The 82 best books in German

Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht, Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke lead the 82 best books in German, ranked by literary regard. To start, The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer is the most approachable of the highly regarded books here, about 3.8 hours to read.

Each point of light is one of the 82, placed by how hard it is to read. The brighter, the higher it ranks. The dotted line is one way up.

82
books
909
hours to read
13
free to read here
Start low: Grimm's Fairy TalesSee all 82
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No. 1 of 82

Mother Courage and Her Children

Bertolt Brecht · 1941

Difficulty 62/10013 hours

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Readable here · 13

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Showing 82 books

About 909 hours for 82 of 82 books with measured lengths. Estimates use 250 words a minute, adjusted for each book's difficulty. At 2 hours a day, about 455 days for those books.

1–10 · 71 hours

  1. No. 1 on this list. Mother Courage and Her Children

    Bertolt Brecht · 1941

    Challenging13 hours

    Taught in schools: UNAM Escuela Nacional Preparatoria – programas de Literatura (Mexico)

    Included in: Great Books of the Western World

    Mother Courage is a required text on virtually every drama and theatre studies syllabus worldwide. It appears on the AP Literature list, the IB Theatre curriculum, and is included in every major anthology of 20th-century drama from Norton to Penguin. The play is routinely placed alongside Waiting for Godot and Death of a Salesman as one of the three foundational postwar plays in the Western canon.

    Start this book

  2. No. 2 on this list. Faust

    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1832

    Challenging3.9 hours

    Taught in schools: Turkish edebiyat curriculum (Turkey)

    Included in: Bokklubben World Library, Great Books of the Western World

    Goethe spent sixty years building a dramatic poem in which a scholar sells his soul not for pleasure but for the experience of a moment worth stopping time for. The work became the central myth of modernity: the idea that striving itself, not arrival, is what redeems a human life.

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  3. The Duino Elegies appear on virtually every 20th-century world poetry and comparative literature syllabus internationally. Rilke is the central figure in German-language modernist poetry and the Elegies are his culminating work, regularly paired with The Waste Land and Four Quartets as the defining lyric sequences of the modernist era. The sequence has been translated into every major European language and dozens beyond.

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  4. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality is a foundational text in psychology, psychoanalysis, sexuality studies, and cultural theory curricula worldwide. Listed among Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century (1999), the Open Syllabus Top 500 in Literature, and available on Wikipedia in 20 languages. Taught in psychology, philosophy, literature, gender studies, and history of science courses, it is considered inescapable for anyone studying psychoanalysis or the history of sexuality.

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  5. No. 5 on this list. The Metamorphosis

    Franz Kafka · 1915

    Moderate1.4 hours

    Taught in schools: Common Core text exemplars (Appendix B) (US), Lithuanian literature curriculum (lietuvių kalba ir literatūra)

    Included in: Great Books of the Western World

    The Metamorphosis appears in Wikipedia across 70 languages and has been in continuous print for over a century via Penguin Modern Classics and dozens of other prestige publishers. It is taught in comparative literature, modernism, and world literature courses at universities globally. The Open Syllabus data (0 appearances) likely reflects the novella being assigned within collected editions rather than as a standalone text.

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  6. Kafka's short fiction is taught in university literature courses worldwide, and 'A Hunger Artist' is among his most frequently anthologized works. It appears in virtually every Kafka collection and features in major short story anthologies. The work has sustained academic and pedagogical attention since its posthumous publication in 1922.

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  7. Standard curriculum in German literature and comparative literature courses worldwide. The novel launched the Sturm und Drang movement and anchored the European Romantic turn. No syllabus data is available in the database, but its presence in university world literature courses is pervasive and long-established.

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  8. No. 8 on this list. The Trial

    Franz Kafka · 1925

    Difficult9.2 hours

    Taught in schools: Lektury obowiązkowe – Polish national reading list (Poland)

    Included in: Bokklubben World Library

    Appears on Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century, the Open Syllabus Top 500 Literature list, and 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, with Wikipedia articles in 59 languages. Taught globally in comparative literature, philosophy, and political theory courses. The word 'Kafkaesque' entering the dictionary signals how completely the novel has entered Western cultural bedrock.

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  9. Die Dreigroschenoper premiered in Berlin on August 28, 1928, and became one of the most performed plays of the 20th century, with productions on every inhabited continent. It is core curriculum in theatre studies, German literature, European modernism, and political theory courses worldwide. No syllabus data appears in the database, but the play's canonical standing is among the highest in 20th-century drama.

