We all strive for our way to the artificial paradises, to the feelings, the odours and the tastes of our childhood and of a world before our time: We can find access in old photographs, in accidentally read names of streets or people, in handwritings on postcards and notebooks, in the levity of a transitory motion or in the distant sound of a summer night’s party: All the pain and all the beauty of the world concentrated in a chord, in a moment, in a word: ACÉPHALE.

Edition Acéphale is our personal take on our childhood love, literature, and a mutual step on our journey to our own artificial paradises: We are publishing first translations and out-of-print editions of forgotten late 19th century decadent literature in German, French and English with a focus on exotic, precious and obscure gems.

With Acéphale we strive to combine this passion for fin-de-siecle with our love for industrial art, contemporary design and urban culture in order to recreate that special feeling of our own initial encounter with literature: A gaze into eternity, marvelling at its vastness and beauty.