Living for science, music and peace

The great physicist Victor Weisskopf (1908–2002) studied under Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger in Leipzig and Berlin. He was forced to leave his native Austria before the Nazi occupation on account of his Jewish heritage. He subsequently joined the team of scientists on the Manhattan Project in the USA, where he was involved in the development of the atom bomb. By the time he fully realized the consequences of his work, however, it was already too late. From then on, he became a vocal opponent of nuclear weapons. A belated realization in the moral dilemma of atomic physics, or a logical conclusion for the man who later became a professor at MIT and the director of CERN? An enthralling, well-founded biography of this physicist and passionate pianist.

Experience a unique literary journey through the world of wine, and discover new perspectives on pleasure and time!

Ilija Trojanow is not just a literary collector of worlds but also a trained sommelier. His close friendship with a leading maker of Riesling serves as inspiration for this love letter to wine. What does wine-drinking mean for our culture? Wine-drinking is a dialogue, says Trojanow. With many interlocutors. With time. With the soil. With a wine-grower. With the self and the unplumbed mysteries of individual taste. The enjoyment of wine is a highly individual experience. For Ilija Trojanow, wine is compensation for being driven out of paradise. Trojanow reflects on time, terroir, nature and culture, on capital, taste, dégustation and drunkenness. A poetic musing on the secret of wine.

From Karl Kraus and Michael Kohlhaas to stubbornness and The Taming of the Shrew: Daniela Strigl explores the crucial importance of defiance.

A defiant person is one who clings to something unreasonable, sometimes against their better judgement. Defiance is associated with stubbornness, obstinacy, and yet it’s also a prerequisite for resistance: to defy someone is to resist them, which may include those with more power. In this essay, Daniela Strigl grapples with the historical and literary phenomenon of rebellion against authority. Troublemakers may have a bad name and ‘lateral thinking’ is perhaps increasingly discredited these days, but mavericks still command our respect. Free-thinking women, in particular, have long been considered especially provocative. But does all this make defiance a virtue? And doesn’t art in a hostile environment depend on defiance?

An entertaining and realistic account of life as part of an intentional community.

Our homes have a big impact on what kind of lives we lead—whether we are lonely, how much we are contributing to climate change, how hard we have to work to cover the cost of our housing. When Barbara Nothegger started looking for a new home for her young family, she became fascinated by these very questions. Despite many objections, she decided to risk an experiment, moving with her family into a communal living project in Vienna. A hundred people built a home for themselves, which included various shared areas and open spaces for residents to come together, share and interact. After more than ten years in the building, Nothegger explores in this humorous guidebook what makes modern communities succeed, and how being a good neighbour can help facilitate climate-friendly living.

A love letter by philosopher and passionate record-collector Konrad Paul Liessmann to the instrument that unites all instruments as one.

In the age of digitalisation, record players and good old vinyl discs are enjoying a remarkable renaissance. For Konrad Paul Liessmann, however, this came as no surprise. He has always stayed true to the record player. The revolving record, the slender needle and the delicate grooves exert a powerful fascination for him. Turning his attention to his beloved record player, the philosopher Konrad Paul Liessmann intertwines his personal musical experiences with a brief cultural history of listening. He tells the story of how sound has been stored and reproduced, from the first gramophone to modern streaming services, and asks to what extent our relationship with music has been changed as a result of its technological reproducibility.

True stories: tracking down unknown heirs.

A homeless person bequeaths £100,000—but to whom? An heir in Australia turns down a huge inheritance because he doesn’t want it to change his life, and a nun inherits a brothel—life writes the best stories. Some are tragic, like the tale of two sisters who were separated as children and never reunited, even though they lived only a few streets away. The tumult of history and the twists of personal fate are intertwined again when there is money to inherit but no obvious heirs. The Family Research Office tracks down these heirs across the whole world. This book is an account of the stories, coincidences and curiosities they come across in the course of their work.

Moving everyday stories from a year of chaos

Spring, 1945: caught between the advancing Allied armies, Austria was temporarily transformed into a political no-man’s land. There was chaos, hope and fear. Drawing on the everyday lives of ordinary people, Kurt Bauer vividly explores this tumultuous year. There is the Wehrmacht soldier who takes a long and winding road home; the Jewish emigre forced into exile in 1938, returning to his home town as part of the victorious army—only to find that the old Vienna of his childhood is gone; the Jewish woman who survived the war in Vienna and now wants to get to the USA as quickly as possible … a multifaceted and gripping book.

Gesa Olkusz uses spare, pared-back prose to explore human loneliness—and to overcome it through the magical power of her language.

A simple story, written in poetic and crystal clear prose: Parker and Kasimir immigrated from Poland to the USA when they were young, brought by their mother so that they could have a better life. After this single act of resolve, their mother loses all interest in life, and the brothers develop a powerful symbiotic bond, isolated from those around them. They survive in this foreign country but never feel at home there. Parker works nights as a private chauffeur, while Kasimir never leaves the house. When footloose Luzia moves in with them, she brings a new breath of life, but in doing so she destroys the brothers’ almost wordless bond. When the young woman leaves abruptly for Panama, one thing is clear: Kasimir is going to follow her, even to the ends of the world.

A story of young love—between two people who have grown old

They haven’t seen each other for more than sixty years, but one day Luisa bumps into HIM on the street: Heinrich was once the love of her life, her childhood sweetheart, but they fell out of touch. They arrange to meet again, and this rendezvous is followed by many more … As they talk, Luisa and Heinrich look back on their short-lived romance and on the decades they have spent apart. Gradually they grow closer again, travelling in their conversations through the highs and lows of their separate lives. Is a new love story developing, in the magic of the present? Because: ‘I think we’re both at an age now when it’s best not to put things off.’

Discomfort takes us on a journey under the thin skin of civilisation—and into the overwhelming power of the natural world.

Lorenz Urbach, a teacher, is increasingly troubled by a vague discomfort: a political dissatisfaction, a sense of being overwhelmed and world-weary. Suddenly he has an outburst of aggression—he gets into a fight and his life is turned upside down. When reports start to appear of a blood-thirsty animal causing trouble in the Alps, it triggers deep-seated memories in Lorenz. The media is speculating wildly—could it be a wolf? or perhaps a human being?—and Lorenz thinks of his childhood friend Theresa, the perennial outsider, the social dropout, forever primed for violence … He sets off on a solitary hike into the mountains, grappling with the forces of nature, searching both for the ‘monster’ out in the wilds and for the origins of the violence in himself.