By Neil MacGregor, author of A History of the World in 100 Objects, this is a view of Germany like no other. For the past 140 years, Germany has been the central power in mainland Europe. Twenty-five years ago, a new German state was created. How well do we understand this new Germany and how do its people now understand themselves? Neil MacGregor argues that uniquely for any European country, a coherent, overarching narrative of Germany's history cannot be constructed, as both its geography and history have always been unstable. Its borders have always been fluid.

Königsberg, where Germany's greatest philosopher, Immanuel Kant, was born, is today Kaliningrad, in Russia. Strasbourg, in whose cathedral Johann Gall reinstated the uniqueness of his country's art and history, now lies within France's borders. For most of the five hundred years that this book covers, Germany has been composed of many distinct political units, each with its own history. And any comfortable national narrative that Germans might have told themselves before 1914 was destroyed by the events of the next thirty years.

German history may be inherently fragmented, but it contains a large number of shared memories, realizations, and experiences; exploring some of these is the purpose of this book. Starting with Gutenberg's invention of modern printing in the 15th century, MacGregor chooses objects and ideas, people and places that still resonate in the new Germany - porcelain from Dresden and ruins from its destructions, Bauhaus design and the German sausage, the crown of Charlemagne and the gates of Buchenwald - to show us something of its collective imagination. There has never been a book about Germany like this.

Pages: 624, Dimensions: 13x13cm