Book Premiere
July 1941 in a cell of the Gestapo prison in Vienna: The chief rabbi of Thessaloniki, the Viennese lawyer Dr. Strauss and the first-person narrator from Zagreb are sharing the cell that is already much too small when the Polish scientist Dov Tarnopolski is brought to them on a Monday.
Image gallery
Deutsches Theater Berlin
Tarnopolski's arrival, his words and his powers test their sanity and challenge the prevailing laws of nature. He "conjures up" cigarettes, cake and a radio; he defies the guards and his presence raises the question of the key that could bring freedom to the Jews of Europe.
Hinko Gottlieb wrote a first version of the novel in the Italian concentration camp Porto Ré in 1942/1943. The manuscript was lost in the turmoil of the war. In March 1945 he managed to escape to Palestine, where he reconstructed the novel and translated it into German. Almost 80 years later it is now published in its German-language original.
The key to the big gate will be published by Hentrich&Hentrich Verlag at the beginning of October 2023. An event of the Humboldt University of Berlin, in cooperation with the Alfred Landecker Foundation, Hentrich&Hentrich Verlag and the Deutsches Theater Berlin.
Hinko Gottlieb (1886-1948) was a Croatian lawyer, Zionist, writer and poet. In May 1941, shortly after the German invasion of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, he was taken to Vienna by the Gestapo. In 1942 and 1943 he was interned in the Italian camps of Porto Ré and Kampor. Here Gottlieb writes, organizes theater performances and takes on spiritual activities. The first version of the novel "The Key to the Great Gate" is created. In March 1945 he fled to Palestine with his wife Ruža Gottlieb.
dr Marija Vulesica is a historian and Alfred Landecker Lecturer at Humboldt University in Berlin. She is the author and editor of numerous writings on the history of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and Jewish history in Southeast Europe
dr Nora Pester is a publicist, owner and publisher of Hentrich&Hentrich Verlag.
Additional information
by Hinko Gottlieb Talk with: Dr. Marija Vulesica (Historian and Editor) and Dr. Nora Pester (Publicist) reading by: Franziska Machens
