A World on Edge: The End of the Great War and the Dawn of a New Age

'Moving and inspired book ... An evocative and deeply affecting requiem for what might have been.' - Douglas Smith, author of Rasputin and Former People

A World on Edge reveals Europe in 1918, left in ruins by World War I. But with the end of hostilities, a radical new start seems not only possible, but essential, even unavoidable. Unorthodox ideas light up the age like the comets that have recently passed overhead: new politics, new societies, new art and culture, new thinking. The struggle to determine the future has begun.

The sculptor Käthe Kollwitz, whose son died in the war, was translating sorrow and loss into art. Ho Chi Minh was working as a dishwasher in Paris and dreaming of liberating Vietnam, his homeland. Captain Harry S. Truman was running a men’s haberdashery in Kansas City, hardly expecting that he was about to go bankrupt – and later become president of the United States. Professor Moina Michael was about to invent the 'remembrance poppy', a symbol of sacrifice that will stand for generations to come. Meanwhile Virginia Woolf had just published her first book and was questioning whether that sacrifice was worth it, while the artist George Grosz was so revolted by the violence on the streets of Berlin that he decides everything is meaningless. For rulers and revolutionaries, a world of power and privilege was dying – while for others, a dream of overthrowing democracy was being born.

With novelistic virtuosity, historian Daniel Schönpflug describes this watershed year as it was experienced on the ground – open ended, unfathomable, its outcome unclear. Told from the vantage points of people, famous and ordinary, good and evil, who lived through the turmoil and combining a multitude of acutely observed details, Schönpflug composes a brilliantly conceived panorama of a world suspended between enthusiasm and disappointment, and of a moment in which the window of opportunity was suddenly open, only to quickly close shut once again.

‘Outstanding . . . a wonderfully stimulating guide to a world that knew it had changed utterly but was fearful about where it was heading.’ ― Evening Standard

With great care, a marvellous eye for detail and a highly accomplished style, [Daniel Schönpflug] reveals this time anew and allows readers to rediscover the twentieth century and themselves. A masterpiece. -- Philipp Blom, author of Fracture: Life and Culture in the West, 1918–1938

Historian Daniel Schönpflug gives us a kaleidoscope of sparkling stories . . . elegantly composed and beautifully written. -- Alexander Gallus ― Die Zeit

For a brief moment a century ago the end of the Great War offered peace and the prospect of a bright new social order to a dark, ravaged Europe. In his moving and inspired book, historian Daniel Schönpflug recreates how these days were experienced by the people who lived them―their struggles, dreams, and desires―and traces the elusive fate of their noble visions. An evocative and deeply affecting requiem for what might have been. -- Douglas Smith, author of Rasputin and Former People

This turbulent era left its mark on the biographies of people from
all walks of life. Schönpflug introduces readers to all these
individual stories so vividly you could almost think they only
happened a few moments ago.

-- Sibylle Lewitscharoff, author of Blumenberg

Dr Daniel Schönpflug was born in 1969, and is a guest lecturer at the Free University, Berlin, and the academic coordinator at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (WIKO). He specializes in European history from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, focusing on social and cultural history. Alongside his research, teaching and academic management work, he has also been successful in bringing history to a wider public and has co-authored scripts for docu-dramas broadcast on German national television, as well as writing A World on Edge.