THE OVERLOOKED WOMEN OF BAUHAUS
The Bauhaus believed that design, art, and architecture were all interconnected, and that it would form a community of creatives who fueled one another in the spirit of collaboration and an exchange of ideas with the common desire to better society. When the Bauhaus was founded in Weimar, Germany in 1919, its founder and inaugural director, Walter Gropius, claimed in the school’s manifesto that it welcomed “any person of good repute, without regard to age or sex.” It’s a little known fact that more women applied to the Bauhaus than men for its inaugural year. Although the females who were granted admission were often relegated to more “feminine” course tracks such as weaving or ceramics, the move was groundbreaking at the time because women weren’t allowed to formally study art. While the men who came out of the school—like Mies van der Rohe, Wassily Kandinsky, and Marcel Breuer—went on to become legends in their fields, their accolades often overshadowed those of the females of the Bauhaus. Margaretha Reichardt actually developed the iron yarn used in Breuer’s iconic chairs; Anni Albers was just as good of an abstractionist as her husband Josef Albers, but she specialized in weaving; and Friedl Dicker-Brandeis was an extremely talented industrial designer, artist, graphic designer, and fashion designer who died at Auschwitz. Oftentimes, the men’s wives would play a big part in their husbands’ design process. It was the age of Modernism, and the women of the Bauhaus defined the embodiment of the modern woman: self confident, independent, and full of her own ideas.
Founded at the dawn of the golden age of the Weimar Republic, the famed art school stayed in Weimar from 1919 until 1925, when it was forced to move to Dessau, Germany due to rising political pressure from the National Socialist Party in Thuringia, which faced pressure from the state’s more conservative cities to put a leash on the school’s experimental exhibitions. After the Bauhaus decamped from Weimar to Dessau, Gropius erected the iconic minimal Bauhaus building that went against the neoclassical aesthetic of the day. It was in Dessau that the Bauhaus achieved its most fruitful period, until 1932, when the Nazi party took control of Dessau’s city council, and forced the school to relocate to Berlin. The school operated for 10 months, until the Gestapo, the Nazis’ secret police, shut it down. They later allowed it to reopen, but Mies van der Rohe and its faculty made the decision to close the school three months after Adolph Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany.
With the Bauhaus centennial, Weimar, Dessau, and Berlin are set to become tourist destinations this year, and countless institutions and galleries across the globe are holding exhibitions in tribute. The women of the Bauhaus are also finally getting their due; The Angermuseum in Erfurt currently has the exhibition Bauhausmädels (Bauhaus Girls) on display until June 16, and Taschen is releasing a book titled Bauhausmädels. A Tribute to Pioneering Women Artists. But history has largely ignored the accomplishments of the women who were part of the Bauhaus, and although books exhibitions are finally shedding light on their work, until names like Anni Albers, Marianne Brandt, and Friedl Dicker-Brandeis become as known as Marcel Breuer, Mies van der Rohe, and Wassily Kandinsky, the new attention is not enough. Here are just a handful of the Bauhaus women whose work should be celebrated as much as that of their male counterparts.
Marianne Brandt, Metal designer and painter
The Bauhaus fully believed in the fusion of form and function, that a product’s design was just as important as its functionality. That belief is evident in Marianne Brandt’s work. Even though the metal designer and painter’s minimal, circular-shaped ashtrays, lamps, and teapots produced by Alessi were created in the 1920s, their look remains just as relevant in today’s design landscape. Brandt joined the Weimar Bauhaus in 1924, studying under Hungarian painter László Moholy-Nagy in the school’s metal workshop, where she quickly rose in the ranks from assistant to workshop director. Brandt negotiated contracts for the metal workshop. She left the Bauhaus and headed to Berlin, where she assisted Gropius in his studio before becoming the head of metal design at Ruppel in Gotha. Her distinct designs are considered among the best to come out of the Bauhaus and still remain ubiquitous with the design world, influencing countless designers after her. One design, the Model No. MT49 tea infuser, went for a record-breaking $361,000 at auction.
Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Artist, graphic designer, industrial designer, fashion designer
The Vienna-born Friedl Dicker-Brandeis’s work isn’t widely exhibited, but it should be. Her creativity spans several different mediums; she worked in graphic design, designed clothes, made furniture, conceptualized toys, and created thought-provocative collages. Several lectures by artist Paul Klee prompted Dicker-Brandeis to explore the relationship between art and the imagination of children. The multi-hyphenate studied at the Weimar Bauhaus from 1919 to 1923, sometimes working as a teacher. Dicker-Brandeis could design everything from toys to costumes to handbags to exhibition fliers, and her art ranged from colorful, expressive abstract paintings to dark collages that brought together images of Hitler, war planes, and crying babies. Because Dicker-Brandeis was Jewish, she was deported with her husband to the Terezin ghetto, where she took it upon herself to teach the children to express themselves through art. She was transported to Auschwitz in 1944, where she was murdered that year. But, she managed to safely leave two suitcases containing 4,500 children’s drawings, preserving their legacy and a narrative of the tragic period.
Anni Albers, Artist, printmaker, textile designer
Born Anneliese Fleischmann, Anni Albers studied at both the Weimar Bauhaus and the Dessau Bauhaus. Because of her gender, she trained in the weaving workshop and received a diploma from the Bauhaus. In 1925 she married Bauhaus master Josef Albers. Albers served as deputy and acting head of the weaving workshop numerous times between 1928 to 1931, eventually becoming the head in 1931. Albers and her husband left Germany for the United States because of her Jewish heritage. Their first stop was North Carolina, at the invitation of architect Philip Johnson, who connected them to teaching positions at the experimental Black Mountain College. Albers is arguably the most well known woman to come out of the Bauhaus; she was the first textile designer to earn a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1949. Albers’s patterns often involved repetitive, geometric designs. Had she not been a woman, Albers certainly would have been destined to become an important abstract artist. Earlier this year, the Tate Modern ended a solo exhibition that paid tribute to Albers bridging the gap between textile design and modern art.
Margaretha Reichardt, Textile Designer
Margaretha Reichardt collaborated with Marcel Breuer, one of the most well-known architects and designers from the Bauhaus. She helped develop the sturdy iron yarn material that would become a pivotal detail of his famed tubular steel chairs. Reichardt studied at the Dessau Bauhaus from 1926 to 1932, studying under Josef Albers, Klee, Kandinsky, and Moholy-Nagy, eventually earning a diploma before becoming a weaving master there. In 1933, Reichardt established a handweaving studio in her hometown of Erfurt, Germany, becoming one of the first female entrepreneurs, a rare occurrence at the time. Reichardt’s weavings incorporated bright colors and shapes, and two of the toys she designed in the wood workshop were eventually mass produced by Swiss company Naef. Reichardt would eventually become one of the Bauhaus albums to be present at the reopening of the Bauhaus Dessau. While Breuer’s name is the main one behind the tubular steel chairs still used constantly in interior design, Reichardt’s contribution to them should be remembered.
Lucia Moholy, Photographer, documentarian
Without Lucia Moholy, there would have been a lot fewer photos recording the happenings in the Bauhaus, along with the art and objects that stemmed from the school. When her husband Moholy-Nagy moved to Weimar in 1923 to become a master teacher, Moholy saw it as an opportunity to explore her interest in photography, serving as her husband’s darkroom technician while apprenticing in the school’s photography studio. Moholy’s photographs documented the interior and exterior details of the Bauhaus’s architecture, allowing for the possibility to recreate what was destroyed. Moholy created a record of the Bauhaus masters’ now iconic living quarters for publicity use. She separated from her husband in 1929, and participated in an important photo exhibition in Stuttgart titled Film und Foto. Afterwards, she became a photography teacher at school directed by Johannes Itten, another Bauhaus instructor. She eventually moved to London, working as a photographer, author, lecturer, and documentarian. In 1959 Moholy moved to Switzerland, where she fought Gropius for the original images she contributed to the Bauhaus archive in order to build her own. Sadly, much of Moholy’s work went uncredited, but without her photos, many details of the Bauhaus would have been left to memories and the written word.
