In 1894, Paul contributed to a book honoring Strindberg in which he especially highlighted Strindberg’s view of the battle between the genders, and revealed a familiarity with Nietzsche’s übermench ideal. In the mid-1890s Strindberg, who was now middle-aged, had separated from Frida Uhl, with whom he had a daughter. He suffered from severe paranoia and, according to some sources, wrongly accused Paul of having based unsympathetic characters on him in two of his books. Other sources say, however, that both Strindberg and Paul populated their novels with miserable characters based on each other. Most of the artists in Paul’s group based fictional characters on each other and used each other in paintings.