Francesco Mazzaferro
The Diaries of Paul Klee
Part One: a Publishing Success
[Original Version: April-June 2015 - New Version: April 2019]
[Original Version: April-June 2015 - New Version: April 2019]
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| Fig. 1) The Italian Version of the Diaries published in 2012 by Abscondita Publishers |
An art work...
Paul Klee (1879-1940) writes: "A diary
is simply not art, but a temporary accomplishment." [1] I would like to respectfully disagree:
the four Diaries of Paul Klee, one of
the boldest publishing successes of art literature in the twentieth century,
are a work of art in their own right, even if a literary art work. Just read
the pages in which the author describes the deep impression made on him by Genoa,
modern and industrious city, and Naples, decadent but rich of a great past, to
appreciate his literary qualities. In fact, Klee is a man of uninterrupted
readings: little remains of fiction - both among contemporary authors as well
as classics authors, newly republished in those years - that he does not read
and comment. Listing the works that he mentions in the Diaries occupies three dense pages in a precious attachment to the
Kiepenheuer edition published in Leipzig in 1980. Klee was also a man with a
passion for writing: there are many passages, scattered in the 400 pages of
diaries, which reveal his intention to write a real autobiography, according to
the models of the autobiography of the XIX century dramatist Franz Grillparzer
[2], whom he quotes and considers a model for anyone who wants to try his hand in the same endeavour.
I picked up the Diaries repeatedly. I did it for the first time six months ago – after
an almost random purchase, during a trip – in a recent paperback edition in
French: I have been fascinated by this reading like if it were a novel, and in
a few days I have brought it to an end. Then I read the German edition of 1957,
finding that the original style is strikingly different, very edgy, full of
expressions derived from the Swiss German, written in a very dry language that,
as Dieter Schmidt writes [3], is reminiscent in some respects of Bertold
Brecht; it is, however, an already much watered down transcription of the
original manuscript (written in an extraordinarily old German orthography, no
longer in force since decades when the writing is published). Finally, I have
consulted the most recent, very elegant, Italian version of 2012, which I
rather analysed with care, being careful to details, trying to identify themes
that could inspire this review. Finally, the English passages are taken from
the 1964 version by the University of California Press. In a few cases, I found the English translation gave us an Americanised Klee, perhaps simpler and more immediate, but not always faithful to the complexity of his identity.
First of all, I wanted to read the Diaries as an autonomous work (i.e. a
writing with whole and comprehensive substance beyond art themes), following
four leading themes, twinned among each other: music, poetry, eroticism and
abstraction. These are the four themes on which I will focus the reader's
attention in the second part of this note.
The Diaries are also an extraordinary testimony to the artistic development of one of the three main painters of the European avant-garde of that time (with Picasso and Kandinsky). As one progresses in their reading, the gradual but relentless transformation of the text from a commented chronicle to a theoretical reflection on art becomes more and more apparent. This will be the theme of the third part of the review. What do the Diaries tell us on the artistic production of Klee until 1918, and the steps that will bring him to create a unique style? And what do they tell us about him as an author of art literature? One gets the image of an artist who is acutely aware of all the opportunities and all the limits of its aesthetic experimentation. The comparison between the pages of the Diaries with the first three monographs published on Klee in 1920 (to which - as we will say - Klee contributed actively, providing summaries of the Diaries to the authors, and even permitting a partial reproduction of sections of them) allows us to discuss the differences and the similarities between the image that Klee cultivates of himself and the opinion of the critics of the time. The correspondence of Klee shows that he tries to control his public image and that he substantially manages to do it, even if his relationship with the art critics is not always an easy one.
