Not only in his "War Notes from Paris" does Felix Hartlaub succinctly note the distortions of life that National Socialism brought about. As a student in "Hitler's Berlin" from 1934 to 1938, he honed his mastery in highlighting how ordinary scenes of daily life reveal that nothing is as it once was. His literary sketches, initially intended only for the drawer, condense what he observed into a melancholic description of the new orders that reshape and freeze the life of the capital. Less melancholic and more biting, Hartlaub approaches his surroundings with his drawing pencil: His drawings—created for friends and family—exaggerate what presses upon him. Literary scholars Nikola Herweg and Harald Tausch edit Hartlaub's texts and drawings.