1914
Arnold Schönberg Center, Wien
On September 24, 1914 Schönberg began to write an illustrated journal in which he drew a connection between military events and weather observations – reminiscent of Emanuel Swedenborg’s correspondence principle: “On regular occasions, I noticed the ‘golden shimmering’, the ‘wind of victory’, a ‘dark-blue sky’, ‘blood-red clouds’ (at sunrise) which always preceded victorious German events. Equally, severe deterioration in the weather with storms and rain […] preceded a turn for the worse on the Austro-Russian battlefield.”
“Many people, like mys elf today, will have tried to interpret the events of war by rhe sky, since finally the belief in higher powers and also in God has returned. Unfortunately only now the thought occurred to me to put down my impressions in writing. But I will do so from now on and hope to find some coincidenc[esl once more accurate reports are available, since so far a number of war events could be premonitioned by the ‘mood’ of the sky.”