Kluge, C. (Constantin), 1912-

Constantin Kluge was born in Riga, Latvia on Jan. 29, 1912. His father was drafted into the Russian army in 1914 and at the outbreak of the 1917 Revolution began moving his family eastward, finally settling in Manchuria during the winter of 1919/20. In 1925 the family moved again, this time to Shanghai, where the young Constantin studied cello and violin and began drawing. After graduation from the French Municipal High School in 1931, Kluge was sent to Paris to study architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he received a diploma in Nov. 1937. Before returning to Shanghai in 1938, Kluge began painting portraits and cityscapes of Paris. It was in Shanghai during 1942-1943 that he met Pierre Leroy and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Kluge and Teilhard also had a mutual friend in Mrs. Claude Rivière, head of the French radio station in Shanghai. In 1946 Kluge accepted an architectural position in Hong Kong and remained there until 1950, when, fearing a Chinese Communist invasion, he returned to France. Kluge continued to pursue a career in art and was a frequent exhibitor at the Paris Salons. In 1961 he received the 'Medaille d'argent' of the Société des Artistes Français and the following year was awarded the gold medal of the Salon. Constantin Kluge was named a 'Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur' by the French Ministry of Culture in 1990. His self-titled autobiography was published in 1987. Constantin Kluge died on Jan. 9th, 2003.

Pierre Leroy, biologist and Jesuit, was born in La Madeline in northern France on Aug. 24, 1900. He completed his education at the Jesuit College in Lille and the Faculté des Sciences in Nancy, later working at the Museum of Natural History in Tianjin, China in the 1930's. From 1940 to 1946 he served as director of the Geobiological Institute in Beijing, where one of his colleagues was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. S.J. After returning to Europe, Fr. Leroy was a researcher at the Collège de France and director of the Gif-sur-Yvette laboratory until 1970 and 1971 respectively. In addition to his biological research, Pierre Leroy wrote extensively on Teilhard de Chardin and edited for publication their correspondence, which appeared in 1976 under the title, Lettres familières de Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, mon ami: les dernières années, 1948-1955, and was followed by an English translation in 1980.