Availability of German Language theological e-books

James A. Schumacher, Th.D.
James A. Schumacher, Th.D. Member Posts: 2 ✭✭
edited November 2024 in English Forum

Having grown-up with German as my second language, I would greatly appreciate being able eo get the works of my favorite authors in their original language.  Does anyone out there know where I might find e-books by folks like Juergen

Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Hans Kueng, Rudolf

Bultmann, or others in their original

German?

Jim Schumacher

Comments

  • Clifford Kvidahl
    Clifford Kvidahl Member, Logos Employee Posts: 146

    Jim,

    You may want to try google books. They have a good amount of German books in the Public Domain that you can access for free.

    Cliff

  • Rosie Perera
    Rosie Perera Member Posts: 26,194 ✭✭✭✭✭

    What is the German word for "e-book"? I would google the authors' names, one at a time, in quotation marks to make sure it's found as a phrase, with the German word for e-book on the same search line. For example if you were searching in English, it would be, "Wolfhart Pannenberg" e-book (or "Wolfhart Pannenberg" eBook) -- try both options.

    Also, you can restrict the search results to just sites in Germany by appending  site:.de to the end of your Google search criteria.

    I can't read German, but this appears to be an excerpt from the eBook version of Pannenberg's Grundfragen systematischer Theologie:

    http://www.e-cademic.de/data/ebooks/extracts/9783525581346.pdf

    You could poke around on that website to find out how to order the full thing.

    Similarly, here's an excerpt from Pannenberg's Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive:

    http://www.e-cademic.de/data/ebooks/extracts/9783525561645.pdf

    And here's a place where you can download Die Ethik von Wolfhart Pannenberg - Grundzüge und Thema Staat (eBook), though I don't know whether that's by him or about his ethics.

    You get the idea. Do that with each of the other authors you're interested in, and I'm sure you'll find some good hits.


    (BTW, I think I've answered my own question: it appears ebook is used in Germany for ebook; I was expecting it would be something like e-buch.)

  • NB.Mick
    NB.Mick MVP Posts: 16,253

    it appears ebook is used in Germany for ebook; I was expecting it would be something like e-buch.

    Yes, it's "ebook" or "e-book", not "e-buch". Unfortunately, the German publishers for a long time resisted ebooks, then lobbied that ebooks (unlike audiobooks) fall under our compulsory book pricing law (buchpreisbindung) and tried to keep a party line of setting the compulsory fixed price for ebooks higher than the price for paper books. Historically, this price has been outrageously high for university-level theological works, too.  

    This means that for works up till some months rather than years ago, you just won't find any proper ebooks (say in Kindle or ePub format) save for illegal scans. So all (meager seven) works from or about Pannenberg in Amazon's German Kindle store are in English: http://www.amazon.de/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_5?__mk_de_DE=%C5M%C5Z%D5%D1&url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=pannenberg&sprefix=panne%2Cdigital-text%2C271 (note that we Germans are kept with IP-geo-location filtering from using google books scans and have to pay different prices for Kindle books etc. Amazon had to agree with the German publishers that they sell Kindle books to German customers only through the German Kindle store etc)

    Note: 

    And here's a place where you can download Die Ethik von Wolfhart Pannenberg - Grundzüge und Thema Staat (eBook), though I don't know whether that's by him or about his ethics.

    Don't fall for this place or comparable things. Clever people (e.g. the publisher here: GRIN) make a living by allowing seminarians to publish their papers in ebook format - this is 38 pages and claims to have been graded "good". 

    The e-cademic site you found seems to be good - you linked to an excerpt (the first couple of pages, called "Leseprobe", is equivalent to our "look-into" here and often it is available for books that are sold as paper versions only), but it seems the anthropology book can be bought there http://www.e-cademic.de/product/9783525561645 - note that the site usually displays the book in Adobe Flash, but allows for DRM'd pdf downloads (restrictive licencing is applied, such as number of print pages, characters to be copied etc), read http://www.e-cademic.de/content/Wie+funktioniert%C2%B4s . I just ordered the second volume of "Grundfragen systematischer Theologie" (less than 10 USD) just to test, and it seems very okay. The downloaded PDF requires a password and contains my name as licencee in every page footer.

    Hope this helps,

    Mick 

     

    Have joy in the Lord! Smile

  • NB.Mick
    NB.Mick MVP Posts: 16,253

    Jim,

    welcome to the forums!

    You will have seen my reply to Rosie above. In addition to that: some few newer works from Küng or Moltmann will be available from Amazon or other booksellers.

    Maybe Theolobias, another user from Germany, will drop by and add something - after all, he should know as he is a "real" theologian and should have ways to aquire his profession's tools, rather than me as an amateur.

    Mick

    Have joy in the Lord! Smile

  • Rosie Perera
    Rosie Perera Member Posts: 26,194 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Aha, I see the user formerly known as "NewbieMick" no longer considers himself a Logos newbie. [:)] Congrats!

    Thanks for those insights into German ebook publishing.

  • NB.Mick
    NB.Mick MVP Posts: 16,253

    Aha, I see the user formerly known as "NewbieMick" no longer considers himself a Logos newbie. Smile Congrats!

    Thanks! After a year with Logos and a thousand forum posts, I thought it might be time for the change. The by-name "The increasingly inaccurately named..." is already taken (for a five-volume trilogy you may know). Actually I considered doing it now since back in December:

     


    'Newbie' Mick ... it's becoming progressively more obvious you're intentionally misleading the forum members with your 'Newbie'.

    well.... if I were to follow the words of a sophisticated forum member, I should start to consider a new nick - say in 2016 or so...

    I'm a 'newbie' compared to others on the forum; I 'joined' in 2006.

     

    (from http://community.logos.com/forums/t/41364.aspx ) - too good to not quote here Cool

    KS4J befittingly pointed me to http://wiki.logos.com/Getting_Started_with_Logos to celebrate my 1001st posting. [:D]

    Have joy in the Lord! Smile

  • NB.Mick said:

    KS4J befittingly pointed me to http://wiki.logos.com/Getting_Started_with_Logos to celebrate my 1001st posting. Big Smile

    True => http://community.logos.com/forums/p/45912/341368.aspx#341368 [Y] for resource idea: "1,001 things you still do not know about Logos 4."

    Thankful for many friendly forum discussions about using Logos Bible Software; personally have learned a lot plus have a lot to learn (possibly more than 1,001 things).

    Keep Smiling [:)]