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1913 - Der Sommer des Jahrhunderts
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1913 - Der Sommer des Jahrhunderts
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1913 - Der Sommer des Jahrhunderts
Audiobook6 hours

1913 - Der Sommer des Jahrhunderts

Written by Florian Illies

Narrated by Stephan Schad

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

1913 ist das Jahr, in dem unsere Gegenwart beginnt. In Literatur, Kunst und Musik werden die Extreme ausgereizt, als gäbe es kein Morgen. Proust sucht nach der verlorenen Zeit, Benn liebt Lasker-Schüler, Rilke trinkt mit Freud, Strawinsky feiert das Frühlingsopfer - und in München stellt ein österreichischer Postkartenmaler namens Adolf Hitler seine Werke aus. Anfang und Ende, Triumph und Melancholie - alles verschmilzt, alles wird Kunst. Virtuos wie kein anderer entfaltet Florian Illies das Panorama eines unvergleichlichen Jahres und setzt der Geburtsstunde unserer Moderne ein literarisches Denkmal.
LanguageDeutsch
Release dateFeb 6, 2015
ISBN9783862312061
Unavailable
1913 - Der Sommer des Jahrhunderts
Author

Florian Illies

Florian Illies was born in 1971. He has worked as literary editor for major German newspapers and magazines, and co-founded art magazine Monopol. His previous four books have sold over one million copies.

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Reviews for 1913 - Der Sommer des Jahrhunderts