The fourth and final part of this note will
be devoted to the relationship of Klee with some European countries. First of
all with Switzerland (where - born as a foreigner, i.e. as a citizen of the
German Empire - he lives the first part of his lifetime with his family and comes back
- essentially in exile - after the seizure of power of the Nazis). Klee will
succeed to acquire the Swiss citizenship only a few months before his death: it
is now known [4] that the citizenship application was first rejected by a dull Swiss
officer, probably a Nazi, who claimed that his art revealed the presence of
mental health problems and that his integration in Switzerland would therefore
create problems for the local art world. Then, secondly, his relationship with
Germany, where he studies, marries, integrates in art circles and for which he
also fights in World War I (and his son Felix will do in the World War II). In Munich,
Klee first approaches the first Secession, then creates the group Sema with
Alfred Kubin, later on meets Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, and joins the
Blue Rider (Blaue Reiter) and the second
Secession, becoming one of the landmarks of modern German and European
avant-garde painting. Finally the meeting with Italy, to whose art Klee has an
articulated attitude. He is in Italy between 1901 and 1902, with the Cicero of Burckhardt in his hand, but
his reactions are very different from the enthusiastic ones of the Swiss
discoverer of the Renaissance. He does not fall in love with Rome, but - as it has
already been said - has a real excitement for the modernity of Genoa and the
decadence of Naples. Florence is certainly the place of fine arts harmony for
him, but also the city of mercenary love and sexual temptations. Everywhere in
Italy Klee visits concert halls and theatres (I remember beautiful pages on Eleonora
Duse and La Belle Otero). He rejects
the classic-Roman monumental art and the one of the sixteenth century (with the
exception of Leonardo), condemns the Baroque, but discovers the art of early
Christians, and of the Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic times (especially
mosaics, carvings and architecture) and - very selectively - the Quattrocento (Donatello, Mantegna,
Botticelli). He almost seems to fall in love with the styles of the so-called 'minor'
Italian art history, more in line with his conception of art based on
simplicity, control and inner coherence. He prefers Santa Sabina to San Pietro.
The journey across the peninsula, in fact, does not satisfy him intimately:
while he claims to have discovered in Italy the role of architecture for any
pictorial representation (a fundamental aspect to later develop his constructivist
theory of paintings), he returns from Italy with the feeling of being the epigone
of an art past that can never revive. As it had been the case with other
artists on whom I have already had occasion to write (Hofer, Pechstein), during
his visit in 1901 to 1902 the young Klee shows total misunderstanding for contemporary
Italian art, and considers only France and Switzerland as the preferred partner
of Germany for the development of contemporary art. However, he changes view
later on in 1913, when the Futurists - especially Carrà, but also Boccioni and
Severini - will impose themselves also in Munich.
… and a publishing success
The Diaries
are published posthumously – with the editing of his son Felix (1907-1990) - in
1957, by the Cologne publisher DuMont [5] (the publisher of all modern art and
contemporary art, in West Germany, after the war), at the end of an annoying
judicial controversy which had arose between the son (returned from Russian war
captivity) and the Klee Foundation in Bern (which, on the death of the wife of
Klee, in 1946, and in the absence of his son, has nevertheless the historic merit
of avoiding the dispersion of the numerically very large heritage of the artist).
The agreement that follows creates the basis for fruitful cooperation; the Paul
Klee Foundation (they change the name after the agreement) will have a worthy
role in the field of the study of all writings, promoting their critical
review.
The publishing success is extraordinary: to
the original edition of 1957 follow reprints, always by the DuMont in Cologne,
in 1960, 1961, 1964, 1979, 1988, 1995 and 2006. The edition in Leipzig, in the
Democratic Republic German, by the publisher Kiepenheuer, with an interesting
afterword by Diether Schmidt, is of 1980. [6] In 2007 appears a new edition at
DuMont in Cologne, this time curated by the grandson, Alexander Klee. The
publishing history in German also can count on a remarkable critical edition of
1988, [7] published by the Paul Klee Foundation, and edited by Wolfgang
Kersten, professor of modern and contemporary art in Zurich.
Immediately after the publication in German in 1957, the diaries are translated into French (1959), Italian and Japanese (1960), English (1964) and Spanish (1970). Of all five original editions available in these languages, the successive reprints are regular, until the present day. To be added to these versions are a new Spanish version (1987), the new translations in Portuguese (1990, with a publication in Brazil) and Chinese (1997) and new versions in Japanese (2004 and 2009) and Italian (2012).
