Zwitscher-Maschine. Journal on Paul Klee / Zeitschrift für internationale Klee-Studien No. 14 (Editorial)

EDITORIAL

It is with great pleasure that we present the 14th edition of the journal Zwitscher-Maschine. This new issue offers a wide range of articles that engage with the kaleidoscopically diverse aspects of Paul Klee's work and life.

Otto Karl Werckmeister's contribution, "Leap of the Tiger into Death," is published here posthumously. The epilogue to this unparalleled study is provided by the editor Wolfgang F. Kersten, who is responsible for Werckmeister's academic legacy. Kersten describes it, in analogy to Klee's painting The Important Package from 1939, "as a valuable package marked with a red X, thus as a legacy of unknown magnitude".

Charles W. Haxthausen's essay, "Kairouan, or a Tale of the Critic Hausenstein and the Painter Klee," explores Wilhelm Hausenstein's peculiarly polemical portrayal of Klee as a "painter-draughtsman." Haxthausen concludes, "It is Hausenstein who is the focus of this essay; this is a tale about him, about his evolving response to Klee's art and the conflict it generated within himself."

Jordan Lahmar-Martins's article, "Paul Klee, a French Painter?", illuminates for the first time Klee's maternal family, the Fricks. Regarding the origins of his mother Ida, Klee wrote in an autobiographical excerpt from his diaries, presented to Wilhelm Hausenstein in 1919, as follows: "Is half Swiss (Basel). Her remaining lineage is not fully clarified; it may be Oriental through Southern France."

Shiori Furuya's piece, "André Masson's 'Eulogy of Paul Klee,'" analyses how the surrealist painter André Masson received Klee's art. Furuya points out that Masson saw in Klee an artist who broke away from Cubism to create a new, freer form of pictoriality. This new phase in Masson's artistic development was marked by his encounter with Hausenstein's monograph on Klee; Masson serendipitously discovered a copy of the Kairouan book in a Parisian bookstore and excitedly showed it to his studio neighbour Joan Miró.

Walther Fuchs's article, "The Rock-Cut Temple by Paul Klee and Lina Bo Bardi: Parallel Worlds of Imagination," explores the connection between Paul Klee's drawing, Rock-Cut Temple, and the home of the architect Lina Bo Bardi in São Paulo. Fuchs demonstrates that both works are linked by their mutual fascination for architecture and the realm of imagination.

Marianne Keller Tschirren's contributions, "The Record Collection of Paul and Lily Klee" and "Addenda Catalogue Raisonné: Paul Klee, African, 1920, 1 (CR 2346) and Paul Klee, Garden Picture with Black Plants, 1920, 72 (CR 2417)," provide insights into the musical interests of Paul and Lily Klee, as well as two newly discovered works by Paul Klee.

In their article, Claudia Engler and Marcel Baumgartner present the book Hans Bloesch – On the Path to the Model Citizen. The book narrates, not chronologically but encyclopaedically, the life story of the Swiss historian and librarian Hans Bloesch, who was a close friend of Paul Klee.

We would like to thank all the authors for their contributions, which provide a valuable addition to the research on Paul Klee. Special thanks go to Henna Keski-Mäenpää for the editorial work and Rita Klee for the financial support of the journal.

The editorial team of the Zwitscher-Maschine:

Osamu Okuda, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern
Walther Fuchs, Digiboo Verlag, Küsnacht
Marianne Keller Tschirren, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern