Frankfurt cuisine

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Frankfurt kitchen from 1926

The Frankfurt kitchen was initiated by Ernst May in 1926 as part of the New Frankfurt project and developed by the Viennese architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky . It is regarded as the archetype of the modern fitted kitchen .

The Frankfurt kitchen should be designed to be as practical as an industrial workplace: all important things should be within easy reach and the work steps should be shortened with a variety of equipment . In order to be able to be reached quickly, the kitchen was kept very compact, which met the requirements of the large-scale housing construction. At the same time, the Frankfurt kitchen stood for high design standards .

basics

The basis of the Frankfurt kitchen was Taylorism , the aim of which is to optimize work processes. As early as 1912, Christine Frederick transferred this system to the work processes in the home environment, especially the kitchen, and published it as a book a year later. All movements to be carried out were measured with a stopwatch and the duration of a work process was determined and optimized.

Wall cabinets with sliding doors (Ernst-May-Haus)

It was Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky who, as an architect, transferred this idea of ​​work optimization with industrial mass production to housing construction by designing the kitchen workplace according to ergonomic and practical considerations, without neglecting affordability for broad sections of the population. The woman should have to spend less time in the kitchen to have more time for herself and for relaxation:

“The problem of making the housewife's work more rational is of equal importance to almost all strata of the population. Both the women of the middle class, who often do household chores without any help, and women of the working class, who often have to pursue other jobs, are so overburdened that their overwork cannot remain without consequences for the entire public health in the long term.

The kitchen is consistently designed as a workplace for one person; an assistant ( housemaid ) that is still quite common in larger households was explicitly excluded in the basic version of the kitchen.

The kitchen by the Viennese architect Anton Brenner , which he designed together with his assistant at the time , Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky , and the Haar kitchen by the Haarer brothers from Hanau can be seen as forerunners of the Frankfurt kitchen . The Grossauheim Museum says the following about this largely unknown company, Haarer :

"The company for reform kitchen furniture was founded in 1921 by the brothers Richard and Otto Haarer in Frankfurt am Main and moved to Lamboystraße in Hanau a year later. In 1925, the engineer Otto Haarer developed the 'economic kitchen' on the basis of occupational studies.
Otto Haarer already had a number of patents when he and his wife Anni met Ernst May (1886–1970), the Frankfurt City Planning Officer, at an exhibition held by the Agricultural Housewives Association in Hanau in February 1926.
There was a fruitful collaboration with the Frankfurt Building Department and the architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897-2000), who was able to build on the Haarer company's experience with cooking boxes, pot and pantry cupboards and new types of food containers when developing the 'Frankfurt kitchen' . From 1926, ten thousand fitted kitchens in Ernst May's housing estates in Frankfurt were equipped with the patented aluminum chute 'Original Haarer', which combined the properties of a drawer with those of a watering can.
The company went bankrupt during the global economic crisis of 1929. After that, Otto Haarer produced parts of his reform kitchens, in particular the chutes, in the Emil Möhn machine factory on Ruhrstrasse.”

layout

Combined electric charcoal stove from a Frankfurt kitchen: three electric plates and an oven with top and bottom heat (right) and a charcoal drawer with a warming drawer and plate above it (left)

Up until the 1920s, individual pieces of furniture were common in kitchens, which the occupants would have had to take with them to the unsuitable kitchen in case of doubt. Sometimes there were even apartments without kitchens or eat-in kitchens . Even then, a kitchen was a high-priced purchase, so that the provision of it was expected to benefit the resident.

The kitchens were custom-made for entire buildings. The entire functionality of a "large" kitchen should be concentrated in a minimal space (type 1: 1.9 m × 3.4 m), without subordinating efficiency to minimizing space. The individual work centers were arranged in such a way that unnecessary movements and hand movements were avoided.

