Else Oppler-Legband

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Else Oppler-Legband, portrait by Minya Diez-Dührkoop , 1907

Else Oppler-Legband , née Oppler (born February 21, 1875 in Nuremberg , † December 7, 1965 in Überlingen on Lake Constance) was a German architect , interior designer , artist / craftswoman , costume designer and fashion designer . Oppler-Legband is one of the representatives of the so-called “ reform clothing ” in women's fashion of the 1910s and 1920s, the center of which was Berlin.

life and work

Else Oppler was the elder of two daughters of Theodor Oppler (1835–1909) and his wife Julie, née Stern (1850–1939). Else's father was a chemist and owner of a chemical factory in Fürth. She spent her childhood in Fürth and her youth in Nuremberg, where she attended the Port'sche Institute. Her sister Frida was an artist, later married to Otto Rubensohn . Her uncle was the architect Edwin Oppler , Else was a cousin of the artists Ernst Oppler and Alexander Oppler . She first completed training at the Munich Art Academy with Maximilian Dasio (drawing), and in 1898 she lived in Dachau . as well as with Henry van de Velde in Berlin, with Josef Hoffmann at the Wiener Werkstätte (with the latter two together with Lilly Reich ) and from 1901 as a master student with Peter Behrens in Nuremberg (whose partner she became in the 1920s). Studying together with Else Oppler-Legband probably had a major influence on Lilly Reich's range of activities.

From 1901 to 1903 she was the artistic director of the arts and crafts department of the Nuremberg Frauenwohl Association, then from 1903 to 1904 she was artistic director of the arts and crafts department of the Wertheim department store in Berlin (either A. Wertheim GmbH or Wilhelm Wertheim) and Lilly's trainer Rich.

In 1904 she married the artistic director, director and set designer Paul Legband . In September 1910 she took over the management of the newly founded "Higher School for Decorative Art", which was supported by the German Werkbund, the Association for Commercial Teaching and the Association of Berlin Specialty Shops (VBS). Originally located on the premises of the VBS, the facility was incorporated into the Reimann School on January 1, 1912 .

Around 1913 she worked with her husband in Freiburg im Breisgau . From 1913 at the latest, she has been proven to be a member of the Deutscher Werkbund (DWB).

Oppler-Legband was responsible for the buildings in several silent films: King Nicolo (1919, director: Paul Legband), Schwarzwaldmädel (1920, director: Arthur Wellin ), The Crown Jewels of the Duke of Rochester (1920, director: Paul Legband), The Swarm of the higher daughters (1920, directed by Franz Hofer ). In 1922 she was the costume designer for the German silent film Marie-Antoinette, The Life of a Queen (director: Rudolf Meinert ). In a letter dated June 12, 1926, the Inter-Allied Rhineland Higher Commission banned the film from selling and showing it in the occupied area.

Else Oppler-Legband's collaboration as a designer at the Ibach piano manufacture is specifically documented.

Originally, Oppler-Legband was supposed to design the furniture for the apartment in the Behrens building of the Stuttgart Weißenhofsiedlung , which was built in 1927, but in the end the order was carried out by the brothers Heinz Rasch and Bodo Rasch .

Her partner at the time, Peter Behrens, who won the competition for the design of Berlin's Alexanderplatz in 1929 , chose sandstone from an Unstrut quarry for the facade cladding of the Alexanderhaus there , which was majority owned by Else Oppler-Legband.

She fled to Sweden from the National Socialists . After the end of the Second World War, she returned to Germany and lived in Überlingen on Lake Constance until her death on December 7, 1965.

Filmography

literature

  • Else Oppler-Legband: The High School for Decorative Art . In: Spiritualization of German work. Yearbook of the Deutscher Werkbund 1912 , Jena 1912, pp. 105–110.

Web links

Sources and Notes

Main source of all biographical information, unless otherwise stated, is the website:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Claudia Frosch-Hoffmann: Chemistry between Nuremberg and Fürth Abhandlungen der Naturhistorische Gesellschaft zu Nürnberg, Abh. 48, (2017), pp. 92-107
  2. ^ Lorenz Josef Reitmeier: Dachau: the famous painter's place; Art and testimony from 1200 years of history; presented in twelve topics with addenda to the trilogy “Dachau - Views from Twelve Centuries” and a Dachau artist list . City of Dachau, Dachau, 1989. ISBN 3-7991-6464-2
  3. ↑ "[…] Reich might have practiced the typical female accomplishments had she not studied with Else Oppler-Legband. [...] Oppler-Legband's interests and capabilities demonstrated to Reich the wide range of art activities then open to women, especially in the areas of fashion, window, scenery, and interior design. " Virginia Pitts Rember, Review of: Mathilda McQuaid, Magdalena Droste: Lilly Reich: Designer and Architect . Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Autumn, 1997 - Winter, 1998), p. 57
  4. ^ Esther da Costa Meyer: Cruel Metonymies: Lilly Reich's Designs for the 1937 World's Fair . In: New German Critique, No. 76, Special Issue on Weimar Visual Culture (Winter, 1999), pp. 161-189
  5. ↑ With further references: Sherwin Simmons: August Macke's Shoppers: Commodity Aesthetics, Modernist Autonomy and the Inexhaustible Will of Kitsch . Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte , 63 vol., Volume 1. (2000), p. 53, footnote 23.
  6. ↑ filmportal.de, see web links
  7. ^ Herbert Birett: Sources on film history 1923–1929
  8. ↑ Florian Speer : Virtual Museum about the traditional piano manufacturer “Rud. Ibach Sohn ”, using documents from the company archive: Introduction and naming of the designers who work for Ibach who are known by name
  9. ↑ Marcus Nitschke: Not for eternity. The Alexanderhaus and its stone facade . In: Naturstein architektur 1–2 / 1998, pp. 6–10, online ( Memento from October 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). During the restoration at the end of the 1990s, it was replaced by Elm limestone .
personal data
SURNAME Oppler-Legband, Else
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Oppler, Else (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect, interior designer, artist / craftsperson, costume designer and fashion designer
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH December 7, 1965
Place of death Überlingen on Lake Constance