Mulheres na Deutscher Werkbund

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Women and the Werkbund: Gender Politics and German Design Reform, 1907-14
Author(s): Despina Stratigakos
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Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Dec., 2003), pp. 490-
511
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Women and the Werkbund 
Gender Politics and German Design Reform, 1907-14 
DESPINA STRATIGAKOS 
Harvard University 
In September 1907, an exhibition opened in the gallery 
of the Berlin Secession that prompted one reviewer to 
comment that the usual clarity, order, and good form of 
these rooms, normally dedicated to displaying modern art, 
had succumbed to the chaos of"bric-a-brac."' The cause of 
this disruption was an arts fair hosted by the Women's 
Employment Association, an organization that promoted 
economic opportunities for women.2 Antique dealers were 
invited to participate in the fundraising event, and old Gobe- 
lins, Madonna statues, Meissen knickknacks, chalices, giant 
amethysts, and even mammoth bones commingled with 
handicrafts by the association's members (Figure 1).3 
Reviews in the popular press emphasized the jarring 
contrast between this jumble of artistic wares and the sobri- 
ety associated with the Berlin Secession's own exhibition 
methods.4 The vast quantity and variety of objects displayed 
at the women's show-heaped together with little regard 
for categories-were described as confusing and over- 
whelming, but also as intimate and cozy.s If the Secession, 
according to reviewers, now resembled more "a great col- 
orful bazaar" than a "little temple of art," the transforma- 
tion was not unpleasant.6 For in the thick stew of 
bric-a-brac, one could immerse oneself in the visual and tac- 
tile pleasures of excess, heterogeneity, and disorder. 
While enthusiastic crowds shopped at the Women's 
Employment Association exhibition, a group of artists, 
architects, critics, and business owners met in Munich to 
found the German Werkbund.7 They came bearing differ- 
ent ideologies but a common goal: to save German culture 
from bric-a-brac. From the perspectives of those gathered 
in Munich, the Berliners' chaotic pleasures were symptoms 
of a national malady. The confusion of styles, the popular- 
ity of kitsch, and the allure of the fantastic were signs of the 
disintegration of German Geist, the nation's cultural glue, in 
the face of modern economic and social pressures. Mem- 
bers of the Werkbund mourned the common spirit they 
believed had integrated cultural forms in the precapitalist 
era. Yet if bric-a-brac signified modern soullessness, it could 
also be a site for intervention. Rejecting the elitist approach 
to art reform represented by the Secession (all the more 
striking when its pristine gallery was briefly usurped by lace 
makers and curio-hunters), the artists of the Werkbund 
directed their aesthetic discipline to everyday spaces and 
habits, focusing on the home and the consumer commodi- 
ties that filled it. They hoped that in this down-to-earth 
environment a modern Wohnkultur, or culture of dwelling, 
would arise to unite deeply rooted German spiritual values 
with the forces of industrialization.8 
Architectural historians have recently shifted from 
treating the Werkbund as a precursor of 1920s concerns 
with art and technology to locating its significance within 
the debates on modernity in Wilhelmine Germany. Mark 
Jarzombek has probed the fissures of race and class in the 
Werkbund's egalitarian rhetoric.9 Frederic Schwartz has 
revealed in the vast literature produced by Werkbund pro- 
ponents an emerging discourse on mass culture.10 Although 
Figure 1 "Bric-a-brac in the Secession": the 
Women's Employment Association exhibition, 
Berlin, 1907 
these new perspectives have greatly increased our under- 
standing of the complexity of the Werkbund, the role of 
gender has remained unexamined.1l 
As studies in other areas of cultural history have shown, 
however, gender was central to the crisis of modern identity 
in the Wilhelmine period.12 Women seeking higher educa- 
tion and careers challenged traditional gender roles, raising 
both hopes and fears for the future of German society. 
Questions about the nature of sexual difference, the cultural 
and economic roles of men and women, female suffrage, the 
sanctity of marriage and motherhood, and the morality of 
"new women" filled the German press. Although other 
Western nations faced similar social pressures, conserva- 
tives in Germany worried that weak gender roles would 
undermine their newly unified state.13 
The "woman question" at the heart of German debates 
about social stability and national identity also entered into 
discussions of modern aesthetics. The bric-a-brac pleasures 
of the Women's Employment Association exhibition were 
considered by many in design reform circles to be typically 
feminine vices. In their call for a return to order, Werkbund 
spokesmen-and spokeswomen-were not gender-neutral. 
When Karl Scheffler, an art critic and influential Werkbund 
theorist, declared that "the battle of the Werkbund is ... a 
campaign to achieve a new masculine reason," he meant it 
literally.14 Although others countered that design reform 
needed a feminine viewpoint, the belief that the "battle" of 
aesthetic renewal was a gendered one emerges repeatedly 
in Werkbund writings. 
In this article, I explore the gender of everyday design 
WOMEN AND THE WERKBUND 491 
Figure 2 Participants at the Werkbund conference, Vienna, 1912 
in the Werkbund discourse, focusing on the organization's 
early years, from its founding in 1907 to its major design 
exhibition of 1914 held in Cologne. During this period, the 
Werkbund grappled publicly with its reform agenda, 
attempting both to define it for its own members and to 
inform a lay audience. To the conglomeration of texts pro- 
duced by male Werkbund artists, journalists, theorists, and 
publishers that has comprised this discourse for historians, I 
introduce the voices of women. In attending to gender, I also 
expand the category of primary sources relevant for Werk- 
bund scholarship to include women's exhibitions, texts on 
gender by male Werkbund commentators, and the women's 
press, a burgeoning and increasingly influential forum of 
newspapers and journals in the Wilhelmine period. 
Employing these new sources, I analyze the discipline 
of the Werkbund through the lens of gender. I begin by 
investigating attitudes among women and men active in the 
Werkbund toward women as consumers, sellers, and pro- 
ducers of everyday commodities. In the second section, I 
consider how contemporary theories of gender, and partic- 
ularly the idea of a female aesthetic lack, contributed to 
shaping the Werkbund's central design values of quality and 
Sachlichkeit. I conclude by examining how the role of women 
artists and the gendering of design values converged in theHaus der Frau, the women's pavilion at the 1914 exhibition. 
By bringing together these elements, I seek to demonstrate 
that the Werkbund's discipline, which promised a new spiri- 
tual and aesthetic unity in Germany, was grounded in con- 
flicting assumptions about gender roles in modern society. 
To overlook this tension is to miss the full complexity of 
responses by male and female design reformers to the exhil- 
arating and confusing experiences of modernity. 
Women and Everyday Objects 
Women in the Werkbund 
The presence of women in the Werkbund has been all but 
unrecognized by historians.15 Nonetheless, women artists, 
writers, and entrepreneurs were among those who enthusi- 
astically took up the Werkbund banner (Figure 2). From a 
small but distinguished cohort among the principal founders, 
the number of women grew significantly in the organization's 
early years.16 In 1910, about fifty women artists and women- 
492 JSAH / 62:4, DECEMBER 2003 
owned firms were listed as members of the Werkbund, rep- 
resenting 5 percent of the total.17 Three years later, their 
numbers had doubled to nearly one hundred, or about 8 per- 
cent.18 Since members were admitted only by invitation of 
the Werkbund's board of directors, this increase suggests a 
growing recognition of women in the design field. To these 
statistics we must add the numerically unquantifiable but 
nonetheless substantial presence of women who actively par- 
ticipated in the organization without appearing on its mem- 
bership roll, a broad category that included leaders of 
affiliated associations and wives of male members (who were 
often accomplished artists in their own right). Membership 
numbers alone, therefore, are only a partial indicator of 
women's influence in the Werkbund.19 We must also con- 
sider their writings, designs, and positions within the group, 
as well as contributions to conferences and exhibitions. 
The most prominent of the early female members were 
designers, including Gertrud Kleinhempel (1875-1948), well 
known for her furniture designs and pioneering role in Dres- 
den's design reform workshops; Anna Muthesius 
(1870-1961), a leading dress reform designer and wife of 
Werkbund cofounder Hermann Muthesius; Else Oppler- 
Legband (1875-1965), a prominent clothing and interior 
designer who directed the women's artistic dress department 
at the Wertheim department store in Berlin; Margarethe von 
Brauchitsch (1865-1957), a textile artist in Munich famous 
for her machine embroidery; Elisabeth von Hahn, the trend- 
setting artistic director of window displays for Wertheim; and 
Fia Wille (1868-1920), a clothing and interior designer and 
co-owner of one of the most successful design firms in 
Berlin.20 Oppler-Legband achieved a high profile within the 
Werkbund, serving as a speaker on its national lecture tour of 
1909 and the following year becoming director of the Werk- 
bund's school for display art, the H6here Fachschule fiir 
Dekorationskunst in Berlin.21 
Acclaimed and confident artists, these women brought 
their own theories of design reform to the Werkbund, ideas 
that were shaped in part by contemporary discourses in the 
applied arts but also by other radical currents at the turn of 
the century, including dress reform and the women's move- 
ment. They envisioned a vital role for women in German 
aesthetic culture as mediators between old and new, bring- 
ing traditional feminine values to bear on a modern 
Wohnkultur. At the same time, they shared with their male 
Werkbund colleagues certain assumptions about feminine 
vices-indeed, loudly proclaimed their dangers-but 
argued that they alone could eradicate them. Women in the 
Werkbund presented themselves as the "natural" teachers of 
other women on the basis of a shared feminine sensibility 
and an understanding of the domestic realm. They thus 
insisted on their centrality to the organization's educational 
efforts, particularly in bringing the reform message to Ger- 
man housewives, shop girls, and other women artists. 
Bad Shoppers: The Role of Women Consumers 
To vanquish bad taste, Werkbund members knew they must 
first win over the consumer. As long as German consumers 
delighted in Schund, or junk, manufacturers had no incentive 
to offer anything better. Germans had to be made to under- 
stand the cultural significance of consumption and the 
national consequences of their personal choices.22 Here the 
reformers could not ignore female consumers, who formed a 
large sector of the buying public. In a 1911 essay, Werkbund 
member AdolfVetter, an Austrian government official, linked 
the historic decline of quality work to a progressive loss of 
mastery among women, initially in their role as producers of 
goods and later as consumers.23 Their loss of expertise and 
concomitant inability to discern quality were symptomatic of 
economic shifts, but also contributed to chaos in the mar- 
ketplace. Nonetheless, modern women consumers in Vetter's 
account were cast as victims, not villains. 
Others in the reform movement, drawing on the com- 
monly held view that female taste was conservative, were 
more hostile toward women consumers and treated them 
as impediments to change. In an article written at the time 
that the idea for the Werkbund was germinating (and 
almost certainly read by its future leaders),24 the Austrian 
theorist Joseph August Lux, soon to be a founding mem- 
ber, bluntly declared: "The spiritual backwardness of 
women is one of the greatest spiritual obstacles with which 
progress must struggle. Men are ruined not so much by 
wicked females as by stupid ones." Unfortunately, these 
fools had a great deal of economic power "because women 
are the clientele for the important, large sector of industry 
that creates for the furnishing and design of daily life, for 
the visual culture of the everyday." Their influence, he 
warned, was a cause of poorly manufactured goods.25 
But women were not entirely to blame. Lux admon- 
ished educated men for relinquishing control of this 
domain. By claiming "not to understand anything about 
these matters, [men] leave the care of the home and house- 
on which the essence of the city, life, and thus pretty much 
everything depends-to women, who usually understand 
even less." The result was an economic and spiritual disas- 
ter: "Through [women], who determine public taste, senti- 
mentality waltzes in the door" in the fashionable 
"ultra-curlicued" clothing of mass-produced commodities.26 
Almost as if speaking to cuckolds, Lux rebuked men for 
doing nothing to stop their kitsch-embracing wives. 
