The Bauhaus Women’s Class

To begin with, all kinds of handcraft were done there, from sewing and knotting to embroidery, crocheting and macramé. When the women students discovered a room in the school with looms, where girls from the city were taught embroidery ...

... not only the appliances but also the teacher, Helena Börner, as workshop head, were shortly afterwards integrated into the Bauhaus. The women’s class became the workshop for weaving.

For Gropius, this was more than just a workshop: it was the solution to his “women problem”. In September 1920 Gropius then put forward the proposal in the Masters’ Council for “strict separation immediately at matriculation, especially for the female sex who by their number are too heavily represented.”

The women who made it then to the Bauhaus were packed off to the weaving workshop straight after the foundation course. All other workshops, from wood to metal, were open only to male students. There was absolutely no question of women being admitted to study architecture.

“Everything technical, the way the loom worked, the possibilities of intersecting warp and weft, the way threads are fed in, we could only find all this out ourselves by trial and error. It caused a lot of head scratching for us poor autodidacts, and many a tear was shed,” wrote Gunta Stölzl.

Nonetheless, the women students Stölzl and Benita Otte went on to take courses at the technical school in Krefeld and passed their skills on to their fellow students.

The Bauhaus women countered the art nouveau-period narrative tapestry with two-dimensionally constructed designs in keeping with a new abstract art.

Until 1923, mainly single pieces were made, and these were presented to great acclaim at the Bauhauswoche exhibition – “All previous storms and struggles were forgotten in the intoxication of joy” (Stölzl). In the following year the weaving workshop registered the rights to around 900 weaving patterns.

It worked. Stölzl got a contract as ‘teacher of the weaving workshop’ in Dessau. Muche stayed as master of form until 1927, and after that Stölzl (second from right in this picture) was the head of the textile workshop as a ‘young master’. In many respects, and especially in contrast to the normal way things were done at the time, it was something completely new. For the first time a management position had been awarded despite the reservations of the Director and the masters.

But above all – for the first time, a woman filled a senior position at the Bauhaus. Yet she was not treated equally. Stölzl was paid less than the male masters and had no right to a pension.

Like all the Bauhaus workshops, the weaving workshop had to show turnover and work contracts for industry. The pressure on the weavers grew. There was hardly any more time for creative experimenting, for instance with the newly-acquired Jacquard loom. In her collage ‘sie brauchen das bauhaus’ (they need the bauhaus) Margaretha Reichardt is critical of this time pressure.

Next to a selection of her fabric patterns her comment, “schooling at the factory belt” and “faster, faster”. An “eager master weaver” points at the constantly ticking clock.

In the lower part of the collage Reichardt uses a Bauhaus advertisement from 1928: “you need modern quality work. the bauhaus takes it on.”

Over a list of weaving contract orders for May to September 1928 Reichardt asks, “Check for yourself – is there any time left over then for experimental work?”

A new revolution was in the making.

Under Meyer, however, the emphasis was on the continuing technical development of textiles and Gunta Stölzl dedicated herself passionately to the woven fabric as a “serving object that adapts and integrates”.

New materials such as iron thread, ‘viskaband’, cellophane and cellulose filament were tried out. The idea was to develop resilient, cheap fabrics that also satisfied high design demands.

Towards the end of the 1930s Stölzl found herself being the target of various intrigues, initiated by people including her critic, Reichardt.

In 1931 she resigned and left for Switzerland.

First Anni Albers took over as head of the weaving workshop, then Otti Berger (pictured here). Later, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – Director of the Bauhaus from 1930 – brought in the Berlin native Lilly Reich to take on the job. She was a successful interior designer with no technical knowledge of weaving, and from then on laid the emphasis on textile printing.

Reich was little loved by the students. In 1932 the workshop had only 3 students left. The following year the Bauhaus was closed down.