Leo Meter was born in Cologne in 1911. A stage designer and an illustrator, he was imprisoned in 1933 and migrated to Netherlands in 1934. There, he met a Jewish woman, Elisabeth Palut, who had also been running away. In 1934, their daughter Barbara was born. He was arrested by the Gestapo and later was given up to serve the German army. He wrote “Letters to Barbara” while he was in Ukraine.
He was executed by firearm in 1944, possibly because he refused to fire his rifle.
A collection of letters by Leo Meter to his little daughter during World War II, written and sent from the battle front, where he had been placed by the Nazis. A touching document, with duplications of original drawings, about the brutality of war, despite the fact the word “war”, because of censorship reasons, never appears in the letters.
“A good book” (Diario de León).
Selected by Germán Sánchez Ruipérez Foundation to contribute to its catalogue “Books with two ways of looking”: “… these letters, full of drawings and other fantastic stories, tell us about the need to take shelter in love and literature as the only chance to survive the brutality of war”.