WOMEN AND THE WERKBUND 493 
Equally harsh criticism of women was voiced by Else 
Warlich, a writer living in Kassel.27 Her polemical essay 
"The German Werkbund and Woman" appeared in the 
inaugural volume of Das Werk, the Werkbund's first publi- 
cation. Commenting on the "hot" cultural wars fought by 
the Werkbund, Warlich identified the woman consumer as 
the "arch enemy." Responsible for making the home beau- 
tiful, modern women failed because they preferred cheap 
imitation to authenticity. Lacking the "proper judgment and 
appreciation for quality work," women alone were to blame 
for the brummagem decor, the "household junk" (Haus- 
greuel), of the modern dwelling.28 
Warlich pleaded with Werkbund leaders to address 
women, thereby implying that they conceived their audience 
as primarily male. In making her case, Warlich likened the 
female consumer to an open sore and a barbarian, and the 
Werkbund to her surgeon and civilizer: "Here is the deep, 
gnawing wound from which our entire cultural life falls ill; 
here the doctor must position the knife; here above all the 
German Werkbund should seek, with the strongest remedies, 
to make its educational influence felt. Make it perfectly clear 
to the woman what a great barbarian she is as a consumer, 
hold a mirror before her again and again so that she turnsin 
shame from her own reflection, teach her to love what is real 
and true, to recognize and appreciate the high value of qual- 
ity work, and prove to her that the good and expensive nev- 
ertheless still is and remains the cheapest!"29 Tapping into 
broader fears of cultural degeneration and evoking the lan- 
guage of race and disease common in debates about German 
colonialism, these images were intentionally alarmist. War- 
lich's essay was, in essence, a manifesto intended to refocus 
the Werkbund's energies onto women. 
Although censorious, Warlich did not suggest, as did 
Lux, that husbands play a greater role in domestic con- 
sumption. Rather, she argued for reforming the woman 
shopper and believed it would be other, better educated 
women who would administer the cure. Warlich's attack was 
meant to reaffirm the centrality of the woman shopper, a 
key difference from Lux. Other women associated with the 
Werkbund similarly insisted that the organization recog- 
nize the importance of the female consumer and of indus- 
tries devoted to her, such as women's apparel.30 
The argument that women's immersion in the world 
of everyday objects placed them at the center of commod- 
ity reform was also employed by Fia Wille, who with her 
husband, Rudolf, owned a prominent design firm in Berlin. 
Addressing the obfuscating fashionability of window dis- 
plays, an art that figured prominently in the Werkbund's 
concern with the appearance of consumer goods, Wille 
argued that it fell to women to induce change: "The effect 
of the displayed material is intended primarily for her; she 
has a right to demand that one show her not only what is 
'modern,' but also what is and will remain beautiful. A 
woman's time is also valuable-she does not want to spend 
hours searching only in the end to have to take what she 
basically does not like."31 Published in a popular women's 
journal shortly before the Werkbund was founded, Wille's 
article explained to its female readership what to demand 
from shop displays-how to distinguish between that which 
performed a service through the simplicity and utility of its 
presentation and that which cared only for profit, attempt- 
ing to entice with gaudy fashion tricks. Wille, together with 
other female members, continued to use the women's press 
as a mouthpiece for reform in the early years of the Werk- 
bund. Their writings disseminated the organization's mes- 
sage to an important general readership not as easily 
reached by its own more specialized publications. 
When we focus on the female shopper in the Werk- 
bund discourse, our understanding of what was at stake in 
the reeducation of the consumer shifts. It was a question 
not only of what the consumer would buy-whether qual- 
ity goods or Schund-but also of who would make purchas- 
ing decisions. Elisabeth Altmann-Gottheiner (1874-1930), 
an economist and prominent figure in the bourgeois 
women's movement, claimed that middle-class female con- 
sumers were driving the dramatic growth in luxury com- 
modities.32 For Wille and her female colleagues in the 
Werkbund, this affirmation of women's economic power 
was professionally desirable: a strong woman consumer rep- 
resented a persuasive claim to influence within the organi- 
zation. But this very recognition could lead to a reactionary 
stance, as represented by Lux. Precisely because women 
were seen as all-too-powerful consumers, men (and specif- 
ically, educated, middle-class men) must be rallied to the 
shops. The Werkbund leaders' insistence on addressing 
their fellow men (as suggested by Warlich) thus makes sense 
despite claims by Lux and others that it was women who 
dominated the consumer market for everyday commodities. 
In the context of male anxiety about women's economic 
influence, a new reading of the Werkbund's consumer re- 
education program is necessary: it was not only about mak- 
ing better shoppers, but also, and importantly, about 
convincing men that shopping was a gentleman's affair. 
Middle-Class Missionaries: The Argument for 
Female Shop Clerks 
To her plea for a change of priorities within the organiza- 
tion, Warlich added a warning: men may well be the 
founders and leaders of the Werkbund, but women would 
494 JSAH / 62:4, DECEMBER 2003 
determine its success. The "public" spoken of in Werkbund 
propaganda, she pointed out, was overwhelmingly com- 
posed of women. In addition to consumers, women were 
the majority of sales personnel "in the entire garment indus- 
try, in department stores, in gold and silverware shops- 
there where all the thousand little embellishments for our 
life and home are sold." The salesperson's position, with its 
power to shape consumer choices, was viewed by the Werk- 
bund as one of enormous responsibility, and Warlich 
decried the harm being done by tasteless saleswomen push- 
ing "ugly, false, and cheap rubbish" on their customers. 
Warlich demanded that the Werkbund focus on training 
female sales personnel, who, multiplied by the thousands, 
would become the foot soldiers of its reform campaign. For 
Warlich, the ideal saleswoman would be from the educated 
middle classes, and on the basis of her education and culture 
would "bear the truly well-made and beautiful to the widest 
strata of our people."33 
Writing in Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration a few years 
later, Karl Widmer, a Karlsruhe-based professor and Werk- 
bund member, recommended educated female sales per- 
sonnel for arts and crafts shops. He did so reluctantly, 
believing that modern social conditions compelled women 
to seek careers instead of their "natural occupation," moth- 
erhood. Widmer opposed allowing women access to "male" 
professions, but could foresee an expansion into areas for 
which women were particularly suited, such as crafts retail. 
Women constituted the main market for handicrafts, he 
argued, and they, much more than men, felt the lure of fash- 
ion and the need for advice. As sales personnel, women were 
particularly good at giving this kind of advice and were "nat- 
urally" interested in the objects for kitchen and dwelling 
that comprised the bulk of production in the arts and crafts 
industry. Widmer may have sought to diminish the dis- 
tasteful monetary aspect of this exchange by subordinating 
the saleswoman's role in fulfilling material needs to a higher 
cultural duty, the education of taste. At this level of respon- 
sibility, technical knowledge alone did not suffice; one had 
to be cultured. Echoing Warlich, whose article he may have 
read, Widmer declared that educated, middle-class women 
were desperately needed, but feared that the shame associ- 
ated with working outside the home would keep them from 
the retail profession.34 
Although Widmer based his argument for the sales- 
woman partly on gender-based needs and skills, it is inter- 
esting that both authors emphasized her middle-class status. 
The Werkbund's class-driven goals, which strove to impose 
middle-class tastes across German society, were easily allied 
with the efforts of the bourgeois women's movement to 
broaden employment possibilities for middle-class 
women.35 If, as discussed below, women as artistic produc- 
ers were resisted within the Werkbund, they may have been 
perceived as useful allies at the level of retail. Educated, 
middle-class men would not accept such socially inferior 
employment.36 But if educated, middle-class women could 
be persuaded to go in their place, they could serve as the 
retail missionaries the Werkbund needed for the successful 
propagation of middle-class taste. 
Positioning the Woman Designer: From the 
Margins to the Center 
For an appeal to recognize women as partners in design 
reform, Warlich's essay began, at first glance, rather oddly. 
She discussed the inherent conceptual limitations that pre- 
vented women from achieving greatness in "masculine" 
artistic fields, such as architecture.37 Her views recalled the 
theorieson women and creativity published a year earlier 
in the influential book Die Frau und die Kunst by Karl Schef- 
fler.38 Scheffler's treatise belonged to a new type of German 
literature that emerged toward the end of the nineteenth 
century and scrutinized women's capacities to function in 
particular professions. In 1872, for instance, Theodor von 
Bischoff, a professor of medicine in Munich, published a 
pamphlet arguing against female physicians on the "scien- 
tific" basis that women's weak physiology, and particularly 
their small brains, could not withstand the rigors of medical 
study. His concern, he claimed, was not only for the pro- 
fession, but also for the femininity and fertility of the prac- 
titioners.39 Decades later, Scheffler portrayed the female 
creator in the fine and applied arts as a perverse figure 
endangering German culture and womanhood. Scheffler 
was vitriolic in his criticism of women who presumed to 
compete with male artists, veering into the paranoid when 
he claimed that women who strove toward masculine genius 
would destroy themselves, becoming prostitutes and les- 
bians.4? Published in the same year that women won admis- 
sion to Prussian universities, Scheffler's book was meant as 
a warning-a wake-up call to his fellow Germans-to stop 
the advancing tide of productive (rather than reproductive) 
women before it was too late. 
Scheffler's treatise on women has received little atten- 
tion in design histories, perhaps because his extreme views 
place this important critic-for many years editor of the 
journal Kunst und Kiinstler and an influential voice within 
the Werkbund-in a distinctly unflattering light. Yet Die 
Frau und die Kunst found a receptive audience in design 
reform circles (and beyond), judging from the discernable 
imprint of its theories on later publications about women 
designers and architects by Werkbund members Otto Bart- 
WOMEN AND THE WERKBUND 495 
ning, Robert Breuer, Paul Klopfer, Paul Westheim, and oth- 
ers. Scheffler's ideas were further disseminated in the jour- 
nals of prominent publishers in the Werkbund.41 
The reason why Die Frau und die Kunst found adher- 
ents among men in the Werkbund is not difficult to imag- 
ine. Many had begun their careers in art academies and 
architecture schools and were newcomers to the design of 
everyday commodities. Their attempt to create a new field 
of professional activity for themselves was opposed by the 
craftsmen who dominated the traditional arts and crafts.42 
Standing on contested ground, male reformers reacted 
antagonistically to the competition represented by yet 
another group of newcomers. Women, also seeking new 
professional markets, turned to design in increasing num- 
bers after the turn of the century. Evoking their customary 
role as arbiters of taste in the home, they now sought to 
exercise this monopoly on a professional level. The appeal 
of Scheffler's vilification of women artists must be consid- 
ered in light of the struggle by different groups-voiced in 
Werkbund debates to control this field of culture at the 
moment when it was becoming commercialized and pro- 
fessionalized. 
In this context, Warlich's appropriation of Scheffler, far 
from signaling a concession, served to reinforce a propri- 
etary claim. Agreeing with Scheffler that women's artistic 
talents were not equal to those of men, she countered that 
those differences were precisely the source of women's spe- 
cial talents in domestic design. Where the male artist 
"strives in vastness," the woman excelled in "the small and 
fine, the fragile and ornamental." In her ability to think on 
an intimate scale, she surpassed the man, and the art of the 
home, Warlich maintained, should belong first and fore- 
most to her.43 A potential liability was thus transformed into 
a strategy for intervention in the heart of Werkbund terri- 
tory, the realm of everyday objects. 
Despite their being a minority, Warlich imagined an 
essential role for women as artistic producers in this 
domain. Who could better understand and educate the pub- 
lic in the art of the home than the woman artist who pos- 
sessed first-hand knowledge of daily domestic life? Her 
relationship to women seeking to beautify their homes 
would be more direct and effective, for it was "precisely the 
woman who best knows and can judge the manifold wishes 
and demands of women in this regard, certainly better than 
the man. She is able, therefore, to propose some new and 
good things, which cannot be asked of a man in the same 
measure, and certainly not with the same sure feeling, as a 
woman."44 With the intercession of the woman artist, then, 
Warlich's argument came full circle. Her account of the 
Werkbund's relationship to women proceeded from the sins 
of fallen shoppers to their redemption by the all-knowing 
female creator of daily life. Simply put, the bad women 
destroying German culture would be saved by the good 
women belonging to the aesthetically enlightened. Warlich 
thus situated women at the center of the Werkbund's design 
crusade, which was to be fought, literally, on the home 
front. 