The kitchen was formally simple, wooden parts were painted blue-green where visible, because according to scientists from the University of Frankfurt, flies avoid blue-green surfaces. There were a few deviations from the original color, ranging as far as green-blue. In addition, kitchens in other colors were also realized, especially from the large versions (Type 2 and 3).

The horizontal work surfaces consisted of a wooden body with a linoleum coating on one side (above) and an end strip at the front.

The worktop in front of the window was special in many respects: on the one hand it was made of natural wood, on the other hand it was mounted so low that you could work on it while seated. For the quick removal of waste from the work area, there was a rectangular recess on the right side of the plate with an oversized long, enamelled chute mounted underneath as “intermediate waste”. The free front edge without a ledge made it possible to attach kitchen utensils ( mayonnaise maker , can opener, strainer , etc.). The position of this special work area, perpendicular to the sink, allowed both the equipment and the plate to be cleaned immediately without anything falling to the floor.

The dishes were placed to the right of the double sink for washing up. The dishes were soaked in the right-hand basin, dirt was removed and then rinsed in the left-hand basin. Flat dishes (plates, lids, boards) could then be placed on the left in the appropriate stand above the draining basin to dry. Pots and other bulky items were stored directly on the draining pan. Drying should be completely replaced by draining.

Electric stove from a Frankfurt kitchen: three electric plates and an oven with top and bottom heat

Kitchen appliances in the true sense were not integrated into the Frankfurt kitchen. Rather, a workroom was created in which equipment could be set up and used according to taste and, above all, according to budget. In addition to the small electric stove , there was also one with side storage space for hot pots. After many housewives complained about the high cost of electric cooking, a combined coal and electric stove (see figure) and a cooking box for the electric stove were also offered. The refrigerators that are just coming up or the space for them were deliberately avoided.

To reduce costs, the standard variant of the Frankfurt kitchen was designed as a modular system that could be manufactured in large numbers in factories and only had to be installed by the carpenters. The cost of the kitchen was added to the rent. The Frankfurt kitchen not only influenced today's fitted kitchen through its design , but also through the standardization of the modules and the possibility of industrial production.

There are differences to today's fitted kitchens in terms of the materials: different woods and metals were used in the Frankfurt kitchen; Substitutes and imitations that were already known at the time were dispensed with. Today's fitted kitchen is mostly made of chipboard or MDF and provided with painted or laminated blend surfaces.

variants

The Frankfurt kitchen was produced in two versions: a small and a large one. Furthermore, deviations in the coloring are known, on the one hand due to production fluctuations (despite alleged supervision by the designer), on the other hand probably on request, so that there were also orange and gray copies. Pieces of furniture that have been preserved show a discolouration towards green and a dark colour. The residents made their own cupboards above the cupboard with the sliding doors, so that individualization took place here.

During production there were some changes in the standard kitchen. The separate furniture with the 18 characteristic drawers was given up in favor of 12 drawers in the high cupboard. One reason could have been a criticism of the RFG . There it was criticized that 12 instead of 18 chutes were enough and that these were too easily accessible for small children due to the height. Kitchens in public facilities and villas, on the other hand, were always custom-made, albeit using a few standard parts.

Another change concerns the chutes themselves, which exist in two versions. The first is marked "Haarer Frankfurt AM" and has embossed designations of the filling, the second is marked "Haarer Hanau AM" and riveted labels in a trough. Whether the latter were also produced in the kitchen or only afterwards is unproven. Unlike the kitchen itself, they can still occasionally be found in internet auctions.

production

The Frankfurt kitchen was used on a large scale as part of the ambitious Frankfurt housing program that created a large number of housing estates between 1926 and 1932 under the leadership of Ernst May ( New Frankfurt ). Since, on the one hand, it saved work and, on the other hand, the building costs could be reduced due to the smaller construction volume, every new municipal apartment had to be equipped with such a kitchen during this time - a total of around 10,000 of the 15,000 May apartments in Frankfurt am Main, but also a small number of Private kitchens in homes. The production costs per kitchen were around 500 marks at the beginning  . Thanks to the large number of pieces and the assembly line work in the commissioned wood workshops, the unit costs in the large Westhausen housing estate were only 238.50 marks, but it was only a simplified economy version.

importance

designation

The name "Frankfurter Küche" was chosen to distinguish the design and the product from products from other cities. Although there were variants and further developments, the decision was made consciously in favor of the singular, representative of a design approach shared by all kitchens from Frankfurt.

