The changing classic book culture that is German

I visited the best and largest bookstore in Konstanz, a university town and a town with above-average wealth.  The bookstore had three floors.

In times past, you might have expected to find hundreds of classic German-language novels in such a store.  This visit I found only a single shelf devoted to such novels, and most of them were not German-language heritage at all.  (In contrast, the section for English-language books was about three times larger.)  I saw Italienische Reise by Goethe and Wilde Phantasien by Tieck, and…?  Maybe two or three others?  There was plenty of Sherlock Holmes, a fair amount of Dickens and Austen and Melville, and so on.  No Kafka, Musil, Mann…you can keep on going and no it wasn’t there.  Nowhere to be found in the store.  You might do better looking for those works (in English) in an American Barnes and Noble.

Do the classic German book buyers simply use Amazon?  Or is the shift in reading habits so dramatic?  Is this another international conformity effect, and can I somehow blame the Woke?  Maybe immigrants are a modest factor too, or you might not wish to post your reading of such books on social media.

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