It’s hard to imagine a more dramatic and controversial documentary novel. In 1938 the Sandgrube vineyard – one of the most famous vineyard estates in the Wachau valley – is owned by the Jewish businessman Paul Robitschek. His partner is August Rieger. Robitschek and the supposed baron are business partners, as well as glamorous lovers. Denunciations clear the path for the Aryanisation of an estate that would eventually become the basis of the famous Krems vintners’ cooperative – a name that is synonymous with wine and culture far beyond the national borders. This Aryanisation has to date never been the subject of investigation. The authors were able to recover a hoard of documents, enabling them to tell a staggering story of betrayal and loyalty, love and business, destruction and repression.

During the Nazi tyranny, the prison in Krems-Stein was the largest in the "Ostmark" or ‘Eastern March’; the Nazi’s name for Austria. This was where dissidents were imprisoned – communists and "saboteurs", resisters from Austria and Eastern Europe. On April 6 1945, the prison governor opens the gates of the prison when faced by the advancing Red Army, but the SS, SA and local people hunt and kill hundreds of political prisoners in an unprecedented massacre. Some manage to escape, some survive by hiding in cellars, and their reports form the basis of Robert Streibel’s polyphonic panorama.