6/21/2023 0 Comments 1913 the year before the stormIllies writes that "Austro-Hungary doesn't have a chance against the attack from the French." But he's writing about tennis: Frenchman Max Decugis beats Austrian Ludwig Salm in three sets in the final of a Madrid tournament that April.įar from teetering on the edge of the abyss, the generation of 1913 looks surprisingly carefree. Nothing about Italy's imperial extension into Libya a few sentences only on the second Balkan war. There's more on Kaiser Wilhelm's passion for stag-hunting than on the consequences of the Reichstag bill to increase military spending. He also tries to write the teleology out of early 20th-century history. In 1913: The Year Before the Storm, Illies tells the story of that year through a series of snapshots from the lives of artists, scientists, inventors and politicians, relayed with a novelist's eye for detail and a liveblogger's sense of urgency. C an you write a history of the year 1913 and ignore the disaster waiting around the corner? With the centenary of the first world war approaching that may sound perverse, yet it is precisely what Die Zeit journalist Florian Illies tries to do in his new book, which was a bestseller in Germany when it was published there last year.
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