Due to Swiss neutrality, Lesh grew up unscathed by the effects of World War II, and the havoc wreaked on her mother's native Austria after its annexation by the Third Reich.
A formally trained actress of both stage and cinema, as well as television, Lesch studied at the Staatlichen Schauspielschule (i.e. the (former) State Drama School, East Berlin), after which she received a contract with the Potsdam Theatre [de].
Although initially expected to screen-test, as all the other actresses who had vied for the part, the film's director Václav Vorlíček was so impressed, he gave Lesch the role after only a read-through.
At least two versions exist in English, viz: One dubbed without lip-synchronisation, whilst another uses an omniscient narrator in voice-over, as the actors can still be faintly heard to give their original lines in their own languages.
Lesch also spoke of her only visit to Zürich in 1991, after the fall of the East Bloc when she was free to travel, and the enjoyment she felt in revisiting old haunts from her childhood after an absence of some forty-four years.