His name probably means nothing to you, but in a sense you already know the story. An opera performed today from Amsterdam to Atlanta was created in the Terezín ghetto, and its words were written by a man who did not even have proper paper to write on. He originally wrote the libretto on the back of a deportation list, because there was no other paper in the camp. When you type KIEN Brno into a search engine, you will not find a festival or a band, but the fate of painter and poet Petr Kien, a young man who grew up on the streets of Brno and left behind over a thousand drawings before he turned twenty-three.

It is one of those stories that never made it into school textbooks, yet it should be printed there in bold. Kien was not just one name on a list of victims. He was a person who drew, wrote poetry and entire plays, all at the same time. And because he spent a crucial part of his life in Brno, it makes sense that the search query KIEN Brno leads straight to him.

Who was Petr Kien and why do people search for him as KIEN Brno

Petr Kien was a Jewish visual artist, poet and playwright connected to Brno, whose name today appears most often in connection with the opera The Emperor of Atlantis. The search term KIEN Brno does not point to a music festival, but to one of the most versatile talents of his generation.

Peter Kien was born on 1 January 1919 in Varnsdorf and was a Jewish artist and poet. He was one of the prominent figures among the artists imprisoned in the Terezín ghetto, and his name is usually associated with Ullmann's opera The Emperor of Atlantis; alongside the libretto he left behind a significant body of visual art, poetry and plays. That versatility is precisely why Kien did not disappear from history, despite the Nazis' attempts to make him do so. Those who search for KIEN Brno usually encounter the opera first, and only then discover how much lies behind a single name.

From Varnsdorf to the streets of Brno

Kien came into the world in the border town of Varnsdorf, but the formative years of his childhood and adolescence were spent in Brno. It was here that his talent fully revealed itself.

Kien spent his first ten years in Varnsdorf, an industrial town on the Czech-German border, and during the economic crisis the family moved to Brno. His father owned a textile business whose fortunes were undermined by the crisis at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. After 1929 the Kiens settled in Brno, where Petr enrolled at a German grammar school and excelled in drawing, painting and writing. In 1936 he graduated with distinction, and his school report contained special notes about his exceptional abilities in writing and drawing.

From Brno the path led to Prague. That same year Kien enrolled at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in the class of Professor Willy Nowak and at the graphic arts school Officina Pragensis under Hugo Steiner-Prag. But politics brought the promising start to a halt. After the introduction of racial laws, Kien was expelled from the Academy in 1939, but continued to work at Officina Pragensis. He also began teaching art at the Vinohrady synagogue. In 1940 he married Ilse Stránská and the family attempted to emigrate.

That did not succeed. But he left behind a large body of work from a time when he was barely twenty. From his pre-Terezín years there survive over a thousand drawings, sketches, designs and paintings. When you realise how much he accomplished before he turned twenty-three, it begins to make sense why Kien is spoken of as a hidden gem of Brno's culture. There is a great deal of material; it is just not widely known.

Terezín: the draughtsman who documented the ghetto from within

In December 1941 Kien ended up in Terezín and was assigned to the drawing office of the technical department. Officially he drew for the camp administration, but in secret he recorded what the ghetto really looked like.

In December 1941 Kien was deported to Terezín. Upon arriving in the ghetto he was appointed deputy head of the drawing office of the technical department. He worked as a draughtsman and graphic artist alongside other artists, among them Bedřich Fritta and Leo Haas. Alongside his compulsory work he did what he considered more important. He secretly documented the daily life of the prisoners, drew portraits and other scenes, and wrote plays, poems and an opera libretto. His watercolours and drawings were made clandestinely on stolen paper and captured with precision the brutality of the camp that the Nazis publicly presented as a model Jewish community.

There is a striking contrast that appears in his work from those years. The Terezín drawing office produced portraits, landscapes and genre sketches; his visual work radiates light, hope and warmth, while the texts from the same period are mostly tragic and hopeless. His hand and his pen seemed to belong to two different people. And it was not only drawing. Kien's socially satirical play Puppets was staged in Terezín by Gustav Schorsch and performed twenty-five times, and Gideon Klein set his poetry cycle The Plague to music. Among his ghetto plays is also Medea.

The banknote rejected by Heydrich

Few people know that Kien also designed the currency that circulated in Terezín, or that one of the highest-ranking SS officers personally intervened in his design.

The ghetto had its own means of payment, intended to reinforce the illusion of normal life. Real currency was confiscated from prisoners and replaced with vouchers that could only be spent inside the camp; the whole arrangement was part of an elaborate illusion to make the camp appear normal and the prisoners look like paid workers. The task of designing those banknotes fell to Kien. His original design was rejected by SS commander Reinhard Heydrich, who ordered that Moses should look more stereotypically "Semitic" and that he should cover one of the commandments with his hand. A detail that sums up in a single sentence the cynicism with which Kien's talent was treated.

What survives of Kien's work is largely the result of chance and human decency. Before his deportation he entrusted a suitcase to his assistant Helza Wolfenstein; inside were nearly five hundred artworks and a number of letters. Today 681 of his works are held by the Wiener Holocaust Library in London. His work is now credited with capturing the true nature of the camp and getting the message out that it was no model place.

The Emperor of Atlantis: an opera written on the back of a deportation list

Kien's best-known legacy is the libretto for the opera The Emperor of Atlantis, composed by Viktor Ullmann. It was written in Terezín, banned by the Nazis, and the world did not hear it until three decades after the deaths of both its authors.

