Marx, Wagner, Nietzsche, three thinkers who left their mark on the 19th and 20th centuries. Contemporaries who honored, rejected, or ignored one another, they stamped an era of scientific polyphony and explosive social dynamics. Their rivalries and confrontations lie at the core of developments in Germany, and beyond, during that period. Herfried Munkler traces these giants of thought, placing them within the vast tapestry of their time.

He describes the impressive parallel between the lives of Marx and Wagner: their involvement in the 1848 revolution, their flight, persecution, and exile, the creation of a significant work that attracted a correspondingly significant number of followers, as well as the fate of that work in the hands of its administrators. Nietzsche, slightly younger, stands as a unique philosophical entity in his own right, leaving a profound imprint on subsequent generations.

Marx, Wagner, Nietzsche: all three broke the conventions of the bourgeois world and created something new, which in turn gave birth to a new reality. Through their lives, their similarities, contrasts, and disputes, Minkler brilliantly depicts the hopeful German 19th century, which culminated in the century of extremes and political catastrophes. He illustrates this "world in turmoil," which gave rise to the modern world.