The Complex Relationships Between the Bauhaus and the Nazis Administration
It’s impossible to discuss Bauhaus without addressing its entanglement with the politics of its time. While many Bauhaus leaders fled Nazi persecution, maintaining an image of exile and resistance, some—like Walter Gropius—stayed in good standing with the regime. Women like Lilly Reich designed exhibitions for the Nazis, and Marianne Brandt, known for her beautiful and functional napkin holders, worked for the Reichskulturkammer to survive the war years. These stories complicate the narrative of Bauhaus as a purely avant-garde movement disconnected from its political surroundings after it closed. However, this is largely a "masculine" story—most of the collaboration with the Nazis came from male students and teachers.
Female Resistance Fighters and Famous Female Artists
Some Bauhaus women actively resisted the Nazi regime, using their art and design skills to fight oppression. Edith Tudor-Hart, from Vienna, became a key figure in the resistance, using her talents to document early arrests—such as those during May Day parades in the early 1930s. She also put her Bauhaus training into practice by creating photos for forged identifications to help people escape the country quickly, showing how the school's principles of practicality and adaptability could be a powerful tool against authoritarianism.
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky: Designing for Women and Freedom
Although not matriculated at Bauhaus, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky collaborated closely with Bauhaus teachers and students. She is known as the first female architect in Austria and is best known for her creation of the Frankfurt Kitchen (1926), a revolutionary design aimed at improving efficiency and hygiene for women in the home. During World War II, she actively resisted the Nazis as part of the Communist underground, and after being arrested and sentenced to death (later reduced to 15 years in prison), she went on to continue her architecture work post-war, creating spaces designed specifically for women. Her story is one of perseverance, and her influence can still be felt—her apartment in Vienna stands as a testament to her life and work.
The Legacy of Bauhaus Women and Their Struggles
While many male Bauhaus members managed to obtain work permits outside of Europe during the rise of Nazism, women were often left with fewer options and greater risk. Many Bauhaus women were persecuted and killed by the Nazis, like Otti Berger, who perished at Auschwitz. The gender disparities in their opportunities for survival and escape remind us of the broader struggles women faced during this time.
The Bauhaus Beyond Europe
After the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis, its legacy continued to spread across the globe. Institutions such as Harvard University School of Design and the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago carried forward its teachings. Meanwhile, Bauhaus architecture found a new home in Tel Aviv, often called the “White City” for its stunning Bauhaus-inspired buildings. This influence is still evident in schools like Black Mountain College in North Carolina, which centered women artists in its programs, and the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm (College for Design, Ulm, Germany). Black Mountain College in particular housed artists like Elizabeth Schmitt Jennerjahn, whose piece Cross (1949) carries forward Bauhaus principles.
Inspiration for Contemporary Design
We also examined how Bauhaus principles influenced contemporary design. Mary Bauermeister took Bauhaus ideas into new realms of assemblage and collage, while Dieter Rams brought its clean, functional aesthetics to the world of consumer electronics with Braun—later inspiring Jony Ive's iconic designs for Apple products like the iPod.
Continuing to Complicate the Narrative
From the early 20th century to today, the women of Bauhaus challenge us to rethink and expand our understanding of modernism. Each of these women's stories not only contributes to Bauhaus’s legacy but also reshapes how we understand the interplay of art, design, and social justice. The Bauhaus was more than a movement, it was a space where the boundaries of design, art, politics, and identity were constantly negotiated, often by women whose names and legacies are just now being fully recognized. By learning their stories, we can better understand how Bauhaus continues to shape our world today.
SOURCE:
READ MORE:
https://www.thecollector.com/5-women-behind-the-bauhaus-art-movements-success/
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180919-anni-albers-and-the-forgotten-women-of-the-bauhaus
https://www.afar.com/magazine/behind-the-bauhaus-influential-women-who-helped-shape-a-movement
https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/sore-popitz-meet-the-bauhauss-only-known-woman-graphic-designer/
https://www.archdaily.com/890807/the-lost-history-of-the-women-of-the-bauhaus
VIDEO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PshQs7LLNiw