Mirjam Deckers – S2781735
Research Master Arts, Media & Literary Studies University of Groningen
First supervisor: Prof. dr. Ann-Sophie Lehmann
Second supervisor: Prof. dr. Andreas Blühm
20 March 2020
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“Ich freute mich so skizzieren zu können nach Herzenslust in dem stürmischen Frühlingswetter. Ein tiefblauer Himmel wölbte sich über die sternklaren im Sonnenglanz wie Kristall schimmernden Bergspitzen sie leuchteten so stark so rein und fern dort hinauf hab’
ich all meine Wünsche meine Kunst gehoben und von dort will ich sie mir wieder holen wenn es einmal Zeit ist.”
- Gunta Stölzl in her diary, 3 June 1917
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Index
Preface 7
Acknowledgments 9
Introduction: An Artist in the Making 11
Gunta Stölzl (1897-1983): A Short Biography 12
The Munich Years (1897-1919) 12
The Bauhaus (1919-1931) 13
The Zurich Years (1931-1983) 15
Outline, Method, and Methodology 16
Chapter 1: The Image of a Bauhaus Weaver 19
1.1 The start: catalogues 20
1.2 From the 1990s onwards: Bauhaus women and feminist art history 21 1.3 Bauhaus anthologies: Gunta Stölzl from student to pars pro toto 27
1.4 Conclusion 31
Chapter 2: A Picture of Munich in the Early 20th Century 34
2.1 Munich between 1900-1919 34
2.1.1 A flourishing art center 34
2.1.2 German Expressionism in Munich: painters, patrons, places 36
2.1.3 The influence of Impressionism and Vincent van Gogh 39
2.2 The Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich 45
2.2.1 Richard Riemerschmid and Kunstgewerbe in Germany 45
2.2.2 Riemerschmid’s attempt for educational reform 48
2.2.3 Stölzl’s curriculum at the Kunstgewerbeschule 51
2.3 Conclusion 53
Chapter 3: Stölzl’s Early Lines of Thought (1914-1919) 55
3.1 Thoughts on art, art history and the artist 56
3.1.1. Contemporary art, artists and art historians 56
3.1.2. Van Gogh’s letters and the model artist 60
3.1.3. Glass painting and wooden sculptures 63
3.2 Thoughts on gender roles 64
3.3 Personal doubts: between Kunst, Handwerk, and Kunstgewerbe 67
3.4 Conclusion 77
Chapter 4: Gunta Stölzl’s Early Work on Paper (1914-1919) 79
4.1 Bäuerinnen (1915): expressionist colors and Hinterglasmalerei 80
4.2 Berghütte (1914-1919): contrasts and textures in pencil 83
4.3 Bauernfamilie (1914-1919): working class heroes 84
6 4.4 Zerstörte Kirche (1918): the horrors of the war in one medium 87
4.5. Giesing (1915): color experiments in an architectural setting 88 4.6 Stadt am Abend (1917-1919): Expressionism and atmosphere in watercolor 91
4.7 Berglandschaft mit See (1917-1919): towards abstraction 93
4.8 Blick auf Stadt and Blick auf Städtlein (1917-1919): mastering the medium in primary colors 96
4.9 Conclusion 99
Conclusion: From Weaver to Artist 102
Further research 104
Bibliography 106
Appendix 114
Plate 1: Bäuerinnen (1915) 114
Plate 2: Berghütte (1914-1919) 115
Plate 3: Bauernfamilie (1914-1919) 116
Plate 4: Zerstörte Kirche (1918) 117
Plate 5: Giesing (1915) 118
Plate 6: Stadt am Abend (1917-1919) 119
Plate 7: Berglandschaft mit See (1917-1919) 120
Plate 8: Blick auf Stadt (1917-1919) 121
Plate 9: Blick auf Städtlein (1917-1919) 122
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Preface
It was in the Autumn of 2017 that I heard the name Gunta Stölzl (1897-1983) for the first time. I had just decided on switching from a regular master in art history to a research master and, to put it bluntly, was looking for something new to do. My tutor at the University of Groningen, prof. dr. Ann-Sophie Lehmann, suggested a project that involved building a database in collaboration with “an elderly woman from Groningen”, who happened to be the daughter of Bauhaus weaver Gunta Stölzl. By accident, this woman, Monika Stadler (1943), had moved to the Netherlands in the 1960s, and after her mother had died in 1983, an enormous part of Gunta Stölzl’s estate had come to this provincial town in the north of our small country. Stadler had taken care of Stölzl’s estate ever since, a strenuous task that involves contact with museums worldwide, contemporary designers who wish to use Stölzl’s textiles for remakes, and researchers writing on Stölzl’s years at the Bauhaus on a daily basis. Moreover, Stadler had set herself the task of building a database that would contain the complete oeuvre of her mother, both in private and in public collections, that would be accessible to museums, designers and researchers alike.
Especially with the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus in 2019 approaching, Stadler decided on looking for help with this monster project. She reached out for support by contacting prof. dr. Andreas Blühm, director of the Groninger Museum. Blühm, who is also professor by special appointment in Art History, Museums and Society at the University of Groningen, in turn knocked at the door of Lehmann, who contacted me.
Database, Gunta Stölzl, the Bauhaus or even the German language were all things that I was not really familiar with. Nevertheless, my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to pay a visit to Monika Stadler. A little bit nervous, not sure what to expect, I pushed her doorbell on 15 March 2018.
Now, not even two years later, it is with pride that I present this thesis on the subject of Gunta Stölzl’s early and formative, yet completely ignored years (1914-1919). Last year, 2019, all eyes have been on the Bauhaus, its gender policy, and its forgotten women artists, Gunta Stölzl functioning almost as a
‘pars pro toto’ for them, as I will demonstrate in the first chapter of this thesis. It is wonderful to see that so many people now have come to know her name, her beautiful textiles, and the extraordinary story of the career that she managed to build between 1919 and 1931 at this influential German design school.
Nevertheless, something has been bothering me. Working with Stölzl’s complete oeuvre on a weekly if not daily basis has brought me close to the woman beyond the Bauhaus weaver. Stadler’s collection contains hundreds of samples and larger pieces made during the years 1931-1967 in Stölzl’s own Swiss weaving workshop, all interesting textiles made during a career that spanned over three decades. It is intriguing that this overwhelmingly largest part of Stölzl’s oeuvre is still ignored. Another part that has been neglected, was actually the first thing from Stölzl’s hand that I saw on that first day that I met Monika Stadler. There, in her living room, she started to introduce her mother to me by showing these beautiful drawings of a young adult woman, some years before she would turn to weaving or even enroll
8 the Bauhaus in Weimar. Sketches of Bavarian landscapes, paintings of German villages in bright colors,
exhibiting the artistic talent that Stölzl would also demonstrate at the Bauhaus. These works on paper were accompanied by a whole box of notebooks, diaries and letters from these early years, 1914 until 1919. Despite I was born 101 years after Stölzl, I soon discovered some similarities between myself and this young woman – although I have a complete lack of artistic talent. Her diaries and notebooks reminded me of myself at that age, feverishly reading up on literature and philosophy, raving about Nietzsche, and turning myself into an omnivore devouring everything in the domain of art history and culture. In her romantic descriptions of nature and the divine I recognized my own writings from almost 100 years later. I developed a similar interest in mountaineering, making long hikes, although not living in the much more challenging landscape of Bavaria, but in the Dutch lowlands.
