Born Sylvia von Halle in Hamburg, von Harden (she chose the name as an aristocratic pseudonym)[1] wrote a literary column for the monthly Das junge Deutschland ("The young Germany") from 1918 to 1920, and wrote for Die Rote Erde ("The red Earth") from 1919 to 1923.

An ambivalent image of the New Woman, it depicts von Harden with bobbed hair and monocle, seated at a cafe table with a cigarette in her hand and a cocktail in front of her.

''You have brilliantly characterized yourself, and all that will lead to a portrait representative of an epoch concerned not with the outward beauty of a woman but rather with her psychological condition.

'[5]The painting, an important example of the New Objectivity movement,[6] is now in the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

[2] In an article she wrote for the refugee newspaper Die Zeitung in April 1943, she described "her shift work in a factory and, in the exalted tones that were common in wartime publications of the sort, claimed to have been made to feel part of the family there".