Another potential liability for the woman artist-the 
stereotype of the eternal feminine-was tactically deployed 
in a 1906 article on Else Oppler-Legband (Figures 3, 4). 
Author Irma Schneider-Sch6nfeld gave a feminist inflection 
to the theory common among German design reformers 
that modern form had its roots in the (imagined) golden 
past of their forefathers.45 Schneider-Schonfeld's review of 
an exhibition of Oppler-Legband's furniture and clothing 
designs began with this homey scene from the time of the 
"ancestors": 
As grandfather took grandmother and with formal, tender gal- 
lantry led her to their new home, he was greeted there uni- 
formly-from wall and ceiling, furniture and utensil, picture and 
book and bouquet of flowers-by the same friendly spirit that 
equally dominated the flowery dress of his little wife as his own 
delicately solemn tailcoat. The spirit that, above all, was alive in 
them both-deep in their gestures and in the sounds and steps 
of their dance rhythms. 
In them bloomed again-and thereafter in no other genera- 
tion-the loveliest flower of all culture, the unsought, natural 
harmony of outer and inner life: their own style.46 
The ancestors' style-the revival of which would soon 
become a Werkbund leitmotif-was believed to have 
emerged organically from a domestic culture deeply rooted 
in and expressive of an authentic, integrated self. Although 
this folkloric Eden, according to Schneider-Sch6nfeld, had 
been followed by the fall into fashion, a period of masquer- 
ade and falsehood, the design reform movement was poised 
to bring about a spiritual rebirth. 
In the search for modern authenticity, Schneider- 
Sch6nfeld portrayed Oppler-Legband as a Janus figure, in 
touch with the best of the past but also forward-looking. 
She ascribed to her "the fine and noble personality of a 
woman-who unites the ancient feminine capacities for 
charming, balanced prudence; clever, selective taste; and 
controlled temperament with the educated and self-empow- 
ered intelligence of the modern woman, which enables her 
to transform every talent into a deed. For this reason, it 
seems to me that her beautiful, harmonious image, which 
looks out at us from page fifty-one, belongs-in more than 
one sense-to her work. The same noble spirit of yearning 
496 JSAH / 62:4, DECEMBER 2003 
Figure 3 Else Oppler-Legband, 1906 
Figure 4 Else Oppler-Legband, sideboard and hutch, 
displayed at an exhibition of her work, Berlin, ca. 1906 
for beauty emanates from both."47 In this concordance 
between her domestic interiors and her own being, Oppler- 
Legband embodied the organic and empowering harmony 
of an earlier age. Rather than being the vehicle for kitsch- 
Lux's accusation against women- she mobilized an authen- 
tic German spirit (via ancient femininecapacities) in her 
modern designs. To the quest for style, then, women 
brought a particular feminine balance that united a spiri- 
tual connection to the past with a modern sensibility.48 
(En)gendering Good Form: The Feminine 
Other of Qualitat and Sachlichkeit 
Efforts to position women at the center of the Werkbund's 
reform project thus sought to reinforce and capitalize on 
their identification with the objects and spaces of everyday 
life. Whether learned or innate, women designers' gender- 
specific knowledge was posited as grounds for professional 
privilege. This claim did not go unnoticed or uncontested. 
Men seeking professional sovereignty over the same realm 
could not present equivalent credentials. But in their dif- 
ferences they, too, saw an opportunity. On the basis of 
defending good form, the Werkbund's goal, male design 
reformers made their own gendered counterclaim to the 
everyday. 
With hundreds of members, the Werkbund never rep- 
resented a unified or-as underscored by the much-discussed 
debates about types between Hermann Muthesius and Henry 
van de Velde-consistent viewpoint on design reform. 
Nonetheless, two interrelated concepts dominated the Werk- 
bund's definition of good form: Qualitit (quality) implied 
solid, honest materials and unalienated workmanship; and 
WOMEN AND THE WERKBUND 497 
Sachlichkeit signified a sober, "scientific" approach to design 
that rejected nostalgia for past styles and excessive ornament 
in favor of a simple "inner truthfulness." Both concepts 
assumed rigorously trained artists uniting the latest machine 
technology with traditional German cultural values.49 
The relationship of women to quality was the subject of 
an essay by the Swiss economist Wilhelm Wirz (b. 1890). It 
appeared in Wohlfahrt und Wirtschaft and subsequently was 
reprinted in Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration and Innen-Deko- 
ration, journals owned by the publishers and Werkbund 
members Eugen Diederichs (Wohlfahrt und Wirtschaft) and 
Alexander Koch.50 Wirz wished to assess the impact of 
female psychology on the production of quality goods. 
Quoting the art critic Oscar Bie, Wirz stated that there 
were two types of people: "those who have a need for orna- 
ment, an external ideal of riches, and those who possess the 
organ for function, for the inner construction of things and 
for bringing out the anatomy."5 For Wirz (and Bie), these 
categories were distinctly gendered: men possessed the 
"organ for function" (i.e., Sachlichkeit) that women lacked.s2 
Citing Scheffler and Warlich, Wirz argued that women's 
ornamental taste, having no critical or constructive depth, 
was drawn to appearance rather than to substance.53 
Unlike Lux and Scheffler, Wirz concluded that female 
psychology was not a source of bad design. But it was not a 
positive force either: "the predominance of the decorative 
over the constructive does not predispose women to further 
the quality movement."54 The aesthetic creation of the 
home at the "tectonic" level must be left to male designers. 
Women had a role to play in functional, modern design at 
the level of refinement, which consisted of softening its 
"hardness" with the female flair for intimacy. Wirz ended 
his essay with a quote from Oscar Wilde: "She has nothing 
essential to say, but says the unessential with great charm."55 
In 1912, critics were given an unprecedented opportu- 
nity to evaluate women designers' contributions to the qual- 
ity movement. The German Lyceum Club, an elite 
professional association for women, hosted a monumental 
exhibition in Berlin entitled Woman at Home and in the Pro- 
fessions. Werkbund members Oppler-Legband and Wille 
were among the principal organizers, and the work of 
women designers dominated the exhibits. Three complete 
dwelling interiors created for the upper, middle, and lower 
classes attracted particular attention. These exhibits repre- 
sented an important public statement about a new, profes- 
sional design relationship between women and the home. 
Extensive coverage by the national and local press as well as 
an astonishing half a million visitors temporarily focused 
the limelight on women designers.56 
Judging the work of his female colleagues, Werkbund 
critic Paul Westheim, who wrote three reviews, reported 
that women's tectonic lack was showing.57 The dominance 
of the decorative he detected was evidence, for Westheim, 
of the continuing "problem" of women's artistic activity.58 
Westheim tended to agree with Scheffler that women had 
an "unproductive predisposition," meaning they were 
unable to conceive in a profound and original manner.59 But 
it was women designers' real productivity in the market- 
place, not their low yields in genius, that most worried Wes- 
theim. In the past, he explained, the influence of a woman's 
creative output had not extended beyond her own house or 
circle of friends. The new professional designers, however, 
needed to create a market. And what they initially brought 
to the marketplace, Westheim claimed, was uniformly bad.60 
Although he admitted there had been some improvement, 
Westheim's reviews give the impression of someone coming 
to assess the damage after the floodgate has broken. 
Making his rounds at the exhibition, Westheim's hawk- 
ish gaze detected the lingering presence of the Dilettantin (the 
woman dilettante). She was identified by her tendency toward 
kitsch, the signifier of aesthetic lack.61 Almost as if describing 
their makers, he called the displayed ceramics "wretched lit- 
tle ornaments, little pictures, craftily coiffured, old-maid 
kitsch."62 The embroidered pictures of one artist prompted 
Westheim to note "how easily something like this can sink 
down to the level of old-maid arts."63 Even favorable impres- 
sions stirred up bad memories of earlier, amateurish efforts 
(that is, progress was marked by a reminder of how bad things 
used to be).64 Similarly, praise of the "good, sometimes even 
excellent" work on display was undermined by referring to 
the artists as "the garnished hats," once again evoking the 
image of the ornamented dilettante.65 
This is not to say that Westheim's criticism was wholly 
unwarranted; with thousands of objects on display, a range 
of quality was inevitable. Notable, however, is how readily 
the charge of dilettantism in particular was levied against 
the woman designer. To prove herself as a professional, the 
woman designer had to banish the ghost of Christmas fairs 
past. In the contemporary discourse on the women 
designer, education was, for many critics, the key to her 
rehabilitation.66 In light of the growing number of women 
entering the design field, the need to provide equal training 
for "quality craftsmen" (Qualitatshandwerker) of both sexes 
was broached by Karl Gross, an outspoken Werkbund 
member and art professor in Dresden, at the 1908 confer- 
ence of the German Applied Arts Associations, and by Mar- 
garete von Brauchitsch at the 1909 meeting of the 
Werkbund in Frankfurt. Women's lack of access to appren- 
ticeships was their main concern, a problem that arose 
partly because of the nuisance of legal regulations govern- 
498 JSAH / 62:4, DECEMBER 2003 
ing workplaces employing both sexes. An article reporting 
on their efforts stated that most people, "even artistically 
talented women, can . . . achieve nothing or at best dilet- 
tantism without lengthy apprenticeships."67 
Others were skeptical that education would lead 
women from dilettantism to quality. Scheffler believed that 
dilettantism was a woman's natural (and only) artistic 
state.68 Klopfer, director of the Royal Building College in 
Weimar and an influential critic, took a similar view. He 
began an article on women in the applied arts by com- 
plaining that at "an otherwise excellent applied arts 
school," "young ladies" had a disruptive habit of enrolling 
shortly before Christmas in order to make their holiday 
presents undera teacher's supervision.69 Klopfer's essay, 
which initially seemed to be a defense of "serious" female 
students, was actually about keeping women out of applied 
arts schools, and the image of the dilettante was cleverly 
employed to link in the reader's mind the triviality of the 
Christmas interlopers with the deeper lack of substance 
Klopfer believed characterized almost all female applied 
artists. Because he, like Scheffler, thought women inca- 
pable of understanding the underlying architectonic prin- 
ciples of the applied arts, Klopfer maintained that even 
trained female applied artists created work that was uno- 
riginal, piecemeal, and superficial-perhaps somewhat bet- 
ter (but not all that much) than the holiday presents made 
by the dilettantes. Although the fault lay partly with peda- 
gogical methods in the applied arts, it was also, Klopfer 
maintained, inherent in female psychology.70 
Women designers struggled to distance themselves from 
the taint of dilettantism. Organizers of the 1912 Berlin exhi- 
bition, for example, sought to impress upon the German pub- 
lic that women's dilettantism was a thing of the past.71 The 
selection of displayed objects was carefully controlled, and 
education in all branches of women's work was made central 
to the exhibition.72 According to one of the organizers, the 
exhibition displayed women's determination "to eliminate 
superficiality and dilettantism everywhere, to achieve a good 
education, to strive for a deep and fundamental knowledge, 
to foster efficiency, clarity, and truth."73 As we will see below, 
the claim to quality and Sachlichkeit at the Haus der Frau was 
based on the total repudiation of the Dilettantin and the un- 
Werkbund-like attributes she represented. 
