This was the essence of Worringer’s thinking. Art was a different realm, like music—not merely a retreat or a diversion, but a force powerful enough to replace an unbearable reality. What Klee was creating had the strength to compensate for the horrors of life and to provide comfort. It was a beautiful new universe that gave value to life at a moment when everything was in jeopardy.
Then Franz Marc was killed at Verdun on March 4, 1916. A week later, Klee himself, then thirty-five, was drafted into the air force. But nothing could keep him from his passions. In the military camp in Landshut, he played first violin for a performance of Haydn’s Creation. Privately billeted, he was given the task of painting airplanes, and he managed to spend time in museums in Cologne, near his encampment, where he immersed himself in the masterpieces of Bosch and Bruegel. In the barracks, he read Chinese literature, Rousseau’s Confessions, and Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, and during his leaves in Munich, he continued making art. Klee did not ignore current events; rather, he transformed them through the act of painting. He made wonderful pictures of the Zeppelin flying over the Cologne Cathedral at night.
Apart from those images of the Zeppelin, most of Klee’s work depended solely on his imagination. Some bordered on pure abstraction: geometric forms that cyclically open and fold up, simultaneously expanding and compressing. Other pieces, mostly watercolors, introduced Klee’s private universe of birdlike humanoids, ships that are both child’s toys and serious seagoing vessels, and cheerful monsters. The titles—Astral Automatons, Irma Rossa, The Animal Tamer, Fatal Bassoon Solo, and The Eye of Eros—evoke the unique mental realm in which the artist lived. His inner necessity to paint drove him forward in difficult circumstances, and he was further encouraged by soaring sales of his work, even during wartime.
He also began to catalogue his paintings, meticulously assigning a number to each and recording the title, measurements, and medium, a practice that he would continue forever after.
From 1916 onward, Klee was convinced that Germany would be defeated. In 1918, he asked to be demobilized and obtained his discharge. He then rented a large studio in a castle in Munich, where his wife and son joined him. His loyal dealer, Hans Goltz, also in Munich, mounted solo exhibitions of his work, but as Oskar Schlemmer, who would soon be Klee’s colleague at the Bauhaus, pointed out, Klee, “the genuine artist,” remained less understood by the art critics than were other famous painters.
Schlemmer adulated him; he considered Klee to be one of the best artists working at the time. “He can reveal his entire wisdom in the barest of lines. That is the way a Buddha draws.” Schlemmer was overwhelmed by Klee’s intensity, warmth, and, above all else, his complete originality. Klee’s art exemplified for Schlemmer the realization of a broad overview executed meticulously. He believed that the mark of the greatest artistic accomplishments was that they derived from “a simple but comprehensive insight into the nature of things. To have found this means is to have found oneself, and thereby the world.”32
Schlemmer wrote this following a furlough, when he had again donned his army uniform but could think only of the lesson provided by Klee’s approach, which encouraged thinking first, then drawing. Schlemmer admired Klee’s pursuit of “the One Significant Thing,” however tortuous the route to get there might be. Schlemmer used the word “voluptuous” to describe the way that both he and Klee drew, in keeping with the idea that “lack of moderation leads to the palace of wisdom.”33
IN FEBRUARY 1919, Schlemmer went to Munich to see this artist he worshipped but had never met. Encountering his hero in person, Schlemmer was disappointed. In spite of the apparent childlike quality of Klee’s work, as well as its spiritual depth, he discovered that Klee was surprisingly like a tense, midlevel businessman. When they finally met, Schlemmer was astonished at how materialistic Klee’s interests were. The artist he expected to find otherworldly was, in fact, deeply worried about the cost of food and apartment rents, with an obsessiveness that “bordered on the ludicrous.”34 Nonetheless, Schlemmer, who headed the Stuttgart Academy, tried to get Klee appointed to take over the composition class being given by an older professor, Adolf Hoelzel.
