German philosopher and publicist Wolfram Eilenberger, founder and editor-in-chief of Philosophie Magazin, takes a close look at one of the great decades of German-Austrian thought—the 1920s—with a microscope-like examination not only of philosophical work but also of the lives of four 'magicians': Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose destinies were intricately intertwined with each other and with the turbulent times between the two world wars. The book is neither a history of philosophy, nor an academic study, nor a fictionalized biography, but combines elements of all these genres, compellingly illuminating their lives and thought through one another.