The turf war between men and women over the aes- 
thetic creation of everyday life was thus entrenched in the 
rhetoric of sexual difference. From Wirz's probing of the 
psychology of taste to Schneider-Schonfeld's search for a 
connection to the past, reformers argued over the signifi- 
cance of a person's gender for achieving the goals of the 
design reform movement. Supporters of women designers 
emphasized their familiarity with day-to-day domestic prac- 
tices and eternal feminine values that tapped an older, purer 
German spirit. They also emphasized the difference 
between "reformed" women, who belonged to a design 
elite, and their dilettantish Other. Those advocating a 
supreme role for male designers adopted a similar strategy 
promoting difference: by defining quality and Sachlichkeit 
partly against so-called feminine flaws, they portrayed good 
form as the more "natural" product of men. On the basis of 
the Werkbund's "new masculine reason," men could claim 
everyday design for themselves. 
The House that Women Built 
In 1914, the Werkbund summoned an international audi- 
ence to an exhibition in Cologne that demonstrated in 
visual form, and on a monumental scale, the organization's 
efforts to elevate German design. Female members were 
invited to participate with their own building, the Haus der 
Frau, intended as a showcase of their achievements in the 
applied arts.7 The pavilion was well located, sharing a plaza 
with van de Velde's theater, Peter Behrens's Festhalle, and 
Walter Gropius's factory administration building (Figure 
5). Amid these leading modernists, the Haus der Frau 
boldly asserted women's role in the design reform move- 
ment. Employing the visual signs of sobriety and restraint, 
it announced the arrival of the sachlich woman designer. In 
its "feminine" conception and organization, the pavilion 
also proclaimed her difference. 
The organizing committee of the Haus der Frau, con- 
sisting of Anna Muthesius as chairperson, Oppler-Legband 
as managing director, and the Berlin designer Lilly Reich as 
general coordinator, reserved the pavilion as an exclusive 
realm for women's artistic labor. Work designed by men but 
executed by female hands was refused.75 Rather, it was the 
conceptual origin that mattered, and only designs created 
by women were displayed at the Haus der Frau. This 
marked an important difference from traditional notions of 
Frauenarbeit, or women's handwork, which emphasized the 
manual aspect of artistic production. By defining women's 
work as intellectual, the Haus der Frau organizers under- 
scored their distance from dilettantism, while also chal- 
lenging the prevailing cultural view of intellectual creativity 
as a masculine domain.76 In addition, they claimed jurisdic- 
tion over all such female labor at the Werkbund exhibition. 
Hoping to create clearly gendered boundaries of artistic 
production, they attempted (but failed) to force women 
artists to show only at the Haus der Frau.77 
In promotional literature, the organizers stressed the dis- 
ciplining standards of the women's pavilion.78 An early notice 
WOMEN AND THE WERKBUND 499 
GESAMT-LAGEPLAN 
der 
Deutschen Werkbund-Ausstellung 
KOLN 1914 I 
Entwurf von Karl Rehorst I 
Baulichkeiten der Ausstellung 19 Aborte und Wasdcraume 32 Bahlsen, Keks-Haus 44 Bremen-Oldenburger Haus mit Garten 51 Alkol5tr1i (.Gstl.is 20 laupt=Cafe 33 Werkbund=Theattr 44 a Flaggenmast des Norddeutsdcen Lloyd, 52 Arl,iterh..u 9 Vcrwaltungsgebaude 21 Gelbes Haus mit Garten 31 Garten Gerhartz und Giesen Bremen 53 I)esgleidhen 
1( Aborte und Waschraume 22 Bierhalle mit Terrassen 35 Garten Finken 45 Etagenvilla 54 Desgleichen 11 Kolner Haus mit Garten 23 Osterreidcisdes Haus 36 Aborte und Wasdthrume 46 Reihenhauser mit Girten 55 Dorfkirdhe 12 Sommerliaus Stadler mit Gartenl Ott 24 Sacsisdces Haus 37 Grabmalkunst 56 Dorffriedhof 
13 l,adenstrale mit Post u. Depositenkasse 25 Koloniales Gehoft 38 Ausstellungsgebaude fir Kranken= und 57 Groles Gehft 14 I:arbenschau 26 Haupthalle Siechenpflege mit Garten Neues niederrheinlishes Dorf 58 jugendhalle 15 I'avillon der 1 amburg-Amerika-Linie 27 Musikpavillon 39 Garten ,Hoppe-Bohmr" 59 Dreifamilienlaus (\Ausstellung fir 16 Verkehrshalle 28 Festhalle 40 Biro und Fabrik 47 Kleines Geh6f lleimatsoutz uni Bauberattng) 
17 Haus Heinersdorff 29 Kabarett und Bar 41 Pavilion der Gasnotorenfabrik Deutz 48 Weinkneipe 60 Dorfgasthaus 18 Teehaus mit Marionetten-Theater 30 Weinhaus mit Terrassenen 42 Shmiedepresse fur Panzerplatten(Mod.) 49 Arbeiterhaus mit Garten 
Miindcener Kinstler u. Garten am Fort 31 Haus der Frau mit Garten 43 Gartenpavillon 50 DorfsAdmiede 
VERLAG RUDOLF MOSSE, KOLN-BERLIN 
Figure 5 Site plan, Werkbund exhibition, Cologne, 1914. The Haus der Frau is no. 31 on the plan. Proceeding clockwise, the neighboring 
buildings include: Walter Gropius's factory administration building (no. 40); Henry van de Velde's theater (no. 33); and Peter Behrens's Festhalle 
(no. 28). 
stated that it was conceived not "as a sanctuary for female 
handiwork of a dilettantish sort, which otherwise could not 
find a place in the German Werkbund exhibition, but rather 
as a fully valid certificate of female artistry."79 Work submit- 
ted by women artists and designers was subject to close 
scrutiny: objects shown at the Haus der Frau were juried three 
times.80 Oppler-Legband indicated what was at stake: "This is 
the first time that women's achievement in the applied arts is 
being tested in such a united format [and] under such high 
demands." In addition to being a test of women's abilities, she 
suggested the Haus der Frau would set a standard, serving "as 
a criterion for selection among the great numbers of those 
who feel called" to the design profession.8' 
The stark physical appearance of the building signaled 
this new discipline. Chosen in a competition open to Ger- 
man and Austrian women architects, the winning design 
was submitted by Margarete Kniippelholz-Roeser (b. 1886), 
an architect living in Berlin.82 The pavilion was a low, tri- 
partite structure with an impressive horizontal span. From 
the front, a striking feature was the total absence of win- 
dowson the wings (Figures 6, 7). Entrances to the building 
were framed by two monumental portals in blue ceramic 
tile by the Munich artists Johanna Biehler (1880-1954) and 
Minnie Goossens (b. 1878). At the rear of the building, a 
garden terrace faced the Rhine (Figure 8). Except for the 
tiled portals at the front and band molding at the rear 
entrance, the building was unornamented. It was also insis- 
tently rectilinear in its forms, with no rounded elements. 
The only exceptions were the small domed trees that the 
architect, who designed the gardens, included at the front of 
the building. 
Writing about the building in the Werkbund's 
Jahrbuch, Oppler-Legband claimed that the design, and par- 
ticularly the approach to ornament, bespoke a fundamental 
restraint: 
[The architect's] design corresponds excellently with the prin- 
ciples that determined the direction of the entire enterprise: it 
is simple, without pretensions, and clear in all parts. Above all, 
it spurns (and this was precisely what appealed to the leader- 
500 JSAH / 62:4, DECEMBER 2003 
Figure 6 Margarete Knuppelholz-Roeser, Haus der Frau, Werkbund exhibition, Cologne, 1914, destroyed 
Figure 7 Unattributed early drawing of the Haus der Frau published in Bauwelt, 1914. The statuary by the entrances in 
this version emphasizes the pavilion's stark geometry. The caption states that the building's form is entirely determined 
by its internal exhibition spaces. 
Figure 8 Knippelholz-Roeser, Haus der Frau, rear fagade (facing river) 
WOMEN AND THE WERKBUND 501 
f 
E - E I.______ - }__- 
I 
ship of the Haus der Frau) covering up honest ability and good 
taste through sumptuousness and invalid means, and thereby 
simulating more than is really there-the fundamental evil of 
every false decorative style. The colored ceramics for the main 
portal by the sculptors Goosens and Bieler [sic] are chosen as 
the only ornament and simply to emphasize the principal archi- 
tecture, so that the building in its succinctness, strict Sach- 
lichkeit, and material solidity may be regarded for all intents and 
purposes as the program for the entire enterprise.83 
The refusal to embellish was explained, then, in the famil- 
iar moralistic Werkbund rhetoric of good form, emphasiz- 
ing Sachlichkeit and quality ("material solidity"). But in the 
context of a women's pavilion, this plainness bore other lev- 
els of meaning. The extent of the nakedness of the building, 
shocking to many visitors, suggests that the organizers were 
determined to avoid the criticism of excessive ornament so 
readily flung at women designers. The bare, expressly "tec- 
tonic" surfaces can be seen as a visual retort to Scheffler, 
Westheim, Klopfer, and their like-minded Werkbund col- 
leagues. But the association of the feminine with the deco- 
rative was so ingrained in architectural discourse that, as we 
will see below, some critics had difficulty conceiving this as 
a women's pavilion. 
The minimization of ornament also paralleled similar 
tendencies in the reform dress designs of Anna Muthesius 
and Oppler-Legband after the turn of the century.84 Dress 
reform, one of many Lebensreform (life reform) tendencies in 
Wilhelmine Germany, attracted physicians, suffragettes, 
nudists, and artists, among others. 85 It is significant that the 
two most powerful designers at the Haus der Frau were 
leaders in the movement to modernize women's clothing. 
Moreover, as both progressive artists and working women, 
they were positioned at a crossroads in this ideologically 
diverse campaign. In design reform circles, an aesthetic 
interest in naked form, unconcealed by ornament, extended 
from women's clothes to architectural theory. For support- 
ers of women's rights, by contrast, dress reform was politi- 
cal: it was about liberating women's bodies from the 
constraints of the corset, and represented the most intimate 
dimension of a larger process of women seizing space that 
propelled them across new social, economic, and physical 
thresholds. Locating the Haus der Frau at the intersection 
of these aesthetic and political approaches to modern 
women's clothing reveals new meanings in its design. 
Oppler-Legband's no-frills design philosophy, 
expressed in her description of the Haus der Frau, exem- 
plified the approach to modern architecture advocated by 
van de Velde and Hermann Muthesius, who saw in the 
reform of clothing "a literal model for design practice." 
Rejecting fashion, they believed architects should prioritize 
utility, "stripping off the excess layers of ornament to liber- 
ate and mobilize the underlying structure." 86 At the Haus 
der Frau, a building intended to house and represent 
women, the example of clothing may have been applied 
even more literally. Typically, reform dress took the form 
of loose garments that minimized surface ornament, fol- 
lowed the contours of the natural (i.e., uncorseted) female 
body, and promoted freedom of movement. Similarly, the 
Haus der Frau presented a naked facade and clearly articu- 
lated external and internal spatial divisions, all of which 
accentuated the building's structure. Organized around a 
symmetrical axis, the floor plan's partitions mirrored the 
building's external contours (see Figures 7, 9). The internal 
layout also emphasized physical movement. Exhibits were 
arranged in a circuit, so that the visitor circumambulated a 
clearly defined core-conceived as the exhibition's vital 
feminine essence-at the center of the pavilion.87 The inter- 
nal spaces can thus be compared to an unencumbered 
female body, with freely circulating limbs surrounding a 
beating heart. This dynamic building-as-body was sheathed 
in architectural reform dress. 
