The long-forbidden film had problems with East German censors. It finally premiered, uncut, in West Germany and West Berlin on March 3, 1983 at the Arsenal Kino on the occasion of writer-producer-director Falk Harnack's 70th birthday as part of an eight film Harnack retrospective, some 30 years after its production.
Arnold Zweig wrote the novel on which this film is based in forced exile, at intervals between 1938 and 1942, finishing it while in London. It was first published in Hebrew in Haifa in 1943, then later published in 1947.