Göttingen turns up repeatedly in 20th-century intellectual history, and the best reading is non-fiction tied to the university.
- The Göttingen Eighteen (various authors) — a number of short biographical studies of the seven professors (Jacob Grimm among them) and the wider circle dismissed in 1837 for protesting against the King of Hanover's abolition of the constitution. The episode is foundational to German liberal academic identity.
- Constance Reid, Hilbert — biography of the mathematician David Hilbert, set largely in Göttingen, and one of the best portraits of the great pre-war mathematical school.
- Heinrich Heine, Die Harzreise (1826) — Heine wrote his celebrated walking-tour-as-satire after a stretch as a (bored, drinking) student at Göttingen, with which he opens the book in a fairly hostile mood. A small classic of German prose.
- Walter Kempowski, Tadellöser & Wolff — autobiographical novel, partly set in Göttingen, where Kempowski studied after the war. A vivid picture of provincial German bourgeois life in mid-century.