Release date is 2026-04-19

Tuula Temonen and Johanna Kankaanpää

"Kolmas" by Adeline zu Rantzau is a novel written in the early 20th century. It follows Mara von Doren, a Munich painter; her fiancé Peter Rasmussen, a former musician now chasing success as a writer; and Peter’s fragile friend Knud Hansen, whose sudden arrival as the “third” unsettles their hard-won equilibrium. Set between bohemian Munich and the North Sea coast, the story explores art, poverty, loyalty, and the strain that ambition and dependency place on love.

The opening of the novel introduces Mara and Peter in a crowded Munich tavern, bound by work, fatigue, and Peter’s hope of winning a major prize for his nearly finished novel. The next evening Peter brings in Knud—starving and exhausted—whom Mara quietly feeds and shelters with the help of their gentle neighbor, the musician Augustin Häberle, as Peter reads from his manuscript and the trio debate whether art needs “blood” as well as “sweat.” Weeks pass in convalescence, silent meals, and nightly music, while an unspoken triangle forms; Knud presses for a restorative retreat to the North Sea, and a sudden gambling win funds the journey. Peter and Knud depart, leaving Mara with foreboding and Häberle’s counsel to stand firm, and the section closes with a brief look back at Mara’s Schleswig-Holstein roots, her stubborn path to painting in Munich, and the family scandal of her engagement. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Porvoo: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 1923