Working for the Gunta Stölzl Archive has already brought me to interesting and unexpected places. I was asked to give a talk on the sample cards that she made in her Swiss workshop at the Schweizerische Institut für Kunstwissenschaft (SIK-ISEA) in Zurich – where else? –, a talk that I could translate into a contribution to the volume Textile Moderne/Textile Modernism (2019), edited by Burcu Dogramaci1. To crown it all, I was asked to curate the exhibition Gunta Stölzl: 100 Years of Bauhaus Textiles at Wall House #22, an art venue that is part of the Groninger Museum. However, ever since I first saw them, the drawings and paintings from Stölzl’s early years kept haunting me, to such an extent that I had the strong feeling that I needed to do something with them, or rather, something for them.
They not only needed attention, a context, but their sheer beauty also deserved it. The same goes for Stölzl’s own writings from these years, which give a unique insight into her early development penned down in wonderful prose. On top of that, during the many events, the meetings with other researchers or museum professionals, but also during my own research projects, I was constantly bothered by the fact that Gunta Stölzl is usually the Bauhaus weaver, and nothing more. Luckily, with the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus celebrated this very year and the discourse on Bauhaus women growing and extending, she is also nothing less than the Bauhaus weaver. The important role that she fulfilled at the Bauhaus receives increasing attention. Nevertheless, given the artistic talent that Stölzl demonstrates throughout her oeuvre, it is time to expand this discourse, and what better place to start than the first and formative years that marked the start of Stölzl’s career as an artist?
Hence, for this thesis, I return to Stölzl’s years in Munich, where she studied at the local Kunstgewerbeschule while making long hikes through Bavaria in her spare time, armed with her diary and her sketchbook. Initially, I had planned to only analyze her artistic work from these years (1914- 1919). But the more I came to read her writings from this same period throughout my research process, the better and less troubled my image of this young artist became. I became deeply affected by them, not only by the beauty of her prose and its high literary quality, but also because of how familiar her
1 See Deckers, ‘The Weaver’s Laboratory’ (2019).
2 This exhibition ran from 30 March – 1 September 2019. In the conclusion of this thesis, I will explain why I actually regret the title of this exhibition.
9 writings still sound to me. Furthermore, they are excellent in shaping a more diverse image of this brave
young woman than we have had until today, as they help in following her development as an artist very closely. During my process of research I was blessed with unlimited access to the estate of Gunta Stölzl as well as the endless support of Monika Stadler and her family, for which I am truly grateful.
I examined the works and writings that Stölzl made and wrote until she was 22, when she entered the Bauhaus in Weimar. When I have finished this research project, my time as a 22-year old will just be over. I never met Gunta Stölzl, as she died almost ten years before I was even born. Nevertheless, this thesis is not only an attempt to expand the image of a meaningful and brave female artist, but also an ode to a woman I have come to admire and that I feel a connection with.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I would like to thank Monika Stadler, for her full support of this thesis, her willingness to think along with me, her suggestions and her honesty. Above all, I am grateful for the wonderful friendship that we have developed during our collaboration, despite our ages. Secondly, I would like to thank prof. dr. Ann-Sophie Lehmann and prof. dr. Andreas Blühm for entrusting me with the ‘Gunta Stölzl Project’, as I have come to call it, for introducing me to Monika Stadler in March 2018, and finally, for supervising this thesis, which I regard as a milestone within this project.
I would like to thank Ingrid Radewaldt, Stölzl’s biographer, for her help in accessing sources that are actually in the Bauhaus-Archiv, which is unfortunately closed for researchers due to construction work, but of which she had made notes for her own research projects. I thank her for her willingness to make copies of these notes and to send them to me in a thick envelope all the way from Hamburg. Most of all, I am grateful for all of the research she has already done on Stölzl, and for giving Stölzl the attention that she deserves.
Mariëtta Jansen of the Groninger Museum was convinced of the artistic value of Stölzl’s early work on paper from the moment she first saw them, and has encouraged me to choose these works as the subject of my research project. Furthermore, she has taken the time to discuss them with me in order to provide them with an art-historical context, the results of which can be found in the fourth chapter.
Many thanks for her encouragement and her time.
Last but not least, I would like to thank dr. Peter de Ruiter, who was my first teacher in art history at the University of Groningen in 2015. When Gunta Stölzl describes that during her first lectures by professor Engels she would feel as “eine Mücke am Boden die jeden Augenblick zertreten werden kann”, I immediately think about my first lectures in modern art by de Ruiter. Despite his unorthodox ways of teaching, his lectures sparked my enthusiasm for the art of the late 19th and early 20th century.
After following many other trails through the history of art, this thesis is to some extent a return and an ode to this first love. I am therefore very grateful that Peter de Ruiter was willing to lend me his
10 connoisseur eye and to offer me his time to discuss Stölzl’s early work on paper together, which has
been of incredible value to me.
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Introduction: An Artist in the Making
At the moment of writing this thesis, the dust of 2019, the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus, is starting to settle. There has been a lot of attention for many individual artists of this German design school that was founded in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius (1883-1969). For one thing, the discourse has been concerned with the position of female artists at the school, Gunta Stölzl being one of the most important ones of them, as she made it to become Meisterin of the weaving workshop at the Bauhaus in Dessau.3 An intriguing story that certainly deserves attention. However, in the past two years that I have been able to work for the Gunta Stölzl Archive in Groningen (NL) I have come to question why only very little attention has been paid to Stölzl’s artistic development as a whole. As I will demonstrate in the first chapter, almost exclusively all of the research that has been conducted deals with Stölzl’s years at the Bauhaus (1919-1931). On the one hand, this is understandable, as the Bauhaus is a name with collective power, that has a fixed position within the history of art and design. Furthermore, Stölzl’s intriguing position as a woman at the school has received increased attention within the current discussion on reinstalling female artists within the art historical canon. On the other hand, Stölzl’s career spanned from roughly 1914, when she enrolled the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich, until her death in 1983 at the age of 86. In that respect, her years at the Bauhaus make up only a small part of her whole artistic career. It seems that Stölzl has not yet been regarded as an artist in her own right, outside of the discourse on the Bauhaus.
This thesis is a first step in that direction, questioning the status quo of Gunta Stölzl in current research. In order to do so, it goes back to the very start of Stölzl’s career, that is, her early years in Munich, where she already studied to become an artist and created numerous works on paper, including drawings and paintings, of which no less than around 250 still survive in her estate. None of these works have been discussed or analyzed to the extent that they are in this thesis. They are largely unknown, do not belong to public art collections, and have never been provided with a context. It seems a vicious circle: Stölzl is only known for her (Bauhaus) textiles, and regarded only as a (Bauhaus) weaver. Her early work on paper is not only unknown, but also does not fit the discourse, and hence runs the risk of remaining unknown. The discourse is, literally and figuratively speaking, hanging by a thread. By including a new medium (work on paper) and a new time frame (1914-1919) into the discussion on Gunta Stölzl, we can work towards regarding her as an artist rather than ‘only’ a weaver. Furthermore, by looking at her earliest artistic work, we may be able to answer the question on how Stölzl developed
3 See for example Otto and Rössler (eds.), Bauhaus Bodies (2019); Otto and Rössler, Bauhaus Women (2019);
Rössler, Bauhausmädels (2019), and the biography by Ingrid Radewaldt, Gunta Stölzl. Pionierin der Bauhausweberei (2019). A selection of exhibitions: the large retrospective of Anni Albers at Tate Modern in London (11 October 2018 – 27 January 2019), the small exhibition on Gunta Stölzl at Wall House #2 in Groningen, the Netherlands (30 March – 1 September 2019), and the exhibition on Bauhaus weavers Kitty van der Mijll, Gunta Stölzl, Lisbeth Östreicher and Otti Berger at Textielmuseum Tilburg, the Netherlands (25 May – 3 November 2019).
