The Gedin Brothers, 1942

Lotte Laserstein

Narrator: Hans and Per Gedin, who are fifteen and fourteen years old here, both give an inquisitive impression. The brothers had fled Berlin with their parents and arrived in Sweden in April of 1938, a couple of months after Laserstein. Now, four years later, the young men sit relaxed and focused, each on his own task: Hans reads a book while Per, who would later become a publisher, holds a model airplane in his hands and looks with interest out of the picture. Per has said that his brother Hans, who later became a researcher, was the more introverted of them, while he was the more extroverted qualities that Laserstein observed and captured.

The young men sit in their boyhood room on Linnégatan in Stockholm, where the family moved after emigrating. On the wall behind them is a map of northern Europe, where Scandinavia and Sweden, their new homeland, are in the center. Per remembers Lotte Laserstein as a friendly but fairly decisive person, and how boring it was to need to sit still for so long; it took several sittings before the painting was finished. In his autobiography “A Publisher’s Life” (1999), Per, subsequently Per I. Gedin, tells how difficult it was in the beginning for the two brothers to find their way in Swedish society, even though they had grown up in a bilingual household and spoke Swedish fluently. He also discusses the widespread anti-Semitism they encountered.

In contrast to “The Emigrant”, the double portrait “The Gedin Brothers” communicates a hope that the young generation of refugees, with their inherent openness and inquisitiveness, in the future might be able to contribute to a better world even if the war, when the portrait was painted, raged throughout Europe.