Ernst Jünger is sitting in his study. It is late in the evening, almost nighttime. He is working on the manuscript of his study of time, Das Sanduhrbuch (The hourglass book). On the desk in front of him is an antique hourglass, a present from his late lamented friend Klaus Valentiner, who disappeared in Russia during the Second World War. The hourglass is set in simple wrought iron. It must have had a great deal of use: at the waist the glass has been scoured to an opaline finish. Jünger watches as a funnel-shaped hole appears in the upper bulb while a cone grows in the lower bulb under the velvet stream of soundlessly falling sand. It is not a comforting thought, he reflects, that though time slips by it does not stop. For what vanishes from above piles up a new supply below. Every time the glass is turned upside down the reservoir of available time is restored – you have only to stretch out your arm. But no matter how often you can tap the new supply, time passes more and more quickly. In hourglasses the grains of sand increasingly rub one another smooth until finally they flow almost without friction from one bulb into the other, polishing the neck wider all the time. The older an hourglass the more quickly it runs. Unnoticed, the hourglass measures out ever shorter hours.