Contemporary Resonance

Aluminum chutes
( Gebrüder Haarer , Frankfurt and Hanau)

Despite the avant-garde aesthetics and the benefit of saving labor, the innovation did not always meet with a positive response. After the introduction of the model, the Reich Research Society for Economic Efficiency in Building and Housing (RFG) found that some households made significant efforts to stick to their previous habits (putting more pieces of furniture in the kitchen, eating in the kitchen, cooking in the living room, etc.) . In fact, the Frankfurt kitchen required considerable changes in the living culture of those directly affected, who had had no say in its design. The offices of the Frankfurt city administration tried very hard to get the Frankfurt cuisine to be accepted. Housewife evenings were organized for this purpose. Technical problems such as B. the acute lack of space with the cupboard doors open or the ingress of moisture into the food (the aluminum chutes were not closed at the top), could be remedied over the years. However, many felt that the Frankfurt kitchen was not flexible enough. The RFG criticized the concept of the aluminum chutes, which were rarely used and actually never for their originally intended function. The kitchen was not designed for the presence of children; housewives criticized that the aluminum chutes were placed too low and too easily accessible for children. The possibility for families to develop and retain their own forms of behavior was not necessarily part of the concept, although Schütte-Lihotzky had tried to bring about an appreciation of women's work.

Feedback after the end of the project

Ernst Neufert illustrated the kitchen in his 1936 building design theory, but also pointed out a few minor weaknesses. Nevertheless, kitchen floor plans in social housing after 1945 were mostly smaller than in New Frankfurt. Chipboard furniture with Resopal surfaces was now preferred ; sometimes the representative kitchen buffet came back into fashion. Only the chutes designed by Otto Haarer were still used in larger numbers. The Frankfurt kitchen remained known as an ideal in professional circles - only one architecture magazine reported on it in 1957.

With the historical review from 1976, interest in the Frankfurt kitchen grew again: in 1976, a historian's magazine reported on the importance of the kitchen. A few more followed, so that the kitchen was recognized as a kitchen design classic for about 10 years. In 1989, the Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky was therefore awarded the IKEA Prize by the IKEA Foundation. In addition to some new private kitchens, the best-known example is the Frankfurt kitchen in the MAK Vienna, which was built in 1990. Around the turn of the millennium, an Austrian company remade the beech wood handles in the Frankfurt kitchen.

The concept was viewed negatively by feminism from the 1970s to 1980s: since the room was only intended for one person, it was said that the Frankfurt kitchen almost locked the housewife in a narrow space and thus contributed to her isolation.

Some contemporary successor models are Le Corbusier's Modulor kitchen , the Munich kitchen as a compromise to the eat-in kitchen, the Swedish kitchen and the Swiss fitted kitchen . The achievements of the Frankfurt kitchen also flowed into their own developments in the Soviet Union.

Frankfurt kitchen today

Museum preservation

Frankfurt kitchen, MAK, Vienna (reconstruction 1990),
1st arrangement of the chutes
Frankfurt Kitchen at the Museum of Modern Art , New York
2. Arrangement of the aluminum chutes in the kitchen cupboard (Ernst-May-Haus)

Up until the 1980s, many Frankfurt kitchens ended up as bulky waste, mostly out of ignorance or after the first occupants had moved out. A second use, for example as cellar furniture, was also out of the question, since the kitchens had no rear walls and in some cases no side walls either.

As a result, very few kitchens are partially or even fully preserved. Interest in the Frankfurt kitchen and in avant-garde design objects in general led to the careful expansion of some remaining examples, which found their way into museums, collections or the auction market. Attempts are sometimes made to sell old kitchen furniture, which sometimes also has the Haarer Schütten, as alleged parts of an old Frankfurt kitchen.

