Library

This book is a historical book, covering the main time span from the early 20th century to the 1970s. It is a rich and solid personal history and micro history. The author of this book, Alexander Wolf, lived in Berlin, Germany, for a year to study his family history. This book is the result of this investigation. This history involves the history of German publishing during the Nazi period, personal experiences on the battlefields of World War I and World War II, and the history of Jewish escape and immigration during the Nazi period. The central figure in the family's history is the author's grandfather, Kurt Wolff, a famous publisher in the 20th century. He established his own publishing company in 1910 at the age of 23 and was the first publisher to discover the famous writer Kafka. During the research process, the author of this book also discovered the complicated relationship between his family and the Nazis, including that his father was a Nazi soldier and his grandmother's family controlled Merck, the German pharmaceutical empire during the Nazi period. This book shows the difficult life and displacement of this family during the war and its aftermath. It also uses history as a mirror to reflect on the lingering poison of Nazi Germany in Europe and the United States today.