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| Fig. 2) The first Italian edition of 1960 |
Of the Diaries of Klee are available two versions in Italian. The first - for Il Saggiatore Publishers - is produced in 1960 by Alfredo Foelkel [8] and enriched by a beautiful foreword by Giulio Carlo Argan. In this form, four reprints follow: in 1974, 1984, 1990 and 1995 (and in electronic form, one in 2004). The second edition - the most recent (2012) - is the work of Angelica Tizzo for the publisher Abscondita [9]. The text is followed by an afterword by Elena Pontiggia, a leading Italian expert of art of the twentieth century. The translation by Ms Tizzo has the merit of relying on the German critical version of 1988. Undoubtedly, it is a very solid translation.
The first French edition (1959) is the work of Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001), a Polish-born French philosopher, widely inserted into the art world: his brother is the painter Balthus (1908-2001). [10] In the French case some decades must pass before the edition of 1959 is reprinted (seven times), in 1982, 1984, 1986, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2004, always by the publisher Grasset in Paris.
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| Fig. 3) The French edition of 1959 |
The French edition has some special
features. First, it does not include the division of the original text of Klee
in around one thousand numbered paragraphs (which appears in all the other
national versions). Second, it does not include "certain fragments, of
strictly local interest", which have been excluded "for ease of
reading to the French public. Their absence does not in any way impact the
thought of the writer nor the work of the great artist." [11] The fully achieved
intent is to produce a text that can be read in one breath, as an
autobiographical novel.
For reasons of space, an end note includes equivalent information on the other translations [12].What is certain is that we are facing a sensational global bestseller, against which the first question that arises is: what are the reasons why Klee writes first the Diaries, but then decides not to publish them during his life? Given the excellent results in all the major languages of the world published since 1957 to date, we can say without any doubt, and with the benefit of insights, that Klee underestimates the potential interest of the public. But a lack of self-esteem cannot be by sure the basic reason for such a choice.
The reasons why Klee wrote the Diaries
"The
reader of the four Diaries of Paul Klee in this volume will be initiated –
being presumably an outsider – into a mysterious, rare, individual, and
watchful world, that of Paul Klee the “painter”. Indeed, the entries in his
diaries were not originally intended for publication, but merely for his own
reflection. During his lifetime my father allowed no one, not even myself,
access to his most personal confession.” [13] So writes the son Felix Klee,
in the opening of his short preface to the Diaries, published in 1957, long
after the death of his father.
The memories of Klee cover twenty years of
his life, from 1898 to 1918. Today the thesis of his son Felix – notably that
the Diaries were not intended for
publication, but only to the use of the artist's intimate meditation - is no
longer accepted. Christian Geelhaar’s philological research (he is also the
author of a critical edition of all other writings of Klee, appeared in 1976)
has now determined that the writing of the Diaries
is not contemporary with the events. Obviously, Klee always takes note of the
events of his life throughout the years 1898-1918, but the final version is not
the result of notations taken straight off (nor could it be, if we take into
account the literary qualities shown in the text). In an essay published in
1979, in the catalogue of an exhibition at the Lenbachhaus of Munich on the
early work of the artist [14], held one hundred years after the birth, the scholar
asks himself, as the title displays, whether the Diaries are "an intimate diary or an autobiography". He
can prove, even operating comparisons with the handwriting of the
correspondence, that the texts are reviewed several times (since 1904) and that
between 1913 and 1921 Klee prepares a final version of the manuscript of the
first three diaries, almost certainly destined to the publication of an
autobiography.
The first diary (which covers life from birth, but really focuses on the years 1898 to 1901) is terminated, according Geelhaar, not before 1913, when Klee is already a member of the Blue Rider. The second one, dedicated to the six months in Italy with which Klee completed his academic studies, between 1901-1902, is revised and completed in 1914-1915 (and therefore in the months of war, during which Klee is enlisted as soldier, but works in the military air force logistics, in Munich and in other locations around it, all far removed from the front). The third diary (on the years ranging from 1902 to 1916, until his conscription as a soldier in World War I) is not completed before the autumn 1921, when Klee works already in the Weimar Bauhaus. Only the fourth diary (which includes the war years from 1916 to 1918) will not be revised again, also because Geelhaar discovers that the greatest part of it is simply made up of the transcription of letters from various barracks to the family during the war.
