Fembio Special: European Jewish Women
Otti Berger
(Otilija Ester Berger [real name]; Otti Esther Berger)
born on October 4, 1898 in Zmajevac/Baranya, Hungary (today: Croatia)
died on April 27, 1944 in Auschwitz (Oświęcim/Poland)
Hungarian-Yugoslavian textile artist
80th anniversary of her death on April 27, 2024
Biography
Bauhaus student Otti Berger believed that “...you don't necessarily have to paint pictures to be an artist” (Interview, 1928, p. 24) when she launched a promising career as a textile artist at the end of the 1920s. The avowed avant-gardist, for whom the “conventional” was “never art,” is today considered one of the pioneers of textile design. Berger firmly rejected weaving as a purely decorative, or even figurative, art. Believing that weaving was in need of “research work” (Berger, 1930), she devoted herself entirely to the development of innovative fabric mixtures that she then registered for patents under imaginative names such as “Lamé-plume.” She sold creations under the brand name Otti Berger Fabrics to companies and designed textile accessories for architectural jewels such as the Villa Schminke built by Hans Scharoun in 1933 in the Saxon town of Löbau.
In 1936 her career came to an abrupt end when the Nazis withdrew her license as a “model designer” because of her Jewish roots. She fled to London. Her mother fell seriously ill, forcing her to return to Yugoslavia, the country of her birth. From there, all further attempts to emigrate failed. Otti Berger died in Auschwitz on April 27, 1944.
“...TO BECOME AN ARTIST, YOU HAVE TO BE AN ARTIST”: STARTING OUT AS AN ARTIST
Otti Berger came to the Bauhaus in Dessau on New Year’s Day in 1927. In the questionnaire the Bauhaus distributed a year later to evaluate student satisfaction, she wrote drily that her motivation in coming had been “to overcome myself and to find my Self” (Interview, 1928, p. 24/25). Clearly very satisfied with her educational institution, the witty 29-year-old added: “I have found my Self and now I’m concentrating on letting my Self learn to walk.” Elsewhere she noted more cryptically that ”to become an artist, you have to be an artist, and to become one, if you already are, you come to the bauhaus; and to turn this 'artist' back into a human being: that is the task of the bauhaus.”
Bauhaus photographers Lucia Moholy and Gertrud Arndt, who took remarkable photographs of Berger, were critical of the institution. In contrast, Berger appeared to have quickly and fully identified with the art school founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919. The art academy in Zagreb that Berger had attended for five years (1921-26) was then suddenly scornfully dismissed as a “mindless place of tradition” (Interview, 1928, p. 24). She believed criticism of the Bauhaus, at least when openly expressed, was unreasonable. When asked what disappointed her about the Bauhaus, she evaded the question: “I am not capable of experiencing disappointment” (Interview, 1928, p. 24). Yet there were many in her immediate environment who voiced their criticism. Her friend Wera Meyer-Waldeck, for example, repeatedly expressed disgust at the school's obsession with theory, writing in one of Berger’s lecture transcripts the following warning for her: If she tried to “paint a picture in response to these gushy outpourings,” it would “certainly be crap” (Meyer-Waldeck, 1927, cited in Bauer, 2003, p. 104).
“ONE MUST LISTEN TO THE SECRETS OF THE FABRICS”: PRELIMINARY COURSE
When Otti Berger began her Bauhaus studies with the preliminary course, she came across one of the forefathers of Constructivism - László Moholy-Nagy. Moholy-Nagy wanted to hone his students' sense of touch and therefore had them produce so-called tactile boards. Berger, virtually deaf due to a previous illness, found the exercise very pleasing. And Moholy-Nagy, in turn, was pleased by her work: He printed a photo of her tactile board - a narrow strip of metal mesh with yarn triangles and colorful paper squares that paid homage to the material triad of “metal-yarn-paper” - in his Bauhaus book From Material to Architecture (1929).
The sensuality of the preliminary course was to remain an enduring influence. “Stoffe im Raum” (Fabrics in Space, 1930), her most influential article, reads in passages like an ode to synesthesia. “One must listen to the secrets of the fabrics, trace the sounds of the materials.” Of course, this linking together of the seemingly unconnectable was typical both of the Bauhaus and of the time and thus not solely due to Moholy-Nagy’s influence. Long before Berger began her studies, for example, Gertrud Grunow (1870-1944), then the only Bauhaus master of form, encouraged dancing the color blue. Klee, Kandinsky and Schlemmer would also occasionally wonder whether the color yellow was not actually a triangle (Fiedler / Feierabend, 1999, p. 175).
