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Was sagt uns eine Schädelkalotte über kannibalistische Umtriebe und die Ängste von Steinzeitmenschen? Und was hat ein unscheinbares Trinkglas mit Hinrichtungen und der Medizin im Spätmittelalter zu tun? Von diesen und anderen Mysterien erzählt uns der Wissenschaftsredakteur und SPIEGEL-Autor Guido Kleinhubbert in seinem Hörbuch. Darin rekonstruiert er die deutsche Geschichte von der Steinzeit bis heute auf der Grundlage von bisher wenig beachteten archäologischen Entdeckungen und historischen Objekten.

Louis and Jenni Böhm were a middle-class Jewish couple who established a thriving business and raised a family in a small country town in Upper Silesia in 1885. The book follows the fortunes of the family over a period of 70 years, during which their peaceful and prosperous existence is gradually eroded as they are forced to suffer increasing humiliation and ostracisation under the Nazi regime imposed on pre-war Germany by Adolf Hitler.

Through its unforgettable characters and immersive storytelling, The Intermediaries charts the relationships between nascent sexual science, queer civil rights, and the fight against fascism. It tells riveting stories of LGBTQ pioneers and offers a cautionary tale in the face of today's oppressive anti-trans legislation.

By the end of World War I, Albert Einstein had become the face of the new science of theoretical physics and had made some powerful enemies. One of those enemies, Nobel Prize winner Philipp Lenard, spent a career trying to discredit him. Their story of conflict, pitting Germany's most widely celebrated Jew against the Nazi scientist who was to become Hitler's chief advisor on physics, had an impact far exceeding what the scientific community felt at the time.

The Berlin blockade brought former allies to the brink of war. Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union defeated and began their occupation of Germany in 1945, and within a few years, the Soviets and their Western partners were jockeying for control of their former foe. Attempting to thwart the Allied powers' plans to create a unified West German government, the Soviets blocked rail and road access to the western sectors of Berlin in June 1948.

A unique retelling of WWII’s most dramatic escape, told through first-hand recollections of the airmen who experienced it. On the night of March 24, 1944, 80 Commonwealth airmen crawled through a 336-foot-long tunnel and slipped into the forest beyond the wire of Stalag Luft III, a German POW compound near Sagan, Poland. The event became known as "The Great Escape"; an intricate breakout more than a year in the making, involving as many as 2,000 POWs working with extraordinary coordination, intelligence, and daring.

Brunhilde Pomsel described herself as an 'apolitical girl' and a 'figure on the margins', but, employed as a stenographer during the Second World War, she worked closely with one of the worst criminals in world history: Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. She was one of the oldest surviving eyewitnesses to the internal workings of the Nazi power apparatus until her death in 2017.

The extraordinary true story of surviving the unimaginable … In 1945, seven-year-old Barbie and her sister Eva were trapped, terrified, in wartorn Germany. With their father missing, and hundreds of miles from their mother, news of the approaching army left them confronted with an impossible choice: to face invasion, or to flee on foot.Eva, aged nineteen, was determined to find her mother.

In Hitler’s Path to Power: The Rise and Fall of Nazi Germany: A Deep Dive Into History’s Darkest Regime, acclaimed historian and true crime author Isabella Hayes unpacks how Adolf Hitler transformed from a fringe agitator into the dictator of a totalitarian regime that plunged the world into war and genocide.

Prostitutes and animals could no longer satisfy Peter Kürten’s sexual deviancy. During a burglary of a local tavern, he stumbled upon a nine-year-old girl asleep in her bed. He strangled her, slashed her throat with a pocket knife, and orgasmed upon hearing her blood drip to the floor. His crimes were halted by World War I and an eight-year prison sentence but he unleashed his urges with a spate of brutal murders in 1929 earning him the nickname "The Düsseldorf Monster."

9th November 1989, East Berlin, the day the Berlin Wall will fall: Bernd Zeiger, a Stasi agent, is now in the fading twilight of his career. Twenty five years earlier: a physicist, Johannes Held, had been sent by the East Germans to infiltrate a US military operation in the American desert. Held had unknowingly fathered a child there, a fact Zeiger was aware of, and when he returned and refused to divulge what he had learned despite being tortured, Zeiger strangely became a sort of friend. But he would still betray him, a treachery that haunts him to this day.

Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are now centers of peace and civility that attract millions of tourists, but the stories they tell about places, peoples, and nations are selective. They are never the whole story. Exploring seven old towns, from Frankfurt and Prague to Vilnius in Lithuania, Marek Kohn examines how they have been used since the Second World War to conceal political tensions and reinforce certain versions of history.

