DER TÄTOWIERTE MANN is a literary product that draws very freely on a series of interviews that the author Peter Wortsman conducted in Vienna in 1975 with witnesses and survivors of the worst excesses of Western civilization. Wortsman transcribed, translated and edited this material from tape and memory, acting as a middle-aged secretary to his 23-year-old self, picking up the thread where the young man lost it. It was painful to relive the taped exchange, painful because of the merciless directness of his interlocutors, but also because of the author's inadequacy, his reactions and the long time it took him to make something of it. The subject was once a taboo that people preferred not to touch at all; but in the meantime it has been given a lead-heavy label, idealized and raised to a pedestal, pierced by spotlights, lit up with torches for moral rearmament, almost canonized with a reverence that used to be reserved for crucifixion. This piece is dedicated to the things that were left unsaid.