Lotte Friedlaender, née Mandl was born 1905 into an assimilated Jewish family in Prossnitz, Moravia (today Prostějov in the Czech Repoblic). In 1910 she moved with her parents Anna and Erich Mandl to Vienna, where the family had a textile store in the city’s First District. Erich Mandl was a friend of the architect Adolf Loos, who convinced him to commission a portrait of his daughter from a starving artist, who turned out to be Oskar Kokoschka. He, as well as Peter Altenberg, Adolf Loos, and Arnold Schoenberg were frequent visitors in the Mandls' home, while Lotte herself was a close friend of Heinrich Schnitzler (Arthur Schnitzler’s son).
After a short marriage to Fritz Pinter at the age of 23, Lotte got married to Walter Friedlaender in 1932; their son Thomas was born in 1935. After the November-pogrom in 1938 (Kristallnacht), the family immigrated to the United States in 1939, where they were joined by Anna and Erich Mandl in 1940.
From the guide to the Lotte Friedlaender Digital Collection., (Leo Baeck Institute Archives)