Schonungslos und selbstkritisch erzählt der Schriftsteller Erich Loest aus seinem Leben. 1926 im sächsischen Mittweida geboren, kam Loest über die Hitlerjugend zur NSDAP und nahm als junger Soldat, als sogenannter "Werwolf", am Zweiten Weltkrieg teil. 1947 trat er begeistert in die SED ein, wurde aber zehn Jahre später wegen angeblicher "konterrevolutionärer Gruppenbildung" zu siebeneinhalb Jahren Haft verurteilt. Mit seiner Entlassung endet diese Autobiografie. Gelesen von Kurt Böwe ist "Durch die Erde ein Riss" eine beeindruckende literarische Chronik deutscher Zeitgeschichte.

Frühling 1848. Scheinbar aus dem Nichts versammelten sich in unzähligen Städten von Palermo bis Paris riesige Menschenmengen, oft in friedlicher, manchmal aber auch in gewalttätiger Absicht. Die politische Ordnung, die seit Napoleons Niederlage in Europa Bestand hatte, brach in sich zusammen. Überall entstanden neue politische Ideen. Es ging um die Rolle der Frau, das Ende der Sklaverei, das Recht auf Arbeit, nationale Unabhängigkeit und die jüdische Emanzipation. Christopher Clark erweckt mit neuen Erkenntnissen die Visionen dieser Epoche und deren Niederschlagung zum Leben.

"Kein Volk der Welt hat erlebt, was dem deutschen "1923"-Erlebnis entspricht", schrieb Sebastian Haffner im englischen Exil, und Stefan Zweig befand, dass die Geschichte noch "nie eine ähnliche Tollhauszeit in solchen riesigen Proportionen produziert" habe. Volker Ullrich erzählt auf breiter Quellenbasis die Geschichte dieses Jahrs am Abgrund, das in manchem auf fatale Weise an die heutige Gegenwart erinnert.

1946 ist das Jahr, in dem das heutige Deutschland seinen Anfang nimmt. 1946, das Jahr eins nach Adolf Hitler. Es ist das Jahr unvorstellbaren Hungers und Frierens, des massenhaften Elends, des Sterbens in Flüchtlingszügen, des Überlebenskampfes in deutschen Trümmerlandschaften. Es ist das Jahr, in dem in Nürnberg führende Nationalsozialisten zum Tode verurteilt werden. Es ist das Jahr, in dem auf dem Schwarzmarkt alles zu haben ist, wenn man genug Zigaretten zum Bezahlen hat.Das Jahr der ersten Wahlen auf deutschem Boden seit 1933, der Wiedergeburt der deutschen Demokratie.

In Albert & the Whale, Philip Hoare sets out to discover why Dürer's art endures. He encounters medieval alchemists and modernist poets, eccentric emperors and queer soul rebels, ambassadorial whales and enigmatic pop artists. He witnesses the miraculous birth of Dürer's fantastical rhinoceros and his hermaphroditic hare, and he traces the fate of the star-crossed leviathan that the artist pursued. And as the author swims from Europe to America and beyond, these prophetic artists and downed angels provoke awkward questions. 

Interviews, Originaltöne, Live-Mitschnitte - das Feature zum Standardwerk über die RAF. Stefan Aust hat mit dem "Baader-Meinhof-Komplex" das bedeutendste Werk über den Deutschen Herbst veröffentlicht und die Geschehnisse und Hintergründe immer wieder auf Grund neuer Erkenntnisse aktualisiert. Er gilt als bester Kenner der Szene des bundesdeutschen Terrorismus und sammelt seit über zwanzig Jahren stetig neue Fakten und Informationen. In diesem Feature hat er exklusiv die wichtigsten Interviews und Originaltöne zusammengefasst und kommentiert.

Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm II, who occupied the throne of the German Empire for more than 30 years from June 1888 to November 1918, remains as much an enigma in death as he was in life. Over 70 years after his death in 1941, the mention of his name still sparks unsettled debates among historians. Was he the duty-bound, hands-on leader and passionate pro-British reformer who ruled in challenging times, seemingly mild in comparison to Hitler?

After her mother's death, Robinson was thrilled to find her beloved grandfather's diaries - only to discover that he had been a Nazi. The diaries show Api, a doctor in Berlin, trying to help the wounded in bunkers without water or light. Living in the ruins, he himself was near collapse. As Robinson retraces Api's steps half a century later, she tries to come up with answers to why he joined the Nazi party and reflect on German guilt while also remembering the happiest years of her childhood with him.