In the face of rising anti-Semitism and political persecution following Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in January 1933, ringl + pit closed their Berlin studio and fled Germany. Stern moved to London, where she reopened the studio and soon found herself part of a growing community of German exiles. She photographed the leftist playwright Bertolt Brecht when he came to London and stayed in the same pension as his Marxist mentor, Karl Korsch. Her stark portraits lay her subjects bare and evidence her continued engagement with political and cultural avant-garde circles. In an emphatically lucid portrait, Stern captured Korsch against a railroad-roadway map of Germany, a reference to the transitory exile experience of the photographer and her sitter alike.