Candidate

This novel mixes historical events with a fictional account of the academics who rejected Adolf Hitler's application to study fine art, a decision that de facto sealed the fate of millions and the entire future course of history. In 1958, a young reporter, Erwin Habr, arrives at a Viennese sanatorium at the request of Professor Rudolf Kapinus, who is suffering from war trauma. The old academic is burdened by a long-held guilt which he wants to confess and talk about. Early in his career, he was a member of the committee at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts that twice rejected the young Adolf Hitler as an applicant. The professor decides to tell the journalist everything in detail.

 Alongside his personal story, we follow the period when Hitler is already consolidating his power and the racial and other “purges” are beginning. The question of guilt gains significance and is coupled with the paranoid fear of some academics of the “applicant’s” revenge. Others, conversely, allow themselves to be placated by the calm and assume the Führer's gratitude, for had Hitler been accepted into the school, their rejection would not have enabled his political career to flourish.

 Against a historical backdrop, the eternal theme of crime and punishment unfolds before us. Lubomír Kubík reflects on the extent to which a person is responsible for the indirect consequences of their actions. Through the individual protagonists, he offers various ways to approach this dilemma, while also opening up ever-relevant themes from recent history. Everything is framed by a powerful psychological story, interwoven with passages about humanity, and also about the influence of art on the course of history and human society as a whole.