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gestalten

gestalten continues to actively reimagine the way in which we approach publishing. With our extensive range of titles, we not only seek to enhance and to enrich our reader's lives, but to continually engage with the surrounding creative landscape. Our origin story began with a focus on the aesthetic, particularly that of graphic design and, over the last two decades, the scope of both our content and our expertise has widened. Today, using a myriad of observations of culture, people, art, and other intimate, inspirational informants, we document and anticipate vital movements in architecture, visual culture, design & fashion, escapism, food & beverages, travel, and contemporary art. In 2014, Little Gestalten joined the literary ranks and ensured that there was a place for readers of all ages within the world of gestalten. The gestalten narrative exists beyond the textual realm; regardless of the medium at hand, gestalten wishes to inform and inspire our community. We welcome you to enter gestalten's world of creative culture, whether between our pages, indulging in images and films online or at one of our international events. We look forward to the result: mutual inspiration.
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Promoted Content

July 2003

KZ der Gestapo

Arbeitserziehungslager im Dritten Reich

by Lotfi, Gabriele / Vorwort von Mommsen, Hans

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Promoted Content

September 2015

"Keine neue Gestapo"

Das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz und die NS-Vergangenheit

by Goschler, Constantin; Wala, Michael

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Trusted Partner

January 1992

Gestapo V-Leute

Tatsachen und Theorie des Geheimdienstes

by Weyrauch, Walter O

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Trusted Partner

February 2002

Grenzen der Gemeinschaft

Eine Kritik des sozialen Radikalismus

by Helmuth Plessner, Joachim Fischer, Helmuth Plessner

Plessners Grenz-Schrift galt seit 1924 als Geheimtip. Entlang einer für deutsche Verhältnisse seltenen Limitierung von Gemeinschaftsutopien sucht sie durch die Denkfigur einer »Sehnsucht nach den Masken« ein »Gesellschaftsethos« zu begründen, das sich in den Kernkategorien »Distanz«. »Spiele, »Zeremonie und Prestige«, »Diplomatie und Takt« verdichtet. Wegen seiner jüdischen Herkunft 1933 zur Emigration gezwungen. entging Plessner in den Niederlanden während des Krieges nur knapp dem Zugriff der Gestapo. Nach 1945 spielte er als Remigrant neben Adorno, Horkheimer, Löwith und René König eine bedeutende Rolle in der intellektuellen Konsolidierung der bundesrepublikanischen öffentlichkeit.

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Trusted Partner

November 2014

Pariser Trilogie. Abendgesellschaft, Außenbezirke, Familienstammbuch

Drei Romane

by Patrick Modiano, Walter Schürenberg

Drei Bücher hat Patrick Modiano unter dem Titel Pariser Trilogie zusammengefaßt: Abendgesellschaft, Außenbezirke und Familienstammbaum. Wie wird man zum Verräter, wie läßt es sich verhindern? Diese Fragen stellt sich ein junger Franzose, der sich, für die Gestapo arbeitend, einer Résistance-Gruppe anschließt. In einer ebenso sanften wie unnachgiebigen Erzählung nähert sich Modiano einer Vergangenheit an, die er selbst nicht erlebt hat. Mit seiner unverwechselbaren Musikalität erweckt er Worte zum Leben und überführt sie in eine fantastisch anmutende Abendgesellschaft. In den Außenbezirken, außerhalb von Paris, sucht Serge Alexandre seinen Vater. Wieder befinden wir uns in der Zeit der Besatzung. Wer ist dieser Vater? Was macht er, als Jude unter all den zwielichtigen Gestalten? Warum erkennt er seinen Sohn nicht mehr? Bis zuletzt folgt der Erzähler den Spuren seines geisterhaften Vaters. »Ich war siebzehn, und es blieb mir nichts anderes übrig, als ein französischer Schriftsteller zu werden«, schreibt Modiano im Familienstammbuch und legt uns in 14 Erzählungen seine Jugenderinnerungen vor. Autobiographisches, aber auch Imaginiertes.

