Author reading with Maik Baumgärtner
They have lost their country to the Nazis, terror and the spirit of the times - Karl, Gusti, Moses, Justus, Peter and Paul. The involuntary clique is caught in the quicksand of history. Their fate takes them to Bohemia. There they, the political refugees from Nazi Germany, live in an emigrant commune. At night, their lost Germany returns as a nightmare. But they fight every day, not just for survival, but for tomorrow, in freedom, dignity and humanity.
The social democrat, journalist and author Robert Grötzsch has created a snapshot of German emigration in the 1930s. It is a quick insight into the first country of refuge, Czechoslovakia. The novel was only published once in 1936, after which it was forgotten. Today it is more relevant than ever: an anti-fascist confession from the republican center of society, about cohesion, solidarity and the unwavering belief in humanity.
The editors
Maik Baumgärtner, born 1982 in Jena, lives in Berlin and has been writing for Der Spiegel since 2011 - mostly on right-wing extremism and secret service work. His research has also appeared in the ARD political magazine Monitor and on Deutschlandradio. He is the co-author of several books and brochures on right-wing extremism, drug-related crime and political history. In recent years, he has increasingly devoted himself to art historical and biographical research - particularly in the field of tension between politics and art in the 20th century. He has been awarded the German Reporter Prize and the Nannen Prize for investigative reporting.
Andreas Wassermann was born in Memmingen in 1962 and grew up in Ulm. He studied history, German and political science in Hamburg for seven semesters, and from 1988 was a trainee at the self-governing weekly newspaper Hamburger Rundschau. In 1990, he moved to Dresden as a reporter for the Dresdner Morgenpost and correspondent for the Leipziger Volkszeitung. For 26 years, he worked as an editor for the news magazine Der Spiegel in Dresden, Frankfurt and Berlin. Various investigative research projects also took him to Italy. Wassermann was awarded the German Reporter Prize in 2017. He now lives in Dresden as an author.
Admission: 30 minutes before the event| Duration: 1 hour | Followed by a discussion with the author