12 as an artist – for she certainly did not start off as a weaver, nor – as we will see – did she have any
aspirations to become one. In order to better answer this question, this thesis also introduces Stölzl’s own writings from the years 1914-1919 – diaries, lecture notes, and letters, all sources that have not been published to this extent nor used in the context of a research project examining Stölzl’s artistic career outside of the context of the Bauhaus. By bringing these early writings and artistic work on paper to the fore a new and broader picture of Stölzl and her artistic development will emerge, which in turn could also shine a whole new light on Stölzl’s Bauhaus years.
Gunta Stölzl (1897-1983): A Short Biography
4The Munich Years (1897-1919)
Adelgunde (‘Gunta’) Stölzl was born on 5 March 1897 in Munich as the daughter of school principal Franz Seraph and Kreszenz Stölzl. Her father was a fervent supporter of educational reform movements which gained hold in Munich around 1900. His daughter Gunta was one of the first to attend the new Münchener Mädchengymnasium where she took her school-leaving examination (‘Reifeprüfung’) in 1913, a rare exception for girls at that time. She would also attend the local scouts association, taking long and strenuous mountain hikes.
After taking her examination, Stölzl entered the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich in 19145, which was led by director Richard Riemerschmid (1868-1957). Her testimony, signed by Riemerschmid, demonstrates that she studied glass painting, decorative painting, ceramics, and art history. She kept a diary, testifying to an interest in literature, modern art, theatre, and traveling. Besides, she made numerous sketches, including colorful landscapes, architecture, and human beings. In the summer of 1917, in the midst of the First World War, Stölzl started to doubt her studies, and decided to volunteer as a Red Cross nurse. Her older brother Erwin Stölzl (1893-1947) already served as a soldier. Part of their correspondence from this period has survived. After the war had ended in 1918, Stölzl returned to Munich, disillusioned, where she picked up her studies again in January 1919. She partook in the discussions concerning educational reform, as the second chapter will further elaborate on. However, she encountered – it is unknown how and when exactly – the manifesto of the Bauhaus, written by Walter Gropius6 in April 1919. She decided to leave the Kunstgewerbeschule, one year before her graduation, and entered the newly opened school in Weimar in September.
4 Unless stated otherwise, I follow the most recent biography on Stölzl by Ingrid Radewaldt, Gunta Stölzl.
Pionierin der Bauhausweberei (2019).
5 Sometimes, it is stated that Stölzl entered the school in 1913. Stölzl’s family cannot confirm the exact year. In the most recent biography by Ingrid Radewaldt, 1914 is mentioned, and hence I decided on following that information, see Radewaldt, Gunta Stölzl, 13.
6 Fiona MacCarthy recently published a critical biography on Walter Gropius, in which she argues that Gropius was more than his architecture. Rather, it is his philosophy, his visionary ideas that still influence modern art and design. See MacCarthy, Walter Gropius: Visionary Founder of the Bauhaus (2019).
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The Bauhaus (1919-1931)
In the manifesto of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius proclaimed that all art emerged from craftmanship (‘Handwerk’). Therefore, his new school, founded in Weimar in the building of the former Kunstgewerbeschule of the Belgian architect Henry van de Velde, ‘Kunst’ (art) and ‘Handwerk’ (craft) would form a new unity that could be traced back to their interwovenness during the Middle Ages.
According to the manifesto, all artists should return to craftmanship and to the workshops (‘Werkstätten’), with architecture as the highest achievement: “diese nur zeichnende und malende Welt der Musterzeichner und Kunstgewerbler muß endlich wieder eine bauende werden.”7 The manifesto made daring claims, such as “es gibt keinen Wesensunterschied zwischen dem Künstler und dem Handwerker. Der Künstler ist eine Steigerung des Handwerkers.”8 Furthermore, both men and women were explicitly invited to apply. Today, the Bauhaus is criticized for not living up to this latter
‘revolutionary’ promise. However, the question could be asked whether this promise could be regarded as ‘modern’ to start with, for indeed women were not yet admitted to most of the art academies in Germany until the early 1920s, but were already allowed to enter the Kunstgewerbeschulen, such as the one Stölzl attended in Munich.9 Nevertheless, the Bauhaus attracted a lot of women, and when after the first semester over half of the student population turned out to be female, Gropius, afraid his new project would not be taken seriously, tried to reduce the amount of women to be admitted to the workshops to around a third. By 1921, women were no longer admitted to the Werkstätten.10
Every student to enter the Bauhaus had to attend a six-month preliminary course (‘Vorkurs’), which was led until 1923 by Johannes Itten (1888-1967). Successful completion of the course was a requirement to be accepted into one of the Bauhaus workshops. The Vorkurs offered a general introduction to the principles of design, color, form and material theory, as well as a period of experimentation for the new students, to try several materials and practices. The course consisted of body work, including breathing and concentration exercises, and sensitivity and material training through ‘Tasttafeln’, touch-boards assembled from various materials students had to feel and recognize while being blindfolded.11 In general, the Vorkurs was designed as a ‘self-finding course’, in which imagination and creativity were ‘tested’ and teamwork, sensitivity, diligence and stamina were trained.12 Besides following the Vorkurs, students could enter a workshop at the Bauhaus itself or, in the early days, in Weimar itself, where the Bauhaus had formed different partnerships. The workshops at the
7 Gropius, Walter. Programm des Staatlichen Bauhauses in Weimar (April 1919).
8Ibid.
9 Cf. Herber, Frauen an deutschen Kunstakademien im 20. Jahrhundert (2009).
10 Radewaldt, Gunta Stölzl, 46.
11 The recently published Original Bauhaus Übungsbuch by Nina Wiedemeyer and Friederike Holländer (2019) offers a great overview of different Bauhaus teaching exercises.
