Lena Meyer-Bergner

Lena Meyer-Bergner , as Helene Bergner (born November 25, 1906 in Coburg , † January 23, 1981 in Basel ) was a German textile designer . She is considered one of the most important representatives of textile art at the Bauhaus .

Life and education

Bergner (bottom left) with the weaving class (1927/1928) on the Bauhaus stairs

After completing school at the Lyceum, she initially worked as an assistant at the Haubinda Rural Education Center. In the winter semester of 1926/1927 she enrolled at the State Bauhaus in Dessau, where she studied with Josef Albers , Wassily Kandinsky , Joost Schmidt and Paul Klee until 1929 . From November 1928 to March 1929 she also attended the dyeing school in Sorau, and then headed the dyeing department at the Bauhaus Dessau. From 1929 she worked in the textile workshop under the direction of Gunta Stölzl . Along with Stölzl, Anni Albers , Otti Berger and Benita Koch-Otte, she is one of the most important textile artists.

On September 1, 1929, she was given leave of absence from the Bauhaus because she was supposed to take on a managerial position in the "East Prussian State Weaving Mill" in Königsberg. On April 15, 1930, she passed her journeyman's examination in front of the Chamber of Crafts in Glauchau / Saxony. On October 6, 1930, for completing her studies in the weaving department, she received the Bauhaus diploma with the number 16. Between 1931 and 1936, she lived and worked in Moscow for the only upholstery fabric manufacturer in the Soviet Union where upholstery fabrics and curtains were designed. Since 1936 she lived in Geneva, where she ran an experimental workshop, in which a series of Smyrna carpets "in the richest decorative execution" were created, whose decors clearly reflected the influence of the Bauhaus, especially that of Paul Klee. In 1937 she married the architect Hannes Meyer , who was director at the Bauhaus in Dessau between 1928 and 1930 . In 1939 she received a professorship in textiles at the State Textile Institute in Mexico , where she worked with her husband for ten years. She took care of the hand-weaving methods of the poor population in the Ixmiquilpan region and designed teaching programs and technical equipment for a weaving school for the Otomí who lived there . The project was not implemented. In 1949 she returned to Switzerland and she continues her work as a textile designer. After the death of her husband in 1954, she took care of his estate and arranged for his works to be published.

Works (selection)

• Lena Meyer-Bergner - Original Bauhaus textile designs. OCLC 244573964 (multiple sheets).
• Hannes Meyer, Lena Bergner: El Taller de Gráfica Popular doce años de obra artística colectiva = The Workshop for Popular Graphic Art: a record of twelve years of collective work . Estampa Mexicana, Mexico 1949, OCLC 724023522 .
• Lessons from Klee . In: Christian Borchert, Georg Eckelt (eds.): Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, 1919–1933 (=  form + Zweck. Journal for industrial design . No. 3 ). Office for Industrial Design, Berlin 1979, OCLC 83440775 , p. 60-62 .

literature

• Lena Meyer-Bergner . In: Patrick Rössler , Elizabeth Otto : Women at the Bauhaus. Pioneering modern artists. Knesebeck, Munich 2019. ISBN 978-3-95728-230-9 . Pp. 90-91.

Web links

• Writings by Meyer-Bergner, Lena in the bibliographic database WorldCat
• Part of the estate in the collection of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
• Partial estate in the Bauhaus University Weimar (inventory signature: N85)
• Busch-Reisinger Museum
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art ,
• Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum : Lena Bergner Smithsonian Institution
• National Gallery of Australia
• The Getty Research Institute: Bauhaus student work 1919-1933. Series VI. Weaving, 1922-1930 and 54.0 items

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Meyer-Bergner, Helene (Lena). In: Material Lessons - The Bauhaus in Dessau. P. 4 (PDF; 1375 kB).
2. ↑ Lena Meyer-Bergner . In: Office for industrial design (Ed.): Form + Zweck specialist journal for industrial design. 13th year, issue 5. Berlin 1981, p. 6–9 ( digital.slub-dresden.de - detailed curriculum vitae).
3. ↑ Bauhaus 100: Color and Form Theory at the Bauhaus ( Memento of the original from February 26, 2017 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. 
4. ^ The Museum of Modern Art, New York: Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity.
5. ↑ Ulrike Müller, Ingrid Radewaldt: Bauhaus women - masters in art, craft and design . 1st edition. Sandmann, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-938045-36-7 .
6. ↑ Lena Meyer-Bergner (Ed.): Hannes Meyer. Building and Society. Fonts. Letters. Projects. Dresden 1980.
7. ↑ Fabienne Eggelhöfer: offset, rotation, mirroring - Lena Bergner records from Paul Klee's teaching. bauhaus-imaginista.org, accessed on June 19, 2019 . 
8. ↑ Elizabeth Otto, Patrick Rössler: Lena Meyer-Bergner . In: Bauhaus Women: A Global Perspective . Herbert Press, London 2019, ISBN 978-1-912217-96-0 , pp. 90–91 (English, books.google.de ).