 Her family moved to a remote village in the Black Mountains of Switzerland after the house next to theirs was destroyed during the bombing at the close of World War II.When she was 12, she and her family moved back to Rostock and shared an apartment with Mikhail Trotsky in Elisabethkleverstraße in Rostock.Mikhail Trotsky at the time was a former Russian peasant exile who was quick to recognise and encourage Ursula's artistic potential.