About cheerfulness in difficult times and the question of how important the seriousness of life is

"Serious is life, cheerful is art", wrote Friedrich Schiller. But what is cheerfulness actually? And how do we get it back into our serious lives? In times when we intuitively feel differently in the face of global crises, Axel Hacke sets out in search of an almost forgotten state of mind, of an attitude towards life in which we have become strangely unpractised. Entertaining, clever and personal, he explores the origins of the term, explains what distinguishes cheerfulness from wit and cheerfulness and why it cannot be had without the seriousness of life.

"To be a cheerful person is not to ignore the heavy, but to transform it into something light".