Florian Illies

Schönberg was born on 13 September – and he was terrified at the idea of dying on Friday the 13th. It was no good. Arnold Schönberg did in fact die on Friday the 13th

‘He wrote that only because he didn’t get me, my dear Tommy,’

We learn: this means that Ernst Jünger was already sober, when everyone else thought he was drunk

It’s a lovely idea: the north and south poles of German culture in 1913, together in a single train.

So that’s what the world of 1913 looks like from the vantage point of Sindelsdorf.

does not yet bear the name Nefertiti. It isn’t yet the most famous bust of a woman in the world.

It does not yet bear the name Nefertiti. It isn’t yet the most famous bust of a woman in the world.

The age of extremes, the terrible short twentieth century, begins on a January afternoon in 1913 in Vienna. The rest is silence. Even when Hitler and Stalin sealed their fatal ‘pact’ in 1939, they never met. So they were never closer than they were on one of those bitterly cold January afternoons in the park of Schönbrunn Palace.

Merely to see one another, dear Lou [the word ‘dear’ is underlined three times], that’s my greatest hope.’

my support, my everything, as ever