 "A Princess in Berlin" won the Athenaeum Literary Award in 1980.Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of "The New York Times" wrote that "[i]f the purpose of historical fiction is to tell us what the facts, the figures and the history books do not, then ... "A Princess in Berlin" succeeds admirably"; however, "the effect of experiencing Weimar culture through Mr. Solmssen's looking glass is a little like seeing George Grosz's caricatures as rendered by Norman Rockwell.