Why in the year 1913, Florian Illies does not let go

Already in 2001, the novelist Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht had written a book in which he was examining "a year at the limit of time", namely the year 1926. What is your "1913" of Gumbrecht? "1926" had to?

Incredibly, I admire the courage, the intellectual ingenuity of Gumbrecht, in this Suhrkamp book, just a year to tell. Before dealing with this issue, I have studied this book a lot. The number of cross references on topics such as boxing or vaudeville, or similar things. For me and my access to the world, it was clear that it had a lot more to do with biographies, with people, with what the great heroes had experienced in their daily lives and that I had to choose a different path. In the end, it was an easy way to find out. In twelve months, I tell the year, in the most different places, with different people. It was the approach for me, and I do it similarly in the new book. The most natural way to say a year is to tell from December 31st to January 1st. Quite simply because one can also tell how Marcel Proust, Rilke, Kafka, Kandinsky and many others have lived this year with all its ups and downs.

What is surprising when reading are the many meetings or quasi-meetings. You wonder if Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler could have met in January 1913 in the Vienna Schlosspark Schönbrunn snow-covered or not. Below you will find a description of how Rosa Luxemburg spent the spring of 1913 in Clarens in French-speaking Switzerland. Just when Igor Stravinsky composed "The Rite of Spring" in a Clarens hotel.

Yes, a wonderful coincidence that I fell into my file boxes at some point. The story of Rosa Luxemburg is touching enough in this year 1913. She pressed a plant every day in her herbarium, wandered in the meadows, picked a plant, then wrote the botanical name, and all this herbarium of 1913 was incredibly preserved . in Warsaw. And suddenly I read, she is at the edge of a lake in this Clarens, looking at another box of notes and saying to herself: "There was something else in Clarens this spring 1913. And then there really is that, it's the moment Igor was in it. " Stravinsky composed his work of the century and these are, in my opinion, fascinating links. We suddenly see that the revolutionary forces meet for a second, inside the piano and outside in the meadow.

Of course, as an art historian, you often refer to art and painting, and quote the entry from Paul Klee's journal as approving: "The only declaration of love for art is the year 1913. "Why was it?

Indeed, this never again gave the abundance of contemporary styles of 1913. On one side we have this wonderful extreme expressionism of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Let's say that the "Blue Rider" is softer in Munich. We have the work of the century, the "Tour of the Blue Horses" painted by Franz Marc in Sindelsdorf in this year 1913. We then have these incredibly beautiful celebrations of nature and love and life of August Macke in October 1913, that he has on Lake Thun. These are all icons of the history of painting. At the same time, we have cubism in Paris, the synthetic cubism promoted by Picbado. We have Matisse, who paints his very large paintings in Morocco, then the first black square of Kasimir Malevich in Saint Petersburg and, in December 1913, the first readymade of Marcel Duchamps. So you have everything in one year. The entire history of art, which constitutes the modern era, can be found here in one year. It really deprived me of my breath as an art historian and art critic, this simultaneity of completely different attempts to ban the world on the web.

In 1913, the founder of the publishing house Rowohlt, Ernst Rowohlt, was authorized to sign at S. Fischer. Just in the editor where your book appears. Take this as a good sign for the task you have accomplished as of January 1, 2019. waited at the head of Rowohlt publishing house?

Yes, we can not do otherwise than auspicious. When I found this detail and dealt with the great Ernst Rowohlt and the duo with Kurt Wolff, both originally settled in this first Rowohlt publishing house, founded by Ernst Rowohlt after the war in 1919, I I thought: this is now for the general reader not so interested, so he has not finished in the book. But of course, I had to smile and say: Yes, there seems to be a very long relationship between these two poles, and I'm happy to be the designated publisher Rowohlt at the time my book is published by S. Fischer. am and start there the new year.