Blaugast is the story of ruin. A bored clerk, Klaudius Blaugast, pursues his desires down a path spiraling into complete degradation. Homeless and destitute, having lost everything to the evil prostitute Wanda, he seeks redemption in a Prague that has become alien to him. Flashbacks to incidents in his past, hallucinatory revelations of the meaning of events long forgotten, point to the seeds of his eventual downfall. Unpublished during Leppin's lifetime, Blaugast ranks with Severin's Journey into the Dark for its portrayal of eroticism in a city that has become sybaritic and uncaring. Written in the 1930s as the Nazis were coming to power in Germany, it is an indictment of the despotic and vulgar, an exploration of the sadistic tendencies found in most people, especially those who consider themselves "moral" and "respectable." This volume is based on the original typescript found in the Museum of Czech Literature in Prague and includes an afterword by Dierk O. Hoffmann, Professor of German at Colgate University, who is the editor of Leppin's works in new German editions.