12 Siebenbrodt and Schöbe, Bauhaus, 70-71.
14 Bauhaus were led by a ‘Formmeister’ and a ‘Werkmeister’ together, the Formmeister having the overall
and artistic leadership, while the Werkmeister would oversee the technical management and training.13 In 1920, probably because female students were increasingly discouraged to enter the workshops, a special women’s class was founded. Stölzl, who initially had enrolled the workshops for glass painting and decorative painting consecutively, was one of the initiators.This coincided with a personal crisis, namely the end of her engagement to the painter Werner Gilles (1894-1961). As it is often argued that this class became the textile department due to sexist prejudices, such as that women were not able to see in three dimensions, and its association with domesticity and femininity14, it should also be taken into account that the former Kunstgewerbeschule had left its looms at the building, which had not yet been put into use, as there were no teachers in weaving at the Bauhaus. The women in this new class took up these looms, starting with the easiest of techniques, mainly Gobelin weaving, in a do- it-yourself manner. The workshop was initially headed by Johannes Itten as Formmeister, until painter and architect Georg Muche (1895-1987) took over in 1921. Helene Börner (1870-1938), who had been a teacher in textile techniques at van de Velde’s Kunstgewerbeschule, acted as Werkmeisterin. However, Börner was specialized in ‘Kunstgewerbe’, ornamental textiles, such as embroidery, and not in weaving nor in designing functional fabrics.15 Her presence in the workshop seems not to have made much of an impact.16 In 1922, Gunta Stölzl and her friend and fellow weaver Benita Otte (1892-1976) were allowed to attend a four-week dyeing course followed in 1924 by courses in fiber and weave technologies in Krefeld. They would pass this technical knowledge on to their fellow weaving students. In 1924, Stölzl was asked by Johannes Itten to assist him for eight months in setting up weaving workshop near Zurich, Switzerland. Besides, she followed courses on form (‘Formlehre’) by Paul Klee (1879-1940) and on painting by Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944).17
In 1925, the political situation in Weimar had taken a turn for the worse, and the Bauhaus was forced to leave. The school moved to the industrial city of Dessau. Gropius advocated a change of direction, intensifying the collaboration with the industry. Many of the staff members resigned because they did not agree with this change of course, among others Helene Börner, and the strict distinction between Formmeister and Werkmeister disappeared. Instead, former students were appointed as Jungmeister of the workshops.18 Gunta Stölzl unofficially received the technical direction, becoming responsible for establishing the new workshop in Dessau and revising the curriculum. In 1927, an internal conflict with the students of the workshop prompted Muche to resign. At the request of the weavers, Stölzl became his successor as Jungmeister, the first woman at the Bauhaus to receive such a
13 For an in-depth discussion of this distinction, see Schüler, Die Handwerksmeister am Staatlichen Bauhaus Weimar (2013).
14 Smith, Bauhaus Weaving Theory, xxvi-xxxi.
15 Radewaldt, Gunta Stölzl, 48-49.
16 Cf. Smith, Bauhaus Weaving Theory, xviii-xix.
17 Radewaldt, Gunta Stölzl, 52-61.
18 Siebenbrodt and Schöbe, Bauhaus, 22.
15 high position. In 1928, Gropius left the Bauhaus and was replaced by the Swiss architect Hannes Meyer
(1889-1954). The weaving workshop increasingly sought collaborations with the industry, focusing on
‘Gebrauchsstoffe’, functional fabrics for the interior, and became the most successful department of the Bauhaus. In 1929, Stölzl married the Palestine architect Arieh Sharon (1900-1984), who had entered the Bauhaus in 1926. Through her marriage, Stölzl lost her German citizenship. Only shortly after their marriage, daughter Yael was born in October. As opposed to social norms, Stölzl quickly resumed working and brought her baby with her to the workshop, for which she was criticized.19 On top of that, also in Dessau the political climate was hardening. Stölzl received even more critique as she was married to a Jew and because she was accused of having exhibited leftist and communist sympathies. In 1930, Paul Klee and Hannes Meyer left the Bauhaus, both of whom opposed to the growing National Socialist powers and had supported Stölzl. Meyer was succeeded by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969).
When Stölzl found a swastika painted on her door, she realized that the situation had become hopeless and she officially resigned in the spring of 1931.
The Zurich Years (1931-1983)
Due to the political situation in Germany in the early 1930s, Sharon, Stölzl’s husband, no longer received any commissions. He left for Palestine in May 1931 to renew his passport. Stölzl moved to Zurich with her daughter in November, Switzerland, leaving Germany for good. Together with the Swiss Bauhäusler Gertrud Preiswerk (1902-1994) and Heinrich Otto Hürlimann (1900-1964) she founded Handweberei S-P-H Stoffe, focusing on furniture and curtain material, for example for the important Wohnbedarf AG.
They also developed prototypes for industrial production. The principles of the Bauhaus, that is, the effect and the function of a fabric within a whole interior, and experimenting with materials on the loom, remained important. The area of expertise was quickly extended to include fashion fabrics. In 1932, however, while still in Palestine Sharon announced a divorce, for he had met a new woman there. After the divorce became official in 1936, Stölzl lost her British-Palestine passport as well, becoming a stateless single mother in a country that had become hostile to Germans. S-P-H Stoffe needed to dissolve in 1933 due to financial difficulties. Stölzl and Hürlimann decided to continue the workshop as S+H Stoffe, creating among other things cellophane fabrics for local cinemas, but in 1937 Hürlimann had to leave too. Stölzl moved to the Florastraße in Zurich, where she could have her house and workshop, Handweberei Flora, in one building. She partook in the Schweizerische Landesausstelling in 1939, creating exclusive furniture fabrics and decorative fabrics for the Frauenpavillon. Finally, her situation seemed to stabilize. She continued to create a wide range of handwoven textiles, for example spanning material functioning as a background in the display cases of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, haute couture fabrics for fashion house Grieder in Zurich, or interior textiles for the house of the Swiss architect Hans Fischli. In 1942, she married the Swiss writer Willy Stadler (1901-1990),
19 Baumhoff, The Gendered World of the Bauhaus, 97-98.
16 finally obtaining Swiss citizenship. Their daughter Monika is born in September 1943, while Yael is
adopted by Stadler. The family moves to Küsnacht near Zurich, while the weaving workshop remains in the Florastraße. From the mid-1950s onward, the Bauhaus is rediscovered, and museums worldwide start to collect Stölzl’s fabrics, especially from the Bauhaus years.20 In 1964, Stölzl is invited by the newly founded Bauhaus-Archiv in Darmstadt, Germany, to partake in an exhibition.21 In that same year, she has a holiday home built in the Swiss mountains near Amden. Here, she would invite many old friends from the Bauhaus, such as Benita Otte, Tut Schlemmer (1889-1987, wife of Oscar Schlemmer (1888-1943)), Lisbeth Oestreicher (1902-1989) and Gertrud Arndt (1903-2000). In the 1960s, handwoven woolen fabrics were increasingly replaced by new leather and canvas ones. Hence, Gunta Stölzl decided to dissolve her workshop in 1967 at the age of 70. She returned to her passion, weaving figurative, mainly woolen, wall hangings in the Gobelin technique, and creating some knotted carpets.
Unlike the geometrical forms that dominated the wall hangings she had created at the Bauhaus, these later wall hangings contain mainly natural colors and forms. These figurative weavings received local attention, for example through an exhibition in 1980 at the Paulus-Akademie in Zurich. Many of these wall hangings and carpets are still in Swiss private collections. Gunta Stölzl died on 22 April 1983 in Küsnacht at the age of 86.