Schlemmer’s proposal was definitively rejected by both the academy and the Art Patrons’ Guild. The official reason given was that Klee’s work was too playful and did not show sufficient commitment to the issues of composition and structure that should be evinced by someone in his position. The hostility went deeper: the real reason, although not stated in public, was that Klee was “too ‘dreamy’ and ‘feminine’ an artist” and was “a Jew and a theosophist.”35 This had to do with a perception of character traits, not facts: at the same time that Klee was the choice of the students and the school director, and had a small coterie of admirers internationally, his work upset, even terrified, many viewers.
IN THE SPRING OF 1920, Goltz mounted a major Klee exhibition in Munich, which was well received, and books devoted to Klee’s work began to appear. Goltz made a contract for the regular purchase of Klee’s work, and a collector from Bern, Hermann Rupf, began buying a lot of work both for himself and for the great Paris-based dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Nevertheless, Klee wrote Schlemmer that he knew he needed to take “a profitable teaching position.” Having been granted his military discharge so he could teach, he declared, “My readiness to work as an art educator … stems mainly from altruistic motivations and a willingness to help.”36 Above all, he needed a steady wage.
Klee was also showing symptoms of emotional instability. Jankel Adler, based on what Klee himself told him, would later write about a telling moment in that time period, witnessed by the artist Alfred Kubin:
In his Munich days, at the end of summer, Klee used to sit in the late afternoon in his studio with Kubin. In the window, the sky was a soft violet. On a table near the window there was a pot with water, which Klee used for his watercolors. He watched the reflection of the sky in the pot. To do this he lay on the table, which began to shudder under his nervous weight. After a while, Kubin put his arms round Klee, who said, “I am not very comfortable—I am not like this—I have nothing to do with this.” Kubin leaned over with his mouth to Klee’s ear, and whispered very tenderly, “swindler.” “Today I laugh about it,” said Klee, “but that day I did not laugh.”37
ON MAY 1 AND 2, 1919, when Klee was in Munich, the Bavarian government was ousted by federal troops. Artists and writers sympathetic to the old government were being tracked down and arrested. The playwright Ernst Toller went into hiding in the same building where Klee rented his studio, on the Wernechstrasse.
On June 1, police entered the building, arrested Toller, and also searched Klee’s atelier. Jankel Adler recalled that “detectives knowledgeable about art immediately recognized that there was more ‘behind’ those pictures than met the eye.” On June 11, Klee fled to Switzerland. To Lily, who had remained in Munich but was at no risk, he wrote on June 24, “It seems we have peace now, better for me.”38 This would be his attitude throughout his life—and certainly during the internecine battles of the Bauhaus.
While Klee’s postcard from Switzerland was on its way to Munich, a letter from Lily was en route to him, saying that the police had returned and this time searched the entire apartment, which adjoined the studio. He wrote Lily, “House search! What do they want at my place? To view pictures which they will not find beautiful anyway?”39
Klee did not feel it safe to return to Munich until the end of July, nearly three weeks after Toller’s trial and condemnation for high treason because of his political and antiwar writing. (Thomas Mann and Max Weber used their influence to help him escape a death sentence and receive only five years.) Following these events, Klee wrote Kubin that in spite of the searches and arrests, even if the new regime was a “communist republic” and was “unstable,” it presented exciting possibilities for group living. “It wasn’t altogether without positive results,” he allowed to Kubin, once the short-lived government was toppled. It had made him think that “r
arified individualistic art”—his own—might become more than “a capitalistic luxury” and “curiosities for rich snobs. And that part of us which is somehow striving to reach beyond the eternal values would be more likely to find encouragement in the communist community. The fertilizing effect of our example would take place on a broader basis along different channels.”40
Even before the Bauhaus existed, Klee was envisioning “a theoretical experimental station,” where “we would be able to pass on the results of our inventiveness to the people as a whole. This new art could then penetrate the handicrafts. … There would no longer be any academies but only art schools for craftsmen.”41
In March 1920 the German economy was thriving. While Great Britain and the United States were having severe financial recessions, the German government’s policy of monetary expansion made the art market especially strong, since buyers consider paintings a good hedge against inflation. On July 30, 1920, the Reichstag further encouraged art purchases by abolishing the 15 percent luxury tax that had been imposed on them ever since December 24 of the previous year. Because of his contract with the dealer Goltz, Klee was “riding the crest of this boom,”42 but he was skeptical about it, recognizing the hazards of inflation. He wanted the security of an academic position that would provide housing as well as a dependable salary, and he was hoping to find an institution that embodied his vision of an ideal community.
