Reinhard Böhm: Musil's fine summer day in 1913

Guest comment bei Reinhard Böhm
NO DEEP REFLEXION OVER MUSIL’S FINE SUMMER DAY IN AUGUST 1913 JUST A LITTLE PIECE OF EASY STATISTICS

Poor Ulrich – “der Mann ohne Eigenschaften” -, who lived in the post-fin the siècle Vienna, obviously had a slightly shifted perception of what a “fine summer day” had to be. The 1910s saw the coldest summers of the last 200 years. I am sure – born in Vienna myself - the Viennese will have been in their famous mood of lamenting all the time. And in fact they were right: They had experienced a slow but relentless cooling of Augusts for more than 60 years. And they did not know they lived right at a change point: from then on climate warming took the command also in Vienna.

And for the entire summers (the means of June to August) it had been even worse: 1913 saw the second coldest summer, only 0,3°C from the record holder 1813.

What do we learn?

1. Vienna was a trendsetter in the 19th century – the year without a summer happened three years earlier in our city than in the rest of the world, astonishingly also 2 years before the famous Tambora eruption.
2. Extraordinary cold summers happen each 100 years – so we expect the next for 2013
3. “Don’t worry – be happy” and take weather and climate as what it is: an interesting background of our lives but not the dominating one – learn the lesson from the “Mann ohne Eigenschaften”: Right at the climax of terrible summers he was quite happy about a “fine summer day”.
4. Don’t take too seriously what I was writing – just have fun with it!

Print this post