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Trusted Partner

March 2006

Beckett Erinnerung

by James Knowlson, Elizabeth Knowlson, Christel Dormagen

Beckett Erinnerung beginnt mit Gesprächen, in denen Samuel Beckett seinem Freund und Biographen James Knowlson von seiner Familie, seiner frühen Jugend und seiner Freundschaft mit James Joyce und dessen Familie berichtet. Er beschreibt seine Tätigkeit als Mitglied des französischen Widerstands in Paris, seine Flucht vor der Gestapo und sein Leben während der letzten Kriegsjahre im südfranzösischen Roussillon. Der Band versammelt des weiteren Erinnerungen an Beckett von einigen seiner engsten Freunde. Sie erinnern sich an den Schüler, den jungen Schriftsteller, dann den Autor, der in den fünfziger Jahren des vergangenen Jahrhunderts mit seinen Romanen und dem Theaterstück Warten auf Godot weltberühmt wurde. Schauspieler, die in seinen Inszenierungen auftraten, Regisseure und Beckett-Kenner schildern ihre Erlebnisse mit Autor und Werk, und eine Reihe von Schriftstellern (darunter Edward Albee, Paul Auster, J. M. Coetzee, Raymond Federman und Antoni Libera) äußert sich über Becketts Werk und über den Einfluß, den es auf ihr eigenes Schreiben gehabt hat. Beckett Erinnerung präsentiert ein facettenreiches, eindringlich persönliches Bild des gemeinhin als unzugänglich bekannten Jahrhundertgenies - zusammengesetzt aus lauter "Originaltönen". Der Band enthält zahlreiche Entdeckungen, auch für Kenner.

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Trusted Partner

September 1994

Jorge Semprún erzählt seine deutsche Geschichte

2 Bände: Die große Reise. Aus dem Französischen von Abelle Christaller. – Was für ein schöner Sonntag! Aus dem Französischen von Johannes Piron

by Jorge Semprún, Johannes Piron, Abelle Christaller

Jorge Semprún wurde am 10. Dezember 1923 in Madrid geboren. Mit 14 Jahren musste er bei Beginn des spanischen Bürgerkrieges mit seiner Familie nach Paris fliehen. Dort besuchte er das Lycée Henri IV und studiert Philosophie an der Sorbonne. 1941 trat er unter dem Pseudonym ›Gérard‹ der kommunistischen Résistance-Bewegung ›Francs-Tireurs et Partisans‹ bei. Die deutsche Gestapo verhaftete ihn 1943, und Semprun wurde in das KZ Buchenwald deportiert. Nach der Befreiung 1945 kehrte er nach Paris zurück. Ab 1953 koordinierte er als Mitglied des ZK der spanischen Exil-KP im Geheimen den Widerstand gegen das Franco-Regime in Paris. Unter dem Pseudonym Federico Sánchez arbeitete er zwischen 1957 und 1962 im Untergrund der kommunistischen Partei im franquistischen Spanien. 1964 wurde er wegen Abweichung von der Parteilinie aus der KP ausgeschlossen. Seitdem widmete sich Semprun seiner schriftstellerischen Tätigkeit. In den sechziger Jahren wurde er erstmals als Drehbuchautor bekannt; mit berühmten Filmen wie beispielsweise La guerre est finie (Der Krieg ist aus) von 1966, Z von 1968 und L'aveu (Das Geständnis) von 1970. Nach seiner Amtszeit als spanischer Kultusminister von 1988 - 1991 lebte Jorge Semprún bis zu seinem Tod (2011) in Paris.

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Trusted Partner

March 2002

Der Tote mit meinem Namen

by Jorge Semprún, Eva Moldenhauer

Jorge Semprún wurde am 10. Dezember 1923 in Madrid geboren. Mit 14 Jahren musste er bei Beginn des spanischen Bürgerkrieges mit seiner Familie nach Paris fliehen. Dort besuchte er das Lycée Henri IV und studiert Philosophie an der Sorbonne. 1941 trat er unter dem Pseudonym ›Gérard‹ der kommunistischen Résistance-Bewegung ›Francs-Tireurs et Partisans‹ bei. Die deutsche Gestapo verhaftete ihn 1943, und Semprun wurde in das KZ Buchenwald deportiert. Nach der Befreiung 1945 kehrte er nach Paris zurück. Ab 1953 koordinierte er als Mitglied des ZK der spanischen Exil-KP im Geheimen den Widerstand gegen das Franco-Regime in Paris. Unter dem Pseudonym Federico Sánchez arbeitete er zwischen 1957 und 1962 im Untergrund der kommunistischen Partei im franquistischen Spanien. 1964 wurde er wegen Abweichung von der Parteilinie aus der KP ausgeschlossen. Seitdem widmete sich Semprun seiner schriftstellerischen Tätigkeit. In den sechziger Jahren wurde er erstmals als Drehbuchautor bekannt; mit berühmten Filmen wie beispielsweise La guerre est finie (Der Krieg ist aus) von 1966, Z von 1968 und L'aveu (Das Geständnis) von 1970. Nach seiner Amtszeit als spanischer Kultusminister von 1988 - 1991 lebte Jorge Semprún bis zu seinem Tod (2011) in Paris. Eva Moldenhauer, 1934 in Frankfurt am Main geboren, war seit 1964 als Übersetzerin tätig. Sie übersetzte Literatur und wissenschaftliche Schriften französischsprachiger Autoren ins Deutsche, u.a. von Claude Simon, Jorge Semprún, Marcel Mauss, Mircea Eliade, Gilles Deleuze und Lévi-Strauss. Sie wurde mit zahlreichen Preisen ausgezeichnet, u.a. mit dem Helmut-M.-Braem-Übersetzerpreis und dem Paul-Celan-Preis. Eva Moldenhauer verstarb am 22. April 2019.

