Free summaries
German Literature — page 4
193 public-domain german literature books, summarised. Page 4 of 5.
Helon's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Volume 1 (of 2): A picture of Judaism, in the century which preceded the advent of our Savior
Friedrich Strauss
A young Egyptian Jew journeys across the desert to Jerusalem, seeking to ground his soul in the living traditions and ancient worship of his ancestors.
Roses: Four One-Act Plays: Streaks of Light—The Last Visit—Margot—The Far-away Princess
Hermann Sudermann
The hidden burdens of the heart often reveal themselves in the most quiet rooms, where the weight of a secret can be heavier than the truth itself.
The malady of the century
Max Simon Nordau
A restless intellectual struggles to reconcile his lofty, detached idealism with the messy, impulsive demands of a world he finds profoundly hollow. This searching narrative captures the disquiet of a man caught between his own principles and the weight of human expectation.
![Cover of Hands Around [Reigen]: A Cycle of Ten Dialogues](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/hands-around-reigen-a-cycle-of-ten-dialogues-arthur-schnitzler.webp)
Hands Around [Reigen]: A Cycle of Ten Dialogues
Arthur Schnitzler
This cycle of ten interconnected dialogues traces the restless, interlocking chain of human desire through the streets and bedrooms of fin-de-siècle Vienna. It is a portrait of the ephemeral nature of intimacy, written with a sharp, clinical eye.
The Gray Nun
Nataly von Eschstruth
A young man at a royal carnival finds his world upended when he dances with a mysterious, silent nun, only to discover that his partner may be a spirit trapped by a broken life.
The little Barefoot
Berthold Auerbach
HOOK A young girl, orphaned and penniless, rises from the drudgery of her village life to build a home of her own, guided by the simple, hard-won wisdom of "Sack and Axe.
Seven Legends
Gottfried Keller
A whimsical re-imagining of saintly folklore, these tales find the human pulse beating beneath the austere robes of tradition. Through irony and affection, the sacred is brought down to earth.
Hermann: A Novel
E. Werner
A tale of long-buried secrets and the crushing weight of ancestral shame, this narrative explores the collision between rigid aristocratic pride and the quiet, enduring power of personal integrity.
Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx
Friedrich Schiller
A headstrong princess demands that every suitor solve her impossible riddles or face the executioner’s blade. This dramatic legend explores the collision between cold intellect and the surrender of love.
Feudal tyrants
Benedikte Naubert
<Image alt="A medieval Swiss castle perched on a rugged cliff" caption="Feudal castles and Alpine valleys frame the romance." src="imageagenttag1"/ Feudal tyranny, secret convents, and tragic romance collide across the high Swiss Alps in this sweeping narrative of broken vows, false identities, and enduring love.
Specimens of German Romance
C. F. van der (Carl Franz) Velde
This collection gathers historical fiction from the early nineteenth century, framing the intense, often brutal friction between the fading traditions of the knightly class and the rising, stubborn power of the mercantile elite. Through the lens of the sixteenth-century German city, it explores how rigid social…
Dame Care
Hermann Sudermann
The weight of duty and the shadow of poverty define a life before it has even begun. This story explores the crushing burden of responsibility inherited by a son born into a family’s ruin.
The Imperial Crown
Wilhelm Raabe
An aging scribe in 1453 Nuremberg reflects on a life marked by the shifting tides of empires, the weight of historical memory, and the enduring, tragic power of a childhood promise.
Felicitas: A Tale of the German Migrations: A.D. 476
Felix Dahn
A stone-mason’s inscription promises peace to a Roman home in fifth-century Salzburg, but invading Germanic tribes soon test whether love can survive the fall of an empire.
Honor: A Play in Four Acts
Hermann Sudermann
A young man returns from abroad to discover his family’s dignity has been sold for a pittance, sparking a fierce, uncompromising confrontation with the industrial elite who hold their fate.
The Poems of Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
This collection captures the restless, explosive intellect of a young writer finding his voice in the shadow of authority, blending biting social satire with profound philosophical longing. It serves as both a gateway to his dramatic works and a haunting portrait of an artist grappling with the crushing weight of…
The Two Captains
La Motte-Fouqué, Friedrich Heinrich Karl, Freiherr de
A knightly oath forged in the heat of duel turns two fierce rivals into brothers-in-arms, binding their destinies together across Spanish courts and African battlefields.
A Little Garrison: A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day
Fritz Oswald Bilse
A gripping tale of honor, scandal, and redemption within the ranks of the German army, revealing the complexities of military life and human nature.
In the Blue Pike
Georg Ebers
A wounded, itinerant ropedancer finds her final refuge in a crowded roadside inn, where she encounters the aristocrat who once showed her mercy.
Bertha Garlan
Arthur Schnitzler
A quiet widow seeks to revive a long-dormant romance, only to discover that the past is a ghost and her own desires are a source of profound, isolating distress. This narrative of provincial stagnation and the search for meaning captures the dissonance between internal longing and the stifling reality of social…
The virgin of the sun
August von Kotzebue
A forbidden romance threatens to tear apart the ancient rituals of an empire, challenging the rigid laws that demand blood in the name of the sun. This tale of duty and sacrifice explores the friction between divine decree and the human heart.
The Indian Lily and Other Stories
Hermann Sudermann
The stories in this collection trace the hollow spaces left behind when desire outlives its object, capturing the precise moment human passion turns to ash. These narratives explore the quiet, often bitter aftermath of romantic pursuit among the German middle class at the turn of the twentieth century.
