Although Vladimir Nabokov’s attitude towards Germany alternated between cool distance and ardent disapproval, both in the life and work of the preeminent Russian-American writer various German tropes can be observed. This is not merely a matter of several novels which are set in Berlin. Equally interesting are Nabokov’s views regarding the nature of evil and totalitarianism, confronted with the philosophy of Hannah Arendt. Another essential aspect concerns Romantic motifs in The Defence and Lolita, here viewed under the auspices of specifically German Romanticism (Ludwig Tieck, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, E.T.A. Hoffmann). A separate chapter has been dedicated to a comparative analysis of Invitation to a Beheading and Franz Kafka’s The Trial.