Keller Werner Translated English William (1 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. Jacket and design by George A. Adams (illustrator). 1st Edition. First published in Germany, without illustrations in 1955, this is a first UK illustrated edition, first impression of 1964. A somewhat curious edition, for although it has a British jacket by Hodder & Stoughton and a price in UK sterling, the publishing info on the copyright page is by William Morrow, so one would think that a consignment of copies were shipped to the UK from New York and simply placed in Hodder jackets. Some edge wear and rubbing to top and bottom of jacket and spine, corners and folds rubbed, not price clipped (42s), no inscriptions, internally clean tight and square, overall a vg copy in a rubbed jacket. 360pp, lavishly illustrated, map endpapers. Dr Werner Keller (1909-80) was a German civil servant, journalist, nonfiction author and anti Nazi resistance fighter. While working as a senior staff member in Albert Speer's Ministry of Armaments he saved the lives of many Jews. In 1945 Keller organized an anti Nazi resistance group in Berlin which briefly ran a pirate radio station and which planned a rather foolhardy attempt on Hitler's life. He was caught and sentenced by the Nazi Volksgerichtshof (People's Court) to death by hanging. In February 1945 high ranking friends managed, possibly by a bribe, to get his execution put off at the last moment and get him transferred to Fort Zinna, the Wehrmacht prison in Torgau, where Keller was liberated by American troops of the 69th Infantry Division. In 1955 he published 'The Bible as History', his best known and most successful book, which correlated the text of the Bible with the results of archaeological diggings in the Middle East providing, according to Keller, a confirmation for the Bible's veracity which was not dependent on religious faith. It had a circulation of over one million in Germany and has been translated into more than 20 languages, and in 1957 gained him the Italian Literary Prize Premio Bancarella. Among others, it was successfully translated into Hebrew at a time when cultural relations with Germany were far from taken for granted in Israel. The 'Davar' Labour daily newspaper in Tel Aviv in 1958 distributed free copies of Keller's book to its subscribers.