Maria May (textile designer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maria May (born September 24, 1900 in Berlin ; † October 28, 1968 there ) was a German textile designer and from 1956 to 1966 head of the master school for fashion in Hamburg .

Life

Maria May passed her exams as an art teacher with distinction in 1921 . At 21, she was at the largest German private school for arts and crafts, the Reimann School in Berlin, 1,922 teacher . There she was in charge of the class for textile art and decorative painting until 1931 and stayed with the Reimann School in the following years.

Since 1927 she has been developing decorative spray fabrics in the textile workshops of the Reimann School, which are marketed under the name May fabrics and are characterized by their enormous variety. There were purely geometric, patterned spray fabrics, those with figurative motifs, fabrics with cosmopolitan motifs and designs with a historicizing note. These materials helped both the Reimann School and Maria May to become well known within Germany and Europe. In addition, the sprayed decoration fabrics were produced on a larger scale by the United workshops in Munich and the industrial works in Plauen since 1928 . May also designed large-format sprayed shop window back walls, exhibition decorations and trade fair designs. In 1928 she created a large deep-sea mosaic for the ballroom of the Bremen ocean liner , executed by Puhl & Wagner , and has worked for various wallpaper manufacturers since 1930. B. 1932 for the wallpaper factory Gebrüder Rasch its own collection of May wallpapers . In 1931 she was appointed artistic director of Christian Dierig AG, where she created the German Kretonne .

In 1935, together with Otto Arpke , she designed numerous wall decorations sprayed on silk for the airship LZ 129 Hindenburg . In 1930 an exhibition of her work took place in New York, which met with great approval. In 1937 May took over the management of the manufacture department of the German Fashion Institute in Berlin, where she designed textile collections for export. Since 1939 interior decoration of the Foreign Office on behalf of Ribbentrop in Berlin and numerous embassies. In 1945 she was said to have been involved in the transport of Ribbentrop's so-called Nibelungenhort, the gold treasure of the Foreign Office, to Schleswig-Holstein.

1946–1955 Maria May was the head of the class for fabric painting and textile design at the Landeskunstschule in Hamburg, where she taught for almost 10 years. In 1955, until her retirement in 1962, she took over the management of the Master School for Fashion Hamburg Department Design in Hamburg. In this position she was appointed professor by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. In 1951 she founded the German Association of Working Women - the German branch of the Association of Business and Professional Women - and was its President from 1951 to 1956. During this time she campaigned for a clear profile and effective publicity measures. In 1952, she organized the Week of the Working Woman and in 1954 the first UN seminar with specialist speakers from home and abroad. Both events were intended to draw attention to the role of working women in society and aimed to bring about social change. In 1966 Maria May returned to her hometown Berlin.

literature

  • Angelika Timm : On the best way: on the history of the Association Business and Professional Women - Germany; 1951 to 2001 . [Ed. on behalf of BPW Germany by Silke Keubler], Helmer Verlag, Königstein / Taunus 2001.
  • Swantje Kuhfuss-Wickenheiser: The Reimann School in Berlin and London 1902–1943. A Jewish company for international art and design training up to its destruction by the Hitler regime . Aachen 2009, ISBN 978-3-86858-475-2 , pp. 149-199.
  • Swantje Wickenheiser: The Reimann School in Berlin and London (1902–43) with special consideration of fashion and textile design . Diss. Rheinische-Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn 1993, pp. 218–281

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Swantje Kuhfuss-Wickenheiser: The Reimann School in Berlin and London 1902–1943. A Jewish company […] . Aachen 2009, ISBN 978-3-86858-475-2 , pp. 154-170.
  2. ↑ Swantje Kuhfuss-Wickenheiser: The Reimann School in Berlin and London 1902–1943. A Jewish company […] . Aachen 2009, ISBN 978-3-86858-475-2 , pp. 159-161, 165.
  3. ↑ Swantje Kuhfuss-Wickenheiser: The Reimann School in Berlin and London 1902–1943. A Jewish company […] . Aachen 2009, ISBN 978-3-86858-475-2 , pp. 178-182
  4. ↑ Swantje Kuhfuss-Wickenheiser: The Reimann School in Berlin and London 1902–1943. A Jewish company […] . Aachen 2009, ISBN 3-86858-475-7 , pp. 176 f., 184 f.
  5. ↑ Swantje Kuhfuss-Wickenheiser: The Reimann School in Berlin and London 1902–1943. A Jewish company […] . Aachen 2009, ISBN 978-3-86858-475-2 , p. 182 f.
  6. ↑ Swantje Kuhfuss-Wickenheiser: The Reimann School in Berlin and London 1902–1943. A Jewish company […]. Aachen 2009, ISBN 978-3-86858-475-2 , pp. 190-194.
  7. ↑ Swantje Kuhfuss-Wickenheiser: The Reimann School in Berlin and London 1902–1943. A Jewish company […] . Aachen 2009, ISBN 978-3-86858-475-2 , p. 194 f.
  8. ↑ Swantje Kuhfuss-Wickenheiser: Maria May. Active co-designer of the wall decorations in the airship LZ 129 Hindenburg and protagonist of spray decoration technology in Germany in the 20s and 30s . In: Wolfgang Meighörner (Hrsg.): Scientific yearbook 2005 of the Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen . Friedrichshafen 2005, ISBN 3-86136-106-X , pp. 34-63.
  9. ^ Robert MW Kempner : The Third Reich im Kreuzverhoer; Munich 2005
  10. ^ Die Welt : Second World War End of the war 1945 The missing treasures of the Nazis , from: May 7, 2015; 2nd June 2018
personal data
SURNAME May, Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German textile designer
DATE OF BIRTH September 24, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 28, 1968
Place of death Berlin