Outline, Method, and Methodology
In order to answer the main question of this thesis, namely how Gunta Stölzl developed as an artist during the years 1914-1919, I draw on two important sources that until now have not been used to this extent and in this context – that is, outside of the discourse on the Bauhaus and outside of a purely biographical discussion. Before I introduce these sources, I conduct a field review in the first chapter, which gives an overview of the status quo of Gunta Stölzl and her oeuvre in current research, in order to sketch the discourse to which this thesis will be adding. What can be concluded from this overview is that Stölzl, like other female Bauhaus artists, has been largely ignored in Bauhaus literature until roughly the late 1990s, when the Bauhaus women were rediscovered, but only within the context of their womanhood, that is, the discourse around gender issues at the Bauhaus. After this rediscovery, Stölzl has certainly gained her place within the discourse on the Bauhaus, which was confirmed by the attention the Gunta Stölzl Archive (GSA) in Groningen received this year during the worldwide celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus. However, this discussion is limited to Stölzl as the Bauhaus weaver, limiting her to a specific period in her long career (1919-1931), and to a specific practice (weaving) and medium (textiles). Outside of this discourse, Stölzl is neglected. It is the aim of this thesis to extend the discourse and to take a first step in exploring Stölzl as an artist in her own right.
20 For example, the Busch-Reisinger Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts bought a wall hanging (1923) in 1949, followed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, that purchased a wall hanging (1924) in 1958. The Victoria & Albert Museum in London obtains tens of Bauhaus fabrics and designs in the late 1960s.
21 Arbeiten aus der Weberei des Bauhauses, 12 May – 14 June 1964.
17 To fulfil this aim, this thesis focuses on the years before the Bauhaus, that is, the period 1914-
1919, during which she started her career in the arts. In the second chapter, an art historical context is sketched out, focusing on Germany and Munich in the early 20th century, in particular the 1910s. The second part of that chapter discusses the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich where Stölzl studied between 1914 and 1919. It discusses its director Richard Riemerschmid, its teachers, its curriculum and its position within the broader discussion regarding the division between art (Kunst) and the applied arts (Kunstgewerbe). This context might seem to consist of dry, familiar facts and traditional art history, but it is necessary as a backdrop for the third and fourth chapter.
In chapter three, I introduce new archival material from the Gunta Stölzl Archive, consisting of personal writings, for example letters, diary entries, lecture notes, written between 1914 and 1919. These archival sources are closely analyzed against the backdrop of the second chapter in order to show that Stölzl was attracted to the arts in a very broad sense. Outside of her studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule, she actively educated herself on recent developments within art history, she visited theatre plays, museums and galleries, she would read literature and philosophy, and philosophized about the role of the artist in society, while reflecting on her own career perspectives. Furthermore, I will demonstrate that she had a clear vision of what her ideal career as an artist would look like, ideas that tie in with the discussion on the differences between Kunst, Handwerk, and Kunstgewerbe, as well as with her personal ideas on gender roles. These writings have not been published before to this extent nor contextualized.
Single entries from Stölzl’s diary have sometimes been quoted, but only in Bauhaus-related literature, not to illustrate an artistic career before and beyond the Bauhaus. An exception is Ingrid Radewaldt’s recent biography Gunta Stölzl. Pionierin der Bausweberei (2019), in which she frequently draws upon Stölzl’s own writings. Although the book is a good first step in discussing Stölzl as an individual, rather than a pars pro toto for the weaving workshop at the Bauhaus, also this book, as the title already reveals, is largely devoted to Stölzl’s Bauhaus years. Using Stölzl’s early writings to a larger extent and outside the context of the Bauhaus is the first step in contributing to a broader picture of the artist Gunta Stölzl.
In the fourth chapter, I closely examine a second source, Stölzl’s drawings and watercolors on paper that she made until 1919. These works on paper not only represent the artistic talent that she already demonstrated at a young age, but are also highly unique, as they have never been discussed in depth nor put into an art historical context. Worse still, this part of Stölzl’s oeuvre is usually never even mentioned at all, as the first chapter demonstrates. Their artistic quality and their content is neglected.
Until now, they have not been embedded within an art historical context. This is exactly what I will do in the fourth chapter, using a small yet representative selection of these works. I will employ the rather traditional art-historical method of conducting visual analyses on the basis of which I compare these works to other contemporary artists, who are already introduced in the second and third chapter. A relationship between Stölzl’s weaving and her early work on paper is difficult to establish, because they are very different from each other. Nevertheless, including these early works within the discourse around
18 Stölzl helps in the much-needed broadening of her image, making it more inclusive, and regarding her
as an artist in her own right.
Taking a close look at these years both in the third and fourth chapter, using archival material, demonstrates that Stölzl was well aware of recent developments in the artworld in Western Europe in general and in Munich in particular. She herself had developed clear thoughts on the role of the artist in general and her own position in particular – also in relation to gender issues. Furthermore, she made hundreds of paintings and drawings on paper that, on closer examination, reveal the influence of modern artists as well as a desire to experiment. Hence, together, the third and fourth chapters provide a new and broader perspective on Stölzl’s artistic talents, development and career. These art historical methods – visual analyses, comparisons, and the close reading of autobiographical sources, using unique and exclusive materials – within this methodology – focusing on the career of one single artist – lead to new and striking insights into Stölzl’s career. Rather than limiting the discussion to Stölzl as the female Bauhaus weaver, I will argue that Stölzl’s years at the Bauhaus can be regarded as a stepping stone, a logical next step within her whole artistic career, and a continuation of her earlier artistic aspirations.
When Stölzl entered the Bauhaus in 1919, she already had firm ideas regarding the distinction between art (Kunst), craftmanship (Handwerk) and the decorative arts (Kunstgewerbe), as well as gender issues.
She had personal ambitions in the arts to which the Bauhaus provided a possible answer. As I will conclude, the Bauhaus weaving workshop, with which Stölzl became almost exclusively associated until today, can equally be regarded as merely the space where she could realize her broader aspirations in the realm of the arts. As a consequence, Gunta Stölzl becomes more than a pars pro toto for the weaving workshop. and more than only a weaver, or an artist whose oeuvre is limited to textiles.
19
Chapter 1: The Image of a Bauhaus Weaver
Before embarking on any research project to recontextualize Gunta Stölzl’s oeuvre, it is important to outline the corpus of literature that this recontextualization will be added to. Therefore, the first chapter of this thesis provides an overview of the literature in which Gunta Stölzl is discussed or portrayed, or, in other words, the status quo about her work in current research. This overview is the result of a short field review that demonstrates how the literature started with a sole exhibition catalogue in 1987, and from there moves towards a growing corpus of literature on the Bauhaus from the perspective of gender studies, in which Stölzl is discussed in the context of the rediscovery of Bauhaus women from the 1990s onwards, a corpus that is still growing.22 In 2019, the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus was celebrated worldwide.23 This coincided with a high awareness of the status of women in art history, further triggered by the me-too debate. Hence, the question of gender inequalities at the Bauhaus has been receiving increased attention, and, as a consequence, also the history of individual women at the Bauhaus24. The rediscovery of these important female artists certainly is a valuable development. Yet I conclude that there is a double suppression at work in the discussion on Stölzl, a suppression that is probably also the case for other Bauhaus women: first, Stölzl was neglected as a female Bauhäusler, and then, after the Bauhaus women and their work have been rediscovered slowly from the late 1990s onwards, her work outside of the context of the Bauhaus has been ignored until today. It is a mechanism visible in the careers of other artists and especially female artists as well: first they are ignored, then rediscovered, but only within a specific movement or collective. In the case of female artists, they are often rediscovered within the context of their womanhood, that is, from the perspective of a more feminist art history. The problem with this mechanism is that (female) artists are not regarded in their own right, leading to parts of their oeuvre being neglected. This is exactly, as this chapter will demonstrate, what happens in the case of Gunta Stölzl.