Rating: 3.8461538461538463 out of 5 stars
4/5

13 ratings16 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Chronology of the yewr, month by month, describing everyday life of well-known public figures (mainly Europeans) in a way that brings history alive. Easy to dip into, pick up a while and interrupt as needed.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    "Alex, I'll choose 'People I have never heard of' for $600."I don't know anything about German poetry and early 20th century artists, so much of the name dropping in this book just passed me by. Very little on the people who would have important roles in 1914-1918.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A fascinating idea - to take the year before the 1st world war and create this portrait of it. There's some fascinating stuff but it helps if you are interested in middle Eurpean art and literature at the time. It's not exactly very wide ranging but follows a relatively small artistic circle, some of whom are not well known names.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Quite a clever construct, using short narratives or biographical information. the author pieces together the world using notable personages as a guide to the world in the year before the Great War was fought. So many interesting tidbits, including the Lutz, the skater jump, this was apparently the year that this was first performed by a man named Lutz of course. A young Hitler recently rejected from art school, Stalin, Lenin, the theft of the Mona Lisa. Getrude Stein, Picasso, who had to provide an alibi for the time of the theft, Freud and even his cat. While this was informative and entertaining reading, the broken up pieces only give a wide view of the world, not a particularly cohesive one. I think it is important to know this so that the reader realizes this and knows what to expect.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This a kind of weird and unusual book, published in German in 2012. Month by month it tells of thngs going on in 1913, concentrating on artists and writers such as Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Franz Werfel, and the like.. Occasionally it tells of Hitler and his time in Vienna, but only fleetingly. Even Stalin was there for a bit that year. It pokes fun at Kaiser Wilhelm and his slaughtering, with Franz Ferdinand, of animals and birds. All the while one is conscious of the catastrophe we know is looming over Europe, but this book does not talk of military men--except to tell of Ernst Junger's enlistment in the French Foreign Legion--annulled because he was underage. The book is a rather fascinating kaleidoscopic look at a world about to be shattered by the Great War.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    An interesting book that focuses on the the literary and artistic scene in pre-WWI Europe. Vienna seemed to be the place to be for on the edge artists/writers. Here are some of the players:- Louis Armstrong- Franz Kafka (one of my favorites)- Sigmund Freud- Lou Andreas-Salome- Thomas Mann- Ernst Junger (just read Storm of Steel)- Stalin- Hitler (the watercolorist?)- Rainer Maria Rilke- Pablo Picasso- Carl Jung- Marcel Proust- Gertrude Stein- Jozip Broz (Tito)- Herman Hesse- Leo Bronstien (Leon Trotsky)- Albert Schweitzer- Albert Einstein- Virginia Woolf- Hiram Bingham- Charlie Chaplin- Henry FordThat's just a short list, there are many more.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Broken down in a month by month chronology it features a number of the main figures from that era along with a number of more obscure ones. The Kafka and Mann vignettes are interesting, some of the others are more esoteric and may be more appealing to specialists in that setting. Written with one eye on the year being covered but always with the looming war as a backdrop.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An amusing month by month chronicle of what happened to the German literati, artists and politicians in the year 1913, as if the world was solely composed of famous or soon-to-be famous people, a mix of Wikipedia snippets and tweets. At the beginning of the year, we find Hitler, Stalin and Tito all in Vienna, blissfully unaware of each other and the impending catastrophe of the First World War. Thomas Mann's Death in Venice has just been published and the author starts writing his Magic Mountain. Elias Canetti arrives in Vienna and starts learning German. Illies' book is light and charming, but also forgettable and filled with too many small mistakes. Overall, a sweet presentation of a year nobody is aware of.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book got off to a good start but started to bog down a bit in the middle. By then I'd put in too much time not to finish, and thankfully the final third got back on track. '1913 The Year Before the Storm', the year before the start of the first World War, and it really was fascinating to read of all the famous people that were travelling in and around Europe during that year. Here are some of the names you will read about, Franz Kafka, Marcel Duchamp, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Adolf Hitler (in 1913 a penniless artist), Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Henri Matisse. Charlie Chaplin signs his first movie contract in 1913 and the book opens with a fascinating little story about how Louis Armstrong gets his first trumpet. slow but full of interesting details.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Provides interesting context to the history of WWI
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "Read" as an audiobook auf Deutsch. Intriguing and often witty, if bitty. Snapshots of the famous, mainly creative artists, mainly in the German-speaking world. Here and there other nations get a look-in but that makes them seem arbitrary, e.g. why DH Lawrence, not Somerset Maugham or Henry James or Augustus John. Odd coincidences, eg, Stalin and Hitler and Trotsky all walked the same park in Vienna at the same time, while all three were nobodies. Gives a strange feeling that 1913 was packed with geniuses, but a similar account could probably be given of any year in the last 200. A discovery for me was Else Lasker-Schüler, fine poet I'd like to explore more.The tone almost everywhere is how these great names were all bit ridiculous, sad, funny, e.g. Kafka's 20 page letter proposing marriage to Felice describing himself as a useless sick man; the Austrian Kaiser's list of 50 or more titles where the bit that made school kids laugh was "etc, etc"; Thomas Mann's rigidly punctilious work rhythm which included a cigarette and a brief word with his children; Alma Mahler's charms which it seems she only applied to major artists.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Eine etwas verwirrende Mischung aus Kulturgeschichte und Klatsch, wobei der Klatsch überwiegt. Teilweise amüsant zu lesen, aber irgendwie unbefriedigend .Alles wird ein bißchen angerissen aber nichts bleibt wirklich hängen.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Achja. Naja. Hab nix erwartet, hab wenig bekommen. Ist am Anfang ganz nett, weil man viele Ideen bekommt, was man "Richtiges" lesen könnte. Irgendwann nervt dieser künstlich aufgeblähte "augenzwinkernde" Stil, mit dem kleine Fetzchen über Liebschaften und Schlagwörter herumgetragen werden. Der Schwerpunkt liegt ohnehin nur auf Künstlern und Schriftstellern, fast nichts über Naturwissenschaften und Erfindungen. Nunja. Pseudo-Histo-Belletristik in homöopathischer Dose. Nettes Verlegenheitsgeschenk für Leute, die man nicht kennt und auch nicht kennenlernen will, denen man aber aus irgendwelchen Gründen was schenken muss.