Founder of the Instituto Cultural Brasil-Alemanha, Willy Keller is one of the most important characters among Brazil’s exiles. In Germany he worked from 1921 in various theatres – from 1932 to 1934 – as theatre director in Osnabrück. Denounced as an anti-Nazi and threatened with arrest by the Gestapo, he came with his family to Porto Alegre, where he lived with his wife’s aunt. He worked without pay at the mirror factory owned by his wife’s uncle, while she worked for low wages as a German language commercial correspondent. In Porto Alegre, Keller also started to write for the anti-Fascist newspaper Aktion, published by Friedrich Kniestedt. After six months, Keller travelled on a coal ship to Rio de Janeiro to look for work as director at the film producer Atlântida, or elsewhere. In a long letter dated 12 th February 1937 he reported bitterly to his friend Hans Rothe his lack of professional prospects: “When I came to Brazil, I had hope that there would be a primitive theatre culture, or at least a film industry. And that it would be merely a matter of time before I could in some way return to my old profession. Vain dreams. By the time Brazil has created conditions for its own theatre culture, many generations will have passed. Here I cannot become famous, nor even manage a modest teaching position.” In 1936 Keller moved to São Paulo, where he worked until 1939 as an accountant at a large restaurant. When he refused to swear allegiance to the Third Reich on a German ship anchored off Brazilian territorial waters, he was summarily dismissed. “From that moment my family was on the brink of total ruin. We then moved to Rio de Janeiro, where we found shelter at my sister-in-law’s house. My wife managed to find a job, but not I. With her first salary we rented a little house, back then still at modest prices. Our first table was an upturned crate, our first chairs were crates, our first beds crate planks nailed together. In those days I used to do the housework. To begin with, this inversion of roles did me no good, nor my wife. However we managed to survive thanks to chance, which I cannot explain. 32 years passed and I resigned myself to my destiny,” he said in an interview to Werner Röder in 1971. In 1940, Keller got in touch with the group Das andere Deutschland (The Other Germany), in Buenos Aires. A few years later he began to work as political journalist for the Notgemeinschaft deutscher Antifaschisten (emergency association of anti-Fascist Germans), which worked closely with the above group, as well as the circle around Friedrich Kniestedt, in Porto Alegre. Furthermore, he founded the Notbücherei deutscher Antifaschisten (emergency bookshop for anti-Fascist Germans), which would publish his only work of Brazilian exile. Probably due to lack of resources, he was unable to publish other work, not even his own. Keller’s work in Brazilian theatre already began before the end of the war, in particular rehearsing the Teatro Experimental do Negro in the late 40’s. Only after 1946 was Keller able to produce theatre in the German language. In 1957, Keller founded the Instituto Cultural Brasil-Alemanha, which he directed till 1969. From 1973 he directed Brazil’s amateur student theatre. All his activities were recognized through awards and tributes, but were rarely able to guarantee his livelihood. Nevertheless, Keller received many awards and countless medals for his activities as theatre director. He became an Honorary Rio Citizen on 22th January 1957, received the Order of Merit, 1st Class from the president of the Federal Republic of Germany, in Luebke on 22nd February 1963, the order of the Southern Cross, official degree, on 22nd May 1968, the Estácio de Sá trophy for classical music in 1969*. Another of Keller’s activities was translation. He translated poems by Brazilian authors into German and organized an anthology published in Germany. (...) Also from this period are his translations of Graciliano Ramos, his version of Auto da Compadecida, by Ariano Suassuna, and his translations of Pedro Bloch. It seems Willy Keller never considered returning to Germany. “In this country, Brazil, whose language I never thought I’d understand or speak, I discovered that my homeland is not German soil, which we supposedly have firmly attached to our shoes, but the German language (...) The struggle to learn a foreign language and the struggle not to forget my mother tongue became the true content of my life”, he wrote in Exiltheater Rio de Janeiro.