After the end of World War I Max Pechstein sought to regain his passion for an unconstrained existence in nature with his return to the coast of the Curonian Spit, just the way he had experienced it during his stay in the South Seas before the war. "I went to Nidda in spring 1919, with an axious heart, wondering whether the Curonian Spit still offered a bearable situation for a painter. Anxious also because I did not know if landscape and people that I had discovered as a fruitful source of inspiration would still be the same. Certainly, a lot had changed, but it felt so good to be welcomed with joy by the old fishermen friends. The disastrous war did not have any impact on the waters of the lagoon and the Baltic, on the changing lights of this north-eastern place, on nature with its ever-same rhythm and harmonious colors at every season of the year", wrote Max Pechstein in his "Erinnerungen" (quote after: Max Pechstein. Erinnerungen, Stuttgart 1993, pp. 106f.).