The fusion of the modernity of architecture and female 
bodies at the Haus der Frau had more than aesthetic impli- 
cations. Dress reform was driven partly by the need to 
develop new forms to clothe the energetic, working bodies 
of women who challenged social conventions by pursuing 
higher education and careers. A woman architect, for exam- 
ple, could not climb ladders in a corset. Oppler-Legband, 
Muthesius, and other women artists wore reform dress as 
part of their image as modern, female professionals. A 1912 
photograph of Wille, who created a Damenzimmer (ladies' 
salon) at the Haus der Frau, depicted her in reform dress, 
actively working on architectural plans (Figure 10). In con- 
ceiving a building for modern women like themselves, the 
designers of the Haus der Frau chose an architectural form 
that, like the new clothing, represented and facilitated the 
dynamism of emancipated female bodies.88 
Another facet of the modern woman's liberation sug- 
gested by the Haus der Frau's design was her freedom from 
fashion. Compared to most of the exhibition buildings, the 
Haus der Frau's simple, unornamented surfaces refused any 
hint of architectural modishness. Werkbund theorists con- 
sidered fashion to be one of the most powerful capitalist 
forces destabilizing German society.89 It could be combated 
only through the creation of a lasting national style. Fash- 
ion was, furthermore, a vice explicitly associated with 
women and the female clothing industry, and their enslave- 
ment to foreign (specifically, Parisian) tastes.90 In her writ- 
ings on dress reform, Anna Muthesius argued that dress 
502 JSAH / 62:4, DECEMBER 2003 
Figure 9 Plan, Haus der Frau 
Figure 10 Fia Wille in reform dress and with architectural plans, 1912 
reform was an "antifashion" that fostered women's search 
for personal style.91 As chairperson of the Haus der Frau, 
she applied the idea of antifashion to women's architecture, 
thereby situating the building in the Werkbund's utopian 
realm of true style. 
Upon entering the Haus der Frau, visitors encountered 
a series of variously sized rectilinear spaces, at the center of 
which stood a large square room designed by Oppler-Leg- 
band (see Figure 9, no.30). Flanked by a stage on the right 
side (no. 29) and a tearoom on the left (no. 31), this space 
was intended for social functions. These consisted primar- 
ily of artistic performances by women and afternoon teas, 
which were organized by a special committee of women 
from Cologne.92 The exhibit rooms, which Oppler-Leg- 
band called the "purely practical section," were arranged 
around this active, social core.93 Items displayed included 
tapestries, embroidery, designs for women's and children's 
clothing, books, posters, toys, jewelry, paintings, pho- 
tographs, and even models by women architects (Figures 
11, 12).94 The largest section, at the back of the building, 
was devoted to interior decoration, with individual rooms 
assigned to different designers (see Figure 9, nos. 9-24; nos. 
14 and 15 were passages of shop windows designed by 
Reich). Among the few surviving images of the Haus der 
WOMEN AND THE WERKBUND 503 
Figure 11 Katharina Schaffner, butterfly-patterned cloth exhibited at the Haus 
der Frau 
Figure 12 Dorothea Bock von Wulfingen, dolls exhibited at the Haus der Frau 
Frau's interior are one of a library by Alexe Altenkirch 
(1871-1943), a Cologne-based artist, and one of a dining 
room by Annemarie Moldenhauer, a designer from Offen- 
bach am Main (Figures 13, 14).95 They reveal the unclut- 
tered visual harmonies associated with modernist display 
aesthetics, in sharp contrast with the chaotic abundance of 
the 1907 Women's Employment Association show (see Fig- 
ure 1). Fritz Stahl, art critic for the Berliner Tageblatt, praised 
the "practical and tasteful" rooms of the Haus der Frau as 
among the best of the Werkbund exhibition.96 
A broad cross-section of women's artistic products thus 
surrounded a hub of activity at the center of the pavilion. 
This organizational scheme presented women's creative tal- 
ents as part of a larger synthesis embodied in the Haus der 
Frau. Specifically, visitors to the Haus der Frau encountered 
a modern feminine Wohnkultur that united sachlich objects 
and spaces with traditional domestic practice. The exhibi- 
tion catalogue, for example, noted that "for the duration of 
the exhibition, a social committee of women from Cologne 
will practice the art of hospitality and through artistic events 
of many different sorts variously complement the strict 
Sachlichkeit of the Haus der Frau."97 Sachlichkeit and hospi- 
tality were presented as arts balanced in a women's pavil- 
ion. More vaguely, Oppler-Legband insisted that "each 
department should act not as an austere exhibition object, 
but rather as a space formed with love and care, so that ... 
the true womanly gift to decorate and make livable is 
expressed. True womanliness-that is the general motto for 
the whole enterprise. The Haus der Frau is intended not as 
presumptuous competition to men's work, but rather as a 
balancing regulator and valuable complement to it."98 This 
"womanly gift" to animate spaces and objects, then, also 
served to deflect potential criticism that women designers 
were competing with men: feminine practice or spirit, 
posited as integral to female-designed objects, made the lat- 
ter somehow fundamentally different. 
The Haus der Frau, therefore, was conceived as a 
domesticated (i.e., livable) example of modern design.99 In 
its internal decoration, comfort, and hospitality, the 
women's pavilion was a kind of home; but it was also a place 
of work created by professionals. The Sachlichkeit of its dis- 
plays and spaces belonged to the sphere of the woman pro- 
fessional, while the life within arose from the female bearer 
of domestic culture. Each was posited as integral to the 
other in the creation of the modern home. The conception 
of the pavilion can be seen as involving a dual self-repre- 
sentation of modern women as feminine and domestic, on 
the one hand, and as professional (or sachlich) artists, on the 
other. Although the Haus der Frau's organizers viewed 
these qualities as complementary, not all visitors agreed. 
Critics of the Haus der Frau ignored the importance 
ascribed to practice in mediating form, even though it exem- 
plified the Werkbund's conception of Wohnkultur as a lived 
aesthetic. Rather, adopting a purely visual approach, review- 
504 JSAH / 62:4, DECEMBER 2003 
Figure 13 Alexe 
Altenkirch, library in the 
Haus der Frau 
Figure 14 Annemarie 
Moldenhauer, dining room 
in the Haus der Frau 
WOMEN AND THE WERKBUND 505 
ers of the women's pavilion focused exclusively on appear- 
ances, and many expressed unease with what they perceived 
as its unmoderated Sachlichkeit. The building's minimal orna- 
mentation and windowless wings, in particular, seemed to 
confuse visitors who found it bare, austere, and expression- 
less.100 This sense of an absence or barrenness in the Haus 
der Frau related directly to its femininity. Joseph L6ttgen, 
writing on the Haus der Frau for Deutsche Bauhiitte, com- 
plained that he could not detect a hint of "feminine grace" in 
this overwhelmingly masculine pavilion.101 
The apparent masculinity of the Haus der Frau, sug- 
gested by the absence of feminine signifiers such as ornament, 
represented for some critics, ironically, a kind of architectural 
falsehood. One reviewer mocked the pavilion as "a lot of 
mannerism ... and playing the muscleman.... The power 
that seems to reside in [the Haus der Frau] is borrowed, is a 
reflected radiation [of the energies emitted by the other exhi- 
bition buildings]. On its own, the [women's] building does 
not contribute anything because it does not have any charac- 
ter, or rather pretends a false character. This Sachliche and 
only Sachliche is contrary to the spirit of woman."102 To these 
critics, the Haus der Frau's masquerade in men's clothing 
resulted in sterility, offering only a false semblance of life in 
a sea of productive male virility.103 
Like its detractors, champions of the Haus der Frau 
tended to focus on what it was not. Noting that some female 
visitors found the building without charm, one writer coun- 
tered that the artistic charm of the building lay precisely in 
the absence of all charming things.104 Several other review- 
ers praised the women artists and designers for having 
emancipated themselves from dilettantism.10s In these 
favorable assessments, the Haus der Frau's success was 
attributed to a double negative: it had eradicated aesthetic 
lack. As Wirz might say, women had developed the mascu- 
line "organ for function." Thus, their shame-their aes- 
thetic castration-no longer need be feared: measuring up 
to "the best and biggest" of the German art world, the Haus 
der Frau could "by all means let itself be seen beside the 
others."'06 On the question of a positive contribution, how- 
ever, even the most outspoken supporters were vague on 
what the marriage of femininity and Sachlichkeit produced. 
If admirers had trouble defining the hybrid values pro- 
moted by the Haus der Frau, critics were quick to identify 
a dangerous blurring of the natural order of the sexes.107 
Reviewing the Haus der Frau and its exhibits, Rheinlande 
editor and Werkbund member Wilhelm Schafer defended 
normative boundaries in the division of creative labor 
between men and women.108 He detected originality only 
within traditional branches of female artistry (such as textile 
work). Similarly, commenting on the Haus der Frau, Peter 
Jessen, the influential library director of the Royal Applied 
Arts Museum in Berlin and a founding member of the 
Werkbund, suggested that "[the woman designer] serves 
herself and the fatherland best when she seeks the field for 
her ambition there where she is superior to man according 
to her nature and therefore can create fully from her own 
spirit."'09 For him, the appropriate "field for her ambition" 
was not architecture but needlework. 
Fears of professional competition from women strength- 
ened this resistance to the perceived transgendering of artis- 
ticlabor. Oppler-Legband's claim that the Haus der Frau 
complemented the male design sphere did little to stem accu- 
sations of competitive intentions. Such professional ambition 
on the part of women was regarded as one of the unsettling 
products of modernity and its destabilization of gender 
norms. The reviewer who rebuked the Haus der Frau for 
playing the muscleman associated its gender confusion with 
"the modern woman who in her mounting sense of self 
wishes to enter into serious competition with man."110 
Conclusion 
The Werkbund's mission to restore cultural harmony 
through the aesthetic transformation of daily life could not 
help but become entangled with the changes in gender roles 
that were uprooting the very patterns of that existence. 
Women's "mounting sense of self--expressed in their 
claims to cultural authority and professional practice-rep- 
resented a new kind of agency that impinged upon the 
Werkbund's reform project. From the beginning, the struc- 
ture of the Werkbund's discipline was put into question: its 
roles and methods of policing were contested between men 
and women, both of whom claimed the supposed differ- 
ences of their gender as the basis for their authority. The 
object of aesthetic discipline was also disputed. Warlich, 
Widmer, Wille, and others argued that women's cultural 
and physical proximity to everyday objects should be har- 
nessed as a vehicle for change. Other commentators, from 
Lux to Klopfer and Wirz, believed the solution lay in edu- 
cating and empowering men to reclaim the aesthetic cre- 
ation of daily life from women, whether in the shops, 
classroom, or design studio. Attending to these debates 
brings the reality of gendered everyday lives into the Werk- 
bund's theoretical discourse on design reform. 
Women's "mounting sense of self' also challenged the 
adequacy of the design values at the core of the Werkbund's 
agenda. Accepting the desirability of quality and Sachlichkeit, 
women designers and reformers nonetheless insisted on a 
broader notion of good design, one that reconciled "mas- 
culine" reason with their commitment to a modern "femi- 
506 JSAH / 62:4, DECEMBER 2003 
nine" spirit. At the Haus der Frau, the organizers' attempts 
to define feminine sachlich form, their search for gender 
complementarity, and their demand for the segregation of 
men's and women's artistic labor (echoed by their critics) 
put on display the struggle over the meaning of gender for 
modern design. By claiming to have incorporated the mod- 
ern within the feminine, however, the Haus der Frau pro- 
voked a backlash: thus, a building recognized as an exemplar 
of Werkbund design principles ("Sachliche and only Sach- 
liche") was simultaneously attacked as an utter failure of 
femininity. The perceived incompatibility of the feminine 
and the modern at the Haus der Frau exposes the deeply 
gendered meanings of the design values driving the Werk- 
bund's reform mission. 
With the outbreak of World War I, the exhibition in 
Cologne came to an abrupt end. It was soon to be resur- 
rected, however, in the legend of modernism, which was 
already being written by the 1920s. Design histories give the 
impression that the Haus der Frau, arguably among the most 
modern of the exhibition buildings, never existed.11' Other 
sources and voices introduced here as part of our analysis of 
the Werkbund's engagement with the gendered complexities 
of modem identity similarly have been overlooked. In light of 
these absences, we might usefully direct the questions asked 
in this essay about the relevance of gender to the Werkbund's 
project to the inclusions and exclusions of its history. 
