1913- The Year Before The Storm

English Edition.

I heard one exert of this book being read on Radio 4 , and knew it was for me.  I also tried it out on Theo, who tells me he enjoyed it.  Most of my reading is done during the stillness of a Leicester traffic jam (via a talking book). I liked the idea of following all the fresh shoots if idealism, radicalism, unrequited premonitions and pompous arrogance drifting across the start of the new century as it smacked into the brick wall of the first world war. (I'm still in my car.) The stupidity of the age was suitably celebrated by Prussia, Germany, Sweden and Austria with a big ceremony in Leipzig to commemorate 100 years since the defeat of Napoleon 1813.  This was described as 'The Battle of The Nations.'  A number of books were published in 1913 arguing that interconnected, multinational Europe was not physically or financially able to go to war with it self again.

The Volkerschlachtdenkmal Monument, Leipzig opened in 1913.

In true Freudian style, Ludwig Meider painted his recurring nightmares,
such as 'Apocalyptic Landscape'.  Friends fretted over him.

Florian Illies, a German journalist and academic writes the book in the present tense, crossing the continent between Vienna, Prague, Berlin and Paris, noting the major public and private goings-on amongst the intellectual and political classes. At the start of the year he notes that for a short period, Trotsky, Stalin, Hitler and Tito are all staying within a stones throne of each other.

Vienna in 1913

Sigmund Freud has created a craze for the study of the unconscious.  He and Jung, his student fall out. Illies likens this to 'patricide'.

Sigmund Freud and Karl Jung.  In 1913 they attended the
4th annual congress of the Psychoanalytic Society,
and never saw each other again afterwards.

Marcel Ducamp, Nude descending a staircase.
Cubism is with us.

Henri Matisse was said to be the only person Pablo Picasso did not look down on.  Matisse joined Picasso in his place in Serat.

Here they are again.

In 1913 Franz Kafka wrote hundreds of love letters to Felice Bauer.
This included the worst marriage proposal every written.

And the letter to the father.
How come all this stuff is preserved?

Oskar Kokoschka was assured by Alma Mahler, Gustav's widow,
that she would marry him after he had painted the most perfect
painting ever.  It is entitled 'Bride of the Wind'.
That's the way is remained. They never got married.

The causes of the Saverne Affair

Second Lieutenant Forstner insults the Alsatians

Prussian soldiers patrolling in the streets of Saverne

The Rohan Castle in Saverne was used as barracks for the 99th Prussian infantry regiment

The nineteen-year-old Second Lieutenant Günter Freiherr von Forstner spoke disparagingly about the inhabitants of Saverne on October 28 during a troop induction. He said to his soldiers, "If you are attacked, then make use of your weapon; if you stab such a Wackes in the process, then you'll get ten marks from me." (Note: Wackes is a derogatory term for a native Alsatian and was considered inflammatory enough that German military regulations prohibited its use.)  from Wikipedia.

The Mon Lisa is found on 12th December, offered to a Florentine Art Dealer.  The thief said he was returning the famous picture to it's home.  He was given 7 months prison sentence for this crime, and after a few months of glory in Italy, the Mona Lisa was returned to Paris, in time for war. Interestingly, Mona Lisa's bones are currently undergoing a DNA analysis to fine her current ancestors.