Historian Katja Hoyer delivers a gripping story of life during the rise and reign of Hitler through a vividly drawn cast of characters in Weimar – Life on the Edge of Catastrophe.

Drawing on new archival research, she takes us from 1919 to 1939 as she tells the stories of the men and women who lived through the new republic and Hitler’s regime.

Weimar looms large in German history: a crucible of democracy and dictatorship, and home to some of Europe’s greatest thinkers – Goethe and Schiller, Liszt and Nietzsche among them.

The German town gave its name to the Weimar Republic in the aftermath of WWI, but it was also where fascism took hold, and where Buchenwald was dug out of a beech forest.

“Superb . . . Hoyer finds the town of Weimar a perfect microcosm for a country teetering into darkness . . . intelligent, original and well researched.”

Daily Telegraph