1913

 1913—by Florian Illis. Through a series of vignettes Illis makes 1913—the year before the year that changed the world forever—come alive again, at least on paper. “On paper” really should be stressed. It is possible that someone may still be alive who was born in, or before, 1013. If he or she is still alive, bless him or her, for he or she will be at least 109 years old. In effect, though, the world of 1913 is gone, it doesn't exist any more. Everyone who was alive then—all those millions and billions, with the possible exceptions just mentioned—is dead and buried. Yet, Illies reminds us that that world in a real sense still lives on; and the pages of his book are a reminder of that, and more: they also show us glimpses of what so many of the people who helped shape the modern world—for good or bad—were doing at specific times in 1913. To name a few: Picasso, Freud, Rilke, Jung, Thomas Mann, Kirchner, Mahler, Alma Mahler, Else Lasker-Schüler, Schagall, Duchamp, Hitler, Franz Marc, d'Annunzio, Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, Schonberg, Schnitzler, Kokoschka, de Chirico, Kafka, Franz Werfel, Schweitzer, Spengler, Camus, Brecht, Franz Ferdinand, etc. Among them: Vincenzo Peruggia, the 32-year old Italian worker who in 1911 had stolen the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and took it to Florence where in 1013 he told the authorities that he had stolen it because he felt that it belonged to Italy and that that's where it should be. The idealistic thief was jailed, but not before being acclaimed as a hero by lots and lots of Italians. The Mona Lisa has been back at the Louvre ever since, where one wonders if she has ever been “Gioconda” after her romantic adventure way back in 1913.