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Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia, by Max Egremont
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Until the end of World War II, East Prussia was the German empire's farthest eastern redoubt, a thriving and beautiful land on the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea. Now it lives only in history and in myth. Since 1945, the territory has been divided between Poland and Russia, stretching from the border between Russia and Lithuania in the east and south, and through Poland in the west. In Forgotten Land, Max Egremont offers a vivid account of this region and its people through the stories of individuals who were intimately involved in and transformed by its tumultuous history, as well as accounts of his own travels and interviews he conducted along the way.
Forgotten Land is a story of historical identity and character, told through intimate portraits of people and places. It is a unique examination of the layers of history, of the changing perceptions and myths of homeland, of virtue and of wickedness, and of how a place can still overwhelm those who left it years before.
- Sales Rank: #1101958 in Books
- Published on: 2011-11-08
- Released on: 2011-11-08
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.31" h x 1.30" w x 6.38" l, 1.35 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 384 pages
Review
“This is it. The thoroughly authentic, artistically intelligent biography we've been waiting for. The book is refreshingly rich and subtle as well as psychologically acute. Thank you, Max Egremont.” ―Paul Fussell, author of The Great War and Modern Memory on Siegfried Sassoon
“Memory, its suppression and manipulation, is a recurrent theme in this original book . . . Egremont has written a book that tries to make sense of this history―not as a single, chronological narrative, but as a sequence of short, interconnected essays in which measured reflections, portraits of the leading political and cultural figures, and conversations with exiles from this 'forgotten land' are interwoven. Egremont's allusive prose style seems to echo these multiple perspectives, changing frontiers, blurred racial identities, shifting allegiances and the mass movement of peoples―a story for our time.” ―Richard Calvocoressi, The New Statesman
“The book's canvas is remarkable . . . Egremont's compelling tale exploits his boundless intellectual curiosity, mastery of German and eye for whimsy as well as tragedy. I know enough of the story he tells to appreciate how much he has discovered that is quite unfamiliar to Anglo-Saxon readers . . . his literary journey through its past makes fascinating reading.” ―Max Hastings, Sunday Times (UK)
“East Prussia is Germany's lost province, in national memory the place of Immanuel Kant, honorable nationalism, and military strength. Max Egremont has captured the spirit of the land and its people.” ―Professor Roger Louis
“The experience of reading Max Egremont's wonderful evocation of the final years of East Prussia is like watching a film whose images you know will stay with you for years to come. You stumble out onto the street numb and haunted, unable and reluctant to rejoin the present . . . Its characters represent not only the vanished fringes of Germany, but of that swath of Eastern Europe little known in the West and whose intensity of human experience--from doomed nobility to war-time suffering--now appears almost mythical in scale.” ―Phillip Marsden, Country Life
“Forgotten Land [is] a work of consummate artistry . . . Max Egremont dovetails the stories of individual East Prussians with the wider narrative's tangled skein . . . [Egremont has] a deftly controlling intelligence which draws the reader in before resuming the main thread. The result is continuously satisfying both as a work of art and as a professional work of history.” ―Hywell Williams, The Spectator
“[Egremont's] new book, mixing a personal quest with the strange history of [East Prussia], represents the very best form of travel writing . . . Finally, in a post-totalitarian age, the deeper history of the country is now allowed to raise its head.” ―Antony Beevor, The Mail on Sunday
“In Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia, Max Egremont reconstructs the tragic sequence of events that took place in this picturesque region on the Baltic Sea . . . As we delve into the history of East Prussia, the author introduces us to a range of people. Tracking these individuals across time provides us with a nuanced sense of how each person dealt with conflict and turmoil. Some became martyrs, others villains . . . Egremont observes: ‘Terrible things happen to countries--yet most of them can be proud of much of their past; here such pride skulks in secret, as if within a forbidden sect.' Most of the people who were driven out of their East Prussian homeland are gone now. This potent book bestows an overdue honor to their memory.” ―Vick Mickunas, Dayton Daily News
“Max Egremont's idiosyncratic . . . and beautifully written volume makes an ideal guide to this shifting, shadowy realm. In part a piecemeal history of the final half-century of German East Prussia, in part a travelogue through what was left behind, Forgotten Land is gently elegiac. Shifting constantly between present and a variety of pasts, it is as wistful as a flick-through of an old photo album, as melancholy as a rain-spattered northern autumn afternoon . . . On visiting Kaliningrad in the 1960s, the poet Joseph Brodsky wrote that the trees ‘whisper in German.' They don't any more. But Max Egremont heard their last words.” ―Andrew Stuttaford, The Wall Street Journal
“Max Egremont is at his best when describing his travels and conversations. He has a good sense of local atmosphere and a sharp eye for how ‘the tourist trail reshapes the past' . . . The interwoven story lines are artfully managed, the anecdotes are lively, and Egremont's urbane voice carries the reader along.” ―David Blackbourn, Times Literary Supplement
“Egremont eloquently survey the ‘layered history' of a land in which Germans, assorted Slavs, Lithuanians, and even French Huguenots have left their marks. He draws on testimonies of former residents and provides often touching biographical vignettes of some prominent East Prussians in what is a striking yet melancholy tribute to a homeland now consigned to history.” ―Jay Freeman, Booklist
About the Author
Max Egremont was born in 1948 and studied modern history at Oxford University. He is the author of four novels and four biographies, most recently Siegfried Sassoon: A Life (FSG, 2005). Egremont is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Most helpful customer reviews
69 of 77 people found the following review helpful.
