Second paragraph of March chapter in original German:
| Meier-Graefes Haus in Nikolassee atmete französischen Chic, hatte Eleganz und eine gewisse Behäbigkeit, es war perfekt zugeschnitten auf den gerade 50Jahre alt gewordenen Meier-Graefe und seine Ehefrau (ein paar Jahre später übrigens wurde dann der Architekt Epstein post mortem sein Schwiegervater, weil Meier-Graefe in dritter Ehe dessen Tochter Annemarie heiratete, aber das verwirrt jetzt nur). Hier, im Kirchweg 28. »draußen auf dem Lande«, wie Meier-Graefe in Briefen an den Maler Edvard Munch sein Haus lokalisierte, entstand 1913 ein zentrales Werk der Kunstgeschichtsschreibung: »Die Entwicklungsgeschichte der modernen Kunst«, die ab 1914 erscheinen sollte. | Meier-Graefe’s house in Nikolassee exuded French chic, had elegance and an air of cosiness, it was perfectly tailored to Meier-Graefe, who had just turned 50, and his wife (a few years later, by the way, the architect Epstein became his father-in-law posthumously, because Meier-Graefe married his daughter Annemarie in his third marriage, but that’s just confusing). Here, at Kirchweg 28, ‘out in the country’, as Meier-Graefe described his house in letters to the painter Edvard Munch, a central work of art historiography was written in 1913: ‘The History of the Development of Modern Art’, which was to be published from 1914. |
I picked this up cheap in a Leuven bookshop a couple of weeks ago, partly out of interest in contrasting it with a similar book by my friend Charles Emmerson. Both of them look at the world in 1913 through contemporary records, with the benefit of hindsight and knowing what was around the corner.
Florian Illies’ book looks mainly at the German and Austrian empires, from Kiel to Trieste, with occasional excursions to Britain, France, Italy and America. It’s a fascinating delineation of the links between politics, science and the arts. Stalin and Hitler are both known to have enjoyed strolling in the gardens of the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna that January, and may have tipped their hats to each other as they passed. Franz Kafka had an on-and-off relationship with Felice Bauer. Thomas Mann was coming to terms with his own sexuality. James Joyce was teaching and writing in Trieste. Rilke was loving and writing. Freud and Jung were treating people. The Futurists were starting. Proust self-published Du côté de chez Swann. I had never heard of Der Tunnel, in which a tunnel is built connecting America and Europe. The Mona Lisa, stolen in 1911, was found in Italy in December. There were school shootings in Bremen and Württemberg. Oskar Kokoschka and Alma Mahler launched into their passionate affair, commemorated in Kokoschka’s art.
I found a lot of new names here, particularly literary women who had previously escaped me – Lou Andreas-Salomé, Else Lasker-Schüler, Coco Chanel. There are lots of elements all adding up to a thought-provoking portrait of a time and several places, from an angle I don’t know as well as I thought I did.
I was dismayed to discover that my translation has been cut by around 20% – the German original has 324 pages, my English version only 267. There is no hint of any abridgement anywhere in my copy. That’s frankly deceptive on the part of the English language publisher.
