Anne Applebaum
They Cannot Be Blamed for Hitler’s Excesses
Prussia: The Perversion of an Idea
By Giles MacDonogh
Sinclair-Stevenson 440pp £20
They gave us Kant and Herder, Frederick the Great and Kaiser Bill; they gave us red Gothic castles and dreary country estates; they gave us Berlin and the Junkers, and when they disappeared, their name became part of the English language. But although Prussian (adj: synonym for spartan) can be found in the dictionary, the Prussian state itself no longer exists.
It is this odd fact about Prussia that makes it so intriguing. Here was a fully-fledged nation, right in the centre of Europe, with its own monarchy, nobility, bureaucracy, army and national identity, which vanished forever. Giles MacDonogh has clearly fallen for the romance of it, and he prefaces this beautifully written history with a description: ‘I went for a walk in East Berlin to look at the still pitted and partly ruinous buildings on either side of the Unter den Linden…’ Anyone who has ever visited the deserted Prussian villages in northern Poland or stood in the ruined shell of an East German manor house will understand what MacDonogh was doing on the Unter den Linden in June 1989. Lovers of ghosts, haunted houses, and faded portraits on crumbling walls will always be fascinated by Prussia, and will certainly enjoy this book as well.
MacDonogh’s subject is, in fact, the decline of Prussia or, as he puts it, the ‘perversion’ of Prussia. His goal is to retrieve the honour of Prussia, whose values are often – wrongly, MacDonogh believes – cited as the foundation of Nazism. The connection between Prussians and Nazism was a
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm