About Florian Illies
Florian Illies was born in 1971. With his bestselling novel “1913” (2012), he became an influential storyteller. This was followed by “Love in a Time of Hate” (2021), plus the expansive number-one bestseller on the enigmatic paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, “The Magic of Silence” (2023). Illies studied history of art and modern history in Bonn and Oxford. He was an editor at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and features editor at Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, as well as running an art auction house. Today, he is one of the publishers of Die Zeit and works as an author in Berlin. “Augen zu”, which he co-hosts with Giovanni di Lorenzo, is one of the most listened-to German-language podcasts.