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Martin Prinz: Reading & Panel Discussion at the Austrian Embassy
March 26 @ 6:15 pm – 8:30 pm EDT
The Last Days (Die letzen Tage) Reading & Panel Discussion
With author Martin Prinz and historian James Loeffler. Moderated by filmmaker Bernadette Wegenstein.
March 26, 2026
Doors open at 6:15pm
Event at 7:00-8:30 PM
Embassy of Austria, Washington DC.
ID required upon entry.
The war was almost over, but the killings continued. Set in April 1945 near Vienna, The Last Days (Die letzen Tage) (2025) reconstructs a Nazi society that enables these crimes in Austria, where a summary court sentenced citizens to death for alleged defeatism and desertion. Written in the restrained language of court records, Martin Prinz’s book examines individual responsibility, arbitrary power, and the long silence that followed these crimes.
Limited space is available on a BlueJay shuttle for Hopkins students, leaving at 4 PM and returning at 10 PM. RSVP by emailing [email protected].
During the event, an exclusive clip from the upcoming documentary “The Archives,” produced and directed by filmmaker Bernadette Wegenstein.
MARTIN PRINZ – Born in 1973, Martin Prinz grew up in Lilienfeld and now lives in Vienna. He writes travel stories, screenplays, and novels, including “The Robber and The Last Princess”, and has received numerous awards, among them the screenplay prize at the Gijón International Film Festival.
JIM LOEFFLER – James Loeffler is Felix Posen Professor of Modern Jewish History at Johns Hopkins University, and Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He writes widely on modern Jewish history from antisemitism to Zionism, with a focus on the overlooked ties between the Jewish past and the global present in politics, law, and culture. His new upcoming book, “Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight over Free Speech in Modern America”, argues that, in a moment of democratic crisis, antisemitism has become an ideological obsession – and offers an argument for re-thinking how to reconcile free speech and equal rights in American law.
Find more on Jim Loeffler’s website.
Bernadette Wegenstein is a US-Austrian documentary filmmaker and author. Bernadette has produced and directed several documentary features and shorts. Devoti tutti (2023), which premiered at Biografilm Bologna and won multiple film awards, including Best Documentary and Audience Awards. The Conductor (2021) premiered at Tribeca Film Festival, won five Best Documentary awards, and was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Arts & Culture Documentary. The documentary music short, See Me: A Global Concert, produced during the pandemic, won numerous Best Music Film and Best Editing awards, including the Firenze Corti Premio Rive Gauche. Her intimate breast cancer documentary, The Good Breast, premiered at the Geena Davis Gender Institute’s Bentonville Film Festival. She has recently won a Discovery grant together with Marin Aslop to develop Fidelio and the Unjust Incarceration, a multimedia performance piece that combines Beethoven’s Fidelio with newly created music and text.
Find more on Bernadette Wegenstein’s website.
