The story of the origins and publication of Soma Morgenstern's book The Third Pillar are indicative of the life of an exiled German author. The first edition was published in 1955 in English, the German edition first appeared in 1964 and the Hebrew version appeared in 1976. Morgenstern, the author, always wrote in German. However, while in exile his works were published exclusively in English. His writings were "re-discovered" in German speaking countries relatively late.
Breaking out of a long-standing writer's block, Morgenstern produced the manuscript with the intended title Book of the Dead between 1946 and 1953. Morgenstern's 292-paged, undated, handwritten manuscript was designated “Endgültige Fassung” (final version). The basis of the first German edition of The Third Pillar was an undated version in typescript, only parts of which were found among his papers after his death. Also found in his estate was a radio/dramatised version of the book and a handwritten synopsis, which appeared in translation as the epilogue to the Hebrew edition.

Editions:
The third Pillar. Transl. From the German by Ludwig Lewisohn. New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy 1955. Zugleich Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America 1955
Die Blutsäule. Zeichen und Wunder am Sereth. Wien, Stuttgart, Zürich: Deutsch 1964
Amud Hadamim: Übersetzt von Manfred Winkler, Tel-Aviv: Mossad Abraham Joshua Heschel 1976
Die Blutsäule. Zeichen und Wunder am Sereth. Hg. von Ingolf Schulte. Lüneburg: Zu Klampen 1997