Klingsor goes Online: Digitization of the most important German-language cultural journal in Southeastern Europe

The periodical Klingsor. Siebenbürgische Zeitschrift (Transylvanian Journal), which appeared in Kronstadt (Brașov) in Romania from 1924 to 1939, is the most important German-language cultural journal published in Southeastern Europe between the wars. Thomas Mann hailed its appearance "as a living cultural institution". Like its predecessors Das Ziel. Blätter für Kultur und Satire (1919) and Das Neue Ziel. Halbmonatsschrift für Kultur, Kunst und Kritik (1919-20), this periodical was also regarded as a literary and cultural platform for the war generation. The writer and later exiled functionary Heinrich Zillich, whose personal estate is in the IKGS and is being made accessible as part of a BKM project, served as editor of Klingsor. Other prominent authors of the journal were the Romanian cultural philosophers Lucian Blaga and Nichifor Crainic, leading members of the Hungarian Helikon Circle such as Lajos Àprily or Károly Kós, the world-famous poets Rose Ausländer and Peter Huchel, and a number of Transylvanian-Saxon authors. In addition to literature, the journal was also devoted to music and the visual arts and was a platform for academic and political debates, which in the early phase were characterized by pluralism. The so-called Klingsor Circle, however, became increasingly involved in politico-ideological matters, especially in the dissemination of National Socialist ideas. Das Ziel (Das neue Ziel), Klingsor and the Festschrift zum Zehnjahresfest der siebenbürgischen Zeitschrift Klingsor 1924-34 offer a unique panorama of German-language cultural life in interwar Romania, which was in close exchange with Romanian and Hungarian circles and German-speaking countries. Digitization was made possible by the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek as part of the "Neustart Kultur" program funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM).