Bauhaus wallpaper

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The Bauhaus wallpapers are a collection of originally 14 wallpaper patterns designed by the Bauhaus . The wallpapers were first produced in 1929 by the wallpaper factory Gebr. Rasch in Bramsche and have been produced by the company in a modernized form ever since. They are considered to be the only Bauhaus product that is still industrially manufactured today.

Three samples of Bauhaus wallpaper, left sample b 4

description

The Bauhaus's first wallpaper collection was created in 1929 and was intended for the 1930 wallpaper season. It came out as a sample card and was called the “blue Bauhaus card” or the “blue Rasch card”. It was put together by the Bauhaus wall painting workshop . The map, bound with a blue book cover, contained 14 samples on 145 sheets, each in five to 15 color variations. The designs had small-scale structured designs and had textile structures, the finest grids, grids, vertical and horizontal dashes, blurred cross-hatching or waves. Pattern and background were kept in a hue different gradations, whereby the substrate and ornament chan alloyed . In this way the wall surface started to vibrate . Only light and friendly colors with small line and dot patterns that corresponded to the clear, unadorned aesthetics of the Bauhaus were used for wallpaper production. The wallpapers were intended for the entire wall and abolished the previously applicable division of the wall surface into plinth , picture field and frieze .

After the Second World War , the former Bauhaus teacher Hinnerk Scheper was responsible for the wallpaper designs and their coloring at the wallpaper factory Gebr. Rasch . In the 1950s, the continued Bauhaus wallpapers with applied plastic masses tied in with trends in Scandinavian design. Today (2019) the wallpaper factory Gebr. Rasch offers wallpapers in 40 different surface structures, which can be combined with 72 colors. According to the company, the combination of the wallpaper structure with the colors results in a wall design in the spirit of the Bauhaus. The designs and colors were coordinated with the Bauhaus archive in Berlin.

  • Wallpaper pattern

  • Bauhaus exhibition in the Lower Saxony state parliament , 2019

  • Two Bauhaus wallpapers in the exhibition

  • Two Bauhaus wallpapers in the exhibition

history

The production of Bauhaus wallpapers is based on an offer of cooperation from the managing director Emil Rasch of the wallpaper factory Gebr. Rasch in 1928 to the Bauhaus Dessau . Emil Rasch's sister and former Bauhaus student Maria Rasch made contact with the director of the Bauhaus Hannes Meyer . The wallpaper production that began in 1929 is based on a contract concluded in March 1929, which obliged the Bauhaus to create around 12 designs for a wallpaper and sample collection. According to the contract, 5% and later 8% of sales were earmarked for advertising.

A competition for the design of the wallpapers was announced within the Bauhaus. The student Hans Fischli won two thirds of the prizes with his designs. The other third went to the student Margaret Leiteritz . The aim associated with the Bauhaus wallpapers designed was to improve the lives of the common people in their people's apartments . The designs were a departure from the then expensive wallpaper wall decorations with ornamentation in the form of large-format flower motifs.

The Bauhaus wallpapers were initially a failure, as only four out of around 50 wholesalers included them in their range. The Rasch company then started a large-scale advertising campaign with advertising material designed by the Bauhaus advertising workshop. It was done through magazine advertisements and by sending 10,000 small sample books to the architects. In this way the middleman was bypassed and the wallpapers became a bestseller in 1930 with sales of 26,000 Reichsmarks . Architects are increasingly using them in new building developments , such as the Dammerstock estate in Karlsruhe. Bauhaus wallpapers were even used in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, which the Rasch company used to advertise in the Deutsche Tapetenzeitung in 1931 ("also in the Reich Chancellery bauhausapeten"). The wallpapers were also found in the NSDAP's "Brown House" in Osnabrück . The Bauhaus was involved in the sale of the Bauhaus wallpapers through a commission of eight percent. The wallpapers were the main source of income for the Bauhaus under the various license and patent income. A part of the proceeds was to be transferred to the city of Dessau. For 1931 the commission is estimated at around 6000 Reichsmarks, of which the city reclaimed around 4600 Reichsmarks.

