René Schickele belongs to that generation of authors who published their first works at the beginning of the 20th century and shaped literary life in Germany until 1933. As an early Expressionist, editor of the magazine "Die weissen Blätter," and a prominent novelist in the 1920s, he was in contact with significant contemporaries, including the brothers Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Robert Musil, Stefan Zweig, Lion Feuchtwanger, Joseph Roth, Hermann Hesse, Robert Walser, and many others.

His position was particularly unique: he came from Alsace, was raised bilingual, and saw the mutual enrichment of French and German ways of life and thought as his mission. This "spiritual Alsatianism," as he called it, was a European idea meant to overcome the narrow-mindedness of national concepts – to ensure peace and enrich the intellect of all. His Francophilia was a bold political utopia before World War I, when Germany viewed France as the "hereditary enemy," making him suspicious of defeatism. Thus, it was not without controversy when Schickele published his short novel "Meine Freundin Lo" in 1910, subtitled "A Story from Paris."

The text is narrated from the perspective of a young journalist who – as Schickele himself had done – comes to Paris to report on French domestic politics and the cultural life of the city. Through his friend, the poet Variot, he meets his lover Lo, an actress at the "Grand Guignol." She is the central figure of a bohemian circle that also includes a theater director and an ambitious member of the Chamber of Deputies. Lo lives her erotic freedom with great self-assurance, and soon the first-person narrator becomes her lover. This leads to a summer of happiness in a country house on the outskirts of Paris.