Paul Klee

Paul Klee is portrayed as an artist confronting political persecution and the destruction of modern art. In a scene set in 1933, he speaks of his expulsion from the Düsseldorf Academy of Art and the attacks on his identity and work; in a later exchange with Käthe Kollwitz, he names Adolf Hitler as the source of an insulting label for their art.

Identity and Persecution

Recently expelled from the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, Klee sits with Ernst Barlach, who is cracking his knuckles as his tea cools. Klee nods and sips his own tea, saddened by his circumstances. He says, “They are calling me a Siberian Jew.” Asked whether Das Schwarze Korps is responsible, he answers, “Who else?” The accusation makes clear that the attack is not merely a professional setback: Klee is being marked and denigrated through an antisemitic slur.

Klee also describes books containing pictures of their work being burned. He reports that he is called “a Slavic lunatic,” linking the assault on his identity to the suppression of his art. The scene sets his expulsion, the slurs, and the destruction of images alongside Barlach’s physical discomfort, giving their artistic persecution the intimacy of a conversation over cooling tea rather than the distance of an abstract historical account.

Conversation with Käthe Kollwitz

In another exchange, Klee asks Käthe Kollwitz what she is thinking about. She wonders why men hostile to sexuality are also hostile to images of the body, then refers to “mustache boy.” Klee identifies the target as Adolf Hitler and introduces the phrase “Ferkel Kunst.” When Kollwitz asks what it means, he explains, “That is what he calls what we do.” The terse exchange connects the regime’s hostility to bodily imagery with its contempt for the artists’ work.

Narrative Role

Klee appears through compact, staged dialogue rather than a continuous account of his life. The scenes establish specific pressures on him—expulsion, antisemitic and xenophobic abuse, and the burning of books containing images of his work—while the exchange with Kollwitz shows how political power reaches into the language used to dismiss art. His brief statements make him a witness to that repression, without supplying a later resolution or broader biography.