In the twenties, Gina Kaus published her first novel The Rise, which won the Theodor Fontane Prize, and was very active in the circle of literary intellectuals in Berlin and Vienna. She had friendships with both Austrian writers Karl Kraus and a romance with Otto Soyka; in her autobiography she would write "... I had a lover, I am not loved." In 1933 she would watch both their books fall victim to the Nazi book burnings.