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Fiction

March 2020

El chico de las bobinas

by Pere Cervantes

THE BOY WITH THE FILM REELS / A city under constant threat where the most important thing is to learn how to survive. A murder that will reveal a secret meant to be never discovered. Barcelona, 1945. Nil Roig is a young boy who spends the days on his bicycle, carrying old film reels from one cinema to another and dreaming that one day he will be a projectionist in one of those movie theatres. On the day of his thirteenth birthday he is a witness of a crime committed in the staircase of his house. While the murderer escapes after having threatened him with death if he does not keep his mouth shut, the dying man gives him a mysterious picture card of a film actor from the pre-war times. The object searched for and desired by the low-keyed figures of an ex Gestapo commander and a Francoist police officer. The fact that the man while giving the card to Nil, whispers the name of David, the boy’s father, who disappeared on the day when the city was taken over by the victorious army will prompt him to uncover a mystery of the past for which he will pay a high price. In the Barcelona of light and shade, El chico de las bobinas tells us about the unparalleled strength of the women, victims of the war, who showed the world how to survive, about the local movie theatres, a refuge where people could dream in the turbulent after-war years and about ruined childhood and genuine sorrows, with the plot set in the determined – but also universal time. Far beyond the suffering for what was lost and the struggle for survival El chico de las bobinas is an homage to the mother figure and to the eternal magic of the cinema.

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The Holocaust

October 2017

The Vél d'Hiv Raid

The French Police at the Service of the Gestapo

by Maurice Rajsfus; translated by Levi Laub; foreword by Michel Warschawski

With passion and indignation, Maurice Rajsfus recounts the worst single crime of the Vichy regime in France: the pre-dawn arrest by French police, at German instigation, on July 16-17, 1942, of 13,152 Jewish men, women, and children, and their ordeal on the way to extermination. Rajsfus brings this terrible experience to life with contemporary texts – high-level Franco-German haggling, detailed police instructions, eye-witness testimony, and press commentary. – Robert O. Paxton, author of Vichy France and the Jews This uniquely detailed study of the July 16, 1942 roundup offers the only contemporary analysis of both the precursors and the aftermath of the Vél d’Hiv Raid. Rajsfus details the internal organization of the police, showing the mechanisms of this raid particularly and of raids in general, making the book an indispensable micro-history of the Holocaust. Notably, as the author points out, the French police went beyond Nazi ordinances and took it upon themselves to arrest and imprison more than 13,000 Jews at the Vélodrome d’Hiver. This book flies in the face of right-wing politicians who today continue to deny the crime was a French one.

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Trusted Partner

Last Paths to Freedom. French Girl Guides in resistance to Nazi Germany

by Thomas Seiterich

Summer 1940. Nazi Germany annexes Alsace, but not without resistance: in the Catholic parish of St. Jean, very close to the Great Synagogue, six French Girl Guides opened an underground border crossing for opponents of the regime, Jews, Communists and the military. They explored and found secret routes across the Vosges to the west, and south to Switzerland. By the time the Gestapo picked them up in 1942, they had brought around 500 people to safety. Freisler tried them in 1943 and sentenced six of them to death by guillotine. Pope Pius XII demanded that the women be spared. And Hitler did indeed pardon them – with the proviso that they were not allowed to know. They all survived.

