Der Trompeter von Sankt Petersburg

A vivid panorama of history: St. Petersburg and the Germans. It is the harrowing saga of a lost world: Once, St. Petersburg was a vibrant metropolis and the fifth-largest city in the world, shaped by Germans. German monarchs, entrepreneurs, and artists gave the city on the Neva its magnificent face. This golden age came to a dramatic end with the revolution of 1917 and Stalin's rule. Longtime SPIEGEL correspondent and Russia expert Christian Neef recounts this tragedy through the lens of four life stories, including that of the trumpeter Oskar Böhme, who was shot by Stalin's secret police, the Poehl pharmacy dynasty, and the family of actor Armin Müller-Stahl. Drawing on previously unknown documents, he intricately intertwines human fate with the storms of world history, reviving an era that is much closer to us Germans than we realize.