The Ruins of the Reich

The book is beautifully presented with an attractive cover, and is full of little gems of information, if the reader can find them amongst the lists of names and events dropped by the author with, in many cases, too little or no elaboration. It was a shame that Geoghegan does not start his journey from the Rhineland, covered towards the end of the book, as there we learn of his summer experience in Hochdahl, near Düsseldorf on a school exchange with a German boy “that sowed the seeds of (his) love of Germany”. We learn a chapter or two later that, as well as making many visits, he spent two and a half years in Frankfurt-Sachsenhausen, where he must have got to know Germany fairly well.
This would have made a meaningful base from which to launch his story and put me in a better frame of mind to overlook the otherwise tendentious and deprecatory approach which dominates the descriptions of the other regions he visits in the earlier chapters. His vocabulary exhibits erudition, but it is often spoiled by the occasionally use of obscure expressions and monotonous descriptions, and florid and contemptuous prose. This and some of the irrelevant unnecessarily protracted vignettes of his struggles with his itineraries (getting lost in Usedom, forgetting his driving licence on his way to Kaliningrad, planning his hotels badly - amazing for a supposedly experienced traveller) made me struggle to get through the whole book – although I am glad I finally did, as the last chapters are the best.
The author clearly does have a working knowledge of German (as well as Italian), as he likes to inform us and to show off with expressions in German – some of which are, however, actually wrong - as are his attempts to explain a Polish name or two, revealing his failure to research. His assertion that the Germans are faecal obsessives, because their swear words are exclusively anally oriented, also indicates that he does not know the language as well as he thinks. His quotations in German and Cyrillic give me the impression the author is trying to show us how international he is but he needs to get it right. He loves repeating the Czech name Bat’a but while taking so much trouble to get his publishers to print other regional Roman letters correctly, he should have ensured that he identified the Czech letter ť.
His smugness in describing how he inadequately tipped a waitress, whose performance he sneers at, does not endear the reader to him. His crudities, such as telling his gay English acquaintance to get his dick out when he drools at the (in this book) ubiquitous rent boys – devalues the tone of the book. His frequent self-deprecation goes beyond an expression of agreeable humility. On the other hand, his self-deprecatory episodes with women which – with one exception - fizzle out after a few lines could have been developed into interesting anecdotes, but these – unlike his boring Usedom misadventure and losing the way in Königsberg – could have become entertaining.
His apparent antipathy to Germany and the Germans in the early chapters wrongly caused me to assume that this Ulsterman (Geoghegan is an Irish name, but he tells us he grew up in a terraced house in Leeds and then, without explanation, relates how he went to school in Reading) wanted to produce a book targeted to please British Kraut-bashers and patrons of the gutter press. It is in later chapters, though, that his mood seems to change. Considering his eventual revelation of his familiarity with Germany, it seems strange to claim that “every German restaurant…” is decorated with “clutter” comprising “…dried or fabric flowers, wrought iron candle holder, wooden stand for menus…” a “beer mug containing cutlery and serviettes…” What is he trying to achieve when he claims that all German restaurant toilets smell bad? Why does he make these grossly inaccurate and abhorrent generalisations?
He devotes several pages to the Dichterstein in Offenhausen but ends by declaring he cannot find any information on its origin – while a glance into a Wikipedia entry dating back to 2004 reveals all. This and some other information gaps indicate a lack of really thorough research, despite a plethora of historical facts and allegations. He very often adds a footnote informing us of new revelations since his journey (15 years before the book was published) which would have been much more digestible if they had had been interwoven into the main text. Having spent so much time in Germany, why does he not give more room to the sensitive, intelligent, interesting – often very anglophile – Germans who do not conform to his claim of essential German bellicosity (in which, in the end, I do not think he really believes), whom he must surely have met?
He does not limit his derogatory tone to descriptions of Germany in the earlier chapters. His description of Brno – a town I know well both before and after the fall of communism – is unrealistically unremittingly ghastly. This and other major towns in central and eastern Europe have largely had good as well as bad aspects, but Geoghegan glibly focuses his blarney on the bad. His view of central and eastern Europe seems to have been immutably formed prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, and the way he tells it, nothing has changed – except in Klaipeda, which is one of the only towns to earn a favourable description. The only other place to receive any compliments was Telč, but then that is now spoiled by tourists. Geoghegan experiences nearly everywhere, bad service, sullen waitresses and awful food. No-one who has not been to central Europe should read this book, as he will put it down with completely the wrong picture – and anyone who has been, will know that cuisine – and service - these days in Poland, Czechia and the Baltic States, can be superb. Why does the author of a travel book order mass produced, mass-marketed Polish Żywiec when he should be seeking out the excellent small brewery beers available everywhere in Poland? Some passages make me wonder if Geoghegan really visited these places in the 21st century, let alone – as we learn halfway through the book – in 2006 (while he jumps around in time so much, the reader is often confused as to which era he is describing). My own experience in Kaliningrad in 1990s was by no means as bad as his – and service and food there - and in Russia proper - has meanwhile improved out of recognition from the awfulness of Soviet days (where Geoghegan also claims to have spent holidays).
One wonders that Geoghegan shows little pleasure in his travel experiences, least of all in the prostitutes and rent boys who he encounters wherever he goes in the former Soviet Empire and even in a number of German cities. Even the British he encounters on his receive no preferential treatment. They are also almost exclusively sex-obsessed drunkards and his girlfriend is a superficial good-time girl, who abandons him on one of his visits to the gloomy East. He despises the Czechs and insults the Poles, but Geoghegan reserves his primary contempt for his Germans, who – until the later chapters - are invariably ugly, loud, bullet-headed, drunk, arrogant and unfriendly.
No book on the Third Reich can fail to mention the concentration camps and extermination hospitals, but Geoghegan devotes proportionally rather too many pages to details on these, one feels out of a desire to dramatize rather than inform. Sure, the Nazis were guilty of incomparably awful crimes, but I really have met Germans whose parents really were not Nazis – and so, it is later revealed, has Geoghegan. Yes, he does allude to Thomas Mann who had to leave Germany to escape the Nazis or face dire consequences for his attacks on the party; he mentions the German anti-fascist resistance movement – which was brutally wiped out by Hitler. But these concessions to a better side in the Germans do not adequately compensate for the predominantly anti-German tone of the book.
With thoughtful revision and radical surgery – more depth and less waves - this could be an interesting book. It could be renamed “The Ruins of the Reich – and what became of them”. Travels in the Present it is not, as much has already changed since 2006!