Time Stood Still: My Internment in England: 1914-1918
by: Paul Cohen-Portheim

Hardcover. NY, E.P. Dutton , 1st, 1932, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in red, 235 pages. A masterpiece of humanism, Time Stood Still recounts Paul Cohen-Portheim's years of internment in England as an enemy alien during World War One. An artist and theatre designer, he at first viewed internment as a sort of holiday: 'Should I bring my bathing things and evening dress?' he asked the policeman taking him prisoner. Though confined in a 'gentleman's camp' near Wakefield, as Cohen-Portheim shows with grace, humor, and deep compassion, even under the best conditions, the simple act of being confined and placed in a sort of limbo is a form of torture: 'Where there is no aim, no object, no sense, there is no time.' Time Stood Still is a passionate but balanced argument against internment and its inherently dehumanizing effects. Paul Cohen-Portheim (1880-1932) was an Austrian artist, travel writer and linquist. When WWI broke out, he was painting in Devonshire, England and found himself interned for the length of the war. Flap copy pasted to front fly leaf, stamp to endpapers (Harvard Club of Boston), some light notations as well to endpapers.