As evidence that Klee is thinking of an
autobiography, Geelhaar quotes the text of a letter to Wilhem Hausenstein (a
literate and art historian who wrote a monograph on him in 1920), contained in
the archive of the Klee Foundation, where Paul says he is beginning to search a
publisher, always in 1920. [15] The fact however that that this letter is never
sent confirms that the artist changes frequently opinion in those months. The
editing of the Diaries ends in fact
without any publication. Klee leaves no explicit explanation of the reason why
a so important manuscript, which covers twenty years of his life, is not given
to the press.
In summary, Klee definitely fills a diary regularly
between 1898 and 1918, but the texts of the Diaries
as published in 1957 all belong to the phases in which the painter is already
at the centre of the German and European avant-garde, either as a member of the
group expressionist Blue Rider (Blaue
Reiter) with Kandinsky and Marc (Diary I) or as a member of the Bauhaus. Thus,
the writing of the Diaries goes
beyond the pure biographical narrative, and is to be seen both as a story of
his own human and artistic development and as a tool to expose his aesthetic
positions. It must be said that Giulio Carlo Argan, in the introduction to the
first Italian edition of 1960, has the right intuition, well before the
philological analysis will come to the same conclusion: "The Diaries (...) are an autonomous literary
work, with its construction that does not repeat at all the uniform succession of
the calendar. There is a careful and well-studied choice of memories, a
concatenation of facts according to a prepared and observed thematic (...)"
[16]
The
reasons why Klee did not publish the Diaries
Wolfgang Kersten, the author of the
critical edition of the diary in 1988, believes there is a direct correlation
between the art style development and the choice of the written instruments
with which Klee discusses and documents his art. With the move from Munich to
the Bauhaus in Weimar, in 1921 - he writes - Paul Klee turns from expressionism
to constructivism. Expressionism, being a narrative art movement by its own nature, is
conceptually consistent with the instruments of the memoirs and autobiography; to
the contrary, constructivism is based on a more systematic and timeless
approach to art, and therefore requires the use of theoretical tools less tied
to the biography. [17] It is of the same opinion Mr. Argan: "(…) This explains
why the diary is interrupted just when it begins the phase of the most
challenging and constructive pictorial research, like if by now the
determination and the quickening of the image no longer requires the feedback
and support of a biography." [18]
This thesis is important for the analysis
of art literature in general: in fact, it states that there is a correspondence
between painting styles and literary genres, which cannot be underestimated. To
the season of expressionism (and contemporary figurative art) corresponds the
autobiographic narrative of memoirs. To the season of abstraction in its
various forms are instead better suited manifestos, essays and theoretical
treatises. As a figure of transit between the two artistic movements, Klee
marks the transition from the first to the second form of art literature.
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| Fig. 4) The catalogue of the 1920 exhibition at the Goltz Gallery in Munich |
It must be said that a much less "theoretical"
and by far more prosaic thesis has been spreading in recent years, after the
aforementioned exhibition in Munich of 1979 for the centenary of the birth,
dedicated to his early work. In a nutshell, the argument is that Klee withdraws
the draft of the biography, already very advanced in 1920-1921, in order to
better manage - and perhaps to manipulate - his image with the public, curators
and art dealers, in the months in which for the first time things seem to turn
in his favour. This is the same view expressed by the art historian Otto Karl
Werckmeister (1934-) in his book "The making of Paul Klee's career, from
1914 to 1920" [19]. Let us see what may have happened.
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| Fig. 5) The paperback publication by Hermann von Wedderkorp of Paul Klee in the collection "Young Art" (1920) |
Two failed attempts to impose himself on the art scene (the first time in the frame of the first Munich secession, on return from the journey to Italy, the second time when he joins the expressionist art groups and the second Munich secession, between 1911 and 1914) lead Klee almost to economic ruin and make his family dependent on the activity of the wife as a piano teacher. The artist prepares therefore the publication of the Diaries, hoping that they would enable him to acquire the notoriety that has not yet obtained with engravings, lithographs and watercolors.