Notes 
James C. Albisetti, Barbara Miller Lane, Thomas A. Lewis, and Leslie Topp 
provided invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this article. I am also 
indebted to Magdalena Droste; Laurie Stein; and archivists at the Werk- 
bund-Archiv Berlin; the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum, Hagen; the Stiftung 
Zanders; and the Stadtarchiv Kassel for their help with my research. 
1. Micen, "Bric-a-brac in der Sezession," Die Standarte, no. 49 (1907), 1497. 
On the Berlin Secession, see Peter Paret, The Berlin Secession: Modernism 
and Its Enemies in Imperial Germany (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1980). 
2. Founded in 1899, the organization was dedicated to improving the social 
and economic status of middle-class women forced to work outside the home 
and to creating new markets for their products. The arts fair held in the Seces- 
sion gallery raised money for a vacation home for financially needy, employed 
women. The organization's statutes are reprinted in "Statuten des Vereins 
Frauen-Erwerb (E.V)," Frauen-Leben und -Erwerb, no. 2 (1905), 11-12. 
3. Review in Das Deutsche Blatt, repr. in Frauen-Leben und -Erwerb 3, no. 19 
(1907), 150; Macen, "Bric-a-brac," 1497. Selected reviews of the exhibition 
were reprinted in the organization's journal. 
4. Micen, "Bric-a-brac," 1497; review in Berliner Lokalanzeiger, repr. in 
Frauen-Leben und -Erwerb 3, no. 20 (1907), 159; review in Norddeutsche All- 
gemeine Zeitung, repr. in Frauen-Leben und -Erwerb 3, no. 18 (1907), 146. 
5. Micen, "Bric-a-brac," 1497; review in Das Deutsche Blatt, repr. in Frauen- 
Leben und -Erwerb 3, no. 19 (1907), 149; review in Danziger Zeitung, repr. 
in Frauen-Leben und -Erwerb 3, no. 18 (1907), 145. 
6. Review in Berliner Lokalanzeiger, repr. in Frauen-Leben und -Erwerb 3, no. 
20 (1907), 159; Macen, "Bric-a-brac," 1497. 
7. On the history of the Werkbund's founding, see Joan Campbell, The Ger- 
man Werkbund: The Politics of Reform in the Applied Arts (Princeton, 1978); and 
KurtJunghanns, Der Deutsche Werkbund: Sein erstesJahrzehnt (Berlin, 1982). 
8. For a discussion of Wohnkultur, see Francesco Dal Co, Figures of Archi- 
tecture and Thought: German Architecture Culture, 1880-1920 (New York, 
1990), 198, 210-37. 
9. See Mark Jarzombek, "The Kunstgewerbe, the Werkbund, and the Aes- 
thetics of Culture in the Wilhelmine Period,"JSAH 53, no. 1 (1994), 7-19; 
and Jarzombek, "The Discourses of a Bourgeois Utopia, 1904-1908, and 
the Founding of the Werkbund," in Francoise Forster-Hahn, ed., Imagin- 
ing Modern German Culture: 1889-1910, Studies in the History of Art, vol. 
53 (Washington, D.C., 1996), 126-45. On the role of class in the Werk- 
bund's agenda, see also Junghanns, "Werkund und Arbeiterklasse," Der 
Deutsche Werkbund, 37-42; Julius Posener, "Werkbund und Jugendstil," in 
Lucius Burckhardt, ed., The Werkbund: History and Ideology, 1907-1933, 
trans. Pearl Sanders (Woodbury, N.Y., 1980), 16-24; and Frederic J. 
Schwartz, The Werkbund: Design Theory and Mass Culture before the First 
World War (New Haven and London, 1996), 39-43. 
10. Schwartz, The Werkbund. 
11. Mark Wigley has raised important issues concerning gender in the dis- 
course on fashion and architecture after the turn of the century, to which 
Werkbund members were chief contributors. Further developing their 
implications for the Werkbund's program, however, will require engage- 
ment with a broader range of primary sources than his book offers. See 
Mark Wigley, White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Archi- 
tecture (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1995). 
12. See, for example, Marion A. Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle 
Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (New York and 
Oxford, 1991); Lora Wildenthal, German Women for Empire, 1884-1945 
(Durham and London, 2001); and Dorothy Rowe, Representing Berlin: Sex- 
uality and the City in Imperial and Weimar Germany (Aldershot, England, and 
Burlington, Vermont, 2003). 
13. For a discussion of German debates on the "woman question," see James 
Albisetti, Schooling German Girls and Women: Secondary and Higher Education 
in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1988), 168-203; and Ute Planert, 
Antifeminismus im Kaiserreich: Diskurs, soziale Formation und politische Men- 
talitit (Gottingen, 1998). 
14.Karl Scheffler, "Gute und schlechte Arbeiten im Schnellbahngewerbe," 
Der Verkehr. Jahrbuch des deutschen Werkbundes 3 (1914), 42; trans. in 
Schwartz, The Werkbund, 229 n. 135. 
15. A rare exception is Magdalena Droste, "Lilly Reich: Her Career as an 
Artist," in Matilda McQuaid and Magdalena Droste, Lilly Reich: Designer 
and Architect (New York, 1996), 48-51. 
16. The female founding members were Margarete Junge (1874-1966), 
Elena Luksch-Makowskaja (1878-1967), Else Oppler-Legband, and Mar- 
garethe von Brauchitsch. For more information on Junge, see Sonja Giin- 
ther, "International Pioneers," in Angela Oedekoven-Gerischer, ed., Women 
in Design: Careers and Life Histories Since 1900, vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1989), 
60-61. On Luksch-Makowskaja, see Ulrike Evers, Deutsche Kiinstlerinnen 
des 20. Jahrhunderts. Malerei, Bildhauerei, Tapisserie (Hamburg, 1983), 
213-15. For Brauchitsch and Oppler-Legband, see n. 20. 
17. Mitgliederverzeichnis und Satzung des deutschen Werkbundes E. (Oct. 
1910), Werkbund-Archiv Berlin. 
18. For the number of women, see "Von der Ausstellungsleitung fir das 
'Haus der Frau' ..." in the Frauenberufe section, Die Welt der Frau, no. 31 
(1913), 500. (Die Welt der Frau, a supplement of Die Gartenlaube, was offered 
to subscribers in various formats. For some years, the page and issue num- 
WOMEN AND THE WERKBUND 507 
bers for an article varied depending on whether Welt der Frau was bound 
together with Gartenlaube or separately. The bibliographic information I 
cite in this and subsequent endnotes is based on Welt der Frau issues that 
were bound separately.) For the total number of Werkbund members, see 
Campbell, The German Werkbund, 34 (see n. 7). 
19. Moreover, membership numbers are not entirely reliable due to the loss 
of archival records during World War II. Lists of Werkbund members com- 
piled by the Werkbund-Archiv in Berlin are incomplete. 
20. On Kleinhempel, see Gerhard Renda, ed., Gertrud Kleinhempel, 
1875-1948. Kiinstlerin zwischenJugendstil und Moderne (Bielefeld, 1998); on 
Anna Muthesius, see Wigley, White Walls, Designer Dresses, 138-41; on 
Oppler-Legband, see Magdalena Droste, "Women in the Arts and Crafts 
and in Industrial Design 1890-1933," in Oedekoven-Gerischer, Women in 
Design, 185, and Wigley, White Walls, 138-40; on Brauchitsch, see Kathryn 
Bloom Hiesinger, ed., Art Nouveau in Munich: Masters of Jugendstil 
(Philadelphia and Munich, 1988), 42-43; and on Wille, see Gunther, "Inter- 
national Pioneers," 54-55. On the significance of Wertheim's window dis- 
plays, see Droste, "Lilly Reich," 49, 58 n. 30. 
21. Oppler-Legband spoke on fashion and taste. Other lecturers included 
Hermann Muthesius and Karl Ernst Osthaus. Schwartz, The Werkbund, 102. 
Oppler-Legband wrote an article about the school and her directorship in 
the inaugural volume of the Werkbund yearbook: Else Oppler-Legband, 
"Die Hohere Fachschule fiir Dekorationskunst," Die Durchgeistigung der 
deutschen Arbeit. Jahrbuch des deutschen Werkbundes 1 (1912), 105-10. 
22. See Robert Breuer, "Der Einkauf als kulturelle Funktion," Deutsche 
Kunst und Dekoration 21 (1907-8), 78-82. 
23. Adolf Vetter, "Die Staatsbiirgerliche Bedeutung der Qualitatsarbeit," 
Die Durchgeistigung der deutschen Arbeit. Ein Bericht vom deutschen Werkbund 
(Jena, 1911), 14-16. 
24. Lux published his article in Die Hohe Warte, which he also edited. 
Among the chief contributors to this design reform journal were later lead- 
ers of the Werkbund, including Hermann Muthesius and Paul Schultze- 
Naumburg. In 1909 it became Das Werk, the first publication of the 
Werkbund, as noted below. 
25. Joseph August] L[ux], "Erziehung zur Sentimentalitat," Die Hohe Warte 
3 (1906-7), 25. Lux admitted that men as well as women were capable of 
falling prey to the sentimentality that impeded cultural progress. Yet where 
design was concerned, he focused on women because of their power as con- 
sumers and their influence within the home. 
26. Ibid. In a later manual on taste, Lux employed these arguments with 
greater tact, emphasizing a woman's social duty to educate herself in mat- 
ters of taste in the face of male abdication. See Joseph August Lux, "Die 
Frau fir die Kunst," Der Geschmack im Alltag. Ein Buch zur Pflege des Scho- 
nen (Dresden, 1908), 397-410. 
27. Else (Elisabeth) Warlich (nee Zahn, 1873-1942) does not appear on 
Werkbund membership lists. Her husband, Hermann Warlich 
(1865-1920s), was a Werkbund member and a writer on design reform. His 
publications include Wohnung und Hausrat: Beispiele neuzeitlicher Wohnraume 
und ihrerAusstattung (Munich, 1908). Else Warlich's other known publica- 
tion is a translation of a French biography that chronicled the intrigues of 
Marie de Rohan, the powerful duchesse de Chevreuse, against King Louis 
XIII's court. See Louis Batiffol, Marie von Rohan, Herzogin von Chevreuse. 
Ein Lebensbild der grbijten Intrigantin des 17. Jahrhunderts, trans. Else War- 
lich and Hermann Warlich (Stuttgart, 1914). 
28. Else Warlich, "Der Deutsche Werkbund und die Frau," Das Werk 
(1909), 104. 
29. Ibid. 
30. Else Wirminghaus (1867-1939) was a particularly important voice in 
the campaign to make women's clothing an integral part of the Werkbund's 
mission. Married to Alexander Wirminghaus, an official of the Cologne 
Board of Trade and a member of the Werkbund, she is absent from the 
organization's membership lists. She was nonetheless actively involved in 
the Werkbund through her leading role in the Deutscher Verband fiir Neue 
Frauenkleidung und Frauenkultur, a national association for dress reform 
that joined the Werkbund as a corporate member around 1914. See Else 
Wirminghaus, "Ein ungeschriebener Brief an den deutschen Werkbund," 
Neue Frauenkleidung und Frauenkultur 10, no. 9 (1914), 99-100. On Else 
Wirminghaus, see Sully Roecken, "Else Wirminghaus, 1867-1939," in Kol- 
ner Frauengeschichtsverein, ed., "10 Uhr piinktlich Giirzenich": Hundert 
Jahre bewvegte Frauen in Kiln-zur Geschichte der Organisationen und Vereine 
(Miinster, 1995), 179-82. In the same volume, see also Annette Nottel- 
mann, "'Man kann sich heute kaum die Narrheit vorstellen. .. ' Frauen- 
mode und der Kolner Verein zur Verbesserung der Frauenkleidung," 88-96. 
31. Fia Wille, "Das Schaufenster als Erzieher," Die Welt der Frau 26, no. 16 
(1907), 251. On theories of window display in the Werkbund, see Schwartz, 
The Werkbund, 102-5. 
