The years 1919 to 1929 mark an era of unparalleled intellectual creativity, during which thoughts were first conceived that would fundamentally alter life and thought in our present. The great philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Cassirer, and Martin Heidegger shaped this period, allowing the German language to become, one last time before the catastrophe of World War II, the language of the spirit. Wolfram Eilenberger, bestselling author and longtime editor-in-chief of Philosophy Magazine, brings to life the philosophy of the 1920s and with it an entire decade marked by a zest for life and economic crisis, post-war recovery, and the rise of National Socialism. The meteoric rise of Martin Heidegger and his love for Hannah Arendt. The staggering Walter Benjamin, whose amor fou on Capri with a Latvian anarchist turns him into a revolutionary. The genius and billionaire's son Wittgenstein, who, while being worshipped as the god of philosophy in Cambridge, teaches impoverished elementary school students in rural Upper Austria. And finally, Ernst Cassirer, who experiences the rising anti-Semitism in the bourgeois neighborhoods of Hamburg years before his emigration. In the life paths and revolutionary thinking of these four exceptional philosophers, Wolfram Eilenberger sees the foundation of our contemporary world. Thanks to the author's great narrative skill, this retrospective on the 1920s serves as both inspiration and warning, but above all, it is an exhilarating reading pleasure. This beautifully told book depicts the years between 1919 and 1929, during which Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Benjamin, and Cassirer gained global significance. Together, they form an astonishing intellectual constellation, four life designs, and four answers to the question: What is the.