The most progressive of the architectural schools of its time aspired to be so in everything. In his "Manifesto" on the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, advocating the admission of "everyone who wishes, regardless of sex and age" to the school, explicitly stated that there "should be no difference between the fairer and the stronger sex." And although today we would express it differently, the school promised to become an exemplary model of equality and true progress in higher education, especially since they did not even ask for a high school diploma here: so that "the training would satisfy the Bauhaus teaching council and there would be enough places."
Bauhaus students on the balustrade of the dining terrace in Dessau, circa 1931 © Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau/Courtesy of Bloomsbury Publishing
Gropius' appeals echoed with a refrain in the minds and hearts of German women. After the First World War, which thinned out the ranks of the male population, thanks to the industrial needs that arose during the war, a way was opened for women to enter the spheres previously available only to men. In addition, the constitution of the Weimar Republic of 1919 made a giant leap in recognizing the rights and freedoms of women, providing them with the right to vote and guaranteeing the possibility of obtaining an education in any higher educational institution.
Gradually, the German Fräulein and Frau went beyond the usual paradigm of Kinder, Küche, Kirche, imposed by the patriarchal society. A new type of woman was born - free, emancipated. They wore trousers, cut their hair short, played tennis, went to cabarets and bars, listened to jazz and rediscovered their sexuality. For those of them who felt a creative purpose in themselves, the Bauhaus seemed like a place where this same freedom could be fully realized.
When 84 (!) women and 79 men enrolled in the school in the opening year, it greatly puzzled Walter Gropius
However, the declaration of equal rights and opportunities remained only slogans on paper. When 84 (!) women and 79 men enrolled in the school in its opening year, it greatly puzzled Gropius. Fearing that because of such a "balance of forces" the Bauhaus would be perceived as a women's institution of applied arts, he began to assign everyone to the weaving workshop after they had completed a mandatory preparatory course. In fact, these "new women" with freshly cut "beans", somewhat androgynous and yet with desperate ambitions, faced banal sexism and old prejudices.
Only 11 female students managed to overcome the school's unspoken ban on women working in more "difficult" fields, for example, metalworking and architecture. "We didn't learn anything, we only strengthened our character," says architect Katt Both about his time studying at the Bauhaus in Dessau.
Schoolgirls on the steps of the Bauhaus building, photo by T. Lux Feininger, Dessau, 1927. Photo Bauhaus Archive
Men's club
It would seem that the most progressive of the European societies of its time, which then gave the world Albert Einstein, sociologist Georg Simmel, philosopher Walter Benjamin, musician Arnold Schoenberg, playwright and writer Bertolt Brecht, was ready for the emergence of a higher school of a new form. The de facto picture was quite different.
The declaration of equal rights and opportunities declared by Gropius remained only in slogans on paper
Modernism, which was experiencing its heyday in those years, became a club for men only, even for such prominent ones as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius, who defined the Bauhaus style. Its founder saw architecture as the dominant, ultimate goal of the Bauhaus, but to deal with it was the prerogative of men, in his opinion. Gropius wrote in 1921: "We are absolutely against giving them [women] an architectural education." The art they created was considered "feminine" or simply "handiwork". As a result, women found themselves in a marginal position not only in the school itself, but also outside it, when they tried their best to make the career they dreamed of.
Marcel Breuer and his "harem": Martha Earps-Breuer, Katt Both and Ruth Hollos-Konsemüller. Photo: Erich Consemüller, approx. 1927
The specter of the dogma about the social role of women determined "from above", which is described by only three words - Kinder, Küche, Kirche - haunted them endlessly, despite scientific, technical, political and other revolutions in the world.
Bauhaus weavers. Victory will be ours!
The irony is that despite being exiled to the "women's workshop", the students created the most commercially successful collaboration in all 14 years of the school's existence, leaving behind a powerful legacy. The Bauhaus' only female teacher, Gunta Stolz, transformed the unpopular weaving workshops into one of the school's most prosperous and most profitable departments, achieving levels of productivity never seen before at the Bauhaus.
