Between 1805 and 1810, Rahel Levin Varnhagen exchanged over 200 letters and billets with the author Rebecca Friedländer, née Salomon (1783–1850), who began publishing under the pseudonym Regina Frohberg in 1810. At times these letters went back and forth between their apartments in Berlin on a daily basis. As Jewish intellectuals, Levin Varnhagen and Friedländer were able to build upon common interests, but they also shared the painful experience of unhappy loves (especially with non-Jewish men) and exclusion from the Christian mainstream society, which was doubly sceptical of them as educated Jews and women. Their letters, of which only Levin Varnhagen’s have survived, soon became very intimate. “Putte” or “Putine” — as Levin Varnhagen nicknamed Friedländer — received advice, comfort and “long hugs” from her friend. Initially, Friedländer seems to have honoured Levin Varnhagen’s request to be “true” at all times, but by early 1809, there were tensions between the two women. According to Levin Varnhagen, Friedländer began behaving in an increasingly erratic fashion and demanded exclusivity from her friend, which clearly exaggerated the importance of the relationship. By 1810, when Friedländer published the novel Schmerz der Liebe (Pain of Love), in which Levin Varnhagen appears in thinly disguised form as a cold-hearted, bitter, pseudo-charitable baroness, their romantic friendship had cooled considerably. Not a single letter from Levin Varnhagen to Friedländer is documented for the period after 1812, when her fiancé K. A. Varnhagen (1785 – 1858) published a scathing review of the novel anonymously.