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Biography: historical, political & military

August 2012

Packhorse Called Rachel

by Marcelle Kellermann

A story of courage, fear and defiance based on the authors own personal experience. A Pack Horse Called Rachel is the remarkable tale of a young woman, half Jewish, caught in the extraordinarily brutal world of France in 1944. Rachel moves through the pages of the book with her faithful dog Nourse, touching lives as her work with the Maquis based in the Auvergne takes her perilously close to danger on a day to day basis.The story is based on personal experience, the description of historical events is as true as memory will allow, it is an elegantly written story capturing first hand Kellermann’s painful and lonely life as a resistance fighter within the ‘Maquis’, amidst the harsh beauty of the Auvergne. Beset by the freezing cold climate prevailing in winter, the Vichy traitors amongst the normal French Population and the hostility of ordinary people afraid for their own lives. Rachel overcomes the initial animosity and mistrust of the lecherous and alcoholic farmer Raboullet on whom she comes to rely; the wrath of the Gestapo, the betrayal of St Pré, a full and passionate love affair, tragic loss and yet she survives. Marcel Kellermann notes, with descriptive talent, and intricate detail that only someone especially observant could recall. From the opening raid to the closing trial, the book gives an incisive view, as we understand the mind and soul of the resistance better with each page. This is the story of a young woman paralleled with the struggle of a nation as it regains its courage to fight back.

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2019

A Forgotten Hero

Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish Humanitarian Who Rescued 30,000 People from the Nazis

by Shelley Emling

In one of the most amazing rescues of WWII, the Swedish head of the Red Cross rescued more than 30,000 people from concentration camps in the last three months of the war. Folke Bernadotte did so by negotiating with the enemy—shaking hands with Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Gestapo. Time was of the essence, as Hitler had ordered the destruction of all camps and everyone in them.To learn more about this publisher, click here: http://bit.ly/2JZ10Sb

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True stories: discovery / historical / scientific

September 2020

The Lost Collection

by Pauline Baer de Perignon

Paintings by Monet, Degas, and Renoir… Imagine a magnificent family collection mysteriously vanishing during WWII! The narrator, Pauline, knows from family rumours that one of her great-grandfathers, Jules Strauss, was an art collector. A considerable aura has grown up around this figure. Despite his unfailing eye, he sold his acquisitions too soon. One day, a distant cousin hands Pauline a scribbled list of the paintings that once belonged to Strauss. There is no trace of these pieces in the family apartment. Where are they now? What happened in 1942? Pauline, a homemaker looking for a subject for a book, is no art historian. But, driven by insatiable curiosity that soon borders on obsession, she develops a passion for these missing paintings. Her search takes her from the Louvre to a museum in Dresden, via Gestapo archives.

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Fiction

January 2013

Black Ghosts

by Ken Kamoche

Dan Chiponda earns a scholarship to study in China and reluctantly leaves his native Zimbabwe for an uncertain future. Learning to take racial abuse in his stride, he dates a fellow student, Lai Ying, who is attracted to his easygoing manner. He remains haunted by the weight of his mother’s expectations, encapsulated by the image of the African fish eagle. Things take a dramatic turn when Chinese students pour into the streets in an orgy of violence to drive Africans out of town. The situation in Nanjing only stabilises when attention turns to the mayhem that is unraveling in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. But that is only the beginning of Dan’s troubles with the ‘Campus Gestapo’, loan sharks in Hong Kong, and the shock of his family getting caught up in the violence by Mugabe’s war vets.

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General & world history

A Greater Love

by Olga Watkins

The true story of a woman's incredible journey into the heart of the Third Reich to find the man she loves. When the Gestapo seize 20-year-old Olga Czepf's fiance she is determined to find him and sets off on an extraordinary 2,000-mile search across Nazi-occupied Europe risking betrayal, arrest and death. As the Second World War heads towards its bloody climax, she refuses to give up - even when her mission leads her to the gates of Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps... Now 89 and living in London, Olga tells with remarkable clarity of the courage and determination that drove her across war-torn Europe, to find the man she loved. The greatest untold true love story of World War Two.

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Literary Fiction

A Tear in the Curtain

by John Symons

The author is a fluent Russian speaker so has had access to material only available in Russian. The book is a timely reminder of the recent but half-forgotten period in which the story is set, the Cold War. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 some Russians sought to come to terms with the countless crimes perpetrated by the Communist Party at home and abroad. There was a brief attempt, under President Yeltsin, to reveal the truth, later thwarted by the recrudescence of Communists and then Putin’s leadership. There is now a determined official campaign to minimise or deny the truth about the millions who lost their lives. The book is, in part, based on the author’s talks with people persecuted or imprisoned by the Gestapo or KGB, and on information revealed in documents, many of them not yet available in English, made public in Russia after 1991. Some of the documents are from the huge collection made available, at President Yeltsin’s direction, in 1992 to Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet dissident expelled from his home country in December 1976 who settled in Britain.

