NOT I. MEMOIRS OF A GERMAN CHILDHOOD. BY JOACHIM FEST. NEW YORK: OTHER PRESS, 2013

In an essay published in 1999 concerning the complex relationship between historical and autobiographical writing, Jeremy D. Popkin convincingly argued, throughout the course of a thorough exploration of what he called the “autobiographical frontier”, that engaging in the challenging act of writing a memoir should be regarded as a necessary experience for every historian interested in viewing the past from a different, more intimate angle – through the lens of his own consciousness . Popkin’s statement is of particular significance when one comes across the hereby reviewed book, a memoir accurately described by Herbert A. Arnold in the foreword to the American edition as “quite unusual [...] in several respects, yet [...] a memoir all the same” .