Living in Vienna 30 minutes away from Marienthal by public transport and having heard quite a bit about this classic at university, I picked it up in the bookstore and was pleasantly surprised both by its stylistic elegance and the warmth of its message in the dark times that were the 1930s.

The combination of statistic data with human reporting vividly paints the picture of a community in decline. The only part missing is a proper cconclusion. The report ends without summing up their findings or giving recommendations.

Suhrkamp should have added a modern commentary about what happened to Marienthal or Grammatneusiedl after the study. ( )