Portrait of Gunta Stolz, approx. 1926. The author is unknown
She herself studied decorative painting, glass painting, ceramics, art history and style at the Kunstgewerbeschule school of applied arts in Munich. During the war, she worked as a nurse at the Red Cross, and in the winter of 1919 she began her studies at the Bauhaus. After taking a preparatory course with Johannes Itten and Paul Klee, she entered the weaving workshop under the direction of the artist Georg Muche, who she later replaced as the head after the "rebellion" of the students themselves. In her work, she often experimented, combining craft and advanced industrial production methods. In 1928, together with other Bauhaus members, she visited VHUTEMAS in Moscow.
"Stolz paved the way for a number of weavers and textile designers who achieved international success," write Ulrike Müller and Ingrid Radewaldt in Women of the Bauhaus: A Global Perspective (2019). "She brought improvisation and experimentation to the fore ... and consistently motivated her students to grasp the 'thread of diligence' with team spirit and passion."
Red and Green Tapestry with Split Pile, 1927-1928. Artist: Gunta Stolz
Sketch for a wall hanging "Five Choirs", 1928. By Gunta Stolz
Annie Albers. Applied abstraction
One of the workshop's most prolific designers, Anni Albers, née Fleischmann, had intended to study painting at the Bauhaus and was initially unenthusiastic about the prospect of standing at the loom. "I thought weaving was for weaklings," she recalled in an interview half a century later. "One thread and nothing else." However, it was Albers who became one of Stolz's most successful students, leading the workshop after her.
Portrait of Anna Albers. Photo: Umbo (Otto Umber), 1929.
Later, she admitted that "gradually the threads captured her imagination." Under the influence of her husband, the artist Josef Albers, first a student and then a teacher at the school, as well as her teacher Paul Klee, she began to incorporate elements of painting into her textile works. "Watching what he [Klee] did with a line, a dot or a brushstroke, I tried to find my own direction to some extent through my own material and my own artistic discipline," she says.
Her groundbreaking works had their own unique vocabulary of abstract patterns and symmetrical motifs, reimagining the interweaving of natural yarns and man-made fibers. She often experimented with new materials, like cellophane. Based on it, she developed the most successful commission of her years at the Bauhaus, an innovative double-sided fabric capable of both reflecting light and absorbing sound, for the lecture hall of the German Trade Union school in Bernau bei Berlin. The author called it "textile engineering": the fabric functioned, in fact, as a wall.
Carpet designed by Annie Albers. No title. 1926
Albers became the first woman textile artist to hold a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1949). The exhibits at MoMA were made of black cellophane, raffia, and copper chenille; wheat, grass and ropes; wooden rails and dowels, and they hung on decorative partitions, which she also woven. Together with her husband, Annie often visited Mexico and South America, which became an important source of inspiration for her. Here, in the countries where abstraction arose, Albers studied traditional patterns and methods of weaving, and in 1965 she published the results of her research into the theory and practice of weaving, its history and significance in the monograph "On Weaving". Annie Albers has received numerous awards for her work, as well as an honorary doctorate.
Margaret Heyman-Lebenstein. Dancing ceramics
Weaving was not the only field where Bauhaus women achieved success. For example, the masters, noticing the talent of Margaret Heyman-Lebenstein, admitted her as an experiment in the ceramics workshop under the leadership of Gerhard Marx. At the same time, she continued her studies at Klee and Muche.
Portrait of Margaret Heyman-Lebenstein, circa 1925. Author unknown
She was taken under the care of Gertruda Grunov, who made the students "dance" to the color blue, encouraging them to use all their senses while working with the material. A musician by training, she explored the fundamental relationships between sound, color and movement, developing her own teaching methods, and taught a course on harmony in Weimar, and her lectures were attended not only by students but also by Bauhaus teachers.
