First of all, I’d like to thank Irme Schaber.
I met The Girl with the Leica at a show organized by Schaber, and my book is based on her biography. (Unfortunately, the most up-to-date edition, of 2013, is available only in German.) Above all, she was truly generous in giving me access to the materials she had collected in the course of the work that brought out of oblivion the life and photographic oeuvre of Gerda Taro.
Warm thanks to Mario Bernardo4 for his responses and to Zenone Sovilla for restoring the podcast in which Bernardo describes his time in the Resistance.
Thanks to Professor Giovanni Battimelli, of La Sapienza University, and to Nicoletta Valente, who opened to me the Vittorio Somenzi archive—which had never been examined before—and found the right volumes.
I’d like to thank Professor Peter Huber, of the University of Basel, and Harald Wittstock, the president of the Kämpfer und Freunde der Spanischen Republik 1936-1939 association, for information about Georg Kuritzkes. Thanks to Professor Paul Mendes-Flohr for information about Ina Britschgi-Schimmer.
Thanks to Roberta Gado, who drove me around Leipzig and helped me consult the Staatsarchiv Sachsen.
Thanks to Giacomo Lunghini and Sabrina Ragucci for explaining how a Leica and an analogue reflex camera work.
Thanks to those who tried to rein in my mania for documentation, reminding me that I was writing a novel. It’s true: although I’ve stayed close to the sources, the soul of the book is, necessarily, the product of my imagination.
I took the liberty of calling my protagonist Gerda, although her name was Gerta Pohorylle, because she herself preferred the softer and more common version of her name.
Thanks to all the friends, who listened to me, encouraged me, and supported me. They know who they are.
4 Mario Bernardo died in February 2019.