Florian Illies landed with “1913.
The summer of the century “a world success.
Now his brilliant book “Love in Times of Hate” has been published by S. Fischer.
About the confusions and confusions of love of the twenties and thirties.
A feast!
Our book review.
If you walk through Sanary-sur-Mer today, this cute little town on the Côte d'Azur, you can still feel it. The special aura that is in the air. It flutters around the flags on the masts of the colorful boats in the harbor, it lies in the scent of the pines and cypresses. Thomas Mann felt it. His wife Katia. The children Erika and Klaus. Bertolt Brecht too and Egon Erwin Kisch or Stefan Zweig.
Several found refuge in Sanary-sur-Mer between 1933 and 1940.
The memorial plaque at the tourist office is a no-frills reminder.
Florian Illies, however, the brilliant literary awakening of bygone times, Florian Illies lets us experience this “boldest community emigration project in German literary history”.
In his new novel “Love in Times of Hate” he takes us back to this enchanted place on the azure coast.
Where the exiles tried not to keep thinking about the horrors at home in Germany.
Don't despair of it.
For a deceptive summer long.
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Marlene Dietrich in the film “The Blue Angel” - Florian Illies also illuminates her love life in his book.
© dpa
As in his world success “1913.
The summer of the century ”, the author jumps from one scene to another, from one pair of lovers to the next.
From one bed to the other.
The subtitle indicates the direction: "Chronicle of a feeling 1929-1939".
One always speaks of the "dance on the volcano" that the Europeans, the Germans, the Berliners, danced in the twenties.
If you want to know how hot the lava actually was, through which you jumped with bare feet and bodies, read this book.
Illies draws an entertaining generation portrait with dry wit.
Oh dear, that was a pleasure back then.
And oh dear, how did it end?
Florian Illies did extensive research again - and put everything down to earth in words
One can only guess how extensive the author's research was.
What kind of anecdotes did he unearth, which partly incomprehensible quotes?
And all of this put into words so cleverly and robustly.
Although the 50-year-old picks up a number of threads, he never gets tangled.
It could happen all too easily with this topic.
Illies commented laconically at one point: “No, the love affairs in the thirties simply do not become clearer.” There was cheating and lying, suffering and quarreling, reconciling and moaning.
“What the people of the twenties urgently needed was love (or at least therapists).
What they got were stimulants ”, analyzes Florian Illies aptly.
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Love is a strange game: scene from "Henry and June" with Fred Ward and Maria de Medeiros.
The film is inspired by Anaïs Nin.
It is also a topic in Florian Illies' book.
© ullstein bild - United Archives
Picasso always books his lover Marie-Thérèse in the hotel a few meters away when they are on vacation.
And in the afternoon she switches from the beach chair, in which his wife Olga and son Paolo are sitting, to Marie-Thérèse's towel.
Or Lee Miller and Edward Steichen: "When you get on the train at Gare du Nord, she is his student, when you sit in the compartment, she will be his model when you arrive in Biarritz, his lover." Three sentences - and everything said.
When reading Florian Illie's book, you can taste the champagne that was bubbling at the time
“There are marriages,” as Illies quotes Thomas Mann, “whose origins even the most fictionalized fantasy cannot imagine.” One could also say: Life writes the most porky stories.
Another claim that history is boring.
Here you can taste the bubbling champagne just by reading, feel the shiver that ran down various backs (and other parts of the body).
But with all the fun, the drama that lies behind it always captures.
They pulled the glow sticks of their lives, sucked and sucked desperately - and ignored the fact that they were running out of air.
On the French Riviera, too, at some point they could no longer suppress the dark clouds.
The thirties had to pay the price of the twenties.
Florian Illie's “Love in Times of Hate” is intoxicating read
Durs Grünbein achieved a crystal clear balance sheet for 1939, the book quotes an excerpt from it: “Think of the surrealists' picnic / The adult games on the banks of the Côte d'Azur / This ultimate summer of the avant-garde / The great, retarding moment / Before the last of the humanists / On the Spanish border / died miserably in a dry river bed. "
To read this is tragic, depressing, hilarious, inspiring, animating.
And lets us sigh blissfully with Rilke at the end of an intoxicating reading: "Love, my God, love."
Florian Illies: "Love in times of hate". S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M .; 432 pages; 24 euros.
Reading: Florian Illies will present the book on November 24, 2021, 8 p.m., in the Munich Literature House;
Tickets - also for the live stream - are available here
