Hannah Arendt, who was to become one of the most important political philosophers of the 20th century, studied in Berlin under Martin Heidegger with whom she later became romantically involved. Heidegger, who affiliated with the Nazi movement, later renounced and betrayed her but she continued to support him long after she had fled to the USA and it had become clear that he was using her to further his own career and later to escape justice for war crimes.

Judith Brodsky made a series of images related to the life of Arendt, combining images of war and the Holocaust, with those of both Arendt and Heidegger, addressing, in doing so, her own Jewish heritage. In this piece she moves beyond antisemitism itself to other forms of violation. The central motif was taken from a photograph Brodsky found of a piece of Viennese lace work from the early years of the 20th century, a time of great cultural flowering which more or less came to an end with the onset of the First World War. Although purporting to be modern, in depicting a naked female, this piece of craftwork simultaneously denies modernity by showing woman still in thrall to male chauvinism - for the figure represented appears to be Danae, visited by Zeus as a shower of gold. The notion of violation is further suggested by the repeat images from Poussin's famous painting 'The Rape of the Sabine Women' alternating with images of Arendt around the border of the lace roundel.