"Forgotten Land" Passable Overview of Former East Prussia
By Thomas J. Burke
I picked up Max Ergemont's book "Forgotten Land" after reading a positive review in the "Wall Street Journal." Overall it is a passable overview for readers unfamiliar with the complex and often dark history of the former German province of East Prussia which was divided after WWII by Poland, the USSR, and Lithuania.
The book, however, gets some important details wrong. At various points Ergemont refers to the "Prussians" who inhabited the area prior to the arrival of the Teutonic Knights (or German Order) in 1230 AD. In fact these people were actually called the Prußen or Prussen by the Germans. The term Preußen or Prussian in English came later. The German Order did not lead to "an extinction of the pagan Prussians [sic]" but instead they assimilated in with the Germans and Poles over time.
The author states that "On 6 April 1945, the librarian [Diesch] was on the last ship to leave Pillau..." The last ship to leave the East Prussian port city of Pillau was actually on April 24, 1945, before it fell into Soviet hands the next day. It's a significant error as the port of Pillau was the last escape route for East Prussians and others fleeing the Red Army after land routes were cut off in January of 1945. Some 451,000 refugees and 141,000 were evacuated by the German Navy via Pillau to relative safety in the west. Many more ships and boats made the dangerous journey to pick up refugees and the wounded from April 6 to April 24 despite being under constant attack from the air and from artillery.
Throughout the book the author leans especially heavily on the best-known 20th century East Prussian writer, Countess Maria Dönhoff. Ergemont paraphrases the prolific Dönhoff at length as well as others.
Yet the 1944 massacre of German civilians, including young children and babies, in the frontier town of Nemmersdorf by the Red Army receives little attention. A German counteroffensive retook the town and the atrocities were documented. Word of the Nemmersdorf massacre had the effect of stiffening the resolve of the German troops to continue fighting in a lost cause to buy time for refugees to make their escape. It also created panic among German civilians who were prevented from an orderly evacuation by fanatical Nazi regional and local leaders until it was too late.
The book could have benefited from more detailed maps of the former East Prussia which has just a single one. The photographs are somewhat muddy also in their reproduction.
However, English language books about East Prussia are few and far between. For someone interested in a primer on East Prussian history and culture I still recommend "Forgotten Land." The author is at his best in travelogue fashion, traveling through the modern-day territory that was once East Prussia, including the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad which is back in the news as Russians threaten to move missles facing NATO to the western border of Kaliningrad. He also recounts the brutal treatment faced by those East Prussians unlucky enough to be left behind and fall under Soviet and Polish occupation until they were forcibly deported in 1947.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Three Stars
By Dave
Book really wonders around which was frustrating and made it hard to stay focused.
54 of 60 people found the following review helpful.
Honoring a lost world
By Richard Cumming
When hundreds of thousands of Germans were forced to leave their homeland in East Prussia after World War Two the world remained mostly silent. East Prussia was carved up and made into a Russian enclave and into an expanded Poland. All those Germans had to go and be absorbed into what was left of Germany. Imagine the suffering and the displacement they must have felt? They survived the war only to become exiles.
The author takes readers back through the history of this land, from the Teutonic Knights, through the epic battles, Napolean, Hindenburg, the Wolf's Lair of Adolf Hitler. And we meet some amazing people. Some were good. Some, not so good. The book consists of highly fluid essays. Personalities glide across the pages like ghosts. And they come alive for us as we learn about the tragedy of the people and this place. Gone, but not quite forgotten. A savagely brilliant book.
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