Overview

The Silences of Hammerstein, the latest work from one of Germany's most significant contemporary authors, engages readers with a blend of a documentary, collage, narration and fictional interviews. The gripping plot revolves around the experiences of real-life German General Kurt von Hammerstein and his wife and children. A member of an old military family, a brilliant staff officer, and the last commander of the German army before Hitler seized power, Hammerstein, who died in 1943 before Hitler's defeat, was nevertheless an idiosyncratic character. Too old to be a resister, he retained an independence of mind that was shared by his children: three of his daughters joined the Communist Party, and two of his sons risked their lives in the July 1944 Plot against Hitler and were subsequently on the run till the end of the war. Hammerstein never criticized his children for their activities, and he maintained contacts with the Communists himself and foresaw the disastrous end of Hitler's dictatorship. In The Silences of Hammerstein, Hans Magnus Enzensberger offers a brilliant and unorthodox account of the military milieu whose acquiescence to Nazism consolidated Hitler's power and of the heroic few who refused to share in the spoils.

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Reviews

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, a well-known German poet and writer, has delivered a fascinating account of the family, based on a large quantity of new material from archives and personal collections in Russia, Germany and elsewhere. This is not a conventional academic study there are no footnotes and the text is punctuated with posthumous conversations in which the author interrogates the ghosts of many of his subjects but it is compulsively readable, beautifully translated by Martin Chalmers and full of startling details about this unconventional family that make one think again about German aristocratic life and culture in the first half of the 20th century. --Richard Evans The Historian

-Hans Magnus Enzensberger, a well-known German poet and writer, has delivered a fascinating account of the family, based on a large quantity of new material from archives and personal collections in Russia, Germany and elsewhere. This is not a conventional academic study - there are no footnotes and the text is punctuated with 'posthumous conversations' in which the author interrogates the ghosts of many of his subjects - but it is compulsively readable, beautifully translated by Martin Chalmers and full of startling details about this unconventional family that make one think again about German aristocratic life and culture in the first half of the 20th century.---Richard Evans -The Historian -

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, a well-known German poet and writer, has delivered a fascinating account of the family, based on a large quantity of new material from archives and personal collections in Russia, Germany and elsewhere. This is not a conventional academic study - there are no footnotes and the text is punctuated with 'posthumous conversations' in which the author interrogates the ghosts of many of his subjects - but it is compulsively readable, beautifully translated by Martin Chalmers and full of startling details about this unconventional family that make one think again about German aristocratic life and culture in the first half of the 20th century. --Richard Evans The Historian

Author Information

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, often considered Germany's most important living poet, is also the editor of the book series Die Andere Bibliothek, the founder of the monthly TransAtlantik. His books include Lighter Than Air: Moral Poems and Civil Wars: From L.A. to Bosnia. Martin Chalmers is a translator and editor whose translations include works by Hubert Fichte, Ernst Weiss, Herta Mueller, Alexander Kluge, Emine Sevgi Oezdamar and Erich Hackl.

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