Johannes R. Becher and the painter Eva Herrmann had become acquainted in 1922 in their hometown of Munich. Both lived in Eva Herrmann's Berlin Studio from 1922 to 1924. They continued to write to each other even after separating. They saw each other again in 1937 when Eva Herrmann undertook a journey to Moscow together with Lion Feuchtwanger.

Eva Herrmann had been part of the emigrant community in Sanary-sur-Mer in southern France until 1939. In October 1939, she left Europe from Genoa on the ocean liner Conte di Savoia. German and Austrian emigrants had been interned as enemy aliens in France since September 1939. For many of them, this was an alarming situation. As an American passport holder (her father was the American painter Frank Simon Herrmann), Eva Hermann was not affected, but as a Jew she would have been under just as must much threat from a Wehrmacht raid as her friends, whose fate she reports on in her letter.

Lion Feuchtwanger was interned in Les Milles in 1939, and again in the summer of 1940. He was freed from the Nîmes camp through an intervention by Varian Fry and with the help of the American Vice Consul.

On 24 November 1939 Johannes R. Becher responded to the news of the suicide of their common friend Franziska Herzfeld: "The news about Fränze came as a blow. I cannot help but feel a sense of guilt. How negligent I have been in allowing this friendship to fade." (quoted from Manfred Flügge,) Muse des Exils, 2012)

Further reading:
Flügge, Manfred: Muse des Exils. Das Leben der Malerin Eva Herrmann. Berlin: Insel Verlag 2012.