Karl Schmidt-Hellerau

Karl Camillo Schmidt-Hellerau (born February 1, 1873 in Zschopau ; † November 6, 1948 in Hellerau ) was a carpenter, furniture manufacturer, social reformer and founder of the first German garden city , Hellerau.

Life

After completing his apprenticeship as a carpenter in his hometown, Karl Schmidt (he did not adopt the compound name Schmidt-Hellerau until 1938) worked as a journeyman in German and northern European cities, including Copenhagen, Karlskrona, Gothenburg and London, Bremen and Berlin. During his time as an apprentice in England, he got to know the machine series production of furniture using series components.

In 1898, Karl Schmidt founded his own “building furniture factory and factory for handicrafts” in Laubegast , which soon traded under the name “Dresdner Werkstätten für Handwerkskunst Schmidt & Engelbrecht” (from 1899 “… Schmidt & Müller”). He was a supporter of the life reform movement . This was reflected, among other things, in the fact that there was a warm atmosphere in his factory and that Karl Schmidt tried to train his workers culturally and in the arts. Because of his aesthetic and technical ideas, his friend, the Berlin craftsman and businessman Richard LF Schulz, called him “Wood-Goethe”.

He hired artists and artisans to design serial furniture and everyday objects. The artists received a share of the sales and their names were listed in the product catalogs, both of which were unusual at the time. Among other things, he worked with internationally known artists, such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott . From 1902 he also worked with the Munich artist and architect Richard Riemerschmid . In 1910, Karl Schmidt married Frieda Riemerschmid (1878–1917), Richard's sister, as a second marriage.

At the German Art Exhibition, which took place in the City Exhibition Palace in Dresden in 1899 , Schmidt presented complete home furnishings, and his workshops were the only Dresden company to be invited to the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris , where their reform furniture was awarded three bronze medals.

In 1904 and 1905 Richard Riemerschmid designed so-called machine furniture - modern and objectively designed furniture, the shape and function of which combined with one another in an exemplary manner with regard to machine-friendly production. The furniture was composed of a number of standardized elements, they could be combined in many ways and could be produced in large numbers. The program was called “Dresden Home Appliances”. The furniture could be dismantled and reassembled easily so that it could be transported to the customer and also shipped in a space-saving manner. From 1912/1913 onwards, the type furniture was supplemented by designs by other artists and has since been offered under the program name “German domestic appliance”.

Karl Schmidt-Hellerau's grave in the old cemetery in Dresden-Klotzsche

In 1907, Karl Schmidt combined his business with the Munich workshops for home furnishings ( Karl Bertsch , Adelbert Niemeyer , Willy von Beckerath ). The new company was called Deutsche Werkstätten für Handwerkskunst GmbH Dresden and Munich (converted into an AG in 1913). To optimize production, a new factory was planned. In order to motivate the employees more, they should be located near the new plant and find better living conditions than usual at the time. The result was the foundation of the first German garden city , Hellerau, a reform settlement on the northern edge of Dresden .

Schmidt was inspired by the ideas of life reform , the English arts and craft movement and the garden city movement founded by Ebenezer Howard . The land purchase for factory and settlement construction took place in 1906 and the conception phase began in the same year. Schmidt commissioned Richard Riemerschmid to draw up an overall plan for the development. The groundbreaking ceremony took place in June 1909. As early as 1910, production began in the newly built German workshops for craftsmanship in Hellerau , and the first residents settled in Hellerau.

Karl Schmidt was one of the main initiators and founding fathers of the German Werkbund, which was founded in 1907 .

Other important furniture developments in 1926/27 were the type furniture program “The cheap apartment” (designed by the Stuttgart architect Adolf Gustav Schneck ) and in 1935 the add-on furniture program “The growing apartment” by Bruno Paul , which was still produced after the Second World War until around 1958 .

In 1930 the company was temporarily shut down due to the global economic crisis, but experienced an upturn in the 1930s. The city of Dresden gave him the honorary name Schmidt-Hellerau in 1938. After 1939, Karl Schmidt took part in the realization of armaments contracts, which in 1946 led to the expropriation and dismantling of the company in Hellerau. He did not experience the rebuilding.

Quote

Karl Schmidt in “Open letter to the artists”, Dresdner Werkstätten für Handwerkskunst, Dresden , 1898: “We want ... to create room furnishings ... that are not calculated on the hollow appearance and do not imitate the rich and magnificent with inadequate means in an unsound way ... We create furniture that is designed in such a way that every household appliance serves its purpose perfectly and expresses its purpose in its form. "

Karl Schmidt in the “Jahrbuch des Deutschen Werkbund”, Jena , 1912: “It is strange how difficult it is to grasp the simple fact that the raw material - and with it of course the object made from it - remains cheapest when it is good and is processed conscientiously. If we process wood into junk furniture ... we are guilty of a natural product. The earth only provides raw materials in limited quantities. If we consume as much material as the earth can grow annually, we will have a moderate normal price for the materials; if we could process less, the price would fall through a strong supply; But if we consume more, the price increases in proportion to the additional consumption. Not only that we thereby make goods more expensive, but we also live at the expense of our children and grandchildren. It is a sin and a shame to do so. "

Peter de Mendelssohn in “Hellerau, my captive Europe” about Karl Schmidt: “In the beginning there was a man named Schmidt. If this seems blasphemous to you, you don't need to read any further, because you will not understand what it is about anyway. I know, however, that it is true. Schmidt was a creator. Without him there would have been nothing, absolutely nothing of what will be told here. "

literature

• Klaus-Peter Arnold:  Schmidt, Karl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , pp. 201-203 ( digitized version ).
• Dresdner Geschichtsverein eV (Hrsg.): Gartenstadt Hellerau, The everyday life of a utopia. Dresden History Association, Dresden 1997, ISBN 3-910055-42-7 .
• Michael Fasshauer: The Hellerau phenomenon. Hellerauer Verlag, Dresden 1997, ISBN 978-3-910184-25-1 .
• Clemens Galonska, Frank Elstner: Gartenstadt Hellerau / Garden City of Hellerau. Rosewood, Chemnitz 2007, ISBN 978-3-938305-04-1 .
• Peter de Mendelssohn : Hellerau - My captive Europe. Hellerauer Verlag, Dresden 1999, ISBN 978-3-910184-16-9 .
• Peter Peschel: Concept for the construction and development of the company museum of Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau GmbH. Diploma thesis, University of Technology, Economics and Culture Leipzig (FH), Leipzig 1996.
• Thomas Nitschke: The garden city of Hellerau as an educational province. Hellerau-Verlag, Dresden 2003, ISBN 3-910184-43-X .
• Thomas Nitschke: The garden city of Hellerau in the tension between the cosmopolitan reform settlement and the nationalist-minded folk community. Dissertation. Martin Luther University Halle 2007.
• Thomas Nitschke: The history of the garden city Hellerau. Hellerau-Verlag, Dresden 2009, ISBN 978-3-938122-17-4 .
• Hans Wichmann: Deutsche Werkstätten and WK-Verband 1898–1990 - Departure for new living , Prestel, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-7913-1208-1 .

Web links

• Website of the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau founded by Karl Schmidt-Hellerau