The house of Wladimir Rosenbaum and Aline Valangin was regarded in Zurich during the 1930s as a salon of the artistic avant-garde and a refuge for the persecuted. The Swiss fascist newspaper "Die Front" made Wladimir Rosenbaum a target of its propaganda. A patron, antifascist, and bon vivant, he had to flee as a child from the tsarist pogroms and became one of the most famous Swiss lawyers. Aline Valangin, a pianist and later a writer after undergoing psychoanalysis, was a confidante of many fellow authors. James Joyce shared his dreams with her, and Ignazio Silone was one of her lovers. Shaped by a desire for freedom, Rosenbaum and Valangin experienced their open marriage as an exciting challenge of modernity, not as a chronique scandaleuse. This double biography of two extraordinary individuals includes original excerpts from diaries, archival documents, and tape recordings.