Winifred Wagner was a British-born orphan who became Richard Wagner’s daughter-in-law, head of the Bayreuth festival, and one of Adolf Hitler’s closest personal friends. A no-nonsense Englishwoman who displaced Wagner’s formidable widow to become head of the family and the Festival, Winifred fell adolescently in love with Hitler and made Bayreuth the summer gathering place for the Nazi elite from 1933 to 1939. And yet this staunch German nationalist leaped to the aid of Jewish acquaintances and artists as they were increasingly threatened by exile, imprisonment, or death. Drawing on previously unavailable sources, Brigitte Hamann has produced a meticulously researched and elegantly written biography—the story of the private Hitler and his monumental obsessions, and of the headstrong, dedicated, and misguided woman who remained loyal to his memory until her death in 1980.

Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Hitler's Bayreuth

Biographies & Memoirs

HAMANN, Brigitte

Community & Culture

Houghton, mifflin, harcourt

Already a critically acclaimed bestseller in Germany and in Austria, Hitler's Vienna explores the critical, formative years which Hitler spent in Vienna, painting a fascinating portrait of the development of his ideas and career against the social, cultural, and political climate of the capitol of the Hapsburg Empire. Hitler's Vienna was not the artistic and intellectual center normally associated with Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Arthur Schnitzler, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Instead, it was a cauldron of fear and indignation, a city teeming with the "little people" who rejected Viennese modernity as too international, too "Jewish," and too libertine. Indeed, Hitler's Vienna was a breeding ground for obscure political theories, usually propagated by disadvantaged men living together in hostels. To them, being "better" in this multinational city meant belonging to the "noble German people." Brigitte Hamann compellingly depicts the undercurrent of disturbing social and political ideologies that permeated this city of civil unrest. Drawing on previously untapped resources, she gives us the fullest account ever rendered of the young fuhrer. Hitler's Vienna reveals the vital connection between Hitler's indoctrination into the devastating racial politics that swept Germany's multinational state and the hotbed of nationalistic activity that was Vienna in the early 20th century. It is a profoundly important addition to present Hitler scholarship.

Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship

Thornton, Thomas

Historical

Oxford University Press

Hitler's Vienna explores the critical, formative years that the young Adolf Hitler spent in Vienna. It is both a cultural and political portrait of the Austrian capital and a biography of Hitler during his years there, from 1906 to 1913. Hitler's was not the modern, artistic "fin-de-siècle Vienna" we associate with Freud, Mahler, and Wittgenstein. Instead, it was a cauldron of fear and ethnic rivalry and a breeding ground for racist political theories. Brigitte Hamann vividly depicts the undercurrent of disturbing ideologies that flowed beneath the glitter of the Hapsburg capital. Drawing on previously untapped sources that range from personal reminiscences to the records of homeless shelters where the unemployed Hitler spent his nights, Hamann gives us the fullest account ever rendered of this period of Hitler's life and shows us how profoundly his years in Vienna influenced his later career.

Empress Elisabeth of Austria, known to her family as Sisi, belongs to a famous love story of European royalty - in 1853 the Emperor Franz Josef, the most eligible bachelor in Europe, fell in love with her at first sight when she was fifteen; they were married the next year. On the surface, it was a fairytale marriage, all the more poignant, with hindsight, because her death signalled the twilight years of the Habsburg Empire.
At the time of its first publication in 1988, Brigitte Hamann's biography, which tells Elisabeth's story from her birth as a member of the Bavarian nobility to her assassination at the hands of an Italian anarchist, led to a revised and deeper understanding of Elisabeth. During her lifetime she was idolised solely for her grace and beauty; now, for the first time, the Empress was portrayed as a stronger character, bitter at her marriage, seeking independence, and struggling against the powerful influence of her mother-in-law, the Archduchess Sophie. Researched by a respected historian, this is the definitive account of Elisabeth's life, death and legacy.

