Der Kaiser von Atlantis oder Die Todesverweigerung at Theater an der Wien

In November 1941, the Nazis converted the garrison town and fortress Terezin, a concentration camp which they euphemistically referred to as a "Ghetto". Theresienstadt should on the one hand
serve as intermediate storage for the Jewish population of the "Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia" prior to transport to the extermination camps, appease but also as a "Model camp" the skepticism of foreign observers. Cultural activities of the inmates were therefore encouraged. The composer Viktor Ullmann was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942 and then served as "Director of musical activities". The renowned Schönberg student created in 1943 together with the poet and painter Peter Kien the Chamber Opera for
seven singers and thirteen instrumentalists of the Emperor of Atlantis, which originally carried the subtitle which thanks death off.
The Emperor of Atlantis reigns as tyrant. He gives commands even death, until he refused work and nobody dies. Without death, Atlantis falls into chaos. Death finally agrees to fulfill its function when the Emperor his first victim. Despite already begun samples it no longer came to a performance obviously on Hitler and the obsession with Opera receiving the Nazi reference. Viktor Ullmann was deported on October 16, 1944, to Auschwitz, where he was murdered in the gas chambers.