Jewish Organ, Late Delights

Bound by faith, controlled by money

Two newly translated novels by Ludwig Winder, which the Czech Library wants to publish to highlight the work of important Czech German authors, speak with the contemporary aesthetics of expressionist distress and new verisimilitude to the pressing issues of the present - loss of identity, the feeling of alienation, the mechanisms of power and manipulation. The developmental novel The Jewish Organ (Die jüdische Orgel, 1922, translation and commentary by Ingeborg Fialová-Fürstová) thematises man's age-old struggle to resist authority. Albert Wolf rejects unquestioning obedience to his father and the God of his ancestors. His attempts to break through repressed desires, to rid himself of doubts and self-torture are alternated by the realisation that his own exclusivity is both a curse and a choice. The political novel The Delayed Pleasures (Die nachgeholten Freuden, 1927, translation and commentary by Jan Budňák) reveals the power of money and the fragility of values in the post-war period of economic crises and moral upheavals. Any attempt to make up for lost opportunities in life can then become a substitute for unfulfilled dreams and a ruthless calculus to control and blackmail others. What to do when the supposed material good in the hands of Adam Dupich becomes a tool for evil?