We are in the years immediately following
World War I, at a time of a serious political and economic crisis. In that era
of extreme disorder, Klee joins the revolutionary attempt to establish a Soviet
regime in Munich in 1919 (he enters the Action Committee of the revolutionary
artists in April of that year) and hides at home the promoters, to protect them from the violent repression (a thousand people die and several thousand citizens are
imprisoned in Munich); then he takes refuge in Switzerland. Finally, he comes back
to Munich looking for artistic recognition and commercial success. It is
certainly well aware of the risks of his time and he knows that this will be
his last chance.
The painter is already forty years old
when - in the midst of this situation of extreme instability – a chance
suddenly opens of consolidating all his efforts to acquire a prominent place in
the European contemporary art scene. The notorious hyperinflation of the Weimar
Republic has in fact a surprising positive effect on the lives of the artists
of those years (also Lovis Corinth refers to it, in his Memoirs): to preserve the value of money in those days, when buying
a normal ration of goods food suddenly costs millions of marks, the German
middle-class is quick to buy, and even to hoard, contemporary art as a safe
haven. Suddenly the painters who before the war have difficulty feeding their
families, need to cope with a huge demand of new commissions.
In May 1920, the gallery Goltz of Monaco
(one of the centres of the vanguard of Monaco, where had been held the second exhibition of The Blue Rider, in 1912) organizes the
first retrospective exhibition of Klee, organized by Paul Westheim (the future
author of the anthology of the sources of art history of the Weimar Republic).
The success also depends on the way in which Klee is presented to the public: a
mystic of abstraction, tied hand in glove with a non-historical interpretation
of the world.
Let me think evil: this is also a way to
make people forget that a few months before he was part of the Soviet
revolutionary attempt. After all, nothing is said on that episode in the Diaries, which terminate with the end of
World War I, but are written after the revolutionary events in Munich. Indeed, in
the Diaries Klee mentions with concern
the fear that violent revolutionary events would possibly materialize after the
defeat of Germany [20].
Klee wants to ensure that this 'timeless' image
of him is actually the one that is communicated to the public, and therefore
forwards an autograph biographical note to the gallery Goltz (a summary of the
not yet published Diaries), which is
included in the catalogue. Also in 1920, as mentioned, are published the
first three monographs on Klee. The authors are Hermann von Wedderkorp, [21] Leopold Zahn [22] and Wilhelm Hausenstein.
[23] To be sure that the three authors give a favourable image of his person,
the artist prepares also for them, as we have already said, three short
summaries of the Diaries. In short,
when fortune seems to be favourable to the painter, Klee uses the future Diaries - not yet published - as a
source of information to define and manage his own image.
In conclusion, one cannot certainly speak
of a 'secret' diary, as the son Felix Klee will make in his preface to the
publication of 1957, since the public is informed of its existence. The
original edition of the monograph of Zahn even opens with a photograph of an
autograph page of the diary, and four pages of quotes from the period between
1902 and 1905. The original of the four pages, which Klee compiled by hand for
Zahn, is included in the critical edition of the Diaries of 1988.
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| Fig. 6) The monograph by Wilhelm Hausenstein, in original edition |
Why, then, are the Diaries not published in 1920 (or in the following years), if they
serve as a promotional tool for exhibitions and biographies that year? Possibly,
Klee stops working on them in order to extract materials to be used for the
educational activities that he was preparing to undertake. Also in 1920, in
fact, Walter Gropius invites Paul Klee at the Bauhaus in Weimar as a professor
and the latter takes office in 1921.
It is also likely, based on what has been
said before, that in those crucial months for him Klee changes his mind and completely
sacrifices the Diaries, to foster and
ride all the way down the myth of his 'non-historicity'. Not wanting to risk
revealing any 'biographical' (recent or past) element that can create doubts
and second thoughts on the image which is built of him, he decides to place the
text in a drawer. The new terms of reference of his writings become
'spiritualization', 'dematerialization' and perception of 'imaginary entities',
all terms that convey a sense of complete detachment from earthly life.
These 'non-historical' terms are those that
Klee used in the short essay "Creative confession" of 1920: “Art does
not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible”. [24] The myth of the abstraction
of Klee (both in earthly world as well as in art) is revived in the after-war time
by the promoters of abstraction in art criticism of West Germany (the
monographs of Grohmann in 1954 and Haftmann in 1957) and is not affected by the
publication of the Diaries in 1957.