“... HER WORKS ARE AMONG THE BEST”: STUDENT IN THE BAUHAUS WEAVING WORKSHOP
After passing the preliminary course, Otti Berger began her studies in the Bauhaus weaving workshop in October 1927 at the age of 29. This was evidently a good decision as four years later Wally H. Dietrich, a latently gender-sensitive contemporary of Berger's, was still emphasizing the importance of choosing the right school “to which one entrusts one's abilities” for women aspiring to a career as an artisan/ in design (Dietrich, 1931, p. 290); she recommended, among other institutes, the Bauhaus for her female readers.
Officially, the Bauhaus weaving workshop had been under the management of Gunta Stölzl since June 1927. Stölzl, only one year older, greatly appreciated Berger's work and wrote in 1930 in a letter of recommendation that her creations were “always of great intensity and among the best in the department” (cited in Radewaldt, p. 65). Stölzl was the only female Bauhaus junior master; she did not have an easy time in an institute that rarely allowed women to take on leadership positions. She herself had been placed in charge of “only” the weaving workshop. In other words, she was responsible for the discipline that the refined bourgeoisie had long regarded as an “ersatz art” where women could “pass the time” without, of course, receiving any remuneration. Berger’s contemporary Wally H. Dietrich angrily pointed out that this placed weaving alongside the other acceptable feminine crafts of “embroidery ... and porcelain painting” (Dietrich, 1931, p. 288). The Bauhaus that viewed itself as radical and avant-garde eagerly served - in this respect - upper-class prejudices; particularly in the early years, female students were most often pushed into the weaving class after passing the preliminary course. Many a master viewed the weaving workshop not only as a temporary occupation for women before they became housewives; they also believed it to be at the bottom of the - unofficial - Bauhaus hierarchy of genres.
The current state of research does not reveal whether Otti Berger's move to the weaving workshop was forced or by choice. Nor does it offer any clues as to Berger's view of the chauvinism at the Bauhaus. Some Bauhaus women - Lucia Moholy, for example – voiced in retrospect their strong condemnation of the old boy network. Others shared, at least to a certain extent, the masters' misogynist view of women. Gunta Stölzl, for example, noted in a 1926 essay that weaving was primarily a “woman's field of work,” as women had “more rhythmic than logical thinking” (Stölzl, 1926). Although Berger did not echo this opinion in her writings, she was also not critical on paper. “The Bauhaus people talk too much and do too little, they criticize too much and don't do any better themselves,” was how Berger's friend, Wera Meyer-Waldeck (Interview…, 1928, H. 4, p. 18), summed it up. This pragmatism resulted in Meyer-Waldeck’s appointment as a director for the German National Railway in 1939, and surely also served her well in her extraordinary career as an architect after 1945. It cannot be ruled out that Berger's thinking was similarly pragmatic. However, this is mere speculation.
“...WE DON'T WANT PICTURES”: ASSISTANT IN THE BAUHAUS WEAVING WORKSHOP
In 1929, Otti Berger had just returned from a “semester abroad” at the Johanna Brunsson weaving school in Stockholm when, together with Anni Albers, she briefly replaced Gunta Stölzl as head of the weaving workshop. For some time, since the Bauhaus move from Weimar to Dessau in 1926, the weaving workshop had been moving in a direction towards what today would be called textile design. When the Swiss architect Hannes Meyer, a rigid adherent to New Objectivity, became head of the Bauhaus in 1928, he provided an additional impetus towards a more profit-oriented approach to weaving. Ornamental designs and costly, handcrafted individual pieces were rejected in favor of the development of prototypes that would allow industry to produce inexpensive, functional textiles for a broad market.
It is not clear whether Otti Berger shared the opinion of the new Bauhaus director Meyer that the earlier Bauhaus carpets embodied nothing more than the “emotional obsessions of young girls” (cited in Droste, 1998, p. 16). Berger researcher Regina Lösel merely notes that Berger was annoyed by Meyer's constant, clichéd demands for “more functionality” and “more user-orientation” in weaving as well by his invocation of the term “structure” everywhere and anywhere. Two years after Meyer's dismissal, Otti Berger was still fuming about it in an unpublished text in 1932. She was convinced that weaving had been user-centered long before Meyer had arrived.
However, Meyer and Berger did agree on key artistic demands. Both were in favor of working with industry. Both opposed blind aestheticism and representational art. “we don't want pictures ... we want to arrive at the best possible final material” (Berger, 1930). It seemed grotesque to Berger to attempt to stir up wintry feelings by weaving an image of a “bare tree ... and a raven to go with it.” She sought to create fabrics whose “glitter and shimmer” alone could evoke emotions that enable us to “feel winter” (Berger, 1930). Last but not least, Otti Berger - in analogy to Meyer - focused on scientific research into the functional aspects of textiles. Berger was therefore quite productive under Meyer; among other things, she designed over a hundred rayon blankets for his ADGB Trade Union School (1928-30).