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October 2021

The Iron Duke

by L. Ron Hubbard

He’s a lady’s man, a man’s man—and a wanted man, on the run in 1930s Europe…. Meet conman Blacky Lee, ruggedly handsome with a quick wit and a roguish charm. Think Clark Gable—with larceny in his heart and a price on his head. A price put there by the German Gestapo. But Blacky’s always got an angle, and this time it’s as audacious as they come. He’ll hide in plain sight, with the stolen identity of the crowned head of a Balkan kingdom—the Iron Duke. Can he pull it off? Win the love of a country beset with communism … and of the beautiful Countess? All Blacky has to do is risk everything—and, for once in his life, find a way to do the right thing and reform. Hubbard and Gable were fast friends and fellow adventurers. While Hubbard was writing for Columbia Pictures in 1937, the studio often called upon him to doctor scripts for Gable—giving him a unique knowledge of the man and inspiration for characters like Blacky Lee. “Colorful prose, lively action writing, exotic locales…excellent.” —Ellery Queen

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Children's & YA

Future History 2050

by Thomas Harding

Nominated for the Deutsche Jugendliteraturpreis 2021 It is the year 2020 and a researcher finds a stack of notebooks in a Berlin archive. He starts reading and is shocked to find that this is the history of the next thirty years. Could this really be the story of the future?

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Biography: general

Weeds Don't Perish

Memoirs of a Defiant Old Woman

by Hanna Braun

This is the story of a life lived to the full. Hanna Braun was born in 1927 to a Jewish family living in Germany. The family immigrated to Palestine in 1937, shortly after Hitler came to power in Germany and the onset of Jewish persecution there. During this course of events she was separated from her beloved father, who was forced to flee the country and made for Switzerland to escape the Gestapo. Her grandmother later died in the Terezin ghetto. Once in Palestine, Hanna's uncle became a fierce Zionist, and would convert Hanna's mother to Zionism as well. Hanna - a teenager at the time - also turned to Zionism, although she was initially unaware of what exactly this meant. Over the years, Hanna made many Arab friends in Palestine, and gradually began to question her allegiances. She witnessed the formation of the state of Israel, and was there when the atrocities of Deir Yassin happened; an incident that made her hate Zionism forever. These events, and many others explored in Weeds Don't Perish, helped to shape Hanna's perception, and transformed her into an active human rights activist; unable to witness injustice without speaking out. The book is often controversial and Hanna, not being endowed with the gift of great diplomacy, makes many enemies as well as friends along the way. Throughout, Hanna manages to retain her zest for life and her sense of humour, and delights in describing her years teaching English and Dance to her students in Zimbabwe. Her curiosity and enthusiasm for meeting new people and experiencing new things is infectious, and the reader cannot help but be swept up in the story. Hanna endured many setbacks and painful experiences in her personal life but, like the proverbial weed, she never gave up and refused to be beaten. Instead, she continued to her final days fight passionately for causes close to her heart - human rights and equality for all.

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Arbeitserziehungslager im Dritten Reich

by Lotfi, Gabriele / Vorwort von Mommsen, Hans

Das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz und die NS-Vergangenheit

by Goschler, Constantin; Wala, Michael

Tatsachen und Theorie des Geheimdienstes

by Weyrauch, Walter O

Eine Kritik des sozialen Radikalismus

by Helmuth Plessner, Joachim Fischer, Helmuth Plessner

Drei Romane

by Patrick Modiano, Walter Schürenberg

by James Knowlson, Elizabeth Knowlson, Christel Dormagen

2 Bände: Die große Reise. Aus dem Französischen von Abelle Christaller. – Was für ein schöner Sonntag! Aus dem Französischen von Johannes Piron

by Jorge Semprún, Johannes Piron, Abelle Christaller

by Jorge Semprún, Eva Moldenhauer

by Pere Cervantes

The French Police at the Service of the Gestapo

by Maurice Rajsfus; translated by Levi Laub; foreword by Michel Warschawski

by Thomas Seiterich

by Marcelle Kellermann

Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish Humanitarian Who Rescued 30,000 People from the Nazis

by Shelley Emling

by Pauline Baer de Perignon

by Ken Kamoche

by Olga Watkins

by John Symons

by L. Ron Hubbard

by Thomas Harding

Memoirs of a Defiant Old Woman

by Hanna Braun

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