1913: the moment of greatest flourishing, a year where everything seems possible. And yet, within the brilliant beginning lies the sense of collapse.
In literature, art, and music, even by 1913, it has become clear that humanity has lost its innocence. Franz Kafka writes wonderfully lengthy letters to Felice Bauer, which will ultimately thwart their marriage. Proust seeks the lost time.
Stravinsky and Schönberg provoke unheard-of scandals, Duchamp mounts a wheel on a kitchen stool, in Munich, Sigmund Freud and Rainer Maria Rilke go out for drinks together, an Austrian painter named Adolf Hitler sells his landscapes as postcards, a thirteen-year-old named Bertolt Brecht becomes the editor of a school newspaper in Augsburg, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner paints again and again the Potsdamer Platz.
The young Coco Chanel opens her first boutique. 1913: Beginning and end, triumph and melancholy merge, everything becomes art. Afterward, nothing will ever be the same.
Florian Illies has managed to create with his book the thrilling portrait of a unique year, where the 19th century crashes spectacularly into the 20th century of wars and atrocities, and highlights the year 1913 as a moment of utmost flourishing and at the same time a harbinger of destruction, with a grand panorama that unfolds vividly before us.
International Best Seller - Translated into 22 languages.
