunft. Warum der Kampf gegen den Klimawandel zu scheitern droht (“Future For Sale: Why the Fight Against Climate Change Is in Danger of Failing,” Suhrkamp), Bernhard Kegel’s Mit Pflanzen die Welt retten. Grüne Lösungen gegen den Klimawandel (“Saving the World With Plants: Green Solutions to Climate Change,” DuMont), Eva Horn’s Klima. Eine Wahrnehmungsgeschichte (“The Climate: A Perceptual History,” Fischer), and Armin Nassehi’s Kritik der großen Geste. Anders über gesellschaftliche Transformation nachdenken (“Critique of the Grand Gesture: Thinking Differently About Social Transformation,” C.H. Beck).
What’s more, a multitude of books familiarized a (still) reading public with the opportunities, risks or the sheer functionality of artificial intelligence, a highly successful example being Eva Weber-Guskar’s Gefühle der Zukunft. Wie wir mit emotionaler KI unser Leben verändern (“Feelings of the Future: How We Are Changing Our Lives with Emotional AI,” Ullstein). Oh, and of course there were the timelessly beautiful books, like always. Personally, a number of classy essays made me very happy: Lorenz Engis’s sweeping arc from the disenchantment of the world to the Trump phenomenon (Die Dramatisierung der Welt. Über Illiberalismus / “The Dramatization of the World: On Illiberalism,” Claudius); Björn Vedder’s funny and caustic reckoning with a country idyll that ultimately makes us mean and vulgar (Das Befinden auf dem Lande. Verortung einer Lebensart / “The State of Things in the Countryside: Contextualizing a Way of Life,” HarperCollins); and Martin Scherer’s latest stylistically brilliant installment of his ongoing project on largely forgotten minor virtues (Takt. Über Nähe und Distanz im menschlichen Umgang / “Tact: On Proximity and Distance in Human Interaction,” zu Klampen).
Catherine Newmark holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and works as a cultural journalist in Berlin. She is a radio editor for academic non-fiction and philosophy at Deutschlandfunk Kultur and host of the “Sein und Streit” philosophy broadcast, among other projects.
Translated by: David Burnett
Already early in the year, publishers reacted quickly and massively to the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, first by republishing some relevant classics (Jean Améry: Der neue Antisemitismus / “The New Antisemitism,” Klett-Cotta; Theodor W. Adorno: Zur Bekämpfung des Antisemitismus heute / “Fighting Anti-Semitism Today,” Suhrkamp), followed by a multitude of present-day analyses of anti-Semitism (Michael Wolffsohn: Nie wieder? Schon wieder! Alter und neuer Antisemitismus / “Never Again? Once Again! Old and New Anti-Semitisms”, Herder; Michel Friedman: Judenhass. 7. Oktober 2023 / “Anti-Semitism: October 7, 2023,” Berlin Verlag; Philipp Peyman Engel: Deutsche Lebenslügen. Der Antisemitismus, wieder und immer noch / “German Grand Delusions: Anti-Semitism, Again and Still”, dtv), but also with works on conflict in the Middle East or the history of German-Israeli relations (Joseph Croitoru: Die Hamas. Herrschaft über Gaza, Krieg gegen Israel/ “Hamas: Rule Over Gaza, War Against Israel,” C.H. Beck; Daniel Marwecki: Absolution? Israel und die deutsche Staatsräson / “Absolution? Israel and the German Raison d’État,” Wallstein).
The widely debated question of recent years whether left-wing liberal intellectual and activist circles are still progressive in any meaningful sense of the word or are simply becoming destructive, in short the entire so-called “wokeness” or “identity-politics” complex, was also affected by the events of October 7 and some rather disconcerting Western displays of solidarity with Hamas. The slender book-length essay After Woke by Jens Balzer (Matthes & Seitz) offered a precise reckoning with aberrations in (his own) leftist camp, complementing as it were the more substantial, empirically-rich analyses of Yascha Mounk (whose The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time was published this year in German translation by Klett-Cotta) and Philipp Hübl (Moralspektakel. Wie die richtige Haltung zum Statussymbol wurde und warum das die Welt nicht besser macht / “A Moral Spectacle: How the Right Political Stance Became a Status Symbol, and Why It Doesn’t Make the World a Better Place,” Siedler).
Concerns about the state of democracy proliferated in the book market in the second half of 2024, given U.S. elections on the other side of the Atlantic and the successes of the right-wing populist AfD party closer to home in eastern Germany. Lawyer Maximilian Steinbeis posed the question of how immune Western democracies are to the enemies of democracy (Die verwundbare Demokratie. Strategien gegen die populistische Übernahme / “Vulnerable Democracy: Strategies Against the Populist Takeover,” Hanser), historian Eva Kienholz authored Eine kurze Geschichte der AfD. Von der Eurokritik zum Remigrationsskandal (“A Brief History of the AfD: From Euroscepticism to the Remigration Scandal,” Rowohlt), and human geographer Daniel Mullis took an interest in the swing to the right in Germany as seen from the so-called “centrist” perspective (Der Aufstieg der Rechten in Krisenzeiten. Die Regression der Mitte / “The Rise of the Right in Times of Crisis: The Regression of the Center,” Reclam).
