Cologne factory schools

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The Cologne Werkschulen were a (university) school for fine arts , architecture and design ( design ) that existed from 1926 to 1971 .

history

The Werkschulen developed from the Department of Applied Arts of the Cologne Technical College, founded in 1879 , whose predecessor was founded in 1833 as the Royal Prussian Provincial Trade School in Cologne . The arts and crafts department goes back to the establishment of a Sunday school by the painter Egidius Mengelberg in 1822 in the Jesuit building. In 1910 Emil Thormählen was appointed to the Cologne School of Applied Arts , which he was supposed to build up and expand in line with the German Werkbund movement. His plans to build a new school building had to be postponed because of the outbreak of war in 1914 and could not be tackled immediately after the war ended. Thormählen therefore already retired in November 1919.

In April 1924, under the direction of Martin Elsaesser , the school was able to move into the “Red House”, an expressionist , red brick building on the Ubierring 40 site, which he had designed. The school was restructured and in 1926 was given the name “Kölner Werkschulen” by the then mayor Konrad Adenauer - following the Bauhaus model . Quote: "... in Bonn there is science (= university) and in Düsseldorf there is art (= academy) and in Cologne I want both ..." . While fine art was taught at the art academy and applied art at the applied arts school in Düsseldorf , one should be able to study the whole spectrum at the Cologne factory schools (plural). Adenauer got his way: in 1919 with his University of Cologne and in 1926 with his Cologne art (high) school - both buildings are almost within sight of each other.

1926-1933

The factory schools were a purely stadtkölnisches Art Institute, a place of practical work operation (hand factory / art factory ) that the work federation thoughts saw enshrined in its program (which since the Werkbund Exhibition was established here in 1914) and the close connection between Put the design and execution, free and applied art, of the studio and workshop in the foreground. (Quote): "... the head invents it and the hands do it ..."

The connection between factory schools and industry was greatly encouraged. The industry placed orders with the workshops of the Cologne factory schools. For example, the housing of the people's receiver , typefaces for typewriters ( Erbar and Candida), the design and execution of the German championship trophy and the German football cup come from Cologne students - under the guidance of professors.

Architecture, interior design, painting, sculpture and building sculpture, stage design, costume design and vestments were represented at the Cologne factory schools. Later, additional classes for free and applied graphics (as well as “photography”) and for artistic and technical design were set up under the direction of Richard Riemerschmid and the Cologne Institute for Religious Art was affiliated. Riemerschmid oriented himself - with the approval of the Prussian Ministry of Culture - to the Berlin United State Schools for Free and Applied Arts (VS, today University of the Arts , Berlin), founded in 1924 and directed by his colleague and Werkbund co-founder Bruno Paul .

In 1931 Riemerschmied's contract ran out without an extension. With the rise of National Socialism in Cologne, Adenauer's influence declined. However, he succeeded in appointing the Cologne museum director Karl With (from 1925 to 1928 professor of art history at the Kölner Werkschulen) as his successor. In 1933 With was dismissed from office just like Adenauer.

1933-1945

During the reign of the National Socialists (what art is, determined by the “Führer Adolf Hitler”), the Werkschulen under Karl Berthold were demoted to the Kölner Meisterschule , lost names and significance, and the German Werkbund was dissolved and banned. The new director Berthold had previously Frankfurter Art School ( Städelschule ) in accordance with the new rulers to place a traditional, handcrafted, anti-Semitic and anti-capitalist "German home art" into line .

The buildings of the Cologne factory schools were damaged to more than 70 percent during the Second World War on March 2, 1945. As an architect, Stefan Leuer led the reconstruction of the Cologne factory schools, in which many students actively participated. The Cologne factory schools resumed study with a ceremony on November 4, 1946. In its first edition of January 4, 1947, the Spiegel reported on page 13: "Professor Wallner, the long-time director of the Cologne Werkschule founded in 1879, reopened his institute at the end of December."

After 1946

Under the directorship of August Hoff returned Dominikus Böhm and took over again (as in 1933) to 1953, the department church; afterwards it was headed by Stefan Leuer as the secular and church building department . Friedrich Vordemberge and Otto Gerster taught painting, Ludwig Gies sculpture, Wolfgang Wallner sculpture, Josef Jaekel metal driving, Alfred Will free graphics (as before 1933), Georg Lünenborg architecture / interior design, Wilhelm Teuwen glass painting, Elisabeth Treskow goldsmithing, Heinrich Hussmann graphics.

The federal eagle in Bonn's Bundestag was designed in Cologne by Ludwig Gies and the first ballot box was driven in copper by Josef Jaekel. Federal Chancellor Adenauer and Federal President Theodor Heuss (from 1918 to 1933 managing director and board member of the German Werkbund) were interested in the development of the Cologne factory schools. Guided tours of visitors by domestic and foreign dignitaries were constantly carried out. Portraits of politicians drawn on site in Bonn became the basis for election posters and government advertising leaflets.

In the 1950s - under Vordemberge's direction - the focus on fine art developed and the Werkschulen became the "Kölschen Kunstakademie". The famous and notorious artist festivals “Bird of Paradise and Rags Ball” from the 1920s were also reissued.