WEAVING AS “RESEARCH WORK”: ATELIER OTTI BERGER
Otti Berger passed her journeywoman's examination on October 5, 1930 and immediately found work in various textile factories in eastern Germany. The following year, after Gunta Stölzl's dismissal in October 1931, Berger agreed to take on additional work at the Bauhaus as the provisional manager of the weaving workshop. When the new acting director Ludwig Mies van der Rohe then put his partner, the interior designer Lilly Reich, in charge of the workshop, the two women experienced an uneasy collaboration. There are conflicting opinions as to why in the end Otti Berger decided to open her own studio in Berlin's Fasanenstraße in 1932. Magdalena Droste is convinced that Berger left the Bauhaus because of Lilly Reich. Others see the looming dissolution of the Bauhaus as the primary impulse.
“Otti Berger - Atelier for Textiles - Fabrics for Clothing and Living - Furniture, Curtain and Wall Fabrics - Floor Coverings” was what she wrote on her letterhead for the studio she opened in Charlottenburg. In accordance with her premise that weaving was “research work” (Berger, 1930), her studio functioned as a laboratory and experimental workshop. She created unusual, novel textile mixtures. Some were easy-care, inexpensive and hard-wearing, others exclusive, airy and expensive; all were given onomatopoeic names such as “Diagonal,” “Pointé” or “Heliotroop.” The global economic crisis made the start of the company difficult. Nevertheless, thanks to her remarkable artistic talent, her tenacity and her many contacts, she attracted a customer base that soon included Zürcher Wohnbedarf AG, co-founded by the Swiss art historian Sigfried Giedion, and the Dutch company De Ploeg. She refused to work anonymously for these companies and self-confidently insisted despite the resistance she encountered that her name appear on the label. She argued that after all there were “Rodier and Chanel fabrics” for sale (Berger, 1933, cited in Lösel, p. 244). She prevailed: in an early example of successful branding by an artist, the Swiss textiles were soon marketed under the label “Otti Berger Stoffe” and the Dutch fabrics under the abbreviation “O.B.”
At the same time, Berger gained widespread recognition through her publications in international trade journals. She fought for patents and designed the textiles in Hans Scharoun's early, small masterpiece. The upholstery fabrics as well as the door, window and bed curtains in the Villa Schminke in Löbau (1933) all came from her hand. She explained that as a textile artist she strove to “conform to the aspirations of the architects” (1930/31, cited in Lösel, p. 242). One contemporary, however, drew the opposite conclusion: he praised the “farsightedness of the house” (cited in Lösel, p. 241).
“I CAN'T 'GET THROUGH TO' ANYONE”: GREAT BRITAIN AND LAST DAYS
For the Yugoslavian citizen with Jewish roots, the situation in Germany became increasingly difficult starting in 1933. On May 23, 1936, the Nazis permanently revoked her license as a “model designer.” In February 1937 and on the advice of former Bauhaus director Walter Gropius, she moved to London, where she felt out of place. For weeks she worked without pay in the textile industry but encountered no opportunities for salaried employment. Only the Helios company in Bolton paid her occasionally. “I can't 'get through to' anyone here, I sit alone day after day, evening after evening, sad and despondent,” she wrote resignedly in 1938 (cited in Radewaldt, 2009, p. 67). Her mother’s serious illness forced her to move to Yugoslavia soon afterwards. As Moholy-Nagy had - presumably - offered her the position of weaving workshop manager at the New Bauhaus in Chicago, she hoped for a new life in the United States with her friend, the architect Ludwig Hilberseimer. But despite enormous efforts, she failed to secure a second visa. Once again, she found herself sidelined, waiting for better times, as she revealed in 1941 in a letter. It is considered to be one of her last signs of life.
(Text from 2014;translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2024.)
Please consult the German version for additional information (pictures, sources, videos, bibliography).
Quotes
“to become an artist, you have to be an artist, and to become one, if you already are, you come to the bauhaus; and to turn this 'artist' back into a human being: that is the task of the bauhaus.” (Interview with Bauhaus students. Otti Berger. In: bauhaus. zeitschrift für gestaltung. 2.1928, H.2/3, pp. 24-25)
“there is no such thing as art in the conventional sense and design in the new sense. because the 'conventional' is never art.” (Interview with Bauhaus students. Otti Berger. In: bauhaus. zeitschrift für gestaltung. 2.1928, H.2/3, pp. 24-25)
“Fabric can be grasped and so understood through the hands as beautiful as a color through the eye or a sound through the ear.” (Otti Berger: Stoffe im Raum. In: Bauhaus Sonder-Heft “Red”, 1930, reprinted in: Droste/Ludewig, 1998, pp. 224-225)
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