Actor Leonard Steckel and dancer Jo Mihaly created a photo album every year. In particularly eventful years – such as their years in exile in Switzerland – multiple albums were made. This page comes from an album that the married couple made in Zurich in 1938. It shows the farewell of Steckel's friend, the actor Alexander Granach, before he emigrated to the US. In 1938, Granach, who had just fled the Soviet Union, was a guest performer at the Schauspielhaus Zurich. He performed together with Steckel in a production of Macbeth. Aside from Steckel and Mihaly, Granach's great love Lotte Lieven was also in Zurich in 1938. Like Steckel, the émigré actress had found an engagement at the Schauspielhaus Zurich. One of the pictures was taken in her garden.

The friendship between Leonard Steckel and Alexander Granach began at the Volksbühne in Berlin. Under director Erwin Piscator, in 1927 they acted together in Hoppla, wir leben [Hoppla, We're Alive] by Ernst Toller and Volpone, a comedy by English playwright Ben Jonson adapted by Stefan Zweig. In 1933 they went their separate ways. While Granach first went into exile in Austria and later worked in Poland, Steckel accepted an engagement at the Schauspielhaus Zurich. In their years of exile, the two actors wrote each other letters. Granach frequently enclosed letters to “Stecki” in his letters to Lotte Lieven, asked how his friend was doing or sent his regards.