5
In November 1920, Klee took a holiday in the Ticino, the southernmost canton of Switzerland. He was there visiting Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin, two of the painters who had worked with Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter in the Bavarian Alps a dozen years earlier and who continued to paint in vibrant colors and an animated style. While he was enjoying himself in this region of steep mountains and clear lakes, he received a telegram from Walter Gropius. It was brief and to the point: “Dear Paul Klee: We are unanimous in asking you to come and join us as a painter at the Bauhaus—Gropius, Feininger, Engelmann, Marcks, Itten, Klemm.”43
Since Itten, the dominant faculty member, was a renowned taskmaster, it was anticipated that, by contrast, students could come to Klee if they wanted more subtle guidance. Some feared that Klee would have nothing practical to contribute and was too immersed in “art for art’s sake,” but Klee himself had no inkling of their skepticism when, on November 25, he embarked for Weimar.
The train from Munich took him to Jena, where he arrived shortly before 4 a.m. and had to wait two and a half hours for his connection. Lingering over a cup of tea in the station, he had a wonderful sense of new worlds unfolding. The details of the timetable and the forward movement were intoxicating. Happily boarding the train that left at precisely 6:25 a.m., observing the first traces of dawn on the flat Thuringian landscape, where the sweeping fields and vineyards were punctuated by the red-tiled roofs and slender church steeples of small villages, he was in high spirits when he arrived in Weimar. On arriving at the Bauhaus, Klee was dutifully welcomed by Itten and Muche.
Informed that Gropius would not meet him until noon, Klee explored the town with its medieval walls and narrow streets. He was conscious that Goethe had laid out the English park he had strolled through that morning; “the German Athens” was even more distinguished than he had imagined. The meeting with Gropius, however, did not go as anticipated. Klee had been drawn to Weimar by the prospect of an annual salary of 16,500 marks and a large, free studio, so when Gropius began their conversation by asking him if he would like to be the master of the bookbindery, Klee’s spirits sank. He replied that, other than his love of reading, he had no reason to be involved with this particular craft. Gropius, as always, had a diplomatic sally. “Don’t worry, none of our formmeisters are experts in what they do. That’s what the craftsmen are there for. You would teach theory.”44
Gropius succeeded in persuading Klee that he might apply his ideas on art to any subject being taught at the Bauhaus; it didn’t take long before Klee was convinced that this was the right place for him. Together they worked out the details of Klee’s teaching contract; all that remained was to have it ratified by the Thuringian government. That official accord would allow Klee to start teaching in January 1921. Initially he would spend two weeks of every month in Weimar until he found adequate housing for him and his wife and young son, as well as Fritz the cat, all of whom would remain in Munich until he had done so.
GROPIUS DID NOT WANT Klee at the Bauhaus purely for his talent. The director had calculated that Klee’s presence on the faculty would help the school forge connections with the international art world. Indeed, it was an instant PR coup. The appointment increased awareness of the Bauhaus among many people who might advance the school’s purposes, among them important gallery owners, museum directors, collectors, and critics. Klee’s work was regularly included in shows at several museums led by visionaries who might now want to establish further connection with the Bauhaus, and the impending publication of two important books about Klee gave further luster to the school.
