Reading List · German Literature
The Best to Read
Four of the ten writers below lost their citizenship, two more swapped it, one was born in a city-state that no longer exists and one in a country that was abolished while she was in her twenties. Only one of them stayed put — and forty police officers went through his house anyway.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors, 1749 to today · 6 more who wrote in German · 4 Nobel Prizes · Updated September 2026
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Quick answer
Ten German authors are worth your time, spanning 1749 to now, and four of them won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Six more names turn up on almost every list of German writers without being German at all — Kafka and Rilke were born in Prague, Zweig and Frankl in Vienna, Jung in Switzerland — and one writer here is German but has never written a book in German. Which is which changes what you should read first.
All ten, in order of birth
Written in German, Not German
These six turn up on almost every list of German authors. Five of them wrote in German without being German, and the sixth is German without writing in German. Most lists include them silently, which quietly hands a country three writers it exiled, one it deported and one it never had.
They wrote in German. They were not German.
Franz Kafka
Never a German citizen for a day: an Austro-Hungarian subject at birth, a Czechoslovak one from 1918, and an official of a Bohemian state insurance institute in a Czech-speaking city all his working life.
In 1911 he became co-owner of an asbestos factory with his brother-in-law. It appears in the diaries mostly as a source of misery.
Every book by Franz Kafka →Rainer Maria Rilke
An Austro-Hungarian subject born in Prague, buried at Raron in the Swiss Valais under an epitaph he wrote himself, and the author of a substantial body of poetry in French.
He was Rodin’s private secretary in Paris in 1905 and 1906, until Rodin dismissed him over a quarrel about letters.
Every book by Rainer Maria Rilke →Stefan Zweig
A Viennese Jew whose books Germany burned in 1933 and banned from sale. He applied for British citizenship in 1938, was granted it in March 1940, and died a British subject in Brazil.
He was one of the great manuscript collectors of the century. His heirs gave the collection to the British Library in 1986; it includes Mozart’s own catalogue of his works.
Viktor Frankl
Austrian from birth to death, and deported by the German state to four of its camps — Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Kaufering III and Türkheim — which murdered his mother, father, brother and first wife.
He had sewn a manuscript into his coat lining; it was taken at Auschwitz. He rebuilt it from memory on scraps, then dictated Man’s Search for Meaning in nine days in 1946.
Every book by Viktor Frankl →Carl Jung
Swiss from birth to death, in a country where German is simply one of the national languages. He never held German citizenship and never lived in Germany.
The Red Book sat in a Zurich bank vault for decades and fewer than two dozen people had seen it before 2008. He never finished it: 205 completed pages out of roughly 600 bound.
He is German. He does not write in German.
Eckhart Tolle
The inverse of the other five. German by birth and by name — Ulrich Leonard Tölle — but he left at thirteen, has lived in Canada since 1995, and has written every one of his books in English.
The German editions carry translators’ credits, which is the proof: Jetzt! Die Kraft der Gegenwart is a translation of an English original, not the other way round.
Every book by Eckhart Tolle →Which German author should you read?
| Author | Where from | Best for | Start with | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goethe | Frankfurt, a free city | Where it all starts | The Sorrows of Young Werther | 150 pp |
| Nietzsche | Prussia, then stateless | Thinking without a net | Beyond Good and Evil | 240 pp |
| Mann | Lübeck → US → Switzerland | The artist wrecking himself | Death in Venice | 100 pp |
| Hesse | Württemberg → Switzerland | Working out how to live | Siddhartha | 150 pp |
| Remarque | Prussia, then stateless | What a war actually does | All Quiet on the Western Front | 200 pp |
| Arendt | Prussia → stateless → US | How ordinary people do it | Eichmann in Jerusalem | 310 pp |
| Böll | Cologne, and he stayed | The press and the private citizen | The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum | 140 pp |
| Grass | Danzig, a city that ended | Germany arguing with itself | The Tin Drum | 580 pp |
| Sebald | Bavaria → England | Memory, and what it loses | The Emigrants | 240 pp |
| Erpenbeck | East Berlin, a state that ended | Who gets to belong | Go, Went, Gone | 290 pp |
If these ten interested you
Where to go next, and the guides on this site that go deeper than a paragraph:
- Friedrich Nietzsche — every book, in order, and which of them he actually finished.
- Hannah Arendt — the full body of work, including what she wrote in German before she stopped.
- Franz Kafka — what he published himself, and what Max Brod published against his instructions.
- Viktor Frankl — the books either side of Man’s Search for Meaning.
- Rainer Maria Rilke — the poetry, the letters, and where to start with each.
- Eckhart Tolle — all seven, and the two that matter.
Frequently asked questions about German authors
Who are the best German authors to read?
