Aftermath

Resumen del libro

Germany, 1945: a country in ruins. Cities have been reduced to rubble and more than half of the population are where they do not belong or do not want to be.

How can a functioning society ever emerge from this chaos?

In bombed-out Berlin, Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, journalist and member of the Nazi resistance, warms herself by a makeshift stove and records in her diary how a frenzy of expectation and industriousness grips the city. The Americans send Hans Habe, an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist and US army soldier, to the frontline of psychological warfare - tasked with establishing a newspaper empire capable of remoulding the minds of the Germans. The philosopher Hannah Arendt returns to the country she fled to find a population gripped by a manic loquaciousness, but faces a deafening wall of silence at the mention of the Holocaust.

Aftermath is a nuanced panorama of a nation undergoing monumental change.

1945 to 1955 was a raw, wild decade poised between two eras that proved decisive for Germany's future - and one starkly different to how most of us imagine it today. Featuring black and white photographs and posters from post-war Germany - some beautiful, some revelatory, some shocking - Aftermath evokes an immersive portrait of a society corrupted, demoralised and freed - all at the same time.

Biografía del autor

Harald Jähner (1953) estudió literatura, historia e historia del arte en Friburgo y completó su doctorado en Berlín. Después de graduarse, trabajó como periodista independiente. De 1989 a 1997, fue jefe del departamento de comunicación de la Casa de las Culturas del Mundo, en Berlín. Al mismo tiempo, de 1994 a 1997, fue crítico literario independiente para el "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung". Posteriormente, trabajó en el "Berliner Zeitung", donde hasta 2015 fue redactor en jefe de su prestigioso suplemento de cultura ("Feuilleton") y, además, profesor de periodismo cultural en la Universidad de las Artes de Berlín.