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Sehr fleißig trägt Florian Illies in diesem Buch Fakten über das Jahr 1913 zusammen, die er in einer Art Tagebuch erzählt. Im Mittelpunkt steht hauptsächlich die deutsche Künstlerszene dieser Zeit, an deren Beispiel er die Verfasstheit und Stimmung dieses Jahres anzeigt und den Umbruch, der bereits zu spüren ist.Dazu war sicher enorm viel Recherchearbeit nötig und diese ist Illies sehr gut gelungen. Er schafft es hier, sehr plastisch darzustellen, wie das Leben dieser großen Künstler (und nicht nur dieser) ganz alltäglich verlief. Wir kennen heute nur noch die großen Werke. Illies macht transparent, dass diejenigen, die sie schufen, auch einen Alltag gelebt haben. Kafka, der sich damit plagt, dass ihm nichts Selbstverständliches einfach erscheint (wie etwa ein Buch zu versenden), Brecht, der als Sechzehnjähriger z.T. pubertärte Gedanken ins Tagebuch schreibt, Kokoschka, der für Alma Mahler seine Windsbraut malt, Else Lasker-Schüler, die ein Liebesverhältnis mit Gottfried Benn hat usw usw. Es ist interessant und gut gemacht, dass Illies kaum in die Zukunft verweist, es zählt der Moment des Jahres 1913, die späteren Verwicklungen und Verstrickungen sind noch nicht absehbar. Von ihnen wissen ja nur wir Nachgeborene.Es kommt dem Leser entgegen, dass das Jahr 1913 ein spannendes Jahr war- dennoch treten manches Mal auch Längen zutage. Dennoch: Insgesamt ist das Buch höchst interessant.Ich hatte dem Buch eigentlich gar keine Chance gegeben, weil ich Illies durch "Generation Golf" eher für einen schwachen Autor hielt. Dieses Buch ist deutlich besser, wenn es auch ein paar schiefe Metaphern hat, so ist es doch insgesamt sehr gut gemacht- kein Vergleich mit "Generation Golf".Dennoch, das beste am ganzen Buch stammt in meinen Augen nicht vom Autor selbst, sondern vom unvergleichlichen Robert Gernhardt. Illies beschreibt, wie Rudolf Steiner in Berlin die antroposophische Gesellschaft gründet und eine Art "offenen Salon" hält für Menschen, die bei ihm Rat und Hilfe suchen. Und da zitiert er Gernhardt:Kafka sprach zu Rudolf Steiner:"Von Euch Jungs versteht mich keiner!"Darauf sagte Steiner: "Franz,ich versteh Dich voll und ganz!"
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Ein Jahr vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg passiert die (deutsche) Kulturszene noch einmal Revue und präsentiert sich in all ihrer Vielfältigkeit, in ihren Gegensätzen und Widersprüchen. Ob große Künstler wie Thomas Mann oder kleine Lichter wie Marika Rökk, sie finden in ihrem Sein und Werden, in ihren persönlichen Befindlichkeiten einen Platz in diesem faszinierenden Panoptikum dieses Vorabends der ersten großen Katastrophe des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ein anregender Bogen, der viele Leser verdient und zum Aufgreifen der Bücher und Texte dieser Künstler animiert. Wunderbar!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Some books take you by surprise. Before seeing a chunky little volume entitled 1913 on the shelves of an Oxfam Bookshop, I would never have thought of Florian lllies or about reading a book with that title. I picked it up. Its full title is 1913: der Sommer des Jahrhunderts, published by Fischer in the TaschenBibliothek series in 2015. It is in German and more than 400 pages in length. I studied German to A level and as a subsidiary subject at University. Some of my favourite books stem from that period, for instance Das Brot der fruhen Jahre by Heinrich Boll who incidentally opened Brunel University Library. I recall the bleak picture the book painted of post second world war Germany, the ruins, the struggle for existence, Hedwig, one of the central characters, the drab colours and general gloom.Boll is not mentioned in 1913 but Kafka, Rilke and Schnitzler are. I studied those authors at school but how superficial that study was. If only Florian Illies had been at hand then. They appear at intervals as the months of 1913 are described and fly by in his book. Kafka worries incessantly about Felice; neither he nor she can make up their minds. Life is miserable for Rilke too. He falls in love with inaccessible women one after the other - although really he doesn't want to get too close. Schnitzler, the doctor, whose Leutnant Gustl I studied for A level and didn't know why or what it was about, did know what 1913 and the avantgarde were about - just a game. He was clever.My German is poor and I cannot understand lots of words. Recently though I read an article by Lydia Davies who was reading a book in Norwegian with hardly any knowledge of the language. The challenge is just to persevere and plough on line by line, page by page. That is what I did with 1913 and it was worth it.Serendipity may have drawn my eyes to it in the charity bookshop but as I read through it, I realised that I was in the hands of a brilliant author. Month by month the changing world of European culture is laid before the reader in full knowledge and anticipation of world war in 1914. The artists, literary authors, philosophers and psychologists spring to life with all their peccadillos and of these they have many. Hitler is there selling his paintings one by one to earn a crust; Trakl, a troubled man loves his sister a little too much; Thomas Mann is punctual, punctilious and worries about his house and carpets. Karl Kraus, Kokoschka and Arnold Schonberg all have their moments while Kafka and Felice prevaricate. Did Kafka really want Gregor Samsa to wake up as a bedbug - if that is what Wanze means - rather than a beetle, Kaiser Wilhelm loved ships and planned his own jubilee celebrations; Scott lost out to Amundsen and the quote of Captain Oates sounds quite good in German:'Ich gehe nur mal raus und konnte etwas langer brauchen'. Then there is the young and talented Bertolt Brecht. I had no idea he was such a hypochondriac or that Robert Musil was a librarian more or less on permanent sick leave. Was it possible that Stalin, Hitler and Trotsky walked past each other in a park in Vienna; that Hofmannsthal really did bump into Sigmund Freud and then Rilke while trying to recover from a nightmare or that Kafka and Joyce were both in Trieste on September 14th?Picasso and Matisse loved each other's a work. I was not aware of this or that Gottfried Benn, the surgeon, was so lonely.This is all name dropping but it is great. Everything is linked to everything else. It is hard to believe that while a huge cataclysmic storm of war is brewing a ferment of creativity is blossoming. Wedekind's Lulu appeared and he set about ranking his favourite cities - 'Paris ist die schonste Stadt der Welt, dann kommt Rom, dann sehr bald Munchen'. Proust ventures out from his cork lined bedroom at night. I laughed out loud at the comment of Anatole France when just the first volume of A la recherché du temps appeared. 'Life is too short, Proust is too long'. And what about the genius of Golo Mann at 4 years old and Louis Armstrong at 13 - that is not overlooked. Rilke gets toothache and hates Paris. These cultural icons are all human - far too human, except perhaps Kafka who is in a terrible state. Would you ask for a hand in marriage stating modestly that you were: 'einen kranken, schwachen, ungeselligen, schweigsamen, traurigen, steifen, fast hoffnungslosen Mensch'. Not a good cv but they were all neuroasthenic burnt out cases before the war even began. Freud and Jung were at daggers drawn.This is a beautiful book. It races along. It makes you smile at the sheer brilliance and madness of these great figures. I loved it. When is it due out in English so that I can find out whether I really did understand it? Did Egon Schiele really stay with Arthur Roessler and play with model trains?