Villa Elsa: A Story of German Family Life
Stuart Oliver Henry
The path to true peace lies not in treaties or armaments, but in the intimate, lived experience of foreign cultures. Only through the cross-pollination of national values can the world hope to bridge the deep, often violent, divide separating the German character from the rest of humanity.
What the Swallow Sang: A Novel
Friedrich Spielhagen
Quiet yearning collides with the ruthless greed of a changing Germany, forcing an artist to choose between an impossible past and a bitter redemption.
Four Phases of Love
Paul Heyse
A collection of four novellas, this work explores the unpredictable tides of affection. It captures how love, like the shifting Roman landscape, demands both vulnerability and the courage to endure profound personal change.
The Silent Mill
Hermann Sudermann
** In a decaying, wind-swept mill, two brothers and the woman they both love are undone by a secret, silent obsession that transforms a vibrant home into a place of haunting ruin.
The Elixir
Georg Ebers
An apothecary’s family discovers that the capacity to speak absolute truth is not a gift, but a heavy burden that can unravel the lives of those forced to carry it.
Tales from the German. Volume II
C. F. van der (Carl Franz) Velde
A young man loses his way in the darkness of fanatical times, only to discover that the truest peace lies in the quiet circle of a modest home.
The city without Jews
Hugo Bettauer
HOOK When a law expels every Jewish citizen from Vienna, the city initially celebrates its supposed liberation. It soon discovers, however, that it has dismantled the very engine of its own cultural and economic life.
The two countesses
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
The charm of the Austrian aristocracy lies in the collision between rigid social expectations and the irrepressible, often humorous, spirit of the individuals living within those confines. This work captures that friction with grace.
Absolution
Clara Viebig
A beautiful woman is trapped in a bitter, loveless marriage on a dismal Prussian farm, where the boundary between religious ecstasy and mortal sin bleeds into dark obsession.
Joseph in the Snow, and The Clockmaker. In Three Volumes. Vol. I
Berthold Auerbach
A child wanders into a winter storm, setting off a chain of events that exposes the hidden cruelty and redemption of a fractured village.
Iolanthe's Wedding
Hermann Sudermann
A long-held feud, a sudden proposal, and a duel of secrets turn an aging Junker's quiet life into an hilarious, bittersweet trial of affection.
The Nephews: A Play, in Five Acts
August Wilhelm Iffland
An upright merchant faces sudden ruin when a corrupt chancellor exploits his hot-headed generosity, leaving two estranged brothers to untangle their family's buried secrets before their whole world collapses.
Too Rich: A Romance
Adolf Streckfuss
Wealth, social standing, and the crushing weight of public perception collide in this Victorian-era German romance. It is a story of how material fortunes often mask—or intensify—the poverty of the human spirit.
The coming of peace (A family catastrophe)
Gerhart Hauptmann
The long-lost father returns home to a household defined by resentment and fragile nerves, turning a holiday gathering into a crucible for a family haunted by their own history.
Fires of St. John: A Drama in Four Acts
Hermann Sudermann
A hidden, unspoken passion threatens to destroy a family on the eve of a wedding in this haunting drama. The play captures the volatile intersection of social duty and suppressed desire in a quiet, rural setting.
John the Baptist: A Play
Hermann Sudermann
A passionate prophet wrestles with doubt in the wilderness, arriving in Jerusalem to confront a corrupt court and a yearning populace before meeting a tragic and shocking end.
At the Ghost Hour. The House of the Unbelieving Thomas
Paul Heyse
HOOK A centuries-old haunted house in a German town becomes the stage for a clash between human longing and the petty, invisible machinations of the restless dead.
Elderflowers
Wilhelm Raabe
Elderflowers is a meditative reflection on how the specter of a past love can haunt a lifetime. A physician finds that a simple floral token bridges the decades between his youth and old age.
The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts
August Wilhelm Iffland
An ambitious son attains high office and moral compromise, but his principled father and resolute fiancée guide him back to integrity and humble peace.
Riven Bonds. Vol. I.: A Novel, in Two Volumes
E. Werner
The path to artistic genius often demands a brutal cost, severing the ties that bind a man to his home, his family, and his own moral center.
The Breaking of the Storm, Vol. II
Friedrich Spielhagen
Caught in the gears of 1870s German industrialization, two interconnected families find their private passions and social ambitions crushed between financial corruption, political unrest, and unyielding patriarchal pride.
The German Pioneers: A Tale of the Mohawk
Friedrich Spielhagen
A harrowing journey from the pestilence of a trans-Atlantic voyage to the bloody, frontier reality of the Mohawk Valley tests the souls of German immigrants striving for a new life.
Barbara Blomberg
Georg Ebers
A gifted, ambitious singer finds her fate intertwined with the reclusive, gout-stricken Emperor Charles V during a pivotal stay in sixteenth-century Ratisbon.
The Battle of Sempach
Robert Walser
A military expedition of iron-clad knights meets a swift, chaotic end against the desperate, improvised resistance of local herdsmen on a stifling summer day.
The Rebellion in the Cevennes, an Historical Novel. Vol. I
Ludwig Tieck
In the sun-baked hills of eighteenth-century France, a brutal war of faith drives families apart, turning high-minded devotion into a weapon that leaves both saints and sinners drenched in blood.
Margery (Gred): A Tale Of Old Nuremberg
Georg Ebers
A young woman in late-medieval Nuremberg navigates family loyalty, romance, and the shadow of her brother's fateful travels abroad.