Leopold Zahn

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Memorial to Jospeh Zahn in Baden-Baden

Leopold Zahn (1890-1970[1]) was an Austrian writer and art historian, who was an expert on the works of Paul Klee. He wrote an autobiographical account of his experience an being brought up as a girl, due to an unspecified intersex condition. This was published anonymously in Vienna in 1910, entitled Aus dem Tagebuch einer männlichen Gymnasiastin (From the diary of a high school student).

Early life[edit]

Born Leopoldine in 1890, in Salesianergasse in Vienna, at birth, the midwife was unsure of his gender and the child was raised as a girl.[2] Aged 17, he changed his name to Leopold, and the name and gender entry were corrected in the baptismal register. This alteration of the records featured in newspapers of the time.[2] Zahn wrote an autobiographical account of his experience, which was published anonymously in Vienna in 1910, entitled Aus dem Tagebuch einer männlichen Gymnasiastin (From the diary of a high school student).[3]

Career[edit]

Leopold Zahn - Josef Eberz, 1920

Zahn was an art histoiran, critic and gallery owner.[4] He published one of the first monographs on Paul Klee in 1920,[5][6][7] and his work on Klee infleunced later views on cosmology in Klee's work.[8] Zahn also wrote on decorative arts, especially Viennese furniture.[9]

In 1946, together with Woldemar Klein, he founded the magazine Das Kunstwerk which developed into an important publication on modern art in West Germany.[10] The first issue focussed on the role of the artist in society.[11] In 1955 he was a co-founder of the Die Gesellschaft der Freunde junger Kunst (The Society of Friends of Young Art).[12] He died in 1970.[1]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "Leopold Zahn (b.1890, d.1970) - McNay Art Museum". web.archive.org. 2023-03-31. Retrieved 2024-05-05.
  2. ^ a b lilielbe (2020-01-08). "Diskretion: Ein albernes Ding · Lili-Elbe-Bibliothek". Lili-Elbe-Bibliothek (in German). Retrieved 2024-05-05.
  3. ^ "Anonym (= Leopold Zahn): Aus dem Tagebuche einer männlichen Gymnasiastin, 1910. · Lili-Elbe-Bibliothek". Lili-Elbe-Bibliothek (in German). 2019-12-11. Retrieved 2024-05-05.
  4. ^ ""Chiriko wird Akademikprofessor": Expectations, Misunderstandings, and Appropriations of Pittura Metafisica Among the 1920s European Avant-Garde". Center for Italian Modern Art. Retrieved 2024-05-05.
  5. ^ Bourneuf, Annie (2015-07-20). Paul Klee: The Visible and the Legible. University of Chicago Press. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-226-23360-4.
  6. ^ Werckmeister, Otto Karl (1989-07-10). The Making of Paul Klee's Career, 1914-1920. University of Chicago Press. p. 233. ISBN 978-0-226-89358-7.
  7. ^ Wirth, Jason M. (2017-06-05). Mountains, Rivers, and the Great Earth: Reading Gary Snyder and Dōgen in an Age of Ecological Crisis. SUNY Press. p. 46. ISBN 978-1-4384-6543-2.
  8. ^ Elsner, Jaś (2011). Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 57/58: Spring/Autumn 2010. Harvard University Press. p. 246. ISBN 978-0-87365-861-4.
  9. ^ Jackson-Beckett, Michelle (2024-03-20). Vienna and the New Wohnkultur, 1918-1938. Oxford University Press. p. 55. ISBN 978-0-19-887951-0.
  10. ^ Lange, Barbara; Hildebrandt, Dirk; Pietrasik, Agata (2019-12-09). Rethinking Postwar Europe: Artistic Production and Discourses on Art in the late 1940s and 1950s. Böhlau Köln. pp. 163–164. ISBN 978-3-412-51401-3.
  11. ^ Lee, Mia (2019-01-22). Utopia and Dissent in West Germany: The Resurgence of the Politics of Everyday Life in the Long 1960s. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-75306-0.
  12. ^ "Gesellschaft der Freunde junger Kunst - Geschichte". www.gfjk.de (in German). Retrieved 2024-05-05.
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