This children’s novel was first published in 1931 by the socialist publishing firm Malik-Verlag. The photographs of Ede and Unku were taken by the publisher’s brother, Helmut Herzfelde (1891-1968) better known as John Heartfield, renowned for his design use of photomontage . Grete Weiskopf (1905-1966), the author, based her pseudonym on two Berlin references – ‘Alex’ is shorthand for Alexanderplatz, a central square in the city, and ‘Wedding’ refers to a working-class district of Berlin. Weiskopf left Berlin in 1933 but returned twenty years later to live in East Germany, where her story, which had become part of the school curriculum, was filmed in 1980 as Als Unku Edes Freundin war. Photograph of Ede and Unku (Taken from SPEC Scott Macfie D.2.5, Eddie and the Gipsy (1935), English translation by Charles Ashleigh) The original German edition appeared on one of the earliest lists of authors and titles targeted for removal or destruction by the Nazis, Wolfgang Hermann’s ‘Prinzipelles zur Säuberung der öffentlichen Bücherein’, or ‘Principles for the cleansing of public libraries’, which was printed in the German professional library journal Börsenblatt für den deutschen Büchhandel in 1933.