At the moment of writing, with 2020 knocking at the door, it might be time for the mechanism to change. In January 2019, the biography Gunta Stölzl. Pionierin der Bauhausweberei was published by art historian Ingrid Radewaldt, who has known Stölzl personally and still maintains close contact with Stölzl’s heirs. Although the focus still lies on the years at the Bauhaus, leaving no room for a detailed discussion of Stölzl’s work before or after these years, Radewaldt’s biography is a good step
22 See for example Müller, Bauhaus-Frauen (2009) or Müller, Bauhaus Women (2009); Smith, ‘A Collective and Its Individuals’ (2010); Otto and Rössler (eds.), Bauhaus Bodies (2019); Otto and Rössler, Bauhaus Women (2019); Rössler, Bauhausmädels (2019).
23 Important in this context is the web portal Bauhaus100, an initiative of the Bauhaus Kooperation Berlin Dessau Weimar. On this website one finds information entries, activities, lectures, exhibitions etc., that evolve around the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus, and the influence of the legendary school on contemporary practices of art and design.
24 Examples are the large retrospective of Anni Albers at Tate Modern in London (11 October 2018 – 27 January 2019), the small exhibition on Gunta Stölzl at Wall House #2 in Groningen, the Netherlands (30 March – 1 September 2019), and the exhibition on Bauhaus weavers Kitty van der Mijll, Gunta Stölzl, Lisbeth Östreicher and Otti Berger at Textielmuseum Tilburg, the Netherlands (25 May – 3 November 2019).
20 towards a discussion of Stölzl in her own right, at least taking her whole career into account. This thesis
hopes to take further steps in that direction. However, before these steps can be taken, one needs to examine the current discourse about Stölzl’s work. I start chronologically and end with a conclusion in which blind spots within this status quo are summarized.
1.1 The start: catalogues
The first sources in which Gunta Stölzl is discussed appear remarkably late. Whereas the Bauhaus itself was rediscovered from the mid-1950s onward, causing Stölzl to partake in exhibitions on the influence of the school25 and to sell her work to numerous museums worldwide26, scholars have ignored her. After Stölzl’s death on 22 April 1983, it was her family that put effort into a large retrospective exhibition27, resulting in the exhibition Gunta Stölzl: Weberei am Bauhaus und aus eigener Werkstatt and a catalogue by the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin in 1987. After opening in Berlin in February, the exhibition would travel to the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Zurich and to the Gerhard-Marcks-Stiftung in Bremen until September 1987. As the title already reveals, the focus of this exhibition was on Stölzl’s Bauhaus works, and so does the catalogue, which includes an essay on Stölzl and the development of the weaving workshop28, a chronology, Stölzl’s own texts on the Bauhaus, and short biographies of other Bauhäusler involved in the workshop.29
After this first exhibition, a second one would follow ten years later. In 1997, a seminal retrospective was organized, accompanied by the most extensive publication on Stölzl’s oeuvre until today. The exhibition Gunta Stölzl. Meisterin am Bauhaus Dessau first opened at Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau in August 1997, and from there moved to the Städtische Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg until May 1998. The compilation and the writing of the extensive catalogue was in the hands of Stölzl’s daughter, Monika Stadler, and biographer Ingrid Radewaldt, who knew Stölzl personally.30 The catalogue contains a comprehensive biography, describing Stölzl’s life in
25 Most notable are the exhibitions Arbeiten aus der Weberei des Bauhauses at the Bauhaus-Archiv, Darmstadt (12 May – 14 June 1964), 50 Jahre Bauhaus at the Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart (5 May – 28 July 1968), and the small solo exhibition Gunta Stadler-Stölzl: Wandteppiche und Entwürfe 1921-1976 at the Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin (20 November 1976 – 30 January 1977).
26 For example, the Busch-Reisinger Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts bought a wall hanging (1923) in 1949, followed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, that purchased a wall hanging (1924) in 1958.
27 Already in 1976, the Bauhaus-Archiv had organized a small retrospective exhibition (20 November 1976-30 January 1977), but without a catalogue. The focus of this exhibition was on wall hangings. Furthermore, it was organized together with the exhibition Kibbutz+Bauhaus on Stölzl’s former husband and Bauhaus architect Arieh Sharon, an exhibition that would travel all over the world until 1980. For Stölzl, the exhibition in 1987 was the first retrospective exhibition that would travel abroad, including a broad range of works and with a valuable catalogue.
28 Droste, ‘Gunta Stölzl und die Entwicklung der Bauhaus-Weberei’ (1987).
29 Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin. Gunta Stölzl: Weberei am Bauhaus und aus eigener Werkstatt (1987).
30 Cf. Radewaldt and Stadler, ‘Gunta Stölzl. Biographie’ (1997); Radewaldt, ‘Gunta Stölzl’ (2009); Radewaldt, Gunta Stölzl: Pionierin der Bauhausweberei (2019).
21 great detail.31 Although a large part of the biography is devoted to her Bauhaus years, it is still one of
the few biographies that actually discusses Stölzl’s full career as a weaver, which is maybe no surprise when one takes into account the involvement of her daughter and a scholar who knew Stölzl personally and had direct access to Stölzl’s relatively unknown works in the possession of her family. Nevertheless, the focus of the exhibition itself again was on Stölzl’s Bauhaus textiles.
After 1997, there has not been a monographic exhibition, apart from a small exhibition that I curated myself in March 2019 at the Wall House #2 in Groningen.32 Interestingly, until 2019, when Radewaldt’s biography on Stölzl was published, all of the literature that is devoted to Stölzl specifically only consists of catalogues, publications related to an exhibition on which the focus is usually on the Bauhaus years.
An exception is the book Gunta Stölzl. Bauhausmeisterin in 2009, written by Stölzl’s daughters Yael Aloni and Monika Stadler, published in the context of the 90th anniversary of the Bauhaus. An English version was published by the Museum of Modern Art in New York on the occasion of the exhibition Bauhaus 1919-1933. Workshops for Modernity.33 The book discusses Stölzl mainly from a biographical perspective, focusing on the period 1917-1931, that is, mostly on the Bauhaus years. Despite this limited scope, it is an important publication as Aloni and Stadler included letters and diary entries by Stölzl that had not been published before. Until today, there has not been another publication that made use of these primary sources to such an extent. Nevertheless, similar to the catalogue in 1997, this book came into existence through the efforts of Stölzl’s family, not through scholarly interests. Furthermore, the book was published within the context of the Bauhaus – its 90th anniversary – and was translated into English as part of a Bauhaus exhibition.
