Fritz Wendel was a German-Jewish machine importer and exporter who lived in Berlin during the 1930s. Due to the rampant anti-Semitism of Weimar Republic-era Germany, he passed himself off as a Protestant, though he fell in love with the Jewish heiress Natalia Landauer and ultimately revealed his religious background in order to obtain her parents' permission to marry her. He was also friends with the cabaret performer Sally Bowles and befriended the English-language teacher Brian Roberts in 1931, as he wished to learn more English.