Later, she lived in Berlin with her second husband, Lothar Erdmann, who died in a concentration camp during World War II.

She saved Macke's paintings and copies of his letters by moving them from her house in Berlin before it was bombed in 1943.

Born in Bonn, Elisabeth Gerhardt, called Lisbeth, was the daughter of a family of merchants.

[2] The Mackes were friends with Franz Marc and his wife Maria[3][4] whom they met at the Blauer Reiter group at the house of Gabriele Münter in Murnau.

In 1915 she began to write about their love and marriage, episodes of family life, and travels and meetings with artists, mainly, as she put it, to "preserve an image of their father", or "ein Bild ihres Vaters zu bewahren", for her sons.

[1] In 1916, she married Lothar Erdmann, a friend of her husband from school days, with whom she had three more children, Dietrich, Constanze and Klaus.