Best German Novels of the Twentieth Century

The Best German Novels of the Twentieth Century is a list of books compiled in 1999 by Literaturhaus München and Bertelsmann, in which 99 prominent German authors, literary critics, and scholars of German ranked the most significant German-language novels of the twentieth century.[1]

The group brought together 33 experts from each of the three categories.[2] Each was allowed to name three books as having been the most important of the century. Cited by the group were five titles by both Franz Kafka and Arno Schmidt, four by Robert Walser, and three by Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, Anna Seghers and Joseph Roth.[1]

Top Ten
# Year Title Author
1 1930–43 The Man Without Qualities
Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften		 Robert Musil
2 1925 The Trial
Der Process		 Franz Kafka
3 1924 The Magic Mountain
Der Zauberberg		 Thomas Mann
4 1929 Berlin Alexanderplatz Alfred Döblin
5 1959 The Tin Drum
Die Blechtrommel		 Günter Grass
6 1970-83 Anniversaries. From the Life of Gesine Cresspahl
Jahrestage 1-4: Aus dem Leben von Gesine Cresspahl		 Uwe Johnson
7 1901 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann
8 1932 Radetzky March
Radetzkymarsch		 Joseph Roth
9 1926 The Castle
Das Schloss		 Franz Kafka
10 1947 Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn, Told by a Friend
Doktor Faustus: Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn, erzählt von einem Freunde		 Thomas Mann

See also

References
  1. "Musils "Mann ohne Eigenschaften" ist "wichtigster Roman des Jahrhunderts"" (in German). LiteraturHaus. 1999. Archived from the original on June 7, 2001. Retrieved August 22, 2012.
  2. Wolfgang Riedel, "Robert Musil: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" in Lektüren für das 21. Jahrhundert: Schlüsseltexte der deutschen Literatur von 1200 bis 1900, ed. Dorothea Klein and Sabine M. Schneider, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2000, ISBN 3-8260-1948-2, p. 265 (in German)
  • Der Kanon – article on the novels of the German literary canon (in German)
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