1 Lost Paradise - Armin Kerber

Juri Steiner
“Tu n’as rien vu à
Hiroshima”
Lost Paradise – “Tu n’as rien vu à Hiroshima”
Paul Klee’s father Hans was a German from the small Franconian town
of Tann. His mother Ida was from Berne, Switzerland. Together they had
lived in Switzerland since Hans began work as a music teacher at the
Bernese State Teacher Training College at Hofwil. This is why Paul Klee
was born in Münchenbuchsee in 1879 and went to school and college in
the heart of Switzerland’s picturesque capital city. Contacts with his German
“fatherland” only intensified in the years from 1898 until 1901, when
Klee studied in Munich, becoming permanent when he moved to the German
art metropolis in 1906. It was only in 1921 that he moved on to the
Bauhaus at Weimar. In the meantime, being a German national, he was
drafted into war service in 1916. However, the royal house of Bavaria
having ordered to give consideration to the artists, soldier Klee was not
sent to the frontline.
In the wake of the Russian October revolution, of Germany’s impending
defeat in the Great War, and of dire shortages, the so-called November
revolution occurred all across the Reich in 1918. On November 7, 1918,
Kurt Eisner proclaimed the People’s Free State of Bavaria and was elected
first Minister-President of the Bavarian Republic by the Council of Workers,
Farmers and Soldiers. (Arbeiter-, Bauern- und Soldatenrat). Following
Eisner’s murder in February 1919, a “Central Council” took power, proclaiming
the Bavarian (or Munich) Soviet Republic on April 7, 1919.
Among other bodies, the “Action Committee of Revolutionary Artists”
was formed, among whose members was the renowned pioneer of Dadaist
film, Hans Richter. The committee’s functions and objectives were “the
promotion of new art; the organisation of the May demonstration; the
socialisation of theater and cinema; taking possession of the royal residence,
the Nymphenburg porcelain manufacture, the Galerie Schack, the
Stuck villa, the Maximilianeum, etc.; social welfare; resolving the lack of
studios; and the refashioning of the art academy and the school for arts
and crafts.” The commission directly approached Paul Klee; we have his
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