Lotte Laserstein has only been rediscovered with us in recent years through extensive exhibitions in Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg.

Ninety years ago, around 1930, she was at the height of her work.

Her portraits of women embodied the new, self-confident woman.

This is how she saw herself. She was one of the first women to gain access to the Berlin Academy and found a master in Erich Wolfsfeld whom she soon surpassed with her very precise objectivity (between Wilhelm Leibl and Otto Dix) and perfect craftsmanship.

After graduating, she earned her living with her own painting school.

Best friend and model

Traute Rose was Laserstein's best friend and her favorite model; she has repeatedly painted them as nudes, often in very personal poses or together with herself as a double portrait. The most famous painting became a group of friends: young people, with a sweetheart in the middle, sit together on a balcony in a depressed mood; their eyes are empty or fearful, as if they suspected the coming German calamity. In the distance, the cityscape of Potsdam can be seen like a mirage.

After 1933, Lotte Laserstein was immediately banned from the profession, and hostility increased.

An exhibition in Sweden made it possible for her to flee Germany in 1937.

A marriage of convenience brokered by the Jewish community in Stockholm soon gave her Swedish citizenship.

Now she could feel safe.

However, her attempts to allow her mother and sister to leave the country remained in vain.

As a result, she was tormented by feelings of guilt for life.

Exile in Sweden

Anne Stern lets Laserstein and Traute Rose talk about their life together in Berlin and about their reunion in Sweden after the war. In this way, a lot of authentic information can be accommodated in an exciting way and with many time leaps. Lotte Laserstein's extensive estate in Berlin was available to the author. Only the letters from Traute to the admired friend are not available to this day. Anne Stern was able to rely on Anna-Carola Krausse's thorough dissertation, who was the first to make the painter, which we have almost forgotten, known again.

The result is a lively picture of the thirties with their discussions about art and the right of women to equal rights in all areas of life as well as the end of this promising new beginning through the Nazi regime. The individual fate of an artist in exile is moving; it is representative of many. That is why the novel gains historical significance in places. But at the same time it is the story of an intense friendship, their expectations and disappointments. The fictional dialogue between the friends expresses how far the two have separated due to their different lives.

On the island of Öland, where Lotte owns a house, they meet again after decades. Traute tries in vain to persuade the painter to return to Germany. She conjures up their successes in the early thirties, which Lore could not continue in Sweden because, in order to earn a living, she had to adapt to contemporary tastes and, above all, painted landscapes or pleasing portraits. No matter how hard Traute tries, she fails to restore the old familiarity. Lotte cannot cope with the pain that begins again with the memory: her mother was murdered in the concentration camp, her sister was in hiding, but survived severely traumatized. Berlin is therefore a heavily burdened place for them. Her friend's suggestions harass her, tear something up in her,that cannot be cured.

Traute has become a successful photographer; she painted herself and had a harmonious marriage. Lotte stayed lonely in a strange land. She has not seen the big exhibitions in her home country. She died in 1993 at the age of ninety-four. “It was nice with you,” she wrote to her friend in one of her last letters.