32. Elisabeth Altmann-Gottheiner, "Die Frau als Konsumentin," Die Welt 
der Frau, no. 35 (1911), 551. 
33. Warlich, "Der Deutsche Werkbund," 104, 109. Warlich may have 
known of the 1907 national census, which revealed that three-quarters of 
retail sales personnel were women. The majority came from working-class 
families and had only an elementary-school education. Carole Elizabeth 
Adams, Women Clerks in Wilhelmine Germany: Issues of Class and Gender 
(Cambridge, England, 1988), 14, 18. On the role of sales personnel for the 
Werkbund, see Schwartz, The Werkbund, 102. 
34. Karl Widmer, "Die gebildete Frau im Kunstgewerbehandel," Deutsche 
Kunst und Dekoration 25 (1909-10), 63, 65, 69. 
35. For an introduction to the campaigns for women's education and 
employment led by the bourgeois women's movement, see Ute Frevert, 
"Middle-Class Women and Their Campaign in Imperial Germany," Women 
in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation, trans. 
Stuart McKinnon-Evans (New York and Oxford, 1989), 107-30. On the 
role of class in the Werkbund's mission, see n. 9. 
36. Within the clerking profession, men preferred the more prestigious 
office and managerial positions to retail sales. See Adams, Women Clerks in 
Wilhelmine Germany, 12-14. 
37. Warlich, "Der Deutsche Werkbund," 103. 
38. Karl Scheffler, Die Frau und die Kunst (Berlin, 1908). For a discussion of 
Scheffler's views on female creativity, see Despina Stratigakos, "Architects 
in Skirts: The Public Image of Women Architects in Wilhelmine Ger- 
many," JournalofArchitectural Education 55, no. 2 (2001), 90-100. 
39. Although Bischoff's theories were repeated for decades by opponents of 
female physicians, his argument about female brain size was effectively dis- 
credited when an autopsy "revealed that his brain weighed less than that of 
an average woman." James C. Albisetti, "The Fight for Female Physicians 
in Imperial Germany," Central European History 15, no. 2 (1982), 110. 
40. Scheffler, Die Frau und die Kunst, 91-103, 109. Scheffler's views on 
genius and female perversion were influenced by Otto Weininger's enor- 
mously popular book, Geschlecht und Charakter (Vienna, 1903). Weininger 
argued that genius was inherently masculine in nature and that almost all 
women famous for their intellectual and artistic achievements were "sexu- 
ally indeterminate forms." Otto Weininger, "Emancipated Women," Sex 
and Character [1903], trans. from the 6th German ed. (London and New 
York, 1906), 64-75. 
41. Otto Barming, "Sollen Damen bauen?" Die Welt der Frau, no. 40 (1911), 
625-26; Robert Breuer, "Die Frau als Mobelbauerin," Fachblatt fur 
Holzarbeiter 10 (1915), 101-4; Paul Klopfer, "Die Frau und das Kunst- 
gewerbe," Kunstwart 24, no. 15 (1911), 215-18; and Paul Westheim, "Die 
508 JSAH / 62:4, DECEMBER 2003 
Frauenausstellung," Kunst und Handwerk, no. 9 (1912), 268-75. See also n. 
50. 
42. Campbell, The German Werkbund, 51-52 (see n. 7). 
43. Warlich, "Der Deutsche Werkbund," 103. 
44. Ibid., 109. 
45. Barbara Miller Lane examines the historical preoccupations of German 
(and Scandinavian) design reformers in National Romanticism and Modern 
Architecture in Germany and the Scandinavian Countries (Cambridge, Eng- 
land, 2000). 
46. Irma Schneider-Sch6nfeld, "Eine moderne Kunstgewerblerin," Die Welt 
der Frau 25, no. 4 (1906), 51. 
47. Ibid., 54. 
48. For a similar interpretation of Fia Wille's work as a modern, feminine 
expression of an older domestic culture, see Ernst Schur, "Wohnkultur: Der 
neue Kunstgewerbe-Salon von Fia Wille," Frauen-Fortschritt, 16 June 1910, 
3. 
49. Friedrich Naumann, "Deutsche Gewerbekunst" (1908), Asthetische 
Schriften. Werke, vol. 6 (Cologne, 1964), 254-89; Sebastian Muller, "Qual- 
ititsarbeit. Ein funktionsisthetischer Kunstbegriff des Werkbundes," Kunst 
und Industrie. Ideologie und Organisation des Funktionalismus in der Architek- 
tur (Munich, 1974), 85-96; Hermann Muthesius, Style-Architecture and 
Building-Art: Transformations ofArchitecture in the Nineteenth Century and Its 
Present Condition, trans. Stanford Anderson (Santa Monica, 1994), 79; and 
Hermann Muthesius, "Die Bedeutung des Kunstgewerbes," Dekorative 
Kunst 10, no. 5 (1907), 181. 
50. Wilhelm Wirz, "Frau und Qualitdt," Wohlfahrt und Wirtschaft 1, no. 4 
(1914), 196-200; "Dekorative oder konstruktive Gestaltung," Deutsche Kunst 
und Dekoration 18, no. 12 (1915), 426-27; "Die Frau und die Qualitdts- 
Bewegung," Innen-Dekoration 25 (1914), 391-98. 
51. "[S]olche, die ein Schmuckbediirfnis, ein aufieres Ideal des Reichtums 
haben, und solche, die das Organ fur Funktion besitzen, fur die innere Kon- 
struktion der Dinge und das Herausbringen der Anatomie"; Oscar Bie, Das 
Kunstgewerbe (Frankfurt am Main, 1908), 18; quoted in Wirz, "Frau und 
Qualitat," 197. In addition to writing on art and music, Bie edited the 
important literary revue Neue Rundschau, which was published by S. Fis- 
cher, a Werkbund member. 
52. "[D]as Organ fur Funktion besitzen" may be read in several ways. 
Although the phrase can be translated simply as "to possess a feel for func- 
tion," Organ can also refer to the anatomical. Because Wirz grounded his 
discussion of the decorative in sexual difference (as did Bie, who was equally 
concerned with race), I translate Organ as organ to retain the suggestion of 
the corporeal. 
53. Wirz, "Frau und Qualitat," 197-98. 
54. Ibid., 200. 
55. Oscar Wilde quoted (in German) in Wirz, "Frau und Qualitat," 200. 
56. For a detailed discussion of the German Lyceum Club and the 1912 
exhibition, see Despina Maria Stratigakos, "Profession and Representation 
in the German Lyceum Club and 'Die Frau in Haus und Beruf' Exhibition 
of 1912," in Stratigakos, Skirts and Scaffolding: Women Architects, Gender; and 
Design in Wilhelmine Germany (Ann Arbor, 1999), 215-55. 
57. Westheim, "Die Frauenausstellung," 270 (see n. 41). The other two 
reviews were Westheim, "Von der Frauen-Ausstellung-Berlin," Deutsche 
Kunst und Dekoration 15, no. 8 (1912), 88-89; and Westheim, "Berlin. 
Ausstellung 'Die Frau in Haus und Beruf'," Kunstgewerbeblatt 23, no. 7 
(1912), 142-43. 
58. Westheim, "Die Frauenausstellung," 270, 275. 
59. Ibid., 270. 
60. Ibid. 
61. My use of this term is inspired by Matei Calinescu's description of kitsch 
as "aesthetic inadequacy." See Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Mod- 
ernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism, rev. ed. (Durham, 
1987), 236. In light of views expressed at the time, exemplified by those of 
Wilhelm Wirz, that women's design abilities suffered not from a weak 
"organ for function" but rather from its absence, I believe "aesthetic lack" 
is, in this gendered context, the better term. 
62. Westheim, "Die Frauenausstellung," 271. 
63. Ibid., 272-73. 
64. Ibid., 271, 275; Westheim, "Berlin. Ausstellung," 142. 
65. Westheim, "Berlin. Ausstellung," 143. 
66. See, for example, Albert Reimann, "Die Frau in Kunstgewerbe," Die 
Welt der Frau 26, no. 10 (1907), 148; Irma Wolff, "Die Frau als Kunst- 
gewerblerin," Neue Bahnen 49, no. 7 (1914), 53. On the limited educational 
opportunities then existing for women designers, see Droste, "Women in 
the Arts and Crafts," 176-81 (see n. 20); Renate Berger, Malerinnen aufdem 
Weg ins 20. Jahrhundert. Kunstgeschichte als Sozialgeschichte (Cologne, 1982), 
87-94. 
67. Wolff, "Die Frau als Kunstgewerblerin," 53. 
68. Scheffler, Die Frau und die Kunst, 42 (see n. 38). 
69. Paul Klopfer, "Die Frau und das Kunstgewerbe," Kunstvart 24, no. 15 
(1911), 215. 
70. Ibid., 216-18. 
71. Hedwig Heyl, "Die Ausstellung 'Die Frau in Haus und Beruf'," Die 
Woche 14, no. 4 (1912), 129; Hedwig Heyl, "Die Ausstellung: Die Frau in 
Haus und Beruf," Frauenwirtschaft 2, nos. 11-12 (1912), 263. 
72. "Ausstellung 'Die Frau in Haus und Beruf,' Berlin 1912. Ausstellungs- 
Bedingungen." Printed regulations for exhibitors. This document is in a 
private collection. 
73. Rose H. Szczesny-Heyl, "Die Ausstellung: 'Die Frau in Haus und 
Beruf,"' Die Welt der Frau, no. 5 (1912), 65. 
74. Carl Rehorst to Agnes Grave, 21 Apr. 1913, DWK 203/1, Karl Ernst 
Osthaus-Archiv, Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum, Hagen. Archival materials 
for the Haus der Frau are rare. The primary source is the correspondence 
of Agnes Grave, who was in charge of the textile section in the women's 
pavilion. Her correspondence with colleagues at the Haus der Frau and 
with general organizers of the Werkbund exhibition, such as Carl Rehorst, 
was preserved among the papers of Karl Ernst Osthaus, the founder and 
director of the Folkwang Museum in Hagen, where Grave was employed as 
an assistant. Other materials, including furniture from the Haus der Frau, 
are owned by the Zanders Foundation, Bergisch Gladbach, Germany. Hans 
Zanders, an industrialist and Werkbund member, intervened on behalf of 
women artists early in the development of the Haus der Frau, when it 
threatened to fall under male control. Hans Zanders to Carl Rehorst, 6 Jan. 
1913, Familienarchiv Zanders, Stiftung Zanders. Olga Zanders, his wife, 
helped organize artistic performances at the Haus der Frau; an album of 
newspaper clippings, invitations, and announcements about these events is 
preserved in the family archive. See also nn. 92, 95. For a detailed discus- 
sion of the history and reception of the Haus der Frau, see Stratigakos, 
"Gender, Design and the Werkbund: The 'Haus der Frau' at the Cologne 
Exhibition of 1914," in Stratigakos, Skirts and Scaffolding, 323-53 (see n. 
56). See also Carl-WolfgangSchiimann, "Das Haus der Frau," in Wulf Her- 
zogenrath, Dirk Teuber, and Angela Thiekotter, eds., Der westdeutsche Impuls 
1900-1914. Kunst und Umweltgestaltung im Industriegebiet. Die Deutsche 
Werkbund-Ausstellung Coln 1914, (Cologne, 1984), 233-41. 
75. Agnes Grave to Dr. Wagner, 20 Oct. 1913, DWK/197, Karl Ernst 
Osthaus-Archiv. 
76. This definition was also in keeping with Hermann Muthesius's insis- 
tence on artists as "intellectual producers." See Schwartz, The Werkbund, 
152 (see n. 9). 
WOMEN AND THE WERKBUND 509 
77. Stratigakos, Skirts and Scaffolding, 332-35. 
78. Else Oppler-Legband, "Das Haus der Frau auf der Werkbundausstel- 
lung," Illustrirte Zeitung, no. 3699, 21 May 1914, 18; "Das Haus der Frau," 
Offizieller Katalog der Deutschen Werkbund-Ausstellung Coln 1914, 1st ed. 
