United workshops for arts and crafts

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Share over RM 100 in the United Workshops for Art in Crafts AG from September 1926

The United Workshops for Art in Crafts (1898–1991) in Munich and Bremen were a company initiated by artists for the production of individually or in small series interior fittings.

From the foundation to the First World War

The ideals of the early Art Nouveau (rejection of industrial mass production, appreciation of craftsmanship, overcoming the historicizing pluralism of styles, redesigning the everyday living environment, making things functional) were reflected in the VII International Art Exhibition in Munich's Glass Palace of 1897 , which had a lasting effect on the German art scene . Those responsible for a department with handicraft objects shown there encouraged a number of Munich handicraft businesses to merge, which formally came about on April 6, 1898 with headquarters at Erzgießereistraße 18 in the form of a GmbH. Bruno Paul , Bernhard Pankok , Richard Riemerschmid and Hermann Obrist are seen as mentors in this process . The management was with the painter Franz August Otto Krüger .

Bruno Paul for United Workshops for Art in Crafts, 1900

Even in the early years, other progressive designers for handicrafts had their ideas realized there. These included Peter Behrens , Eugen Berner, Margarete von Brauchitsch, Paul Haustein , Rudolf Rochga , Theo Schmuz-Baudiß and Paul Schultze-Naumburg . The clients behind them were wealthy intellectuals and artists. Distinctive designs for the United Workshops were published in handicraft-oriented magazines such as German Art and Decoration or Interior Decoration . The new style of the workshops found programmatic expression from 1899–1901 in the Munich “Insel-Wohnung” furnished by Rudolf Alexander Schröder , the representation rooms of the monthly magazine of the same name, from which the Insel Verlag emerged in 1901 .

Advertisement from the United Workshops, 1909

At the Paris World Exhibition in 1900, the United Workshops received a Grand Prix for their three exhibition rooms (von Pankok, Paul, Riemerschmid). The facilities shown here are characterized by reduced ornamentation and visibility of the constructive structure. Furniture designed by Bruno Paul was also shown at the 1st International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art in Turin in 1902 . The furniture presented at the St. Louis World Exhibition in 1904 , especially that of Bruno Paul, marked a transition from the curved forms of a floral-inspired Art Nouveau to stricter straight lines and an adaptation to machine production methods. Around 1908, the United Workshops of Bruno Pauls produced "type furniture", standardized furnishing modules suitable for series production, as they were rediscovered in later decades as "add-on furniture". In 1907 the United Workshops took part in the call for the establishment of the German Werkbund . On February 14 of the same year the GmbH was converted into a stock corporation (share capital 1,750,000 marks). Theodor von Cramer-Klett , who came from a large industrial family, became chairman of the supervisory board . In 1908 the workshop moved to Ridlerstrasse, and sales and exhibition rooms were set up at Odeonsplatz 1. In 1907, the United Workshops carried out an order for the North German Lloyd (NDL) for the first time : to equip the luxury cabins for the fast steamer Crown Princess Cecilie . Almost the entire equipment for the saloon mail steamer George Washington followed . For the first time after the historicizing pomp that had previously dominated the first class rooms on transatlantic steamers, the simplicity and delicate elegance of Olbrich, Paul, Riemerschmid and Rudolf Alexander Schröder came into play here. It was the general director of the NDL, Heinrich Wiegand , an open-minded and educated personality in all new developments, be it in ship technology or modern art, who opened this new field of activity to the United Workshops. As a result, an exhibition and sales room ( Am Wall 138) was established in Bremen on March 1, 1907, and own workshops in Bremen- Hemelingen under the direction of Gottfried William Schröder. In 1910 the head office was also relocated to Bremen, where it remained until 1939. The HAPAG was won as a customer. The supplying designers are now named Emanuel von Seidl , Wackerle, Weiss, Orlik, Peter Danzer, Th. Th. Heine, Fritz Erler, Blümel, Ernst Haiger , C. Rehm, F. Landauer, and MM Oswald. The reform movement had before the First World War repeatedly received suggestions from the folk art. Accordingly, the Lower Saxony art workshops , a department of the Bremen company, offered rustic furniture for a number of years around 1910/11 (e.g. based on designs by Bruno Paul and Heinrich Ruyter) and woven tapestries (designs by Emil Högg ).

In addition to the Munich branch (with Margarete von Brauchitsch as head of the embroidery department), branches were also set up in Hamburg, Berlin (with F. A. O. Krüger and the fabric department) Cologne, Hanover, Nuremberg and Darmstadt before the First World War.

From 1910 to 1914, Rudolf Alexander Schröder from Bremen provided numerous designs for the private rooms of a bourgeois upper class who had become wealthy in the last pre-war years wanted to set themselves apart from the general taste. Furthermore, even Carl pasture Meyer , who designed next to furniture and wooden toys was prepared Fritz August Breuhaus , Elizabeth of Baczko to call and Walter Mueller Worpswede. The "straightforward style" (Sonja Günther), as represented by Bruno Paul and others in the first decade, had largely been abandoned by the designers of sophisticated, individually manufactured furniture of that time and had given way to neo-Biedermeier and neoclassical decors. The furniture sent to the Brussels World's Fair (1910) also said goodbye to the avant-garde with their Rococo overtones. On the other hand, the rationalized production of simple "type furniture", ie series production for an intellectual, middle class bourgeoisie was promoted.

Steamship style and Nazi representation

Obersalzberg, Berghof, Great Hall, 1935

In 1927/29, the United Workshops held a leading position in one of the most prominent furnishing orders of the Weimar period : furnishing the express steamer Bremen . Once again, the pre-war fitters worked together with F. A. Breuhaus and others. But their use remained an exception. The protagonist among the designers for the interior fittings of the passenger steamers of the North German Lloyd remained rather Paul Ludwig Troost , who had already contributed to the equipment of the United Workshops from 1922.