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  10. The Glass Bead Game is widely recognized as Hesse's masterwork and a towering achievement of 20th-century German literature. It secures a place in the Western canon as a major modernist novel of ideas, regularly taught in universities and translated into dozens of languages. The novel's influence extends beyond literature into philosophy and cultural criticism, providing an enduring vocabulary ('the Glass Bead Game,' 'Castalia') for discussing intellectual culture.

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11–20 · 143 hours

  1. No. 11 on this list. Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1796

    Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship is taught in comparative literature and world literature courses globally, and is considered essential reading for understanding the development of European prose fiction. Its position as the founding text of the Bildungsroman places it on syllabi wherever German literature or the novel as a form is studied seriously. No database signals were available, but its literary-historical importance is universally acknowledged.

    Challenging19 hours

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  2. No. 12 on this list. Death in Venice · Thomas Mann · 1912

    Included in: Great Books of the Western World

    Death in Venice appears on virtually every German literature, European modernism, and queer theory university syllabus taught in the English-speaking world. It is a standard text in comparative literature programs alongside Kafka's Metamorphosis and Rilke's Duino Elegies. Wikipedia maintains articles on the novella in over 50 languages, and it features on most 'essential modern literature' lists.

    Challenging11 hours

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  3. No. 13 on this list. The Caucasian Chalk Circle · Bertolt Brecht · 1948

    The Caucasian Chalk Circle is among the most-taught plays in university drama and literature curricula worldwide, standard on syllabi alongside Mother Courage and The Good Person of Szechwan. It appears in secondary school programs across Europe and is a fixture of Western dramatic canon, placing it well above mid-century works that lack similar educational penetration.

    Difficult4.7 hours

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  4. No. 14 on this list. The Magic Mountain · Thomas Mann · 1924

    Included in: Bokklubben World Library

    Appears on 228 university syllabi (58.9th percentile, Open Syllabus Project) and Wikipedia articles exist in 41 languages. Listed on Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century and Open Syllabus Top 500 Literature. The Nobel Prize author and the novel's treatment of pre-war European culture have kept it in world literature curricula for a century.

    Challenging30 hours

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  5. No. 15 on this list. Doctor Faustus · Thomas Mann · 1947

    Routinely cited as Mann magnum opus and the great novel of German catastrophe. Taught as essential modernist text.

    Difficult34 hours

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  6. No. 16 on this list. Grimm's Fairy Tales · Brothers Grimm · 1812

    Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected Cinderella, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, and Rumpelstiltskin from oral sources and fixed them in print, giving Western childhood its permanent mythology. The collection launched the discipline of folklore studies and remains the most influential story anthology ever published.

    Easy5.9 hours

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  7. No. 17 on this list. The Tin Drum · Günter Grass · 1959

    Included in: Bokklubben World Library

    The Tin Drum appears on approximately 200 university syllabi according to Open Syllabus Project data (57th percentile), placing it firmly in world literature and 20th-century European fiction curricula. Wikipedia coverage spans 35 languages with dedicated Reception and Adaptations sections, indicating sustained international engagement. The novel is widely regarded as the defining work of postwar German literature, though its syllabus presence falls short of canonical American fixtures like The Great Gatsby.

    Difficult27 hours

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  8. No. 18 on this list. The Sandman · E.T.A. Hoffmann · 1816

    The Sandman is canonical in German literature courses, Romantic literature surveys, Gothic fiction studies, and psychoanalytic literary criticism worldwide. Freud's 1919 essay 'The Uncanny' uses it as the central specimen, ensuring its presence on psychoanalysis and literary theory syllabi for over a century. While it lacks the broad English-language curriculum presence of Frankenstein or Great Expectations, it is effectively required reading in any serious study of German Romanticism, the Gothic tradition, or the history of uncanny fiction.

