After being forced to leave Germany, Heinz Trökes started to get a feel for Zurich, his new place of residence. He took his sketchbook with him on long walks, filling it with the motifs of his emigration during the summer of 1939. On 6 July 1939, for example, he sketched a view of the roofs, towers and nearby mountains of Zurich.

The distance apparent in Trökes drawing as he looks across the city tells us something about the artist’s mood at that time. While living in the Swiss city, he went through a phase of loneliness and very keenly felt the loss of home, something that Zurich’s outward beauty could not completely alleviate. More than anything else, Trökes missed having someone with whom he could talk to about his art. And his hopes of putting a safe distance between himself and harassment by the Nazis to work creatively again soon disappeared. Trökes felt that he was stagnating as an artist in Zurich. He achieved neither recognition nor financial gain from his paintings and drawings there. Only his textile designs, with which he had already earned a living in Germany, found some degree of acceptance.

All of these factors reinforced Heinz Trökes’ long-held plan of seeing the picturesque city shown in his sketch from 6 July 1939 as nothing more than a stop-off on the way to somewhere else. Indonesia, Egypt or at least France were among the places he thought about continuing his exile in. However, when war broke out September 1939, Trökes decided on another path.