Ten worth your time, in order of birth: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Erich Maria Remarque, Hannah Arendt, Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, W.G. Sebald and Jenny Erpenbeck. Four of them won the Nobel Prize in Literature — Mann in 1929, Hesse in 1946, Böll in 1972 and Grass in 1999 — and Erpenbeck won the International Booker Prize in 2024. If you are starting from nothing, begin with Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front or Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther; both are short and neither needs any background.
Is Franz Kafka a German author?
No. Kafka was born in Prague in 1883 as a subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, became a Czechoslovak citizen when that state was founded in 1918, and died a Czechoslovak citizen in 1924. He never held German citizenship. He wrote in German because German was the language of educated Prague, and he worked his whole career for a Bohemian state insurance institute. He is a German-language author, not a German one.
How many German writers have won the Nobel Prize in Literature?
Counting only laureates who were German citizens at the time of the award: Theodor Mommsen (1902), Rudolf Eucken (1908), Paul von Heyse (1910), Gerhart Hauptmann (1912), Thomas Mann (1929), Heinrich Böll (1972), Günter Grass (1999) and Herta Müller (2009). Hermann Hesse won in 1946 but the Nobel Foundation lists him under Switzerland, because he had taken Swiss citizenship in 1924. Several other laureates wrote in German without being German: Carl Spitteler (1919, Swiss), Elias Canetti (1981, British), Elfriede Jelinek (2004, Austrian) and Peter Handke (2019, Austrian).
Which German book should I read first?
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, published in 1929. It is about two hundred pages, it needs no background, and it does in that space what most war writing fails to do at five times the length. If you would rather start with something older, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) is shorter still. If you want something written in this century, Jenny Erpenbeck's Go, Went, Gone (2015).
Did Nietzsche write The Will to Power?
No. Nietzsche announced a book of that name at the end of On the Genealogy of Morality, then abandoned the plan and used the drafts for Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist. The book published as The Will to Power in 1901 was assembled from his notebooks by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, arranged according to outlines he had discarded. The editor Mazzino Montinari called it a forgery. Read Beyond Good and Evil or the Genealogy instead — those he wrote and published himself.
Was Hermann Hesse German or Swiss?
Both, at different times, and the Nobel Foundation says Swiss. He was born in Calw in the Kingdom of Württemberg in 1877, held Swiss citizenship from 1882 to 1890 through his father's Basel citizenship, was made a Württemberger again in 1890 so he could sit a state examination, and became Swiss once more in 1924 through the city of Bern. He held Swiss citizenship when he won the Nobel Prize in 1946 and when he died in Ticino in 1962.
Which German author won the International Booker Prize?
Jenny Erpenbeck, in May 2024, for Kairos, translated by Michael Hofmann. She is the first German writer to win the International Booker Prize, and Hofmann is the first male translator to win it. The £50,000 was split equally between them. Kairos is a love story set in East Berlin in the last years of the German Democratic Republic, the country Erpenbeck was a citizen of until she was twenty-two.
Why are Kafka, Rilke and Zweig on a list of German authors?
They are not on the main list, and that is the point. All three wrote in German and none of them was German: Kafka and Rilke were born in Prague under Austro-Hungarian rule, and Zweig was a Viennese Jew who died a British subject in Brazil. Most lists of German authors include them without comment, which quietly annexes three writers to a country that, in Zweig's case, burned his books. They have their own section on this page, alongside Viktor Frankl, Carl Jung and Eckhart Tolle — who is the opposite case, German-born and writing only in English.
Footnotes
- The Nobel Prize in Literature — NobelPrize.org
- Kairos wins the International Booker Prize 2024 — The Booker Prizes
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — Wikipedia
- Friedrich Nietzsche — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Thomas Mann — Wikipedia
- Hermann Hesse — Wikipedia (German; the 1924 Bern naturalisation)
- All Quiet on the Western Front — Wikipedia
- Hannah Arendt — Wikipedia
- Heinrich Böll — Wikipedia (German; died at Langenbroich)
- Günter Grass — Wikipedia
- W.G. Sebald — Wikipedia
- Jenny Erpenbeck — The Booker Prizes
- Franz Kafka — Chronik, franzkafka.de
- Stefan Zweig timeline — stefanzweig.de (British citizenship, March 1940)
- Viktor Frankl — Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna
- The Red Book — Philemon Foundation
Facts last checked 12 September 2026. Dates are first publication in German unless stated. Three points where sources disagree and I have picked one: Hesse’s Swiss naturalisation is 1924 via Bern, not the 1923 given on English Wikipedia; Böll died at Langenbroich, not Bornheim-Merten, which is where he is buried; and Rilke died of leukaemia, the rose thorn being the wound that would not heal rather than the cause.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the writers are all real.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“It was a weight on me, my silence over all these years is one of the reasons I wrote the book.”
— Günter Grass, on sixty years of not saying it.
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