Hayman ceramics have acquired a unique playful style that does not correspond to the rigid geometry usually associated with Bauhaus aesthetics
Under the influence of Grunov, Heiman ceramics acquired a unique playful style that does not correspond to the rigid geometry usually associated with Bauhaus aesthetics. But the experiment ended, and Hayman, never getting permission from the teachers to finish the course at the workshop, left the school to leave and found her own ceramic factory, Haël, with her husband Gustav Lebenstein. Haël's well-thought-out branding and excellent design immediately attracted the attention of not only the consumer, but also design critics. At its peak in the early 1930s, the factory employed more than 120 people, and its products eventually fulfilled the school's primary mission of bringing modern design to the masses, something many of its male colleagues failed to achieve, who instead created expensive prototypes that never and did not go into production.
Ceramic plate and teapot designed by Margaret Heyman-Lebenstein, 1930.
Marianne Brandt. "The best and most brilliant"
Marianne Brandt is one of the rare exceptions who was lucky enough to work her way into the metal workshop through persistence and hard work. She learned about the Bauhaus at the 1923 exhibition at the Haus am Horn in Weimar and entered it the same year. For her teacher László Mohoj-Nady, she was the best and most brilliant student.
Portrait of Marianne Brandt, ca. 1926. The author is unknown
While still a student, she designed the first lighting fixture for the new school building in Dessau and a number of Bauhaus icons, such as the M49 brass teapot with ebony handle and the Kandem 702 table lamp, the prototype of Pixar's jumping lamp and many others. The lamps, coffee and tea sets, ashtrays and other household items she created today adorn the exhibits of MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, although for a long time they were not even signed with her name, and firms such as Alessi still produce designed her subjects.
How many small hemispheres I patiently forged from fragile new silver, thinking that this is how it should be, and all undertakings are difficult
Despite her superstar status, she has always felt mistrust from her male colleagues throughout her career. "They expressed their displeasure by giving me all kinds of boring, monotonous work," Brandt recalled of her years at the Bauhaus. "How many small hemispheres I patiently forged from the fragile new silver, thinking that this is how it should be, and all undertakings are difficult." But it paid off: her beautiful, simple geometric silver made Marianne one of the most popular metal artists.
In 1928, Brandt replaced her teacher as head of the workshop. Here, together with Hin Bredendyk, she developed lamps for serial production and organized cooperation with well-known firms for the benefit of the Bauhaus. In 1929, Gropius even invited her to his architectural workshop to work on the design of the village of Dammerstock near Karlsruhe. She was later appointed director of design at the prestigious Ruppelwerk metalworks in Gotha, becoming one of the first women to hold such a position.
Teapot designed by Marianne Brandt, brass, silver, ebony, 1924.
Kandem table lamp, designed by Marianne Brandt, 1920s
A story about Bauhaus women would be incomplete without a mention of the school's grande dame.
Ise Gropius. "Frau Bauhaus"
Her husband called her so gently. Ise came to the school shortly before the 1923 exhibition as the bride of Walter Gropius, and they met at one of his lectures in Weimar. A few months later, they got married, inviting Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee as witnesses. Since then, Ise devoted herself to the life of the school, supporting her husband and doing the work of secretary, editor, solving organizational tasks as an "equal partner".
Walter and Ise Gropius, 1929. Author unknown
In her 1986 interview, she said: “The Bauhaus idea became my second personality. Once you contract it, it affects every aspect of your life." Sometimes Ise contributed to the design. For example, she designed modern items for the kitchen (there was nothing decent on the market at that time), and she also designed the House of Craftsmen in Dessau - with architectural corrections from her husband. As soon as he resigned from the position of director, she became a co-author of many of his texts, articles and lectures.
"Frau Bauhaus" is how Walter Gropius affectionately called his wife
In Berlin, she had the opportunity to engage in her own literary work - and she also succeeded in this, selling her works to various publications in Germany and Great Britain. But the success ended unexpectedly in America when the American literary publication The Atlantic Monthly refused to publish her article entitled "Grandma Was a Careerist", citing that the magazine did not want to support and promote the "terrible idea" of working women, which Ise discussed in articles, — the ideal that she, in fact, was. She decided to leave everything as it is and concentrated on editing the texts of Walter Gropius - articles under his name were sold without problems. Gropius dedicated his books to her for consolation.
