Hans Reichel became a prisoner of war in WWII in 1939 and was interned at various camps until 1944, when he escaped and returned to his artistic career that began in the early 1900s. Reichel's own influences included Paul Klee, with whom he shared a studio building in Munich and an affinity for idiosyncratic symbolism. The influence from his later friendships with Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (one of the first purely abstract painters), Walter Gropius (founder of Bauhaus), and Lyonel Feininger (a leader of German Expressionism) are revealed in his improvisational, expressive techniques. In 1938, American writer and painter Henry Miller wrote a book in honor of Reichel, filled with intimate notes and hand-drawn pictures in a dedication to his friend and major influence.