The Jump Artist

The first half of the novel focuses on what is known as The Austrian Dreyfus Affair, a controversial trial in 1928 when the young Halsman was wrongly convicted to several years in an Austrian Prison for murdering his own father. Several prominent celebrities of the time spoke out on Halsman’s behalf, including Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein. When Halsman was finally pardoned by the Austrian Chancellor, public scandal erupted and the Halsman family was forced to relocate to Paris. The novel tells the full story of the Austrian Dreyfus Affair for the first time in English. There is no book-length treatment of the Affair in English, despite its having been hugely sensational at the time, and despite its being a significant historical bellwether for the developments that followed: the collapse of Austrian institutions into fascism and the Nazi abuses of human rights in Austria after the Anschluss. The book “breaks’ the story of Karl Meixner, an unpunished, unremembered war criminal, who has been protected from greater scrutiny by the University of Innsbruck. It is known that Karl Meixner signed the transfer orders to receive Gestapo victims, and known that he used Halsman’s father’s remains without consent, but it’s not yet known how many other human beings suffered the same fate at his hands. This book will appeal to history and photography buffs as well as lovers of vivid and well-crafted prose.