Along with ancient, French and Italian cultural realities, one of the leading places in the poetic world of O. Mandelstam is occupied by motifs from German literature, mythology and history. Heinrich Kirschbaum's book explores the development and strategies for using the German theme in the poet's work: from polemics with Germanophile symbolists and (anti)war poems (1912–1916) to incantations of the fatal unity of the historical destinies of Russia and Germany in the works of 1917–1918, from chanting revolutionary brotherhood in half-forgotten translations from German proletarian poets (1920s) to the tragically controversial civil lyrics of the 1930s.