    Difficult1.8 hours

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  9. No. 19 on this list. The Sonnets to Orpheus · Rainer Maria Rilke · 1923

    In February 1922, Rainer Maria Rilke retreated to Chateau de Muzot in Switzerland and composed fifty-five sonnets in three weeks. He addressed them to Orpheus — the Greek poet-god who descended into death to reclaim Eurydice and was torn apart by the Maenads for refusing them. The occasion was the recent death of Vera Knoop, a nineteen-year-old dancer Rilke barely knew; her death opened something. A tree ascends in the first line. Animals cluster around it in silence, listening. What Rilke is after is the premise that true song is not desire or communication but reality — breath as invisible poem, the moment when inner and outer stop being distinct. Orpheus moves through the cycle not as a character but as a principle: he is already dead, he already belongs to both realms, and because of this he can praise everything, including loss. The Sonnets instruct readers to will transformation, to be ahead of all parting, to whisper 'I am flowing' to the earth. They do not resolve their questions about death and being; they teach acceptance of irresolution as the condition of consciousness. Reading them asks for slow, repeated attention — each poem is compact and dense, and the cycle's meaning accumulates across all fifty-five. This is poetry as philosophical practice, the lyric at maximum pressure.

    Difficult2.8 hours

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  10. No. 20 on this list. Vertigo · W.G. Sebald · 1990

    A narrator wanders through northern Italy in the late 1980s, haunted by a sense that the same catastrophe keeps arriving in different costume. He sits in a Verona archive reading newspapers from 1913—the year before everything collapsed—and finds himself unable to leave. In the second section, a figure called Dr K. travels from Vienna to Venice to Riva, conducting a doomed romance with a girl from Genoa and hearing, at a sanatorium dinner table, a general's theory that battles are decided by specific gravity, not willpower. These two time periods—the narrator's present and Franz Kafka's 1913—are laid over each other until they become one.\n\nSebald writes long, unhurried paragraphs that gather subordinate clauses the way rivers gather tributaries: you are always moving forward but the channel keeps widening. Photographs appear without captions. Characters arrive and dissolve. The dead hunter Gracchus, lost between worlds because a helmsman was distracted, recurs as the book's organizing myth—a figure for anyone unable to depart this life entirely.\n\nVertigo is Sebald's first book, the one in which his method first becomes fully itself: a narrator walking through landscapes saturated with historical catastrophe, finding that the past is not behind us but slightly displaced sideways, still happening, still unresolved. The final image is Samuel Pepys's fire seen from a dream of mountain passes—the city burning, pigeons dead on the pavement, the question 'Is this the end of time?' floating unanswered.

    Difficult8.1 hours

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21–30 · 130 hours

  1. No. 21 on this list. Siddhartha · Hermann Hesse · 1922

    A young Indian seeks enlightenment, journeying from wealth through asceticism to a final understanding by a river. Hesse's beloved fable of spiritual seeking remains one of the most influential novels of the 20th century, offering wisdom that transcends its Eastern setting.

    Moderate2.7 hours

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  2. No. 22 on this list. Austerlitz · W.G. Sebald · 2001

    Austerlitz appears on 197 university syllabi at the 57th percentile, placing it solidly in the serious literary canon—standard in contemporary European fiction and Holocaust literature courses at major universities. Wikipedia covers the book in 23 languages, indicating meaningful global critical reach. It is routinely assigned alongside Primo Levi, Paul Celan, and Imre Kertész in courses on memory and atrocity literature.

    Difficult9.5 hours

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  3. No. 23 on this list. Thus Spoke Zarathustra · Friedrich Nietzsche · 1885

    Major philosophical and literary text; influenced twentieth-century thought.

    Challenging12 hours

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  4. No. 24 on this list. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge · Rainer Maria Rilke · 1910

    Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge is on Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century, with Wikipedia articles in 14 languages. It is taught as a founding text of modernist prose in German and comparative literature courses.

    Challenging6 hours

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  5. No. 25 on this list. The Emigrants · W.G. Sebald · 1992

    The Emigrants is widely taught in contemporary world literature, post-WWII German literature, and Holocaust literature courses, though it lacks the mass-curriculum presence of more canonical texts. It appears regularly on 'best novels of the 20th century' lists — including The Guardian's 100 Best Novels in English — and is considered essential reading in serious literary circles. Its canonical status is high within literary academia but limited compared to texts like Beloved or One Hundred Years of Solitude.

    Difficult7.6 hours

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  6. No. 26 on this list. The Man Without Qualities · Robert Musil · 1930

    Included in: Bokklubben World Library

    A cornerstone of European modernism, taught in world literature courses alongside Proust and Joyce. Essential reading for study of the novel form, Austrian literature, and philosophical fiction, though less universally assigned than Ulysses due to its length and incompleteness.

    Difficult50 hours

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  7. No. 27 on this list. Cat and Mouse · Günter Grass · 1961

    Cat and Mouse occupies significant position within German postwar literature and Grass's own oeuvre, frequently taught in universities and anthologized in collections of important twentieth-century fiction. It lacks the cultural penetration of The Tin Drum but commands substantial literary recognition and scholarly attention.

