Upon emigrating with her husband, the actor Leonard Steckel to Switzerland in 1933, the dance performer Jo Mihaly was refused a work permit, as was the case with many German immigrants at the time. Mihaly could thus only continue to give her performances in private circles. She did, however, manage to circumvent these strict employment restrictions by choreographing performances for Der Neue Chor, a social-democratic worker’s and worker’s movement choir. She herself participated in only a small number of shows, including a solo recital in the Zurich playhouse. A number of her performances were collaborations with the actor and singer Ernst Busch.

This photograph, taken on 19 March 1935, two years after Mihaly’s arrival in Switzerland, depicts one of these rare performances. The dance spectacle Fische fürs Volk (literally: “Fish for the People”) came in for particularly glowing critical praise. The journalist Albin Zollinger voiced his enthusiasm for the emotive power of Mihaly’s humanness in her portrayal of the hungry poor being provided with fish. There was something “radiant” and “resplendent” about her person, explained the critic.

The poverty of the lower classes, which formed the thematic focus of this performance, remained a guiding subject in Mihaly’s literary work. Upon being forced into exile, the dancer shifted the focus of her ambitions to her writing and began penning her novel Hüter des Bruders during her residence in Switzerland.