Alen Müller-Hellwig

Nose shield of the weaver Alen Müller at the customs house next to the castle gate

Alen Müller-Hellwig , b. Müller (born October 7, 1901 in Lauenburg in Pomerania ; † December 9, 1993 in Lübeck ) was a German art weaver .

Live and act

tree
before 1931
Hand-knotted from hand-spun, undyed sheep's wool, 158 cm × 130.2 cm
Busch-Reisinger Museum ; Cambridge, Massachusetts linked image (please note copyrights )

Alen Müller learned hand weaving and embroidery , first at the Hamburg School of Applied Arts as a student of Paul Helms and Maria Brinckmann, then at the Munich School of Applied Arts with Else Jaskolla. In 1925 she passed the master's examination as an embroiderer and in 1928 as a hand weaver.

From 1926 to 1991 she had a hand-weaving workshop in Lübeck. In 1934, the castle gate (tower and the adjoining customs office to the east ) was given to her as a place of work and residence. She had been married to the violin maker Günther Hellwig (1903–1985) since 1937 , who also relocated his workshop here and dedicated himself specifically to the construction of the viola da gamba .

As one of the first weavers, she created a tapestry made entirely of undyed sheep's wool, working solely with the natural shades and the material appeal of the undyed and sometimes unwashed wool. When The Tree , her first work of this kind, was exhibited in the Grassi Museum in Leipzig in autumn 1927 , it caused a sensation. She was then invited to all major German arts and crafts exhibitions abroad.

Living room of the Villa Tugendhat

Her style came close to the ideas of the Bauhaus . She "invented design motifs from the technique of warp and weft ." With the exhibition Hand-Woven Carpets from the Best German Weavers in the Behnhaus, Carl Georg Heise offered her a first great opportunity to present herself in Lübeck and showed her work again in the hall of the Behnhaus On the occasion of the great Carl Milles exhibition in Lübeck in 1929. From 1929 onwards, Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich ordered a series of single-colored, hand-knotted sheep's wool carpets from her for the Villa Tugendhat , the Barcelona Pavilion and buildings in Paris and Milan. In 1931 she received the honorary award of the city of Berlin. She took part in the world exhibitions in Chicago in 1933 and in Paris in 1937 . In Paris she received a gold medal.

Alfred Mahlau , Robert Pudlich and Ervin Bossányi provided designs for their carpets . A model from Bossányi was her first figurative web motif. In 1932 she was the only woman, together with the painters Curt Stoermer and Hans Peters , the graphic artist Alfred Mahlau, the garden architect Harry Maasz and the architects Wilhelm Bräck and Emil Steffann to the founders of the artist group Werkgruppe Lübeck .

From 1934 to 1939, 70 carpets were made based on designs by Alfred Mahlaus, primarily on behalf of the Reich Aviation Ministry , but also for municipalities and private individuals. The growing workshop was thus well utilized. In 1935 it comprised ten looms, a wool laundry, spinning mill with nine spinning wheels, an exhibition room, and an office and sales room, and employed three journeymen, four apprentices, two employees, three unskilled workers, nine home workers and two interns. The first carpet in this series was the Drei Möwen curtain for Kiel-Holtenau Airport . Most of the works of this time have been destroyed or lost. However, some examples, including the cycle The Four Elements from 1939, have been preserved because they were acquired by Walter Passarge for the Kunsthalle Mannheim . The collaboration with Mahlau ended in 1940 because he wanted to support Alen Müller-Hellwig's long-time employee, Hildegard Osten, after opening her own workshop. In March 1942 an exhibition took place in the Reichsmuseum Amsterdam during the German occupation under the title Exhibition of modern tapestries based on designs by Alfred Mahlau and Alen Müller-Hellwig Lübeck. Fabrics and embroidery. Alfred Mahlau Lübeck. Cardboard boxes for tapestries from the Alen Müller Hellwig workshop.

