PagineFaust’s bargain with the Devil, Gregor Samsa waking up as an insect, Siddhartha’s search for meaning, the trenches of All Quiet on the Western Front — German classics ask the biggest questions in literature. Here are 60 essential books written in German, from medieval epics to the 20th century, with short guides to the great German authors, where to start, and many you can read free online in English translation.
New to German literature? Begin with one of these — or follow our step-by-step guide, What to Read for German Classics →
Full books, free in the Pagine e-reader on any phone, tablet or computer — no download.
Short biographies, what to read first, and every book of theirs on this list.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is Germany’s Shakespeare — poet, novelist, playwright, scientist and statesman. His short novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), about a young man destroyed by unrequited love, made him famous across Europe at 24. He spent most of his life in Weimar as a minister at the ducal court, and worked for some sixty years on Faust, the scholar who bargains with the devil Mephistopheles — Part One appeared in 1808, Part Two in 1832, the year he died. Germany’s cultural institute, the Goethe-Institut, is named after him.
Where to start: The Sorrows of Young Werther
On this list: The Sorrows of Young Werther · Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship · Faust · Elective Affinities
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: biography & books (2 free to read) →
Friedrich Schiller was Goethe’s friend and rival and the great dramatist of freedom. His first play, The Robbers (1781), caused a sensation; Don Carlos, the Wallenstein trilogy, Mary Stuart (1800) and William Tell (1804) followed. His poem “Ode to Joy” (1785) became the text of the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony — today the anthem of the European Union.
Where to start: William Tell
On this list: The Robbers · Wallenstein · Mary Stuart · William Tell
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were scholars of language who set out to collect German folk tales before they disappeared. Their Children’s and Household Tales (first volume 1812) — with Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin and Little Red Riding Hood — became one of the most widely read books in the world. Jacob also discovered “Grimm’s law” of sound change, and the brothers began the great German dictionary.
Where to start: Grimm’s Fairy Tales
On this list: Grimm’s Fairy Tales
E. T. A. Hoffmann was a judge, composer and music critic who wrote the eeriest tales of German Romanticism. “The Sandman” (1816), with its mechanical doll, inspired Freud’s essay on the uncanny; “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” (1816) became Tchaikovsky’s ballet; and The Devil’s Elixirs (1815) is a Gothic classic.
Where to start: The Nutcracker and the Mouse King
On this list: The Devil’s Elixirs · The Nutcracker and the Mouse King · The Sandman
Theodor Fontane was a pharmacist, journalist and war correspondent who only turned to the novel in his late fifties — and became the master of German realism. Effi Briest (1895), the story of a young wife married to an older official in Prussian society, is often compared to Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina.
Where to start: Effi Briest
On this list: Effi Briest
Thomas Mann published his first novel, Buddenbrooks (1901), the decline of a merchant family like his own, at 26. Death in Venice (1912) and The Magic Mountain (1924), set in a Swiss tuberculosis sanatorium before World War I, made him the leading German novelist of his age; he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. An outspoken opponent of the Nazis, he went into exile in Switzerland and the United States, where he wrote Doctor Faustus (1947).
Where to start: Death in Venice
On this list: Buddenbrooks · Tonio Kröger · Death in Venice · The Magic Mountain · Doctor Faustus
Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Jewish writer from Prague who worked as a lawyer for a workers’ accident insurance institute and wrote at night. In The Metamorphosis (1915) a travelling salesman wakes up transformed into a giant insect; in The Trial a man is arrested for a crime no one will name. He asked his friend Max Brod to burn his manuscripts after his death; Brod refused, and published The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika. “Kafkaesque” is now a word in every major language.
Where to start: The Metamorphosis
On this list: The Metamorphosis · A Country Doctor · The Trial · The Castle
Hermann Hesse wrote about the search for the self, drawing on Eastern philosophy and psychoanalysis. Demian (1919), Siddhartha (1922) — a young man’s spiritual journey in the time of the Buddha — and Steppenwolf (1927) became cult books for later generations, and The Glass Bead Game (1943) helped win him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. He lived most of his life in Switzerland.
Where to start: Siddhartha
On this list: Demian · Siddhartha · Steppenwolf · The Glass Bead Game
Erich Maria Remarque was drafted into the German army at 18 and wounded on the Western Front. All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), the story of young soldier Paul Bäumer and his classmates, became one of the best-selling and most influential anti-war novels ever written. The Nazis burned his books and stripped him of his citizenship; he lived in exile in Switzerland and the US.
Where to start: All Quiet on the Western Front
On this list: All Quiet on the Western Front
13 of these are free to read in Pagine right now (📖 Read free). The rest link to a free public-domain edition or to Open Library, where many can be borrowed free.
Print it, save it as a PDF, email it to yourself or share it with a friend, book club or class. Every copy links back to pagineapp.com, and the free Pagine app tracks every book you finish.
iPhone & iPad
Android40 free books by German authors in Pagine — including titles beyond this list.
Every title on the list links to the free sources that may have it. Public-domain books are free to read and download; newer books can often be borrowed free.
Many German classics before 1930 are free in older English translations; for Goethe’s Faust and Kafka, a modern translation from your library is worth seeking out for the books you love most. Learning German? Short texts — Grimm’s tales, Kafka’s stories, Kästner’s Emil and the Detectives — are great first reads in the original.
Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Hesse’s Siddhartha, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther and Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front are short, gripping and widely loved.
A brilliant but dissatisfied scholar, Faust, makes a wager with the devil Mephistopheles: if Faust ever finds a moment so perfect he wishes it would last, the devil may take his soul. Part One includes the tragic love story of Gretchen.
Kafka was a German-speaking Jewish writer from Prague, then part of Austria-Hungary and now the Czech Republic. He wrote in German, so he is part of German-language literature.
Yes. Works published in 1930 or earlier — Goethe, Schiller, the Grimms, Hoffmann, Kafka, early Mann and Hesse, and All Quiet on the Western Front — are in the US public domain, and many are free in Pagine or on Project Gutenberg in English.
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