"What times these are when a conversation about trees is almost a crime because it involves silence about so many misdeeds!" Bertolt Brecht, To those born later

Helmuth Kiesel in conversation with Christine Lubkoll and Christian Gohlke

The rule of the National Socialists was an unprecedented challenge for German-language literature. Two and a half thousand authors, including the best, were forced to leave Germany. Those who stayed and did not side with the Nazi regime were threatened with persecution. Helmuth Kiesel has written the first single-source account of the era. It opens up a huge literary field and conveys a moving, often harrowing picture of that time.

In exile, as in Germany, the literary confrontation with the present demanded particular existential strength, political clarity and literary representation. Helmuth Kiesel devotes himself to the literature of exile and internal emigration, but also to authors close to the regime, as well as Austrian and Swiss-German literature. He presents the famous works of the era, from Anna Seghers' The Seventh Cross to Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, from Ernst Jünger's Marble Cliffs to Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game - as well as numerous forgotten works that are literarily remarkable and historically revealing. Many authors saw it as their main task to fathom the "dark times" (Brecht) they experienced historically and to bear witness to them through literature. Helmuth Kiesel brings their voices to the fore with a breadth and intensity never before achieved.