Ludwig Meidner was one of Expressionism's most important portraitists. He painted, drew and etched numerous members the Berlin avant-garde: painters, musicians, actors and, above all, writers. His subjects included the painter Conrad Felixmüller, the actress Lotte Lenya, the director Max Reinhardt, and the writers René Schickele, Johannes R. Becher and Max Herrmann-Neiße, who Meidner met while co-editing the journal "Das Neue Pathos", to which Herrmann-Neiße was a contributor.

In Meidner’s posthumously published text "Poets, Painters and Cafés" he characterizes the poet as follows:

"And then there was Max Herrmann-Neisse, my friend of many years, a frail wreck, an angular skull full of melancholy, an unhappily deformed man, who almost inexhaustibly wrote his tender and moving poetry. Herrmann-Neisse wrote me loving letters and sent me his verse regularly. I painted him twice and drew him countless times, and also made engravings of him. The best drawing of him was lost. Later Max Herrmann-Neisse grew close to George Grosz, for both of them loved dives, night-clubs and Berlin dance halls and would be out on the town for days. Later I met Herrmann again, in exile in London. He was embittered by what had happened and deeply unhappy, but on his daily walks through London's Regent Park he continued to create his German verse. Four volumes of his poetry were published during the years of exile in Zurich and London. He died in London in 1941." (from: Ludwig Meidner: Poets, Painters and Cafés (Dichter, Maler und Cafés), ed. by Ludwig Kunz, Zürich 1973, S. 21f.)

The two paintings mentioned in the text are today at the Art Institute of Chicago and at Institut Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt.

Further reading:
Ludwig Meidner – Begegnungen, hrsg. von Philipp Gutbrod (exhibition catalog Institut Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt), München 2016
Gerda Breuer und Ines Wagemann: Ludwig Meidner. Zeichner, Maler, Literat. 1884-1966. 2 vols. (exhibition catalog Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt), Stuttgart 1991.
Ludwig Meidner: Dichter, Maler und Cafés, ed. by Ludwig Kunz, Zürich 1973, S. 21f.