The “fin de siècle” era at the turn of the 20th century shook many certainties and culminated in the year of tension 1913, which Florian Illies traces in his bestseller of the same name. General societal unrest and personal irritation are also common denominators of the year 2020: In “Über Menschen”, Juli Zeh becomes the chronicler of the first lockdown, dissecting pandemic social phenomena. Like a seismograph, the music between passages read by Anna Schudt conveys the respective shock of crisis-ridden months a good century apart.