Klee’s sister Mathilde was a major behind-the-scenes player in his decision to make the move. Mathilde assisted with the organizing and selling of his work; she accepted drawings as payment only because he insisted on it. He knew that Mathilde would need to assume even more responsibility if he left Munich for Weimar. When he let her know that he would be able to paint with renewed intensity thanks to the unprecedented financial security that would come with his Bauhaus salary, Mathilde told her brother she would gladly take on the extra burden. With her support, Klee accepted Gropius’s proposal.
6
On January 10, 1921, at 7 a.m., Klee’s train again pulled into Weimar. Refreshed by the overnight journey, the new arrival on the Bauhaus faculty checked his bags in the lovely nineteenth-century train station that offered such a gracious welcome to the city. He immediately took a walk in the English Garden, the large local park designed by Goethe. It was still dark out, but while Weimar could be brutally cold at that time of year, it was an unusually springlike day, and he felt as if he had arrived in a bucolic paradise.
He wandered about for a couple of hours. Then, as the day broke, he found a café that had just opened and waited there. Klee was content, anticipating that the park would put him in happy conjunction with squirrels, and, in the upcoming springtime, with many species of birds and foliage. He soon grew frustrated, however. He went to Gropius’s office, but the director was nowhere to be found. Klee abhorred wasting time. He wanted to make all the arrangements for his living and working spaces so that he could resume painting right away. When Gropius finally showed up at 11 a.m., Klee resolved his practical details as quickly as possible.
Later that day, Klee wrote Lily, who was still in Munich. Rather than report on the Bauhaus, he told her about the squirrels in the parklike private gardens behind the sumptuous villas in the Golden Horn, the neighborhood where they would eventually live. That proximity to nature, and the freedom to paint, beckoned him more than his new job.
KLEE SPENT HIS FIRST NIGHT in Weimar in a pension at Am Horn 39, only a few doors from No. 53, the capacious nineteenth-century house where he and his family were to have an apartment. No. 53 was a top-heavy structure with a vast sloping roof covered in rows of scalloped shingles and punctuated by large dormers with cheerful-looking triangular pediments that looked as if they were pointing to the sky. He described it to Lily, writing ecstatically, “Let’s seize the moment, and rejoice!” The neighborhood was in open countryside, on a hill overlooking the English Garden. The path to his studio in the Bauhaus building went through that lush, determinedly informal park, whose unpruned, feathery trees looked as if they had come from a painting by Gainsborough. On the morning of January 11, as Klee took for the first time that path that he knew would be part of his routine, he passed in front of what had been Goethe’s private garden house. He wrote Lily about all of this and described the beautiful market garden behind their future apartment; everything was “just simply splendid.”45
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p; Gropius was out of town for the day. This meant that Klee could not sort out some details that remained unresolved, but he used the time productively to set up his studio and organize his paints and other supplies. Two days later, he was painting again. He had rarely been happier than he was starting afresh in his large new workspace with its pristine white walls waiting for him to make pictures to hang on them.
Beyond the necessities for his work and minimal personal possessions, Klee had brought nothing with him. He mentally compared his new bare-bones existence to the way he had lived in the army. At least he had everything he needed in the way of paper, canvas, and paint, and the central heating was functioning well. His only regret was that he could not find either an easel or a drafting table anywhere in Weimar. But even without them, he could begin creating again, and to make art was to feel alive.
ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, Klee toured the actual Bauhaus for the first time; his studio was in a building nearby. Johannes Itten, wearing a suit whose color Klee described as “Bordeaux red,” had just given a group of young men and women the task of writing on the subject of a popular song, “Mariechen sass auf einem Stein” (Little Mary seated on a stone). He instructed them not to begin until they had intuitively perceived the spirit of the song.
These were the advanced students, and Klee was fascinated by every detail of what they were doing and how they were learning. He wrote Lily a detailed description of the experimental assemblages made from a range of materials in the immense studio next to Itten’s classroom. “They looked like the bastardized offspring of couplings between the art of savages and children’s toys.”46 Klee saw almost everything both as what it was and, simultaneously, as something else.
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