In the 1960s, Cologne was the largest art institute in North Rhine-Westphalia (with 5 departments, 21 teaching areas and almost 500 students) and, along with Hamburg, Berlin and Munich, was one of the largest in the Federal Republic. From 1961 onwards, students from Cologne worked in an “outside studio” of the factory schools in Vinci in Tuscany as scholarship holders for a month “in” and “after” nature.

Inscription plaque at Albergo Leonardo in Vinci (Toscana)

Cologne practiced the model of a “municipal art college”. The higher education system, however, falls under the cultural sovereignty of the federal states as a part of culture , and the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament was reluctant to have a second art college or art academy (next to Düsseldorf) in the "North Rhine" region. More likely, the MPs considered such a solution in Münster in the “Westphalia” part of the state to be feasible. In 1968 the name was changed to the Academy of Fine Arts Cologne - (Kölner Werkschulen) .

In 1970, the city of Cologne asked the state of North Rhine-Westphalia by a unanimous resolution to convert the Cologne factory schools into a state university for the fine arts "in order to maintain their rank and reputation" . The responsible Minister of Science Johannes Rau , however, transferred the Werkkunstschule his hometown as faculty at the University of Wuppertal , Cologne factory schools, however, he divided, in the Department of Art and Design in the newly established in 1971, Cologne University (renamed since September 2015 Technical University of Cologne ) a.

In the 1980s there was a cultural-political initiative of the state parliament, according to which the Kölner Werkschulen and the Kunstakademie Münster, founded in 1971, were to be run as a subdivision of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf , but this was unsuccessful because the academies mainly train art teachers.

The Cologne factory schools were dismantled: the architecture department was relocated to Deutz and then merged with civil engineering training. As a result of the Art Academy Act passed in 1987, fine art was finally abandoned as a subject and the previous courses in graphic design in the so-called "Cologne Model" were initially transferred to a faculty, the "Department of Design", and later to a now internationally renowned pure design institute ( Cologne International School of Design ). In addition to the "Integrated Design" course, which is characterized by the integration of different design disciplines, the European Bachelor and Master course European Studies in Design has also been offered since 1999 .

After the reorganization in the higher education sector, the former Cologne factory schools and the art and design department at the technical college became a university and an institute in Cologne:

Structure from 1971

In the last year of independence, 65 lecturers and professors taught at the Cologne factory schools, which were divided into six departments:

  • Basic teaching: drawing, shaping, painting, nude
  • Architecture: secular and church building, architecture and interior design
  • Fine arts: Sculpture and building sculpture, metal sculpture, studio for metal design, artistic blacksmiths, gold and silversmiths, sacred and profane painting, wall painting, free graphics, photography, textile design, free painting, surface and space, stage design, costume design
  • Visual communication: graphic design, typography, photography, illustration
  • Design: ceramics, design of machines and devices, design of consumer goods
  • Lectures and seminars in: art history, anatomy, aesthetics, sociology, psychology, dramaturgy, cybernetics,

Directors

Well-known artist teachers at the Cologne factory schools

Architecture / interior design

painting

Plastic / Sculpture

Graphics

Goldsmiths

photography

Art history

Ceramics and industrial design

Stained glass

Visiting lecturers

Further

Well-known graduates of the Cologne factory schools

architecture

painting

Plastic / Sculpture

graphic

photography

Goldsmiths

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Short biography Emil Thormählen , accessed in September 2015
  2. ↑ 1927: Konrad Adenauer - Cologne as a western metropolis. In: deutscherwerkbund-nrw.de. Deutscher Werkbund Nordrhein-Westphalen, archived from the original on May 29, 2016 ; accessed on June 30, 2019 .
  3. ^ The fate of the Cologne factory schools. In: The Form. Issue 2, 1931, pp. 78–80 W. Riezler: Die Form, magazine for creative work (6.1931). In: digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de. 1931, Retrieved January 4, 2017 .
  4. ^ Coordination of the Städelschule: Max Beckmann. In: ffmhist.de. Retrieved January 4, 2017 .
  5. ^ Professor Wallner . In: Der Spiegel . No. 1 , 1947 ( online ).
  6. ^ Bird of Paradise and Lumpenball, two Cologne artist festivals in the mirror of the press in: ISBN 978-3-506-71550-0 Schöningh-Verlag 1997; Authors: Breuer & Cepi-Kaufmann, 1997, pp. 395-432.

swell

  • Kölner Werkschulen / FH Art and Design (Ed.): 100 Years of Kölner Werkschulen. Catalog . Greven & Bechtold Publishing House, Cologne 1979.
  • Bachmann, Paul: A Chronicle 1879-1954 in: 75 Years of Cologne Werkschulen. Edited by Kölner Werkschulen in the anniversary year 1954.
  • Joppien, Rüdiger: The Kölner Werkschulen 1920-1933 with special consideration of Richard Riemerschmid's era 1926-1931. WR-Jahrbuch, Vol. 43; Cologne 1982
  • Küpper, Karl Mohammed: Kölner Werkschulen 1970: author / illustrator; . ..from a Muslim electrician's notebooks; Berti Segschneider's cottages for wayward dead Germans; Aesop's apprentice