Things change in 1979, when the analysis of philologists allows a new
assessment of the writings. All in all, centenaries also serve to cast doubt on the most
established truth.
Last but not least, it is not impossible
that the dramatic events of 1919 represent for Klee a break in his life that
makes it impossible for him to continue writing his biography: how to explain to
the rich enlightened bourgeoisie of Weimar, which is willing to buy his works,
and to the great American art dealers, who are fostering his legend across the
ocean, that he was an active part of the attempted Soviet insurrection against republic
and democracy? Better to postpone.
Klee as an art writer after the Diaries
To sum up, after the end of World War I, and more precisely at the beginning of 1919, Klee ceases his biographical annotations. In 1920, he still works at the publication of diaries, but decides to give it up. He starts an intense theoretical production in parallel, almost like if he wanted to mark the final transition from narration (and poetry) to essays. This stage (first in Weimar, then in Dessau and finally in Düsseldorf) lasts from the beginning of the twenties to mid-thirties. The dramatic events between 1933 (he must escape from Germany at the seizure of power of the Nazis) and 1935 (he is diagnosed with a fatal disease, a progressive systemic sclerosis) mark then a second interruption: every literary activity stops, while only the artistic one continues: Klee will not write anything more - even essays or articles - but will continue to draw and paint since the year of his death (1940)
End of Part One
Go to Part Two
NOTES
[1] All quotes for the Diaries are
drawn from the English version of 1968, mentioning the number of the paragraph.
The Diaries of Paul Klee 1898-1918. Edited, with an Introduction, by Felix
Klee, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964. The quote
is at paragraph 170.
[2] Paragraph 553
[3] Schmidt, Diether – Paul Klee und seine Tagebücher (Paul
Klee and his diaries), in: Klee, Paul – Tagebücher
1898-1918, Kiepenheuer, Leipzig, 1980, pages 369-388). The quote is at page
382.
[4] Nicole Aeby, The Bernese artist
who was not Swiss, 21st April 2005. See: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/the-bernese-artist-who-was-not-swiss/4542568
[5] Tagebücher von Paul Klee 1898-1918, Herausgegeben und eingeleitet von
[edited and introduced by] Felix Klee, Cologne, Verlag M.DuMont Schauberg, 1957,
423 pages
[6] Klee, Paul – Tagebücher 1898-1918, Leipzig, Kiepenheuer, 1980
[7] Klee, Paul – Tagebücher 1898-1918. Textkritische Neuedition (New critical
edition). Edited by the Paul Klee Foundation and the Kunstmuseum in Bern,
Verlag Gerd Hatje and Verlag Arthur Niggli, 1988, 591 pages
[8] Klee, Paul – Diari 1898-1918. Preface
by Giulio Carlo Argan. Translation by Alfredo Foelkel. With
a note by Felix Klee, Milano, Il Saggiatore Publishers, 1960. Alfredo Foelkel
also translated into Italian the Journey to Tunisia by August Macke and numerous
authors of German lyrics.
[9] See note 1. For the same series ‘Carte d’artista’ Angelica Tizzo has also
published some art writings by Mondrian and Wölflin.
[10] Klee, Paul – Journal. Traduction de Pierre
Klossowski, Bernard Grasset, Éditeur, 1959, 327 pages. In
addition to the Diaries, Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001), a Polish-born French philosopher,
also translated some masterpieces of German (Hölderlin, Kafka) and Latin
literature (Suetonius). He also produced monographs on Nietzsche and de Sade. Klossowski
influenced some of the great French contemporary philosophers (Jacques Lacan,
Raymond Aron, Jean-Paul Sartre). At the time of publication, Klossowski was as
well-known as Paul Klee in France.
[11] Klee, Paul – Journal (quoted), p.
6.
[12] Originate from America both the
English and the Spanish translation. The English edition is printed in Berkeley
in 1964 (followed by three reprints, in 1968, 1973 and 1992); the collective translation
work is from Pierre B. Schneider in Paris and RY Zachary and Max Knight at the
University of California Press. On the first one I was not able to find any further
information: however, he prepared a complete version in English. The latter two
revised and completed it; they are the curators of many art publications for the
University of California Press. As for the Spanish version, the first edition
is in Mexico, by Ediciones Era of
Mexico City. The curator is Jas Reuter, curiously author of several books on
Mexican popular culture. Starting in 1987, the same translation by Reuter is
published by the publisher Madrid Alianza
(follow reprints in 1993 and 1998).