1.2 From the 1990s onwards: Bauhaus women and feminist art history
After 1987, when the first catalogue on Stölzl was published, further literature in which Gunta Stölzl is discussed slowly started to be written in the 1990s, moving on apace in the last ten years. What stands out is that these publications appear exclusively within the context of the Bauhaus and more specifically in the context of women at the Bauhaus. Stölzl’s first appearance in art historical literature coincides with the rediscovery of female Bauhäusler. With the rise of feminist art history in the 1990s, the Bauhaus weaving workshop became the place of gender inequalities34: women were forced into their own workshop where a feminine craft was practiced.35 The first one to actually take up the subject of Bauhaus
31 Radewaldt and Stadler, ‘Gunta Stölzl. Biographie’ (1997).
32 This exhibition, Gunta Stölzl: 100 Years of Bauhaus Textiles. ran from 30 March – 1 September 2019 at Wall House #2, a small venue in Groningen, the Netherlands, focusing on local art projects. As the Gunta Stölzl Archive is based in Groningen and because of the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus, I was asked to curate this exhibition, in which I deliberately not only focused on Stölzl’s Bauhaus textiles, but more on her Swiss years, on her influence on contemporary designers, and on her life as a mother and a friend.
33 The exhibition ran at the MoMA from 8 November 2009 – 25 January 2010.
34 Baumhoff, ‘Gunta Stölzl’, 351.
35 Smith, Bauhaus Weaving Theory, xxvi-xxxi. For an interesting discussion on the development of the image of textile as Kunstgewerbe, as a craft, and as a form of (modern) art throughout the last century, see Dogramaci,
22 women was Magdalena Droste, who was also responsible for the canonical publication on the Bauhaus
in 2002. Interestingly, her research on Bauhaus women started with Gunta Stölzl when she collaborated on the catalogue for the monographic exhibition in 1987.36 Early incidental publications after 1987 on Bauhaus women include Bauhaus Textiles: Woman Artists and the Weaving Workshop (1993) by Sigrid Wortmann Weltge, in which female Bauhäusler are discussed within the context of the textile department. In the same year, the Bauhaus museums in Germany and the Textielmuseum in Tilburg, the Netherlands organized the exhibition Das Bauhaus webt. Die Textilwerkstatt am Bauhaus (1998)37, together with an extensive catalogue. But such publications remained the exception rather than the rule.
Evá Forgács, for example, in her book The Bauhaus Idea and Bauhaus Politics (1995), does not discuss the unequal position of Bauhaus women nor the exceptional yet paradoxical appointment of Stölzl in 1927. Forgács only introduces Stölzl as “a student, and later leader of the textile workshop”38, and mentions her as one of the students who “matured into creative individualities”39.
In her book The Gendered World of the Bauhaus (2001) Anja Baumhoff, art historian and an expert on the Bauhaus and gender, claims that it is the first proper publication on the (rather conservative) gender policy of the Bauhaus, as until then publications on the Bauhaus would “focus mainly on Bauhaus products and their producers, and neglect to analyze power structures, status, and gender.”40 She argues that it was Sigrid Wortmann Weltge’s publication from 1993 that introduced the women of the Bauhaus to English-speaking readers, but that it still mainly described their products, not discussing them within the context of the Bauhaus gender policy.41 According to Baumhoff, the democratic tradition and modern idea of gender equality the Bauhaus has been associated with was actually undermined by the school’s ambiguous and nineteenth-century conception of craftmanship and art based on notions of the (male) genius, which differentiated between three categories of art. There was fine art (Kunst), such as painting and sculpture, there was handicraft or craft (Handwerk), such as carpentry, and there was applied art (Kunstgewerbe) such as weaving and other forms of textile crafts.
These categories were hierarchical and gendered: fine art and handicraft were male domains, whereas Kunstgewerbe was a female occupation, with a lower status. Until the early 1920s in Germany, women were excluded from most of the handicrafts and art academies, that is, the first and second male domains.42 Therefore, when the Bauhaus proclaimed the unity between Kunst and Handwerk while
‘Textile Moderne’ (2019) and the other discussions within the same edited volume Textile Moderne/Textile Modernism (2019).
36 Droste, ‘Gunta Stölzl und die Entwicklung der Bauhaus-Weberei’ (1987). Droste worked at the Bauhaus- Archiv between 1980 and 1997.
37 The exhibition traveled from 16 September 1998 until 5 December 1999.
38 Forgács, Bauhaus Idea and Bauhaus Politics, 88.
39 Idem., 131.
40 Baumhoff, The Gendered World of the Bauhaus, 8.
41 Ibid.
42 See Herber, Frauen an deutschen Kunstakademien im 20. Jahrhundert (2009) for an in-depth discussion of art education for women in Germany in the early 20th century, especially in relation to art academies.
The Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin devoted an exhibition to the women artists in its collection before 1919, the first year women were permitted to enter a regular art program at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. Fighting
23 inviting women to apply, this could indeed be seen as revolutionary and modern. However, Baumhoff
argues, the reality turned out to be different, for “when Gropius wanted women to become craftsmen he knew that they could hardly be professional handicraftsmen but that they could only do arts and crafts [Kunstgewerbe].”43 Following Baumhoff’s argument, it is no wonder that the women’s class at the Bauhaus became the weaving workshop, associated with Kunstgewerbe rather than with the male domains of fine art or craft. As for Stölzl, Baumhoff argues that “…weaving seemed to be the ideal craft for her. There she did not have to compete with male colleagues and felt free to pursue her own career.”44 However, Baumhoff seems to ignore the fact that the textile department was not necessarily founded as the women’s class because of its associations with femininity, but also, as was stated in the introduction, because the Bauhaus had taken over the looms from the Kunstgewerbeschule that had previously occupied the building in Weimar. These looms were simply still available when the women’s class was founded. Furthermore, as I will argue in the third chapter, Stölzl made a virtue out of necessity by eventually turning the weaving workshop into a place where she could indeed pursue her own career, but by turning weaving into an acknowledged form of Handwerk as well as a form of Kunst, textiles being only a medium to fulfil this aim rather than only a ‘safe’ female domain. I will return to this argument in the third chapter, sustaining it with Stölzl’s own writings from 1926 and 1931.
One year prior to her general publication on Bauhaus women, Baumhoff had already written a chapter on Gunta Stölzl and the Bauhaus weaving workshop in in the extensive anthology Bauhaus by Jeannine Fiedler and Peter Feierabend (2000). Here, Baumhoff does not mince her words when she calls Gunta Stölzl ‘die Alibi-Meisterin’ (‘token master’).45 Baumhoff describes Stölzl’s career at the Bauhaus from the early years until the point that she was appointed Jungmeister, arguing that Stölzl made herself rather indispensable belonging to the Bauhäusler of the first hour, but was never appointed by the Master’s Council, as “das Bauhaus hatte nie geplant, einer Frau die Leitung einer Werkstatt zu übertragen.”46 She describes Stölzl’s official predecessor, the painter Georg Muche, who acted as Formmeister of the workshop, as barely interested in the practice and the technical side of weaving. For example, it was Stölzl and not Muche who was assigned the task of redesigning the weaving workshop in Dessau.47 As the weavers themselves – instead of the Master’s Council – urgently requested the appointment of Stölzl as Muche’s official successor, she was made Jungmeister in 1927. However, Baumhoff argues that giving in to the request of the weavers was also a politically strategic move by the council:
for Visibility: Women Artists in the Nationalgalerie before 1919 runs from 11 October 2019 until 8 March 2020 and claims to be “a revision of the collection, when viewed against the background of current discourse on gender equality.”