Alen Müller-Hellwig turned back to his own designs and until 1942 created a series of tapestries with plant motifs such as thimble meadow (1940), spiraea, bear claw and mullein. Even after the air raid on Lübeck on March 29, 1942 , during which her workshop remained undamaged, she continued to operate it in the Lübeck Burgtor (her two children Friedemann and Barbara brought her to safety in Timmendorfer Strand). After the end of the war, the work was expanded to include textiles for daily use (bed linen, towels, tablecloths) and employed numerous women, mainly from Germany's east, among others. a. Spinners from East Prussia. After the industrial production of textiles got going again, she restricted her work to decorative pieces and floor carpets. In 1954 she received the Schleswig-Holstein Art Prize . Alen Müller-Hellwig ran her workshop until 1990.

Her last apprentice Ruth Löbe (* 1959) took over the workshop in 1992 and continued it until her death in January 2016.

Public engagement

In the hard and controversial discussion about Heises Barlach Plan in Lübeck in 1930 , she publicly declared herself in the Lübeckische Blätter as a proponent of this concept:

"... if the artist has the courage to take on this task, we too should have the courage to give the artist the floor and let all concerns remain silent."

- Enns, culture and bourgeoisie , p. 151

estate

On her 90th birthday, Alen Müller-Hellwig donated a collection of 25 designs to the Hamburg Museum of Art and Industry .

Nine portfolios from her estate and a. with correspondence and newspaper clippings are kept by the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin.

Alen Müller Hellwig Prize

In 1989, on the occasion of its 75th anniversary and in honor of Alen Müller-Hellwig, who was a member of the association for 67 years , the Lübeck Group donated the Alen-Müller-Hellwig Prize as a sponsorship award for female artisans in the German Association of Women and Culture eV northern German countries. It is awarded every three years and is endowed with 5000 euros.

Prize winners:

• 1990: Maria Dohmann, metal artist from Hildesheim
• 1992: Half to Julia Brandes, goldsmith, and Renata Brink, art weaver, both from Hamburg
• 1995: Christine Lange, goldsmith from Hanover
• 1998: Mascha Moje, gold and silversmith from Hamburg
• 2001: Half to Heike Kähler, goldsmith and graduate designer from Itzehoe, and Christine Keller, graduate designer from Hamburg
• 2004: Half to Ulrike Meyer, wood turner, carpenter and graduate designer from Lübeck, and half to Mette Marie Welm, goldsmith from Hamburg
• 2007: Christine Lambrecht, state-certified jewelry designer from Rendsburg
• 2010: (not awarded)
• 2013: Silke Decker, graduate designer from Hamburg
• 2016: Maria Konschake, jewelry designer in Wismar

Publicly owned works

• Der Baum (1928) Kilim weaving, sheep's wool, hand-spun, natural brown and white, 127 × 125 cm; Museum Behnhaus Lübeck (Inv. No. 1929/96).
• Tapestry flowers nut (1929) Gobelinweberei, llama wool, hand woven, natural color, 215 × 92 cm; Commissioned work for the Museum Behnhaus Lübeck based on a design by Bossanyi (Inv. No. 1929/97)
• Tree (before 1931) wool, jute; 158 × 130 cm; Harvard Art Museums / Busch-Reisinger Museum (Anonymous Gift, BR31.95)
• Lübeck the head of the Hanseatic League (1938), wool, 334 × 200 cm; Landesbank Girozentrale Lübeck, today HSH Nordbank
• Lübecke aller Steden Schöne (1939), wool, 328 × 200 cm; Kunsthalle Mannheim (Inv. No. 270)
• Cycle: The Four Elements (1939), wool, 270 × 177 cm; Kunsthalle Mannheim (Inv. No. 283, 284, 411, 412)

Fonts

• About the establishment of a weaving school in Lübeck in 1910. In: Der Wagen 1966, pp. 150–153.
• Report on the workshop from 1926 to 1966. [Lübeck, Burgtorhaus, Grosse Burgstr. 5: self-published] 1966

