Birthday Card: Felix Klee, 1953

Felix Klee (1907-1990) was the only son of the Swiss-born painter Paul Klee and his wife Lily. In September of 1921, the family moved to Weimar where Paul Klee held a teaching position at the Bauhaus.  At the age of fourteen, Felix Klee became the youngest Bauhaus student.

Felix Klee remained in Germany during the years leading up to the war as a theater and opera director with his wife Euphrosine Klee-Grejowa. He was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1944 to serve on the Russian front. After he was released from a Soviet prison camp, Klee moved to Switzerland where he was naturalized in 1960.

Since childhood, Felix Klee had a proclivity for puppetry. He received on his ninth birthday as a gift from his father eight hand-made hand puppets and a puppet theater.  By 1925, he had created about fifty hand puppets, thirty of which are preserved at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland.