Marianne Ludes "Trio mit Tiger"
The first novel about Max and Mathilde Beckmann
Reading and talk with Marianne Ludes & Rebecca Casati
22 October 2025, 6 to 8 pm
Fasanenstraße 25, 10719 Berlin

Admission is free - unfortunately we cannot guarantee a seat.

The artist couple Beckmann in exile in Amsterdam - a novel of a great love and a difficult friendship

Amsterdam, 1942: Max Beckmann and his wife Mathilde, known as Quappi, have been living in exile for five years since the propaganda exhibition "Degenerate Art" in Munich. Meeting up with friends and taking trips to the seaside, the couple try to forget that Holland has hardly offered them any peace and quiet or a livelihood since the German invasion. Max in particular is affected by the constant uncertainty and restrictions on his personal freedom, but Quappi's confidence and organisational skills enable him to continue his work. Max is also supported by his acquaintance with a mysterious German, the art historian Erhard Göpel, who works for the "Linz Special Commission". He is to collect pictures for an art museum planned by Hitler. Göpel is an ardent admirer of Beckmann and is prepared to help in any way, even illegally. Can the couple trust a National Socialist? As Göpel finds himself increasingly confronted with the instruments of power of the Nazi dictatorship, the threat to the Beckmanns and their Jewish friends grows.

Marianne Ludes tells the story of the lives of the famous artist couple in a knowledgeable, entertaining and exciting way: of intimate love, sources of creative inspiration and an idiosyncratic friendship that is historically documented. Ludes had exclusive access to Mathilde Beckmann's previously unpublished diaries and paints a vivid portrait of a clever, energetic woman of our time.

After studying economics, Marianne Ludes built up a large architecture firm together with her husband. In 2023, they founded the non-profit Ludes Foundation. Marianne Ludes also volunteers in the cultural sector, in particular for the Potsdam Literature Festival and the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. Ludes used Quappi Beckmann's unpublished diaries to research her first literary novel "Trio mit Tiger". She has also published "Ludwig Jacobs - oder das verschwundene Leben" (Hanser Verlag, 2021). Marianne Ludes lives in Potsdam.

The author and journalist Rebecca Casati supervised and wrote the big interviews in the Süddeutsche Zeitung for years, wrote for the SZ Magazin, the Spiegel, writes for Die Zeit and Harper's Bazaar and was an editor for autobiographical non-fiction at Suhrkamp Verlag in Berlin for seven years. She is co-founder and editor of our Grisebach podcast "DIE SUCHT DIE SEHEN".