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1938: The Vienna Writers Circle meets at Café Mozart to share hopeful stories during a hopeless time
The Vienna Writers Circle
What you need to know before your trail
The Vienna Writers Circle meets at Café Mozart to share hopeful stories during a hopeless time. Mathias and Johannes – fellow writers, cousins, and close as brothers – thrive within this creative group of friends.
But when the Nazis take over Austria, everything changes. With their families’ lives now under threat, the men hide in plain sight using false identities. The safety of their loved ones and their writing is their only salvation.
A local policeman, Inspector Josef Weber, walks a dangerous line, helping ‘hidden Jews’ like Mathias and Johannes. But Weber faces conflicts of his own: having declared his love for a beautiful Romani-gypsy girl, Deya Reynes, he fears that she too will be sent to her death.
When all they have left is courage, will they survive?
Locations
Reset- Austria - Vienna
- A: Kärntner Straße
- B: Café Mozar
- C: Vienna Police Station
- D: Café Central
- Poland
- E: Sobibor death camp
Travel Guide
Vienna and the war
All details relating to writers’ grpups and agents, Freud, Anschluss (the annexation of Austraia by Germany is 1938), Identity chnage networks and Sobibor death camp are based strongly on fact However the author is keen to point out that this is a ficitonal representation of events.
The author’s choice to set the novel in Vienna was inspired by its prominent circle of writers and intellectuals there. Sigmund Freud was a prominent figure at the time.
The author has a very personal link to this story and that is also explored in the author note.
BookTrail Boarding Pass: The Vienna Writers Circle
Destination/location: Vienna Author/guide: J. C. Maetis Departure Time: 1938
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