After the Bauhaus dissolved itself in 1932, its last director, Mies van der Rohe, transferred the rights to the brand name “bauhaus” to the wallpaper factory Gebr. Rasch for 6000 Reichsmarks. By transferring the trademark rights , the Bauhaus wallpapers were withdrawn from state control through liquidation. The Bauhaus card with the wallpaper patterns was published annually up to the card 1940/41, with updates. On the basis of this sample card, wallpaper production continued until 1944. After a war-related break in operations at the end of the Second World War and in the post-war period , the wallpaper factory Gebr. Rasch resumed the production of Bauhaus wallpapers in 1949.

On the occasion of the 100th year of the founding of the Bauhaus in 1919, the Osnabrück Museum of Cultural History devoted itself in 2019 to Bauhaus wallpapers in an exhibition entitled "Bauhaus wallpaper - re-rolled". In the Lower Saxony state parliament in 2019, individual original Bauhaus wallpapers will also be shown in the exhibition “The dream of a new life - Lower Saxony and the Bauhaus”.

background

The wallpaper factory Gebr. Rasch was interested in a collaboration with the Bauhaus, as it feared a slump in sales due to the wallpaper hostility of the New Building in the 1920s. The Bauhaus wallpapers quickly became the main product of the wallpaper company.

The motivation on the part of the Bauhaus to enter into cooperation with industry probably had political and economic reasons and corresponded to the reorientation of the Bauhaus in the Dessau era in favor of industry and industrial design. This direction was represented by the new director of the Bauhaus, Hannes Meyer, whose maxim was “people's needs instead of luxury needs”.

literature

  • Andrea Branzi: Zeit Walls: a wallpaper collection by internationally renowned designers and architects; German Wallpaper Museum Kassel, June 13 - October 31, 1992 , Bramsche, 1992
  • Wallpaper factory Gebr. Rasch, Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (ed.): Bauhaus wallpaper : Advertising and success of a brand; advertising & success of a brandname , Cologne, DuMont, 1995

Web links

Commons : Bauhaus wallpapers  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Photo of the "blue Bauhaus card"
  2. ↑ Elsa Thiemann wallpaper design, 1930–1931 at bauhaus100.de
  3. ↑ a b Hanna Elisabeth Koch: "Beauty has a new meaning today" - On the West German design of the 1950s using the example of the wallpaper industry , 2014, dissertation, p. 22 (pdf)
  4. ↑ Today at the wallpaper factory Gebr. Rasch
  5. ↑ Bauhaus wallpaper structure + color by Rasch and Sikkens at sikkens.de
  6. ↑ Ruth Hunfeld: Wallpaper meets Bauhaus: wall decorations from Bramsche at ndr.de from April 20, 2019
  7. ↑ a b Bauhaus wallpaper b4 and b6. Gebr. Rasch GmbH at bauhaus 100
  8. ↑ Osnabrück: Museum is dedicated to Bauhaus wallpaper at ndr.de from August 16, 2019
  9. ↑ Werner Müller: The Bauhaus and advertising in: Bauhausapete: Advertising & Success of a Brand; advertising & success of a brandname , p. 28
  10. ↑ Renate Scheper: Wall painting and wallpaper in: Bauhaus wallpaper : Advertising and success of a brand; advertising & success of a brandname , p. 94
  11. ↑ a b c friend or foe? The Bauhaus and wallpaper at bauhaus, the day before Werner Möller on September 21, 2011
  12. ↑ Werner Müller: The Bauhaus and the Finances in: Bauhaus wallpaper: Advertising & Success of a Brand; advertising & success of a brandname , p. 26
  13. ^ Museum exhibition on Bauhaus wallpapers in Osnabrück
  14. ↑ The dream of a new life - Lower Saxony and the Bauhaus at the Lower Saxony state parliament
  15. ^ "Dream of a new life": Bauhaus show in the state parliament at ndr.de on September 9, 2019