(Berlin, 1914), 199-200. 
79. Fir die Frau Meisterin, no. 14 (1913), 3. 
80. The objects were juried first by the female organizers of the women's 
pavilion, then by the same organizers together with male Werkbund col- 
leagues, and finally by a general exhibition jury in Cologne. Lilly Reich to 
Agnes Grave, 30 Dec. 1913, DWK/203/76; and Reich to Grave, 28 Mar. 
1914, DWK/203/91, Karl Ernst Osthaus-Archiv. 
81. Oppler-Legband, "Das Haus der Frau auf der Werkbundausstellung," 
18. 
82. Little is known about Margarete Kniippelholz-Roeser. For biographi- 
cal information, see Stratigakos, Skirts and Scaffolding, 340-41. 
83. Oppler-Legband, "Das Haus der Frau auf der Werkbundausstellung," 18. 
84. Wigley, White Walls, Designer Dresses, 138-40 (see n. 11). See also Anna 
Muthesius, "Die Ausstellung kiinstlerischer Frauen-Kleider im Waren- 
Haus Wertheim-Berlin," Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration 14 (1904), 441-56. 
85. On the history of the dress reform movement in Germany, see Sabine 
Welsch, Ein Ausstieg aus dem Korsett. Reformkleidung um 1900 (Darmstadt, 
1996). 
86. Wigley, White Walls, Designer Dresses, 142. 
87. For a spatial analysis of the building, see Evelyne Lang, "Les Premieres 
Femmes architectes de Suisse et leurs precurseuses au niveau international" 
(Ph.D. diss., Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, 1993), 112-14. 
88. This architectural vision of a socially progressive female body-freed 
from deceit and restraint-contrasts radically with the imprisoning frame- 
work of the corsets displayed in the street of shop windows at the Werkbund 
exhibition. For Else Wirminghaus (see n. 30), their inclusion at Cologne 
indicated an ethical failing on the part of the Werkbund, which too nar- 
rowly defined quality in aesthetic terms. Her suspicions seem validated by 
Henry van de Velde's statement that the crusade against the corset driving 
the dress reform movement mattered little to artists like him. See Wirm- 
inghaus, "Ein ungeschriebener Brief," 100 (see n. 30); and Henry van de 
Velde, "Das neue Kunst-Prinzip in der modernen Frauen-Kleidung," 
Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (1902), 366, quoted by Welsch, Ein Ausstieg 
aus dem Korsett, 36. Wirminghaus, who was actively involved in the Haus der 
Frau, helped organize two events at the Werkbund exhibition that brought 
attention to dress reform: a meeting of the Deutscher Verband fur Neue 
Frauenkleidung und Frauenkultur (14-18 June); and a weeklong women's 
conference (29 June-4 July), hosted by the Verband Kolner Frauenvereine 
(which Wirminghaus also chaired). Lecture topics at the latter conference 
included dress reform as well as other issues focused on women and the 
Werkbund. See J. Str., "Koln," Neue Frauenkleidung und Frauenkultur 10, 
no. 6 (1914), VII-VIII; "Kolner Frauenwoche in der Werkbund-Ausstel- 
lung," Kolner Frauen-Zeitung, no. 27, 5 July 1914, 2-6; "Kolner Frauen- 
woche in der Werkbund-Ausstellung," [Part II] Kolner Frauen-Zeitung, no. 
28, 12 July 1914, 2-6. 
89. On the critique of fashion in the Werkbund discourse, see Schwartz, 
The Werkbund, 26-41 (see n. 9). 
90. Ibid., 40. See also Mary McLeod, "Undressing Architecture: Fashion, 
Gender, Modernity," in Deborah Fausch et al., eds., Architecture: In Fash- 
ion (New York, 1994), 38-123. 
91. Anna Muthesius, "Die Ausstellung kiinstlerischer Frauen-Kleider," 
441-42. See also Anna Muthesius, Das Eigenkleid (Krefeld, 1903). 
92. This committee, the Kolner Frauen-Vereinigung fir kiinstlerische Ver- 
anstaltungen im Haus der Frau, included socially and politically prominent 
women from Cologne. Although most of the events were artistic or social 
in nature, political meetings did occur. Moreover, the artistic events were 
not always without political content, as demonstrated by the 29 May visit 
of the author Gabriele Reuter, who read from her feminist novel From a 
Good Family (see Marie Sarnetzki, "Kolner Frauenvereinigung fiir kiinst- 
lerische Veranstaltungen im Haus der Frau," Kolner Frauen-Zeitung, no. 23, 
7 June 1914, unpag. Anzeiger section). The Kilner Frauen-Zeitung reported 
regularly on special events at the Haus der Frau. See also n. 74. 
93. Oppler-Legband, "Das Haus der Frau auf der Werkbundausstellung," 18. 
94. Lists of participating artists and objects displayed in the Haus der Frau 
are included in the rare second edition of the official exhibition catalogue. 
See Offizieller Katalog der Deutschen Werkbund-Ausstellung Cdln 1914, 2d ed. 
(Berlin, 1914), 262-91. 
95. The library was subsequently installed, in modified form, in the villa of 
the industrialist Zanders family in Bergisch Gladbach. It is now owned by 
the Stiftung Zanders, Bergisch Gladbach (see n. 74). On the rediscovery of 
the library, see Arthur Lamka, "Mobel wandern in grofie Kolner Ausstel- 
lung," Kolner Stadtanzeiger, 17 and 18 Mar. 1984, Ausgabe Rheinberg. 
96. Fritz Stahl, "Der Werkbund, seine Idee und seine Ausstellung," Berliner 
Tageblatt, no. 306, 19 June 1914. 
97. "Das Haus der Frau," Offizieller Katalog, 1st ed., 200 (see n. 78). 
98. Oppler-Legband, "Das Haus der Frau auf der Werkbundausstellung," 
18. 
99. Despite this intention, one reviewer remarked that it was difficult to 
imagine a young housewife with her rambunctious children in these rooms. 
"Was uns die Werkbundausstellung bietet," Neue Frauenkleidung und 
Frauenkultur 10, no. 7 (1914), 80. 
100. Berndt Weber, "Der Werkbund in Koln. Von Bauten und Ausstel- 
lungssorgen," Hamburger Nachrichten, no. 320, 11 July 1914; "Die Deutsche 
Werkbund-Ausstellung. Die Architektur," Kdlnische Volkszeitung, no. 492, 
31 May 1914. 
101. Joseph Lottgen, "Von der deutschen Werkbundausstellung in Koln. 
Das Haus der Frau," Deutsche Bauhiitte 18, no. 29 (1914), 355. 
102. Fb., "Deutsche Werkbund-Ausstellung," Kilner Tageblatt, no. 546, 25 
July 1914. 
103. Opponents of dress reform similarly complained that its unorna- 
mented, "sack" dresses contributed to the modern masculinization (and 
hence barrenness) of women's bodies. See Welsch, Ein Ausstieg aus dem 
Korsett, 20-27 (see n. 85). 
104. Carl OskarJatho, "Werkbundgedanken III," Christliche Freiheit, 9 Aug. 
1914, 513. Another reviewer gave a nationalistic spin to this supposed lack 
of charm, claiming that "fragile, little Rococo things" were foreign to the 
peculiar grace of the German woman. "Was uns die Werkbundausstellung 
bietet," 80. 
105. Carl Rehorst, "Lage und Plan der Werkbundausstellung," Illustrirte 
Zeitung, no. 3699, 21 May 1914, 12; Hugo Koch, "Die Deutsche Werk- 
bund-Ausstellung Co1n 1914," Bau-Rundschau, no. 11 (1914), 97; Walter 
Haas, "Die deutsche Werkbundausstellung Koln 1914," Tagliche Rundschau, 
no. 174, 28 July 1914, 694. 
106. S. D. Gallwitz, "Das Haus der Frau auf der Werkbundausstellung in 
Koln," Die Frau 21, no. 10 (1914), 593; and Haas, "Die deutsche Werk- 
bundausstellung," 694. 
107. Lottgen, "Von der deutschen Werkbundausstellung," 355. 
108. Wilhelm Schifer, "Die Baukunst der Deutschen Werkbund-Ausstel- 
lung in Koln," Die Rheinlande 14, nos. 8-9 (1914), 293. 
109. Peter Jessen, "Die Deutsche Werkbund-Ausstellung Koln 1914," 
Deutsche Form im Kriegsjahr Die Ausstellung Koln 1914. Jahrbuch des deutschen 
Werkbundes4 (1915), 30. 
110. Fb., "Deutsche Werkbund-Ausstellung." 
111. To the best of my knowledge, the Haus der Frau did not appear in a 
510 JSAH / 62:4, DECEMBER 2003 
published design history until 1984, in a book marking the seventieth 
anniversary of the Cologne exhibition (see Schumann, "Das Haus der 
Frau," n. 74). Since then, it has been mentioned in a handful of publica- 
tions, most of which concern women architects. See, for example, Matilda 
McQuaid, "Lilly Reich and the Art of Exhibition Design," in McQuaid and 
Droste, Lilly Reich, 13 (see n. 15); John A. Stuart, "Formulating Feminin- 
ity: Paul Scheerbart and the German Werkbund Debates of 1914," Intersight 
4 (1997), 100-109; and Kerstin D6rh6fer, "Die Frauen-Geschichte der 
IBAs. Historischer Riickblick auf die Internationalen Bauausstellungen in 
Deutschland," Ariadne: Almanach der deutschen Frauenbewegung, no. 36 
(1999), 58-63. 
Illustration Credits 
Figure 1. Frauen-Leben und -Erwerb 3, no. 20 (1907), 159 
Figure 2. Courtesy Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum, Hagen 
Figures 3, 4. Schneider-Sch6nfeld, "Eine modeme Kunstgewerblerin," 51, 52 
Figures 5, 11-13. Jahrbuch des deutschen Werkbundes4 (1915), unpag. spread 
at front of plate section, pls. 115, 117, 113 
Figures 6, 14. Schifer, "Die Baukunst der Deutschen Werkbund-Ausstel- 
lung in Koln," 295, 297 
Figure 7. Bauwelt, no. 14 (1914), 24 
Figure 8. Fritz Stahl, "Die Architektur der Werkbund-Ausstellung," Was- 
zmuths Monatshefte fir Baukunst 1 (1914), 176 
Figure 9. Offizieller Katalog der Deutschen Werkbund-Azisstellung Coln 1914, 
2d ed., 262 
Figure 10. "Die Frau in Haus und Beruf," Die Woche, no. 8 (1912), 325 
WOMEN AND THE WERKBUND 511 
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	Issue Table of Contents
	Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Dec., 2003), pp. 436-547
	Volume Information [pp. 540-547]
	Front Matter
	An Engraved Architectural Drawing at Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Rome [pp. 436-447]
	Drawing with Numbers: Geometry and Numeracy in Early Modern Architectural Design [pp. 448-469]
	Reconstituting Chinese Building Tradition: The Yingzao fashi in the Early Twentieth Century [pp. 470-489]
	Women and the Werkbund: Gender Politics and German Design Reform, 1907-14 [pp. 490-511]
	Exhibitions
	Review: untitled [pp. 512-513]
	Review: untitled [pp. 514-516]
	Review: untitled [pp. 516-518]
	Books
	Roman Architecture
	Review: untitled [pp. 519-521]
	Ecclesiastical Architecture
	Review: untitled [pp. 521-523]
	Review: untitled [pp. 523-525]
	Review: untitled [pp. 525-526]
	American Topics
	Review: untitled [pp. 526-528]
	Review: untitled [pp. 528-529]
	Town Planning
	Review: untitled [pp. 530-532]
	Review: untitled [pp. 533-535]
	Landscape
	Review: untitled [pp. 535-537]
	Abstracts [pp. 538-539]
	Back Matter