Heinrich Söller and Josef Henselmann founded their own branch in Munich in 1930.

Passenger ships that can be verified by the United Workshops were: Columbus (1913/1924), Cologne (1921/1928), Munich (1921/1926), Sierra Nevada (1922/1925), Sierra Ventana (1923/1926), Stuttgart (1923 / 1928), Sierra Morena (1924), Berlin (1925), Europe (1928/1930). The United Workshops were also involved in the steamers Ohio, Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, Steuben, York and Dresden.

He continued the steamer style , which was largely influenced by Troost , in his assignments for representatives of the Nazi regime. As early as 1933, the United Workshops equipped a number of private rooms for Adolf Hitler , and even after the architect's death (1934), his designs were often used. Mention should be made of the "Führer Apartment" in the Old Reich Chancellery (1933, Paul Ludwig Troost), hall and private rooms in the "Berghof" (1935, Gerdy Troost and Leonhard Gall ), German Embassy in London (1936, Hans Rußwurm), New Reich Chancellery and in it apartment Eva Braun (1939, Albert Speer ) and the Foreign Ministry in Berlin (1940/41). The salon car 10205 for Hermann Göring was also fitted out by the workshops.

After 1945

Headquarters in Bremen "Am Wall"
Registered office at Amiraplatz in Munich

As early as 1939 the company had relocated its headquarters from Bremen (where the house at Am Wall 175/177 had been bought in 1936 ) to Munich and in 1940 moved into the exhibition building at Amiraplatz  1. After the war, it was able to move there despite its boom in the 1950s not to resume their former leading role. For for several decades there was no longer a noteworthy private customer market for custom-made items of artistically sophisticated or even avant-garde furniture design. Sales shifted to tastefully flawless retail furniture . In the 1960s, art exhibitions in the business premises were used to connect with an audience interested in culture. The United Workshops still existed in Bremen as a manufacturing branch until February 1, 1970 or 1971. At the beginning of the 1980s, the furniture shop there that continued the name also closed. A cooperation with contemporary furniture designers in the 1980s could not compensate for the economic problems, so that the United Workshops in Munich had to close in 1991. On April 7, 1991 the name was changed to "AMIRA Verwaltungs-AG", which today is dedicated to real estate management.

In the Ridlerstrasse in Munich there was a modern multi-storey building in which up to 100 carpenters made the furniture and interior fittings at times.

literature

Commons : United Arts and Crafts Workshops  - collection of images, videos and audio files
  • 50 years of the United Workshops for Art in Crafts Aktiengesellschaft 1907–1957. (six-page commemorative publication, no place or year, probably Munich 1957)
  • Sonja Günther: Interiors around 1900: Bernhard Pankok, Bruno Paul and Richard Riemerschmid as employees of the United Workshops for Art in Crafts. Fink, Munich 1971.
  • Sonja Günther: Design of Power - Furniture for Representatives of the “Third Reich”. Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-926642-19-X , pp. 11-17.
  • Babette Gräfe: The United Workshops for Art in Crafts Bremen. In: Hans-Eckhard Dannenberg (Hrsg.): From folk art to modernity, art and craft in the Elbe-Weser region 1900–1930 . Stade 1992, ISBN 3-9801919-4-X .
  • Ursula and Günter Heiderich: Rudolf Alexander Schröder and the art of living: 1899–1931; with a chronological overview of the work and catalog as well as a directory of the work drawings in the archive of the United Workshops for Art in Crafts, Munich . Bremen 1977, ISBN 3-920699-17-3 .
  • W. Owen Harrod: Toward a transatlantic style: the Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk and German modernism in the United States. In: Studies in the decorative arts. 12.2004 / 05, 1, pp. 30-54. (not viewed)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Facsimile of the catalog
  2. ↑ Festschrift 50 Years ... , 1957.
  3. ^ Babette Gräfe: The United Workshops for Art in Crafts Bremen. In: H.-E. Dannenberg (ed.): From folk art to modernity, art and craft in the Elbe-Weser region 1900–1930. 1992, pp. 168-169.
  4. ↑ Urs Latus: Kunststücke, wooden toys before 1914. Nuremberg 1998, pp. 100–101.
  5. ^ Babette Gräfe: The United Workshops for Art in Crafts Bremen. In: H.-E. Dannenberg (ed.): From folk art to modernity, art and craft in the Elbe-Weser region 1900–1930. 1992, pp. 164-167.
  6. ↑ The data in brackets limit the execution time with information on (launch / delivery or installation or conversion of the facility). List of ship names according to Sonja Günther: Vereinigte Werkstätten-Archivbestände. Catalog III. Interiors on luxury ships from the United Workshops for Art in Crafts. Munich 1976, Volume 2, 1992. (List of photos and blueprints, but without artist names and without dates). The relevant construction data for the nine ships mentioned are supplemented by Arnold Kludas : Die Seeschiffe des Norddeutscher Lloyd, Volume 2, 1992.
  7. ↑ according to the commemorative publication "Fifty Years ...", 1957.
  8. ↑ Alfred Gottwaldt: saloon car 10,205th of the rail into the museum. 4th edition. Bonn 2007, ISBN 978-3-937086-15-6 , p. 9.
  9. ↑ Festschrift "Fifty Years ...", 1957.
  10. ^ Babette Gräfe: The United Workshops for Art in Crafts Bremen. In: H.-E. Dannenberg (ed.): From folk art to modernity, art and craft in the Elbe-Weser region 1900–1930. 1992, p. 171.
  11. ^ Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, p. 758.
  12. ↑ amira-ag.de