Although human suffering is universal, not all of us are gifted with the creative talent to express such emotions; we are therefore grateful to Hans Suter for this splendid book in which we share this anguish through the eyes of a creative genius, Paul Klee. In one of his last pictures, ‘Tod und Feuer’ (Death and fire), one sees the tight, ashen face of the scleroderma sufferer facing his imminent demise.

We are grateful to Alexander Klee and his family for graciously consenting to act as patrons of our association, and together we intend to raise awareness and resources to further research and overcome this disease. We are in a new and optimistic era of targeted molecular, biological and cellular therapies, which have already impacted on other autoimmune diseases and give hope to our scleroderma patients. Let us take the star from ‘Dieser Stern lehrt beugen’ (this star teaches us to accept our fate) as not just an acceptance of the inevitable, but as a ‘star of hope’ for the future.