Bernhard Cher was an artist who befriended Fedin when they were both civilian internees in Germany during the First World War. They met in a small German town called Zittau in the state of Saxony, which is subordinate to the administrative district of Dresden. During the First World War, a group of civilian internees was sent to Zittau for settlement. The unlucky bunch included students of the Moscow Higher Technical School, an engineer called Rosenberg from the Russian sales office, and Bernhard Cher, a copyist (a scribe who copies business papers) from the Zwinger architectural complex in Dresden.

Indeed, much of what Fedin saw and experienced at that time later formed the basis of his first novel, ‘Cities and Years’ (1924) and I was an Actor (1937). The museum’s archives contain the manuscripts of a novel conceived by Fedin under the title Mr. Artist Cher. But the novel never came into fruition. This sketch was reworked and partially included in the final version of I was an Actor.

Zittau took a huge part in both the personal and creative biography of Konstantin Fedin. Here he first began to truly write, but the first big novel “Wilderness” remained unfinished, and was subsequently destroyed by the author himself. On the stage of the Zittau city theater, the artistic and musical abilities of Fedin were revealed. But most importantly, this city gave him his first big love — a girl named Hanni Mrva. Their story is one of great love that had to be broken off. The writer carried these memories through his entire life, embodying over and over again the image of his beloved in the heroines of his novels. In 1918, Fedin was included in a prisoner exchange group and was allowed to go home, although he had little time to prepare for the trip. This painting is among the few personal possessions he took with him. It became a symbol of his beautiful youth and a source of memories about love and friendship.