ABSTRACT
Not long before the German invasion of the Netherlands, where Werner Guttentag had found temporary shelter, a German-Jewish refugee, nineteen years of age, arrived in Bolivia from the war-torn continent. Guttentag established a literary prize, the first and only one in the country that gave many, who later became famous, their first chance and indeed the breakthrough. On Christmas day in 1939, Guttentag arrived in Arica, a port in Northern Chile and the gate to Bolivia, this being a landlocked country. Guttentag's politics were still of the Left, but he had mellowed. He published a considerable amount of left-wing literature, but he also had friends on the Right. Guttentag had to leave school early which he always regretted. Things Jewish were of little intellectual interest to him, but he was probably not aware to what extent the Jewish tradition was part of his mental makeup.
