Vienna, late autumn 1945. In a city still smelling faintly of smoke and rubble, a thin man in a dark suit stands at the front of a small lecture hall. The windows behind him are patched with cardboard; outside, tramlines rattle past buildings with their insides exposed. Inside the room, students and war-weary adults sit shoulder to shoulder on mismatched chairs, coats still on, breath faint in the cold air. They have come to hear a psychiatrist who has just returned from the camps. His name is Viktor Emil Frankl. His cheeks are hollow, his hair close-cropped, his eyes too old for his forty years, but there is a steadiness in the way he grips the lectern, a stubborn vitality that contradicts the devastation etched into his face. He clears his throat, glances at the notes he has scrawled on yellowing paper, and begins to speak about something almost scandalous in the ruins of Europe: the possibility that life, even life marked by horror, can still be meaningful.