The Erich and Erna Kronauer Foundation has awarded its €10,000 history prize to the German historian Jörg Friedrich, the Frankfurter Allgemeine (February 18th) reports. Friedrich is best known internationally for his book Der Brand. Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940-45, which focuses on the Allied bombing campaign against Germany and most notably on the fire-bombing of cities such as Dresden. He has also written on the legal system under the Nazis, the role of the German army in the mass murders carried out during the invasion of Russia, and, most recently, on the Korean War.

In a review of the English translation of Der Brand in the Dublin Review of Books, Maurice Earls wrote: “While Friedrich does not make overt judgments, the message which emerges again and again from his deeply felt chronicling of Germany’s destruction is that the bombing was terrible, that it was a tragedy, that it should not have happened, that it was wrong. When The Fire was first published in 2002 – under its original title of Der Brand – it caused a considerable stir in Germany. It was not that the bombing had been forgotten, but that Friedrich’s passionate style was new. His account of the German experience, described by one Spanish reviewer as “an encyclopedia of pain”, is almost poetic at times.”

Click here to read the essay: