1913: Summer of the Century. Florian Illies

Extravaganzas of beauty, madness, narcissism and genius in a world on the brink of collapse
Proust searches for lost time, Freud talks to a cat at Berggasse 19. Kafka writes “Transfiguration” and Malevich paints his square. Stravinsky brings “The Rite of Spring” to Paris, and in Munich an Austrian postman named Adolf Hitler sells watercolors.

1913 is a year in which hundreds of voices, scenes and coincidences are wonderfully intertwined, predicting the catastrophe of the 20th century. From Rilke, Elsa Lasker-Schüler and Thomas Mann to the invention of ecstasy and the discovery of Nefertiti – all those who create art are about to find themselves on opposite sides of a turbulent and cruel history. This is the last summer before the abyss. And the last breath of a world that still believes in beauty.