John Craxton’s Ex Libris for the poet and writer Stephen Spender and his wife Natasha - created as a belated wedding gift after their marriage in 1941 (2). I’ve wanted this since I got to know John C (3) while working on my exhibition ‘Poets in the Landscape: The Romantic Spirit in British Art’. I used to visit him for tea, cake and whisky and was very pleased to buy this from @pallantgallerybookshop - It features a self-portrait of John on one of a few original copies of the bookplate, which indicates that Spender especially valued the book: ‘Hyman, Pilgerfahrten, Algabal’ (4) by the German Symbolist poet Stefan George (5). Spender had lived in Germany for a few years from 1929, (6 with Franz Büchner) first in Hamburg and then Berlin at the invitation of Christopher Isherwood. ‘Algabal’ is viewed as a powerful expression of George’s homosexuality and the love poetry he dedicated to Maximilian Kronberger whom he viewed as a manifestation of the divine (7). George’s concept of the ‘thousand year Reich’ were adopted by the Nazis, even though he came to detest their racial theories and turned down Goebbel’s invitation to take the presidency of a new academy for the arts. In 1933 he left Germany for Locarno in Switzerland to avoid celebrations for his 65th birthday and died soon after. In a powerful twist, at one point the book was owned and signed by Moriz Seeler (8 & 9), a German poet, writer, film producer, and man of the theatre. He is best known as the founding father of the Junge Bühne (‘Young Stage’), an avant garde matinee-theatre which came into being in Berlin in the spring of 1922. Having been imprisoned by the Nazis in November 1938, he is said to have been deported to Latvia, where he went missing in Riga, and is assumed to have been killed in the Holocaust c.1942 (10). It is unclear how the book came into the possession of Spender. Given Seeler's links to Berlin it may have been acquired via Isherwood. What a powerful, moving thing to hold and to own... #exlibris #johncraxton #stephenspender #bookplate #stefangeorge #morizseeler #germanpoetry #christopherisherwood #instabook #instagay #maximiliankronberger #queerhistory #bookstagram (at Brighton) https://www.instagram.com/p/BrQ0foTlSfL/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1w1pd696rjkvm
