A second edition entitled "Der Todesgang des armenischen Volkes" ("The way to death of the Armenian people") included an interview with Enver Pasha, one of the chief architects of the genocide.

Johannes, who was on the board of the Syrian Orphanage from 1884 to 1886, met many problems in Jerusalem due to massacres inflicted on the Christian population in 1860.

His work, "Report on the situation of the Armenian people in Turkey", was censored on 7 August 1916, however 20,000 copies were sent throughout Germany before the censorship was enforced.

In 1909 the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire had high expectations from the Young Turk movement which brought Abdul Hamid's regime to an end.

Yet during the opening months of the First World War, there were mass arrests, deportations, and massacres of Armenians living in Eastern Anatolia.

Dr. Lepsius, to the Turkish Generalissimo Enver Pasha, and through the author's [Jaeckh's] intervention the lives of many Armenians, particularly women and children, were saved.

Later, in The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, Franz Werfel attributes two chapters to the description of Lepsius' struggle and his negotiations with Enver Pasha.