The Reluctant Empress: A Biography of Empress Elisabeth of Austria

Memoirs

Faber and Faber

Austrian writer and peace activist Bertha von Suttner was the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. As founder of the Austrian and German Peace Associations and the author of a number of novels and several works on peace, von Suttner's name became synonymous worldwide with peace activism and protest against old world order. Ironically, her death eight days before the outbreak of World War I was seen by her contemporaries as a symbolic end of the possibility for world peace. In Bertha von Suttner, Brigitte Hamann has written the most comprehensive biography of the celebrated journalist - translated into English by Ann Dubsky - tracing not only von Suttner's life and work but spanning the political and social frontier of Austria on the eve of World War I. Von Suttner's novel Die Waffen Nieder! (Lay Down Your Arms!), published in 1899, was a bestseller and brought her international acclaim. Indeed, Tolstoy compared her technique of rallying readers to her cause to that of Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom's Cabin for the emancipation of American slaves. Her lectures on peace and disarmament took her throughout Europe and the United States, where she formed close friendships with Andrew Carnegie, Alfred Nobel, Theodor Herzl, and Albert I of Monaco. As her conviction to initiate peace movements deepened, so her books became more impassioned. Her dictum, "universal sisterhood is necessary before the universal brotherhood is possible, " demonstrated that her concerns extended beyond the peace movement to include women's issues and many social causes, making von Suttner's work quite relevant at the close of the twentieth century.

Bertha Von Suttner: A Life for Peace (Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution)

Arts & Literature

Syracuse Univ Pr

Based on diaries, letters and archival material, this is a biography of Austrian writer and peace activist Bertha von Suttner, the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. It aims to show the relevance of her work in the 20th century.

Brigitte Hamann portrays Rudolf von Habsburg, Crown Prince of Austria, as a liberal intellectual who stood in opposition to his father Emperor Franz Josef and the imperial establishment. Against the prevailing currents of his time, Rudolf wanted to modernize the Habsburg Empire by abolishing the privileges of the aristocracy. He vehemently opposed nationalism and anti-Semitism and fought for liberalism and democracy and the rights of the minorities within the multinational Empire. His political goal was a United Europe of liberal states. For a long time, Crown Prince Rudolf was known mainly in connection with his suicide at Mayerling with Baroness Mary Vetsera. However, the Mayerling tragedy may be seen as the last consequence of living without any prospect of realizing his ideals.

Rudolf. Crown Prince and Rebel: Translation of the New and Revised Edition, «Kronprinz Rudolf. Ein Leben» (Amalthea, 2005)

Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers

What turned Adolf Hitler, a relatively normal and apparently unexceptional young man, into the very personification of evil? To answer this question, acclaimed historian Brigitte Hamann has turned to the critical, formative, years that the young Hitler spent in Vienna. As a failing, bitter, and desperately poor artist, Hitler experienced only the dark underbelly of Vienna, which was seething with fear, racial prejudice, anti-Semitism and conservatism. Drawing on previously untapped sources—from personal reminiscences to the records of shelters where Hitler slept—Hamann vividly recreates the dark side of fin de siècle Vienna and paints the fullest and most disturbing portrait of the young Hitler to date.

Hitler's Vienna: A Portrait of the Tyrant as a Young Man (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)

Tauris Parke Paperbacks

Elisabeth d'Autriche (French Edition)

History

Europe

FAYARD

Die Deutschen und ihre Nachbarn: Österreich

Beck C. H.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by HAMANN, Brigitte. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by HAMANN, Brigitte

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by HAMANN, Brigitte. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Hitler's Bayreuth

Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship

Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship

The Reluctant Empress: A Biography of Empress Elisabeth of Austria

Bertha Von Suttner: A Life for Peace (Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution)

Bertha Von Suttner: A Life for Peace (Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution)

Rudolf. Crown Prince and Rebel: Translation of the New and Revised Edition, «Kronprinz Rudolf. Ein Leben» (Amalthea, 2005)

Hitler's Vienna: A Portrait of the Tyrant as a Young Man (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)

Elisabeth d'Autriche (French Edition)

Die Deutschen und ihre Nachbarn: Österreich