43 Baumhoff, Gendered World of the Bauhaus, 19.
44 Idem., 105.
45 Baumhoff, ‘die Alibi-Meisterin’, 354-357.
46 Idem., 354.
47 Ibid.
24
“Diese Stellenbesetzung hatte die Stärke der Weberinnen gezeigt, und ihr nachzugeben war sicherlich klug. Eine einzige Formmeisterin konnte beweisen, daß auch eine Frau am Bauhaus Aufstiegschancen hatte. Gunta Stölzl wurde so das Pfand, das anderen Frauen suggerierte ‘es geht doch…’, und verhinderte damit eine noch größere Unzufriedenheit. Nun konkurrierten die Weberinnen untereinander um den begehrten Posten in der Webwerkstatt, denn wenig andere Möglichkeiten standen den begabten Studentinnen zu dieser Zeit am Bauhaus offen.”48
This political move is paradoxically what makes Stölzl’s position of Bauhaus Master at the same time the rather painful position of the ‘Alibi-Meisterin’. Of course, Stölzl was also appointed because of her previous merits, the talents that she had shown as a student and because of the natural yet unofficial leadership she had already demonstrated since the foundation of the weaving workshop. For Baumhoff, Stölzl is the only Jungmeisterin in the history of the Bauhaus, although her successors in the weaving workshop (Anni Albers, Otti Berger) could now also have a leading position.49 As Baumhoff argues, Gunta Stölzl could to some extent make a career at the Bauhaus, as the ‘Alibi-Meisterin’, just because she was a woman, as the weaving workshop was the only place where women could take the lead.50 Baumhoff is one of the few who not only emphasizes the unequal position of female Bauhaus students and the important role of Gunta Stölzl’s appointment as Jungmeister of the weaving workshop for that discussion, but also the paradox that is inherent to this appointment. To put it simply, Gunta Stölzl’s position as official Master of the weaving workshop is on the one hand an exception within the gender politics of the Bauhaus, while on the other hand being the very result of her being a woman at the Bauhaus, to which the association of weaving with femininity is closely related.51
As the question of gender (in)equality at the Bauhaus gained prominence, biographies of individual Bauhaus women received growing attention. This is visible in the work of Ulrike Müller, who in 2009 published Bauhaus-Frauen. Meisterinnen in Kunst, Handwerk und Design and its English
48 Idem., 355.
49 The only other officially appointed Meisterin was Lilly Reich, who took over as head of the weaving workshop, which had become part of the workshop for interior design, in January 1932, from Otti Berger, who had headed the workshop temporarily and unofficially. Also not unimportant, Reich was the first woman to enter the Deutscher Werkbund in 1920.Reich was trained in embroidery, but had turned to interior design and
furniture, becoming the partner of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the last director of the Bauhaus. Nevertheless, Baumhoff still argues that Stölzl was the only official Jungmeister as Reich’s appointment only lasted a few months, hence her influence on the workshop is incomparable to Stölzl’s, and Reich’s position is difficult to separate from her relationship to Mies van der Rohe. Through this last argument Baumhoff inseparably links Reich’s career at the Bauhaus to Mies van der Rohe, hence not only pointing out Reich’s already established talents as a designer, but at the same time emphasizing Reich’s role as a woman (and more specific: his woman), too. See Baumhoff, ‘Die Alibi-Meisterin’, 354-355.
50 “Neben ihrer Persönlichkeit gibt es jedoch strukturell bedingte Gründe, weshalb Gunta Stölzl an der männerdominierten Schule Karriere machen konnte. Die Frauenklasse bot als einziges weiblich definiertes Arbeitsgebiet die notwendige Legitimation für eine weibliche Führungsposition. Ohne dieses
Geschlechterdenken hätte Gunta Stölzl ihren Anspruch auf eine leitende Position kaum durchsetzen können.
Dieses ausgesprochene Frauenfach ließ es legitim erscheinen, daß alle anderen Bereiche wie die Tischlerei, die Wandmalerei, die Töpferei oder die Metallwerkstatt den Männern zugeschrieben werden konnten. Frauen wurden dort nur als Ausnahmen gedultet.” Baumhoff, ‘Gunta Stölzl’, 347.
51 On this subject, see also Smith, Bauhaus Weaving Theory, xxvi-xxxi.
25 translation Bauhaus Women. Art, Handicraft, Design. Her publication on Bauhaus women from 2009
was preceded by Die klugen Frauen von Weimar. Regentinnen, Salondamen, Schrifstellerinnen und Künstlerinnen (2007), which included biographies of women in Weimar between the 18th and early 20th century. From this historical perspective, she also discusses the Bauhaus, and in particular Gunta Stölzl, Friedl Dicker (1898-1944), and Marianne Brandt (1893-1983). Müller describes the social-political circumstances of Germany after the First World War, the beginning of the Weimar Republic, the rise of the avant-garde and a new ‘modern’ Zeitgeist.52 This discussion was further developed in her publication Bauhaus-Frauen in 2009, which includes biographies of individual Bauhaus women. Stölzl’s biography is written by co-author Ingrid Radewaldt.53 As one of the few scholars, Radewaldt here shortly describes Stölzl’s youth in Munich, as well as the early drawings, which she describes as powerful (‘kraftvoll’), that Stölzl must have showed to Gropius when she asked for admission to the Bauhaus in 191954, arguing that these free works demonstrated talent and strong observational skills.55 In mentioning and even shortly describing these drawings, Radewaldt is a lonely exception, but it is an exception that can be explained due to the fact that Radewaldt writes from a biographical perspective, having known Stölzl personally, and that she had access to Stölzl’s early work on paper that are in her family’s care. For the same reason it is also no wonder that Radewaldt is also one of the very few to pay attention to Stölzl’s months at the Bauhaus before she entered the weaving workshop, when she started in the stained glass workshop and switched to decorative painting, with the secret desire to paint frescoes.56 This is one of the blind spots to which I will return in the conclusion.
The recent publication Bauhaus Women. A Global Perspective (2019) by art historian Elizabeth Otto and Patrick Rössler, an expert in the field of communication studies, also takes a biographical approach, albeit much more limited. The entry on Gunta Stölzl is written by Ulrike Müller and Ingrid Radewaldt. They mention Stölzl’s studies in ceramics and glass painting during her years in Munich, but ignore the fact that she initially studied the latter during her first months at the Bauhaus. Rather, it seems as if she had joined the weaving department from the moment she entered the school. The reason for Stölzl leaving the Kunstgewerbeschule and entering the Bauhaus merely was, according to this chapter, the disillusion after the First World War. The chapter further discusses Stölzl’s student life at the Bauhaus influenced by Johannes Itten and Paul Klee, followed by her role of a mentor and teacher in the weaving workshop. Her Swiss decades are summarized in a concluding paragraph, which mainly
52 Müller, Die klugen Frauen von Weimar, 133.
53 Radewaldt, ‘Gunta Stölzl’, 39-50.
54 The folder that she most likely brought with her to Gropius, A1-sized, and with her name ‘Gunda Stölzl’
inscribed in elegant black letters on the front, but unfortunately empty, was until recently (June 2019) in the possession of Ingrid Radewaldt. She returned it to Monika Stadler, with the hopes of transferring it to a museum collection in the future.
55 Radewaldt, ‘Gunta Stölzl’, 40.
56 Idem., 42.