Historical works about the Nazi past are a mainstay of the German book market. Particularly impressive contributions this year were Ruth Hoffmann’s Das deutsche Alibi. Mythos „Stauffenberg-Attentat“ – wie der 20. Juli 1944 verklärt und politisch instrumentalisiert wird (“The German Alibi: The Plot to Overthrow Hitler and How ‘July 20, 1944’ Is Romanticized and Exploited for Political Ends,” Goldmann) as well as Tatjana Tönsmeyer’s detailed study Unter deutscher Besatzung. Europa 1939-1945 (“Under German Occupation: Europe, 1939-1945,” C.H. Beck). Other authors were able to link this topic to current fears about the fragility of our democracy by focusing on the early years of the Nazi era, e.g., Volker Ullrich’s Schicksalsstunden einer Demokratie. Das aufhaltsame Scheitern der Weimarer Republik, (“The Fateful Hours of a Democracy: The Avoidable Failure of the Weimar Republic,” C.H. Beck) and Jens Bisky’s Die Entscheidung. Deutschland 1929 bis 1934 (“The Decision: Germany, 1929 to 1934,” Rowohlt). Somewhat more peripheral but nonetheless fascinating is a work by the recently deceased Lutz Hachmeister: Hitlers Interviews. Der Diktator und die Journalisten (“Hitler’s Interviews: The Dictator and Journalists,” Kiepenheuer & Witsch), which concludes, rather topically, that interviews with autocrats are always less insightful to the general public than useful propaganda for dictators.
Very undictatorial, by contrast, are the autobiographies of living politicians. Much praised were the memoirs of Wolfgang Schäuble: Erinnerungen. Mein Leben in der Politik (“Remembrances: My Life in Politics” Klett-Cotta). But perhaps the most anticipated publication of the year, the tentative non-fiction highlight of 2024, were the memoirs of Angela Merkel (co-authored with Beate Baumann), published in late November: Freiheit. Erinnerungen 1954-2021 (“Freedom: Memoirs, 1954-2021,” Kiepenheuer & Witsch) – a mixture of sensitive childhood memories and insufficient political self-critique, as Navid Kermani noted in Die Zeit.
The warm-up to the 150th anniversary of Thomas Mann’s birth in 2025 began in the fall of 2024 with Kai Sina’s Was gut ist und was böse. Thomas Mann als politischer Aktivist (“What Is Good and What Is Evil: Thomas Mann as a Political Activist,” Propyläen), Heinrich Breloer’s Ein tadelloses Glück. Der junge Thomas Mann und der Preis des Erfolgs (“Perfect Happiness: The Young Thomas Mann and the Price of Success,” DVA), and Oliver Fischer’s «Man kann die Liebe nicht stärker erleben». Thomas Mann und Paul Ehrenberg (“‘There Can Be No Stronger Experience of Love’: Thomas Mann and Paul Ehrenberg” Rowohlt).
A host of interesting and critical observations concerning the environment once again found their way into print, even in the face of an ever-growing sense of powerlessness, among them Jens Beckert’s Verkaufte Zukunft. Warum der Kampf gegen den Klimawandel zu scheitern droht (“Future For Sale: Why the Fight Against Climate Change Is in Danger of Failing,” Suhrkamp), Bernhard Kegel’s Mit Pflanzen die Welt retten. Grüne Lösungen gegen den Klimawandel (“Saving the World With Plants: Green Solutions to Climate Change,” DuMont), Eva Horn’s Klima. Eine Wahrnehmungsgeschichte (“The Climate: A Perceptual History,” Fischer), and Armin Nassehi’s Kritik der großen Geste. Anders über gesellschaftliche Transformation nachdenken (“Critique of the Grand Gesture: Thinking Differently About Social Transformation,” C.H. Beck).
What’s more, a multitude of books familiarized a (still) reading public with the opportunities, risks or the sheer functionality of artificial intelligence, a highly successful example being Eva Weber-Guskar’s Gefühle der Zukunft. Wie wir mit emotionaler KI unser Leben verändern (“Feelings of the Future: How We Are Changing Our Lives with Emotional AI,” Ullstein). Oh, and of course there were the timelessly beautiful books, like always. Personally, a number of classy essays made me very happy: Lorenz Engis’s sweeping arc from the disenchantment of the world to the Trump phenomenon (Die Dramatisierung der Welt. Über Illiberalismus / “The Dramatization of the World: On Illiberalism,” Claudius); Björn Vedder’s funny and caustic reckoning with a country idyll that ultimately makes us mean and vulgar (Das Befinden auf dem Lande. Verortung einer Lebensart / “The State of Things in the Countryside: Contextualizing a Way of Life,” HarperCollins); and Martin Scherer’s latest stylistically brilliant installment of his ongoing project on largely forgotten minor virtues (Takt. Über Nähe und Distanz im menschlichen Umgang / “Tact: On Proximity and Distance in Human Interaction,” zu Klampen).
Catherine Newmark holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and works as a cultural journalist in Berlin. She is a radio editor for academic non-fiction and philosophy at Deutschlandfunk Kultur and host of the “Sein und Streit” philosophy broadcast, among other projects.
Translated by: David Burnett