Der Kaiser von Atlantis, or The Emperor of Atlantis, is a one-act opera by Viktor Ullmann with a libretto by Peter Kien, written in Terezín in 1943, before both authors perished in Auschwitz. The story reads like a dark fairy tale with a sharp political edge. Emperor Overall, an allegory for Hitler, declares total war, but Death and Harlequin lose their purpose in his realm: the living stop living and the dying stop dying, and Death eventually offers the emperor a deal - she will return to work only if he becomes her first victim. It is a parable about a regime that stopped counting human lives.

The censors also recognised the allegory of a dictator. The opera was rehearsed in Terezín in March 1944, but the Nazi authorities recognised the figure of the emperor as a satire on Adolf Hitler and refused to allow the performance. The Terezín leadership did not permit the work to be staged. It is interesting how Kien came to be involved in the opera at all. According to the Ars Electronica festival, the painter and writer was brought into the project only after the score was already complete; the last, forty-fourth page of the manuscript bears the date 8 November 1943, and Ullmann listed Kien as the librettist on the title page.

The end of both authors was the same as the end of hundreds of thousands of others. On 16 October 1944, Peter, his wife Ilse Stránská and his parents were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were murdered. Both the composer and the librettist perished in Auschwitz. That the work survives at all is a combination of luck and the courage of those who hid the score. The opera did not receive its premiere until 16 December 1975 in Amsterdam, more than three decades after Kien's death. In 1990 it was recorded in Leipzig by the Decca label.

And Brno's connection is no coincidence. In 2025 the Ars Electronica festival in Linz included a new production of the opera to mark the eightieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, with the Brno Philharmonic among the performers. In other words, the work that people search for as KIEN Brno is not a dead chapter in a textbook, but a living thing that you can encounter today in concert and opera programmes. If you want to keep track of where works like this are being performed, our concerts overview is a good place to start.

The story of a creator: from Kien to Tolkien

Kien's fate belongs to a genre that never stops captivating people: the story of a creator, a narrative about how a work comes into being and what kind of person stood behind it. And you can experience exactly that kind of evening live.

Biographical theatre builds this type of experience around a single question: what drives a person to create a world that will outlive them. In Kien's case the answer is brutally concrete, because he was completing his world under the literal threat of deportation. If you enjoy a portrait of the person behind the work, take a look at the production J. R. R. Tolkien - The Story of the Creator of Middle-earth, playing on 10 October 2026 at the DIOD theatre in Jihlava. It is a different era and a different fate, but the same genre: it is not about spectacle, it is about how an entire world emerges from one author's mind and goes on living without them. More titles in this vein can be found in our theatre section, where biographical and documentary productions are added regularly.

Where to find Kien's legacy

We do not currently have a specific Petr Kien exhibition in Brno in our calendar, but his musical and theatrical legacy is still in circulation and easy to track down.

The most reliable route is through the institutions themselves. The Brno Philharmonic and opera houses that give space to Ullmann and the Terezín composers announce dates on their official websites and sell tickets through verified channels, so you can be sure of the date, venue and price. If you want an overview of what is coming up, browse our events calendar and filter by genre and city. And if you enjoy discovering the real people behind the names on a poster, take a look at our artists section. Kien is a perfect example of how a single name can conceal an entire world that is well worth uncovering.

Frequently asked questions

Who was Petr Kien?

He was a Jewish painter, draughtsman, poet and playwright. In Terezín he secretly documented the daily life of the prisoners, drew portraits and wrote plays, poems and an opera libretto. His name is most often associated with the opera The Emperor of Atlantis, for which he wrote the text.

Why is the connection KIEN Brno used when he was born in Varnsdorf?

Because he spent the formative part of his childhood and adolescence in Brno. After 1929 the family moved to Brno, where Kien attended a German grammar school and excelled in drawing and writing. Brno is therefore the city where his talent took shape, even though he was born elsewhere.

What is the opera The Emperor of Atlantis about?

It is a one-act chamber opera by Viktor Ullmann with a libretto by Kien, an allegory of the Nazi regime. Emperor Overall, a figure referencing Hitler, declares total war, Death and Harlequin lose their purpose in his realm, the living stop living while the dying stop dying.

Where can I see Kien's work today?

Primarily in concert and opera programmes and in museum collections. A collection of 681 of his artworks is held by the Wiener Holocaust Library in London. The opera The Emperor of Atlantis is regularly programmed by festivals and opera houses across Europe.

Is KIEN Brno a festival?

No. The search term KIEN Brno refers to the person of Petr Kien, not a music festival. His legacy does live on in the programmes of concert and theatre institutions, however, so you can encounter it on stage.

Sources

  • J. R. R. Tolkien - The Story of the Creator of Middle-earth (10 October 2026, DIOD, Jihlava) - related production in our database
  • Wikipedia: Petr Kien (en.wikipedia.org) - biography, works and the fate of his drawings
  • Wikipedia: Der Kaiser von Atlantis - history of the opera's creation and rescue
  • The Atlanta Opera - profile of the librettist and opera synopsis
  • Yad Vashem Art Museum - biography and fate of Kien's work
  • Wiener Holocaust Library - collection of 681 Terezín drawings
  • United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - design of the Terezín banknote
  • Ars Electronica 2025 - opera production featuring the Brno Philharmonic
  • EHRI and Antiques Roadshow (PBS) - context of Kien's work in the camp