Steglitzer workshop
The Steglitz workshop was founded in mid-October 1900 by FH Ehmcke , FW Kleukens and Georg Belwe and is considered one of the most important germ cells of the German book art movement .
history
FH Ehmcke and Georg Belwe knew each other from their joint training at the Wolf Hagelberg Chromolithographic Institute , Berlin . While studying at the Berlin educational institute at the royal arts and crafts museum in Berlin , they met the trained draftsman FW Kleuckens. All three were dissatisfied with the subject matter taught there and decided to “take their training to become a practical craftsman into their own hands”. One of the first classic advertising agencies in the country, including a small lithography, was built in the cramped conditions of an attic room in the Belwe house at Fichtestrasse 59 (now Lepsiusstrasse 23) in the Berlin suburb of Steglitz , which served as a studio as well as a living room and bedroom. Hand press for lithographic production. In the course of the year, a fully-fledged dispenser with a Boston crucible was set up in the lovingly furnished Belwe'schen henhouse - the press logo drawn by Kleukens therefore shows a rooster. Here Kleukens also trained his brother Christian Heinrich Kleukens , who together with him took over the Ernst Ludwig Press from 1907 and managed it alone from 1914.
The economic success of the company was ensured primarily by the industrialist Otto Ring. As the manufacturer of the successful Syndetikon adhesive , he had almost all of his commercials designed and printed here. In 1902 a "school for book trade" was attached to the workshop on the second floor of the house, in which book art and other arts and crafts subjects were taught. The print shop was expanded to include three more printing machines, a platen printing press with a motor drive and two high-speed presses. In the following year, parts of the outbuilding were rented to set up a machine workshop, a sculptor's workshop and a bookbindery. The workshop's products were self-sold. However, since not all departments of the workshop worked profitably, financial difficulties gradually arose. At the beginning of 1903, the Steglitzer Werkstatt therefore traded as a GmbH and took on financially strong shareholders. FH Ehmcke and FW Kleukens left the company in mid-1903. Kleukens took on a teaching position at the Leipzig Academy for Graphic Arts and Book Industry . Ehmcke went to Peter Behrens at the Düsseldorf School of Applied Arts. Georg Belwe initially stayed with the company and also took on a teaching position at the educational establishment of the Kunstgewerbemuseum; In 1906 he too left the Steglitz workshop and also accepted the call to the Leipzig Academy, where he later took over the management of the typesetting and printing department. The Steglitz workshop continued to produce for a few years, but gradually sank into mediocrity.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Britta Marthen: The Steglitzer workshop. Free University of Berlin, Berlin 1999.