A largely complete Frankfurt kitchen was bought at an auction (Quittenbaum, in Munich) in 2005 for 22,680 euros, and another for 34,200 euros. The maximum prices apparently only apply to the blue standard kitchen. A different model from 1930 for a psychiatric clinic, which does not have the characteristic wall cabinet, only achieved an amount of 11,000 euros in 2009. Deviating parts also do not achieve top prices: A short wall cabinet with three colorless sliding doors, which is not part of the standard kitchen, reached an amount of 1000 euros in 2010 and missed the estimate of 1600 euros. Since then, apart from the frequently offered chutes, no kitchen or its parts have been offered at an auction (as of 2014); on the other hand, it can be observed how attempts are being made in classified ads and fixed-price internet auctions to sell kitchens or even individual pieces of furniture for amounts of up to five figures. It remains to be seen whether these amounts will be reached or whether the kitchens will be sold at all.

The chutes themselves can be found in numerous pieces of furniture, for example in the Schminke house , which are of the period (or a little later) and contain the original chutes, but as furniture were not part of a Frankfurt kitchen. This is due to the fact that Haarer continued to offer the Schütten on its own after the project was completed. It is exclusively furniture with the second version of the chutes with the riveted labels. They therefore appear relatively frequently on the auction market. In 2010 an element with six large boxes was auctioned for 380 euros, another with ten boxes in the same year for 1000 euros and one with nine large boxes for 1200 euros.

The only publicly accessible kitchen in the original space is in the Ernst-May-Haus , Im Burgfeld 136, Frankfurt-Römerstadt . A documentation and event location for those interested in architecture has been created in this two-storey terraced house.

Other kitchens can be seen in the following museums:

volatilization of the term

While the term "Frankfurt kitchen" originally stands for the development and implementation of innovative kitchens in Frankfurt, in recent years there has also been a disappearance in which not even the basic requirements of a kitchen object are met. A catering business describes itself as a "Frankfurt kitchen" just as a "Frankfurt bee house" in Dortmund refers to the kitchen.

quote in art

In 2008, Robert Rotifer directed a music video featuring the song Frankfurt Kitchen . In 2009, Brit Liam Gillick had an interpretation of the Frankfurt kitchen built as an art object for the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The Cypriot multimedia artist Nikos Charalambidis presented an installation in Greece in 2011, which is also dedicated to the Frankfurt kitchen and includes a replica of Type 1; he staged another variant as the subject of a video installation.

Movie

  • The Frankfurt kitchen. (Alternative title: La cuisine de Frankfort. ) Documentary, France, 2010, 26 min., Director: Anna-Célia Kendall, Production: Steamboat Films, Arte France, le Center Pompidou , Lobster Films, Series: Design, German premiere: 25. March 2012, table of contents by Arte with video excerpt (2:50 min.).

literature

  • Klaus Klemp, Matthias K. Wagner (ed.): The Frankfurt kitchen. With contributions by Lore Kramer, Christian Dressen, Christos-Nikolas Vittoratos, among others. Frankfurt am Main 2020, ISBN 978-3-86638273-2 .
  • Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge , Renate Flagmeier (ed.): The Frankfurt kitchen. A museum manual. Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-943773-00-2 (= Showcase 1 ).
  • Peter Noever (ed.): The Frankfurt kitchen by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. The Frankfurt kitchen from the collection of the MAK – Austrian Museum for Applied Arts, Vienna. Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-433-02392-1 (= Edition Axel Menges ).

