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Everything you need to write your piece, without having to ask.
The First to Stand Up
The Christmas Truce of 1914 and the Courage to Leave Our Trenches
At Christmas 1914, soldiers on the Western Front climbed out of their trenches unarmed, sang with the enemy and buried their dead together. Bernd Blasius tells the story of that night through the letters of the men who were there, sets it beside the tense silence of the Christmases of his childhood, and asks what it takes for one person to be the first to stand up.
- Download the press kitPDF · 1.4 MB
- Cover in print resolutionJPG · 2008 × 3124 pixels · 1.0 MB
- Author photographJPG · 892 × 960 pixels · 118 KB
The press kit also contains a press release for immediate use, five story angles and seven authorised answers.
For editors
This press kit comes without a publisher and without a press office. I wrote the book and am publishing it myself, and I would rather say so straight away than pretend to have machinery that does not exist.
So the kit is built to work without me. Everything you need to know about the book is here, every quotation is taken word for word from the book, and the obvious questions are answered in writing.
Bernd Blasius
- Review copy
- as an e-book or in print, on request from presse@humane-weltformel.de
- Interviews
- in writing. Seven authorised answers are included in this kit and may be quoted with attribution.
- Free to use
- all texts and quotations in this kit, the press release, the cover and the author photograph, and extracts from the book of up to 1,500 characters with title and author.
At a glance
- Genre
- Narrative non-fiction
- Published
- October 2026, independently, by the author
- Editions
- Paperback £9.99 / $14.99 · Hardback £16.99 / $22.99 · Kindle £5.99 / $7.99
- Available from
- Amazon in the UK, the US and other countries
- Length
- about 200 pages
- Inside
- seven letters from the front and from home, in full · a map of the front at Christmas 1914 · three illustrations · a timeline · the people in this book · places you can visit today · ‘Silent Night’ with all six verses · helplines for anyone who finds the festive season hard · sources for every chapter
- Also published
- in German as Wer zuerst aufsteht and in French as Le Premier à se lever
- Online
- humane-world-formula.com/the-first-to-stand-up
Quotations free to use
Word for word from the book, with chapter references.
‘Peace begins when someone is the first to stand up.’
back cover
‘There is a silence that is peace. And there is a silence that only holds its breath.’
Prologue
‘In our house, people who were meant to love one another lived under a ceasefire. Out there, people who were meant to hate one another found real peace, for one night.’
Prologue
‘People who do something together are not sitting opposite each other.’
Chapter 13
‘Sometimes it is the other way round, and someone comes towards you. Then you are not the one who stands up. Then you are the one who does not shoot.’
Chapter 13
‘Today they are often the longest seconds of a year: the ones in which it rings at the other end.’
Chapter 13
‘A trench does not stay a trench for ever, not in Flanders and not at your own table.’
Epilogue
‘On that day nothing has to be right, and that is exactly why everything is.’
Epilogue
‘Peace is when no one has to make themselves small and everyone can breathe freely.’
Epilogue
The author
Bernd Blasius was born in 1969 and lives in Everswinkel, near Münster in north-west Germany. His birthday falls a few days before Christmas, and the Christmases of his childhood left their mark on him: silent, but not always peaceful. Ever since, he has been preoccupied by why peace so often falters at the first step, between nations and at our own tables.
The First to Stand Up is his first book. He is working on a larger book about a more humane world, The Humane World Formula, due to appear in nine languages on 22 April 2027. He plans to use the proceeds of The First to Stand Up to set up a non-profit company for children growing up in difficult circumstances.
Contact
Bernd Blasius gives interviews in writing. Correspondence is handled with the help of an AI; anything sent out in his name, he approves himself.
Out on 22 April 2027
The Humane World Formula
An Architecture of Resonance. A Manifesto
The great crises of our time are not a moral problem but an architectural one: they follow from blueprints, not from bad people. This book shows how the old world was built – and how, with tools that already exist, from blockchain and artificial intelligence to communities of shared values, we can build a world in which trust is no longer a risk.
- Out
- on 22 April 2027, Earth Day
- Languages
- German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Chinese, all on the same day
- Formats
- print and e-book
- Behind it
- a non-profit company being set up for the purpose
The full press kit, with review copies in all nine languages, will follow a few weeks before publication. If you would like to receive it, just send a short note to presse@humane-weltformel.de.