Alma Mahler-Werfel was, as Willy Haas once put it, "hungry for experiences and hungry for life." She documented her experiences in her diary from a young age and later recounted them based on these records. She became a student and friend of famous men early on: the composer Alexander Zemlinsky, the painter Gustav Klimt, and above all Gustav Mahler, whom she married in March 1902. "When I read the diary," writes co-editor Antony Beaumont, "it feels as if one is lifting a curtain, revealing the Vienna of the turn of the century in all its splendor, almost within reach. The vitality of daily life, eyewitness accounts of historical events in the art and music world, unique insights into the social behavior and sayings of the homo austriacus - all of this makes the book a unique document.