Lucia Mohoy. A witness of the era
Together with her famous husband, the Hungarian László Mogoy-Nadem, who taught at the Bauhaus from 1923, Lucia worked in the field of experimental photography. While training in one of the school's photo studios, she began photographing objects made in the Bauhaus workshops for publications.
Lucia Mogoi. Self-portrait, 1930
From 1923 to 1925 she worked as a freelance photographer while the school was still in Weimar and after she moved to Dessau. Lucia Mogoi became the main documentarian of Bauhaus life. It was she who took a series of photographs of the new school building and the Houses of Masters for the press and books, as well as numerous portraits of teachers and students, as well as photos of most objects created in local workshops.
After emigrating to London, Lucia continued her work as a portrait photographer and freelance writer. In the following years, she even made documentaries for many important UNESCO archives and projects in the Near and Middle East. Having moved to Switzerland in 1959, she was engaged in publishing, specialized in art history and art education, and also participated in many exhibitions.
Coffee and tea sets, designed by Marianna Brandt. Photo: Lucia Mogoi, 1924.
Lily Reich
She was the second female teacher at the Bauhaus and a close associate of the school's last director, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Reich met him in 1926 and collaborated closely on the design of the apartment and other projects for the exhibition of the German Workers' Federation held in Stuttgart in 1928. Then there was the German Pavilion at the Barcelona Exhibition, the Tugendhat House in Brno, the Lange House and many others . At the same time, she was the director of the interior design department of the Bauhaus, although her name was not advertised.
Portrait of Lily Reich. Photo: Ernst Louis Beck, 1933.
In addition, MoMA researchers, dealing with Mies van der Rohe's documentation, discovered a considerable number of sketches signed by LR. Of course, in such a close tandem, jobs can be intertwined, for example, one develops a furniture frame, and the other - upholstery and details. But the fact remains: many sketches of miss things are signed by Lily. Other historians, such as Albert Pfeiffer, go even further and suggest that it was not he, but she, who designed the two symbolic chairs of the Bauhaus - "Barcelona" and "Brno".
The women's collective of the Bauhaus was talked about only recently, when solid museums began to dedicate exhibitions and organize retrospectives to them, and directors began to make films
Chair MR 10, lacquered steel, cane, design by Lili Reich and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Another problem faced by women and men at school was persecution by the Nazi authorities. Many Bauhausians were expelled from Germany. Stolz, for example, was forced to leave in 1931 to escape persecution by her own pro-Nazi students for marrying the Jewish architect Arie Sharon. Yes, the one who will become one of the four Bauhaus students who returned to Israel to build a new state. Others followed suit, including the Albers, who established a refuge for fellow Bauhausers at Black Mountain College in Connecticut.
Children's construction set made of wood by Alma Siedhoff-Buscher. Her "Little Ship Building Game", created back in 1923, is still being produced
A frame from the movie Lotte in Bauhaus (2019) by the German director Gregor Schnitzler, filmed for the 100th anniversary of the school, where the prototype of the main character is Alma Siedhoff-Buscher
The women's collective of the Bauhaus has only recently come to the fore, with institutions such as Tate Modern, for example, seeking to ensure "long-overdue recognition of Albers' key contribution to contemporary art and design" by staging the first UK retrospective of her work in 2018. "Historians and commentators of the era who sought to emphasize modernism's love of architecture and industrial design often did so at the expense of other disciplines," explains Libby Sellers, author of Feminine Design (2018).
“Therefore, many designers working in the fields of textiles, ceramics, toy design, scenery and interiors, who were mostly women, have often been overlooked by contemporary sources. These oversights have created blind spots in both our understanding and interpretation of design. The centenary of the Bauhaus is a great opportunity to correct this."
