The never-before-published early diaries of Count Harry Kessler—art patron, museum director, publisher, cultural critic, cultural attaché, and...
more The never-before-published early diaries of Count Harry Kessler—art patron, museum director, publisher, cultural critic, cultural attaché, and secret agent—present a sweeping picture of Belle Époque European court life and bohemia, a world poised to be changed irrevocably by the Great War.Profoundly modern and prescient, Kessler was an erudite visionary and catalyst who was intimately involved in the cultural and political worlds of London, Paris, Berlin, Weimar, and Bern. The diaries are rich with descriptions of his encounters, conversations, and creative collaborations with some of the most celebrated people of his time: from Bismarck and Hindenburg to Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Strauss, Vaslav Nijinsky, Isadora Duncan, and Sarah Bernhardt; from Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Verlaine, and George Bernard Shaw to Aristide, Maillol, Rodin, Degas, Monet, and Munch. Of equal fascination are his entries about the lesser-reported Eastern Front in World War I and his conversion to pacifism.Remarkably insightful, almost cinematic in their scope, Kessler’s diaries are the record of an extraordinary life, and a dazzling, invaluable record of one of the most volatile and interesting moments in modern Western history.
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