Plehn, Erika [later Pinkus] (German, 1897–1937)

Erika Plehn was born on 27 November 1897 in Rawitsch, Posen, Prussia (now Rawicz, Poland), the daughter of Wilibald Georg “Anton Bernhard” Plehn (born 1867) and Johanna Marie Henze (born 1875). Trained in Berlin, she worked as an illustrator during the 1920s, producing illustrations for children’s books and a small body of erotic watercolour sequences. In 1934, she married Klaus Valentin Pinkus (1895–1978) in Berlin. By 1936, the couple had fled Nazi Germany and travelled via Java to the United States, arriving through Hawaii and San Francisco. Erika Plehn died in Paris on 20 April 1937.