Robert Löhr

En el palacio de Schönbrunn tiene lugar la presentación de un insólito invento: un autómata que juega al ajedrez.
El sorprendente artefacto, que tiene la apariencia externa de un gran turco de penetrantes ojos azules, guarda en sus entrañas un misterio que guía sus manos y su mente. Un secreto que solo conocen su creador, el ingeniero y consejero de la corte Kempelen, y su ayudante carpintero, un secreto confinado en el desván del ingeniero, del que solo es sacado con ocasión de las concurridas partidas de ajedrez y que ha empezado a suscitar envidias y recelo.
Pero el sueño de éxito que acaricia Kempelen no tarda en transformarse en su pesadilla cuando, en presencia de él, una hermosa aristocrata halla la muerte en misteriosas circunstancias. La máquina pensante se convierte entonces en objeto de espionaje, de persecución eclesisastica y de intrigas de la nobleza… (meer)

El inmortal Goethe encabeza una expedición para liberar Europa de las garras de Napoleón. Ante la ambición y la sed de poder de Napoleón, un grupo de intelectuales alemanes, liderados por Goethe, deciden viajar de incógnito a París. Su objetivo último es rescatar a su delfín, Luis Carlos de Borbón, y restaurar la corona de Francia. Tras enfrentarse a innumerables peligros y sinsabores, y tras descubrir que el heredero al trono es un impostor, los expedicionarios alemanes recelan de sus buenas intenciones y el grupo se disuelve. Sin embargo, aunque Goethe regresa a Alemania aclamado como un héroe, la sombra de la traición seguirá acechándolo...… (meer)

Almost a rehash of the earlier Das Erlkönig-Manöver, with Goethe and Kleist again involved in undercover activities during the Napoleonic wars. This book is set in 1806-1808.

For complicated reasons, Goethe and Kleist are travelling across Germany incognito, together with Ludwig Tieck, Wilhelm Schlegel, Madame de Staël, an Italian actress and a black poodle, all disguised as travelling players.

Löhr has fun letting his characters quote from their own (future) works, and he lets himself go a bit imagining what might happen when three major playwrights and the most famous German translator of Shakespeare have to improvise a performance of Hamlet for a rustic audience. The joke palls after a while, though, and the ending has to be very contrived to meet the historical novelist's standard constraint of not actually changing any of the bits of history we know about.… (meer)

For a change, a contemporary setting: it opens with schoolteacher, Green activist and single mother Friederieke becoming furious at the success of the Pirate Party in the Berlin state elections in September 2011 (8.9%, 15 seats). Those are votes that should have gone to the Greens, not to a bunch of reckless nerds. She's particularly angry with one of the new Pirate delegates in the state parliament, Volker Plauschenat, who has taken the credit for a successful meme she believes he has stolen from an idea in a blogpost she wrote.

Friederieke decides to infiltrate the Pirates and get her revenge on Volker, which allows Löhr to give us a lot of fascinating — and often very funny — detail about the Pirate phenomenon in German politics, and to show us that there were actually a few serious and worthwhile ideas hiding behind the pony tails, Star Trek references, bestickered MacBooks, and endless bottles of Club-Mate. Of course, we all know how a romantic comedy has to end if it starts with a female character hating a male character, but Löhr manages to twist the narrative inevitability away from the totally obvious a few times along the way. A fun glimpse into the long-gone 2010s!… (meer)