Cover art
Jeschke, Wolfgang. Das Cusanus Spiel. Droemer 2005.
Cover art
Jeschke, Wolfgang. Das Cusanus Spiel. Translated to the English as The Cusanus Game. Tor 2013.

Jeschke, Wolfgang. Das Cusanus Spiel
Divergence: 1452 CE
What if: Nicolaus of Cusa, cardinal, astronomer and philosopher, established a papally sanctioned academy to rigorously study unexplained phenomena.
Summary: In 2052, an Italian botanist becomes part of a papal project to restore central Germany and other areas devastated by a nuclear accident 20 years earlier, and then learns that her job will involve time travel to that region six centuries earlier.
Comments: Allohistorical content of the novel is limited to ten pages in the middle, from the original short story, which describes a timeline in which scentific development in Europe was jumpstarted in the mid 1400s. But the effects of rapid industrialization and development become problematic by 1900.
Published: Droemer 2005 (3426197006), Knaur 2008 (3426639580).
Published: Expanded from "Die Cusanische Acceleration", in Alexanders langes Leben, Stalins früher Tod und andere abwegige Geschichten: Erzaehlungen und Berichte aus Parallelwelten (ed. Erik Simon), q.v.
Original in: German.
Translation: English by Ross Benjamin as The Cusanus Game, Tor 2013 (076531908XBUY), 2014 (0765319098BUY).