THE MISSION; A NOVEL

New York; Coward-Mccann, 1966. Hardcover. Publishers cloth. 8vo. 319 pages. 22 cm. First American edition. Originally published as Die Mission; Vienna, Desch, 1965. Translated from the German by Michael Bullock. Janos Békessy, better known under his pen name Hans Habe (12 February 1911, Budapest - 29 September 1977, Locarno) was an Hungarian-Austrian writer and newspaper publisher. From 1941, he held U. S. Citizenship. In 1930 Bekessy began to work as a reporter for the Wiener Sonn- und Montagspost (Vienna Sunday and Monday Post) . In the following year he became Editor of the Österreichische Abendzeitung (Austrian Evening News) , one of the youngest newspaper editors ever, at age 20. At this time he married his first wife, Margit Bloch. Early in 1934 he moved to the Wiener Morgen (Vienna Morning News) . From 1935 to 1939 he was a Foreign Correspondent for the Prager Tagblatt (Prague Daily News) , stationed mostly at Geneva, covering the League of Nations. In this capacity he was present at the Evian Conference in 1938, where he met again otolaryngologist Heinrich Neumann von Héthárs who had performed an operation upon Habe 13 years before, and was a friend of his family. Habe described the course of the Conference in his novel The Mission (1965) ; dedicated to the memory of Heinrich Neumann. The focal point of the novel is the infamous offer made by the German government, and transmitted to the Conference by Neumann von Héthárs, to sell the Austrian Jews to foreign countries at a price of $250 per capita, and the Conference delegates' refusal to accept. At this time Habe was married to his second wife, Erika Levy, the heiress of the Tungsram light bulb company. Subjects: Physicians - Fiction. Jews - Persecutions - Europe - Fiction. Jewish refugees - Europe - Fiction. Evian Conference (1938) - Fiction. Jewish fiction. Very good condition in good jacket. An attractive copy (HOLO2-97-17).