web links

Commons : Frankfurt kitchen  - collection of pictures

itemizations

  1. ↑ Hamburg Museum of Arts and Crafts , accessed July 8, 2016
  2. ↑ Typical Frankfurt , retrieved 28 Feb 2020
  3. ↑ Christine Frederick: New Housekeeping . In: Ladies' Home Journal . tape 29 , no. 9-12 . Curtis Publishing Company, Philadelphia 1912.
  4. ↑ Christine Frederick: The New Housekeeping . Efficiency Studies in Home Management. The Musson Book Company, Toronto, Canada 1913, p. 266 .
  5. ↑ Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky in The New Frankfurt , Issue 5/1926-1927
  6. ↑ Quoted from the information board about the Haarer company in the Großauheim Museum .
  7. ↑ Gerd Selle: Design in everyday life: from the Thonet chair to the microchip, p. 69 ff., 2007
  8. ↑ [Peter Noever: The Frankfurt kitchen by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, p. 12 f. Ernst & Sohn 1992]
  9. ↑ Sonja Steiner-Welz: 400 years MA, 2nd edition, volume 8, p. 416
  10. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper of August 1, 2010, page V11. The mother of all fitted kitchens and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of July 28, 2010, page 34: A journey through time to the new Frankfurt
  11. ↑ Bauen und Wohnen GmbH, issue 11, 1957, p. 33.
  12. ↑ Archive for Frankfurt's history and art, issue 55-57, 1976, p. 202.
  13. ↑ Margarete Schütte Lihotzky > Biography and Curriculum Vitae
  14. ↑ Gerd Kuhn: The "Frankfurt kitchen" . In: Gerd Kuhn (ed.): Living culture and municipal housing policy in Frankfurt am Main 1880-1930. Towards a Plural Society of Individuals . Bonn 1998, ISBN 3-8012-4085-1 , p. 163-165 .
  15. ↑ The criticism did not end with the 1980s, cf. B. Niklas Maak : https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/kunst/eroeffnung-des-bauhaus-museums-dessau-16374715.html
  16. ↑ Gerhard Lindner: copy or original? On the "reconstruction" of the Frankfurt kitchen. In: Peter Noever (ed.) The Frankfurt kitchen by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-433-02392-1 , pp. 41–46.
  17. ↑ Quittenbaum Auction Newsletter ( Memento des Originals from September 29, 2007 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. . @1@2Template:Webarchiv/IABot/www.quittenbaum.de
  18. ↑ artmagazine: (Market) object of the week: Frankfurt kitchen .
  19. ↑ Auction result .
  20. ↑ von-zezschwitz.de, auction result ( Memento des Originals from September 17, 2014 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. . @1@2Template:Webarchiv/IABot/www.von-zezschwitz.de
  21. ↑ Mehlis, auction result ( Memento des Originals from March 16, 2014 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. . @1@2Template:Web archive/IABot/www.mehlis.eu
  22. ↑ from Zezschwitz ( Memento des Originals from March 16, 2014 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. . @1@2Template:Webarchiv/IABot/www.von-zezschwitz.de
  23. ↑ Mr. Auctions .
  24. ↑ Ernst May Society ev Frankfurt am Main .
  25. ↑ Website of the exhibition Frankfurt once? at Historisches-museum-frankfurt.de, with a picture of the kitchen exhibited there (retrieved on January 9, 2018)
  26. ↑ Object catalog of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. Retrieved December 13, 2021 .
  27. ↑ Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen special exhibition , Museum of Modern Art (MoMa), New York, September 15, 2010 to March 14, 2011.
  28. ↑ Online catalog of the TMW. Retrieved June 20, 2018 .
  29. ↑ Photos of the kitchen in Haus Schminke on loebaufoto.de, retrieved on February 5, 2018
  30. ↑ Victoria & Albert (V&A) Museum, Special Exhibition 2006 .
  31. ^ "Frankfurt kitchen in the Museum of Applied Art, Frankfurt am Main. Retrieved June 20, 2018 .
  32. ↑ Article: Art and the bee. Retrieved May 13, 2013 .
  33. ↑ http://www.cityportal.gr/photos/RambaKITCHEN.jpg
  34. ↑ http://www.artslant.com/ew/venues/show/36787-lagini-workshops