    Moderate3.1 hours

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  8. No. 28 on this list. Dog Years · Günter Grass · 1963

    Dog Years is the third volume of the Danzig Trilogy and less widely taught than The Tin Drum, which dominates university syllabi. The Wikipedia article is notably short (967 characters), reflecting thinner digital documentation than its companion novels. It remains central to German postwar literature courses and appears on reading lists for Nobel Prize study, but lacks the standalone canonical presence of Grass's earlier work.

    Difficult28 hours

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  9. No. 29 on this list. Effi Briest · Theodor Fontane · 1895

    Effi Briest is required reading in German literature courses worldwide and appears on major lists of the greatest novels, including Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century. Its reach outside the German-speaking world is narrower than Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina due to language barriers, but within German studies it holds the same foundational status. Wikipedia articles exist in 40+ languages, reflecting genuine global recognition.

    Challenging9.9 hours

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  10. No. 30 on this list. The Golden Pot · E.T.A. Hoffmann · 1814

    One of the masterpieces of German Romanticism and Hoffmann's most celebrated tale. Widely studied in German literature courses.

    Moderate1.9 hours

    Start this book
31–40 · 60 hours

  1. No. 31 on this list. The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum

    Heinrich Böll · 1974

  2. No. 32 on this list. The Wall

    Marlen Haushofer · 1963

  3. No. 33 on this list. The Stechlin

    Theodor Fontane · 1898

  4. No. 34 on this list. Young Törless

    Robert Musil · 1906

  5. No. 35 on this list. Cassandra

    Christa Wolf · 1983

  6. No. 36 on this list. Demian

    Hermann Hesse · 1919

  7. No. 37 on this list. The Weavers

    Gerhart Hauptmann · 1892

  8. No. 38 on this list. Darkness at Noon

    Arthur Koestler · 1940

  9. No. 39 on this list. The Clown

    Heinrich Böll · 1963

  10. No. 40 on this list. The Land of Green Plums

    Herta Müller · 1998

41–50 · 53 hours

  1. No. 41 on this list. Indian Summer

    Adalbert Stifter · 1857

  2. No. 42 on this list. Visitation

    Jenny Erpenbeck · 2008

    Taught in schools: Bavarian Lehrplan Deutsch (Germany), North Rhine-Westphalia Abitur Deutsch (Germany)

