»Es fragt die Welt nach meinem Ziel, nach deiner letzten Stunde nichts«.

Drawing on previously unused archival material, this double biography presents the lives of the married scholars Hildegund and Ottokar Menzel in hitherto unknown facets and reveals possible factors contributing to their joint suicide in early 1945. Together, the historian Ottokar Menzel, the son of a Munich orientalist, and Hildegund Rogner, a Berlin teacher's daughter who had studied philosophy, mathematics, and physics, strove with great effort to make their way as academics under Nazi rule.