The first Japanese translation, 1960,
is by Minoru Nanbara (1930-2013), professor of German literature at the
University of Tokyo. A German-Japanese dictionary from him, first published in
1972, is still used. Printed in 2004, the second translation by the Japanese
Fumiko Takahashi (1970-), of the Goethe Institute in Tokyo, is still based on
the issue of 1957, while the third one (always of Takahashi) in 2009 is
entitled "New Critical Edition of the Diaries" and is conducted on
the critical edition of 1988 (it also display an essay by Wolfgang Kersten).
The first Chinese edition, titled
"Diaries of Paul Klee, the expressionist maestro", was published in
Taiwan in 1997, edited by Yǔ Yun. In 2011 the same version was published in the
Republic of China by Chu Chen Books, the publishing house of the University of
Chongqing. The translation was made from the English version of the University
of California Press (1968 edition).
[13] The Diaries of Paul Klee
1898-1918 (quoted), p. vii.
[14] Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk 1883-1922
(I primi lavori 1883-1922), Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1979. The exhibition was held between December 12, 1979 and March 2, 1980.
In Switzerland and the Federal Republic of Germany three major retrospective
exhibitions were organised for the centenary of the birth in 1979, one in Munich
for the years 1883 to 1922, one in Cologne for the years 1922 to 1933 and one
in Bern for the years 1933-1940. The reason is that the huge production of Klee
(around 9000 pieces) is distributed between Munich (the years of the Blue Rider), Rhineland (Klee had to
run away from Düsseldorf at the seizure of power by the Nazis) and Switzerland,
where he ended his life and the Klee Foundation was created at his death. No
exhibition was held in Weimar or in Dessau, the locations of the Bauhaus where
Klee spent ten years, possibly because the art of Klee was criticised and almost ignored in the German Democratic
Republic as being ‘formalistic’. Nevertheless, the GDR version of the Diaries is published in Leipzig in 1980,
as already mentioned.
[15] Paul Klee. Das Frühwerk, (quoted) p. 258
[16] Klee, Paul – Diari 1898-1918.
Preface by Giulio Carlo Argan (quoted), p. ix
[17] Klee, Paul – Tagebücher 1898-1918. Textkritische Neuedition (quoted). The
quotation is from note 24 at page 590
[18] Klee, Paul – Diari 1898-1918. Preface
by Giulio Carlo Argan (citato), page x
[19] Werckmeister, Otto Karl - The
making of Paul Klee's career, 1914-1920, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1989. See also:
[20] Paragrafo 1130
[21] Von Wedderkop, Hermann – Paul Klee, Mit einer Biographie des
Künstlers, einem farbigen Titelbild und 52 Abbildungen [Paul Klee, With a
Biography of the artist, a colour cover page and 52 images], Series Junge Kunst
[Young Art], Leipzig, von Klinkhardr and Biermann Publishers, 68 pages.
[22] Zahn, Leopold – Paul Klee. Leben
/ Werk / Geist [Paul Klee. Life / Work / Soul], Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag,
Potsdam, 1920, 87 pages.
[23] Hausenstein, Wilhelm - Kairuan
oder Eine Geschichte vom Maler Klee und von der Kunst dieses Zeitalters,
[Kairuan or a history of painter Klee and of the art of his time], Munich, Kurt
Wolff, 1921. I read the edition published in 2014 (by Klinkhardt and Bierman Publishers
in Munich), and enriched with an introduction by Peter Härtling and an essay by
Michael Haerdter. Wilhelm Hausenstein, writer and literature critic, persecuted
by the Nazis, strongly European oriented, was such an exceptional personality in
German culture that Konrad Adenauer chose him as the first consul general and
then as the first ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in France in
1950.
[24] Klee, Paul - Creative Confession and
other writings - Tate Publishing, London, 2013, 32 pages
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