  3. No. 43 on this list. The Appointment

    Herta Müller · 1997

  4. No. 44 on this list. Billiards at Half-Past Nine

    Heinrich Böll · 1959

  5. No. 45 on this list. Confusion of Feelings

    Stefan Zweig · 1927

  6. No. 46 on this list. The Reader

    Bernhard Schlink · 1995

  7. No. 47 on this list. The Neverending Story

    Michael Ende · 1979

  8. No. 48 on this list. Before Sunrise

    Gerhart Hauptmann · 1930

  9. No. 49 on this list. The Fury

    Paul Heyse

  10. No. 50 on this list. Three Women

    Robert Musil · 1924

51–60 · 104 hours

  1. No. 51 on this list. Go, Went, Gone

    Jenny Erpenbeck · 2015

  2. No. 52 on this list. The End of Days

    Jenny Erpenbeck · 2012

  3. No. 53 on this list. Tyll

    Daniel Kehlmann · 2020

  4. No. 54 on this list. The Hunger Angel

    Herta Müller · 2009

  5. No. 55 on this list. Eurotrash

    Christian Kracht · 2025

  6. No. 56 on this list. Memoirs of a Polar Bear

    Yoko Tawada · 2011

  7. No. 57 on this list. The Pine Islands

    Marion Poschmann · 2019

  8. No. 58 on this list. A Whole Life

    Robert Seethaler · 2016

  9. No. 59 on this list. Critique of Judgment

    Immanuel Kant · 1790

  10. No. 60 on this list. Critique of Pure Reason

    Immanuel Kant · 1781

61–70 · 236 hours

  1. No. 61 on this list. Philosophical Investigations

    Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1953

  2. No. 62 on this list. Being and Time

    Martin Heidegger · 1927

  3. No. 63 on this list. Beyond Good and Evil

    Friedrich Nietzsche · 1886

  4. No. 64 on this list. The Gay Science

    Friedrich Nietzsche · 1882

  5. No. 65 on this list. Illuminations

    Walter Benjamin · 1955

  6. No. 66 on this list. The Arcades Project

    Walter Benjamin

  7. No. 67 on this list. Civilization and Its Discontents

    Sigmund Freud · 1930

  8. No. 68 on this list. Dialectic of Enlightenment

    Theodor W. Adorno · 1944

  9. No. 69 on this list. Aesthetic Theory

    Theodor W. Adorno · 1970

  10. No. 70 on this list. The Logic of Scientific Discovery

    Karl Popper · 1934

71–80 · 102 hours

  1. No. 71 on this list. Minima Moralia

    Theodor W. Adorno · 1951

  2. No. 72 on this list. Mimesis

    Erich Auerbach · 1946

  3. No. 73 on this list. Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry

    Gotthold Ephraim Lessing · 1766

  4. No. 74 on this list. The Origin of German Tragic Drama

    Walter Benjamin · 1928

  5. No. 75 on this list. The Cost of Discipleship

    Dietrich Bonhoeffer · 1937

  6. No. 76 on this list. The Theory of the Novel

    Georg Lukács · 1916

  7. No. 77 on this list. The Sacred and the Profane

    Mircea Eliade · 1957

  8. No. 78 on this list. The Idea of the Holy

    Rudolf Otto · 1917

  9. No. 79 on this list. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

    Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1921

  10. No. 80 on this list. The Phenomenology of Spirit

    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1807

81–82 · 10 hours

  1. No. 81 on this list. The Communist Manifesto

    Karl Marx · 1848

  2. No. 82 on this list. The Problem of Human Life

    Rudolf Christoph Eucken · 1895

About this list

These 82 books are the highest-scoring eligible books in German currently in the catalogue. About 909 hours of reading in all. Difficulty runs from 56 to 74 out of 100 for the middle half of the list; the summit is Aesthetic Theory at 91.

This list is ranked by literary regard, with a consistent order for equal scores. Membership follows authors and co-authors, not translators or editors. Catalogue coverage and the historical canon both limit what this list can represent.

When we matched the Canons dataset to our catalogue in October 2026, our canonical-status scores rose with the number of school curricula, publisher series and lists in it that cite a work: the median score was 72 for books one such source cites, 84 at two, 88 at three, 92 at four and 93 at five or more. Prizes are left out of that count. Outside the state curricula, the dataset’s sources choose mostly from what has been translated into English or French, so it is a weaker check on other literatures. Source: Canons (Andrew Piper), CC BY 4.0

Questions people actually ask

What are the best books in German?
By literary regard, which weighs canonical status, critical standing and influence: Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht, Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality by Sigmund Freud and The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. ReadingRate ranks 82 such books, each with a difficulty score and a reading-time estimate.
Which books in German should I read first?
Start from difficulty, not from rank. The most approachable books on this list that still carry top literary regard are The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (about 3.8 hours), Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm and Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.
What are the shortest of the best books in German?
Among the top 25, the shortest are The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffmann (about 1.8 hours), The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (about 1.4 hours) and Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke (about 2.9 hours), at an average pace of 250 words a minute adjusted for each book's difficulty.
Which of the best books in German are the established classics?
By canonical status, how firmly a book sits in curricula, anthologies and the canon: Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Critique of Judgment by Immanuel Kant, Being and Time by Martin Heidegger, Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant and Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht.
Can I read any of these books in German for free?
13 of the 82 open in ReadingRate's reader with a free account, from public-domain editions: Faust, The Metamorphosis, The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Trial, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and 8 more.
How long would it take to read the top ten?
About 71 hours, at an average pace of 250 words a minute adjusted for each book's difficulty: 36 days at two hours a day. Set your own pace on the page and the list's reading times change to it.
How hard are books in German to read?
Most of this list sits between 56 and 74 on ReadingRate's 100-point difficulty scale, where 40 to 55 is moderate. The summit is Aesthetic Theory at 91. Every entry carries its own score, so a reader can pick a great book at a difficulty they will finish.
How is this list ranked?
On literary-regard data: how canonically established a work is, its critical standing, and its influence on later writing. It is not a readers’ poll, which is why recent bestsellers rarely appear. Membership follows authors and co-authors, not translators or editors. Lists by country, author, period, theme or difficulty keep to literature (fiction, poetry, drama and philosophy), their novels, poems and plays first and their philosophy after them; a list of a kind of book, such as memoir or criticism, keeps every book of that kind. Every list holds at most three works by one author.