But in recent seasons, European directors have rushed to rediscover Horvath, who chronicled the struggles of ordinary people during a time of political menace and social uncertainty that some have compared to our own. New York will soon get rare a taste of his writing, too.

Horvath, born in 1901 in a part of Austria-Hungary that is now Croatia, spent his early life crisscrossing the empire, from Budapest to Vienna to Bratislava. He later lived in Germany, which he fled for Austria after the Nazis took power in 1933. Following the Anschluss in 1938, he fled, again, this time to Paris. That same year he was killed during a storm by a falling tree branch. He was 36 years old.

Of all of Horvath’s work, “Youth Without God,” about a young high school teacher who watches as his students slip into the brutal conformity of Nazi ideology, has acquired fresh relevance in our own age of anxiety. Horvath’s morally astute observations have earned him comparisons to Brecht and Camus. His exploration of individual responsibility and agency inside systems of violence and repression have made him a go-to author for people struggling to make sense of a world under threat by resurgent nationalism, social atomization and environmental catastrophe.

Working from a new stage adaptation by the young Swiss writer Tina Müller, Mr. Erpulat’s production of “Youth Without God” shifts the perspective from the unnamed teacher — the book’s narrator — to the students, who speak about their values, desires, frustrations and fears.

In the novel, the teacher is denounced for telling his class that, contrary to what radio broadcasts have taught them, black people are human beings. In a particularly effective update, actors in the Gorki’s production discuss an online portal set up last year by the far-right party Alternative for Germany, where students could rat out teachers who criticize it.