John Woods (transl.). The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe, edited by Erwin Wickert. New York 1998 and The Good German of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe. London 1999.

Last updated: 14/06/2023

The German editions of John Rabe’s diaries as well as the English translations do not only include a selection of entries from his time in Nanjing, but also from Rabe’s diary written in the summer of 1945 shortly before and after the fall of Berlin.

The English translation by John Woods was published in 1998 in the US and 1999 in the United Kingdom. While they do include Wickert’s selection of the Nanjing diary and the supplementary documents, they do omit some parts of the Berlin diaries, in total 13 pages, as well as most of Erwin Wickert’s essays and the Afterword. As a consequence, the English editions comprise only 300 pages whereas the German version is 440 pages long.

Whereas the UK edition used the original German title The Good German of Nanking (Der gute Deutsche von Nanking), the US edition changed it to The Good Man of Nanking.

Both English language editions are available in open access on archive.org after creation of a free account.
URL: https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Rabe%2C+John%2C+1882-1950%22 (17/05/2023)