Exhibition catalogs

• Ingeborg Wittichen: Forty years of Alen Müller-Hellwig hand-weaving. [Exhibition]; Lübeck, Burgtorhaus, 26. Jan.-23. February 1969. Celle: Bomann Museum 1969
• Wulf Schadendorf : Alen Müller-Hellwig: tapestries, hangings, fabrics and embroidery 1923-1976. Exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of the workshop, St. Annen Museum, Lübeck, October 10 - November 14, 1976; The Textile Museum, Washington, DC, April - May 1977. Lübeck: Museum for Art and Cultural History 1976 (Art and Artists in Lübeck 3)
• The hand weaving mill Alen Müller-Hellwig: own work from 5 decades. Schleswig-Holstein State Library Kiel, February 24 - April 18, 1979, Kiel, Schloss. Kiel: Schleswig-Holstein State Library 1979

literature

• Abram B. Enns : Art and Bourgeoisie. The controversial twenties in Lübeck. Lübeck 1978. ISBN 3-7672-0571-8
• Walter Passarge : Alen Müller-Hellwig: carpets and wall hangings. Berlin: Riemerschmidt 1940 (workshop report, edited by Kunstdienst. H. 7.)
• Barbara Reinhardt: Alen Müller-Hellwig's hand-weaving workshop. Master's thesis, University of Hamburg 1985 (with catalog raisonné)
• Susanne Harth: Memories of a time of new beginnings: Alen Müller and her way into the modern age. In: Yearbook of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg 9/10 (1990/91), pp. 195–232.
• Anja Prölß-Kammerer: The tapestry under National Socialism: Propaganda, representation and production; Facets of a handicraft in the "Third Reich". Hildesheim ; Zurich; New York: Olms 2000 (Studies on Art History; Vol. 137) ISBN 3-487-11167-5 , esp. Pp. 86–93.
• Susan Day: Art deco and modernist carpets. San Francisco: Chronicle Books 2002 ISBN 9780811836135 , p. 109 (with illustration of Müller-Hellwigs carpets)

Web links

• Literature by and about Alen Müller-Hellwig in the catalog of the German National Library
• Here the given pdf link leads to the Alen Müller-Hellwig panel in the exhibition Women in Lübeck History (panel 28)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ it is unclear whether the carpet is still the original
2. ↑ Enns, Kultur und Bürgerertum , p. 124.
3. ↑ Anja Prölß-Kammerer (lit.), p. 88
4. ↑ Anja Prölß-Kammerer (lit.), p. 86f with note 119
5. ↑ Anja Prölß-Kammerer (lit.), p. 92
6. ^ Poster for the exhibition, accessed on December 14, 2011
7. ↑ Color illustration in Passarge (Lit.), frontispiece
8. ↑ figures in: weavings of Alen Müller-Hellwig , oin Gebrauchsgraphik 19 (1942), pp 25-31 ( digitized )
9. ↑ My workshop on Ruth Löbe Burgtorweberei Lübeck ( Memento of the original from March 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Archive version) 
10. ^ Yearbook of the Museum of Art and Industry Hamburg. 1992, p. 265
11. ↑ To Kalliope (database) (the search function must be used for verification)
12. ↑ Alen-Müller-Hellwig-Preis  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
13. ^ Annual exhibition of the craftsmen in the Museumsquartier , press release of the Lübeck museums from June 7, 2013, accessed on August 23, 2013
14. ↑ to 2t. Annual review of the Professional Association of Applied Arts Schleswig-Holstein eV ( Memento from October 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on October 8, 2016
15. ↑ At that time the Behnhaus already owned a majolica figure of a flower girl by Bossanyi (around 1925; inv. No. 1928/172)
16. ^ Entry with illustration in the collection database of the Harvard Art Museums, accessed on February 1, 2016
17. ↑ Figure in Passarge (Lit.), p. 17
18. ↑ Figure in Passarge (Lit.), p. 19