The MagazineUn-supermanAn ordinary German in extraordinary times.Jul 4, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 40
• By SUSANNE KLINGENSTEIN
 The Turbulent World  An Ordinary Berliner Writes the Twentieth Century by Peter Fritzsche Harvard, 288 pp., $26.95 In the spring of 2003, Peter Fritzsche, an insightful and respected historian of 20th-century Germany, discovered in the state archives of Berlin the extensive diaries of an ordinary German named Franz Göll. The diaries run from 1916 to shortly before Göll’s death in 1984, at the age of 85, and cover a period in German history marked by extraordinary violence, social upheaval, and political and economic transformations. There is very little that we do not know about 20th-century Europe. Multitudes of historians have combed through the remains of the two 12- to 14-year German regimes, the reckless Weimar Republic and the brutal Third Reich. Thousands have examined every move made in the two world wars, and every scrap of paper written during the Holocaust. We have more letters and diaries than we know what to do with—but the diaries, in particular, have tended to be those of well-educated, highly self-conscious intellectuals, from the aristocratic Count Harry Kessler to the caustic, melancholy professor of French literature Victor Klemperer. To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
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