Elysium – between two continents fosters artistic and academic dialogue, creative and educational exchange and mutual friendship between the United States of America and Europe. By means of art Elysium fights against ignorance, discrimination, racism, hatred, anti-Semitism, and the forgetting or trivializing of the Holocaust. Elysium’s history is closely linked with Erwin Piscator and his groundbreaking ideas of a politically and socially relevant theater. Founded in 1983 by Gregorij von Leïtis as a theater company in New York, Elysium presented numerous American premieres of German-language plays in English translation. During the last two decades, one programmatic focus has been the rediscovery and presentation of music and literature created by artists who were persecuted by the Nazis. Since December 2018 the collection of the Lahr von Leïtis Archive has been housed at the exil.arte Centre of the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna / Austria.
