Margaretha Reichardt
[2] She spent most of her adult life running her own independent weaving workshop in Erfurt, which was under Nazi rule and then later part of communist East Germany.
The family lived in apartments in Severihof, a prominent building belonging to the church, overlooking Erfurt's catheral square.
[5] In 1921 Margaretha Reichardt was given special permission to begin training, at the young age of 14, at the Erfurt Kunstgewerbeschule, a school for applied arts.
[1][5] In 1923, while at the Kunstgewerbeschule, she went on a class excursion to nearby Weimar to visit the very first Bauhaus exhibition, held at the Haus am Horn.
[7] During her time at the Bauhaus she spent the winter semester between 1929 and 1930 working as an itinerant teacher in Königsberg, East Prussia.
In the spring of 1931, Reichardt, along with Herbert von Arend (1910-2001) and Ilse Voigt (1905-1990), was one of the ringleaders in a revolt against the pedagogic leadership of the head of the weaving workshop, Gunta Stölzl.
[10] The material was originally developed in Germany in the mid-19th century and by 1875 was being manufactured in some quantity,[10] however Margaretha Reichardt improved the quality while she was at the Bauhaus and it was used by Marcel Breuer on his tubular steel chairs.
[13] The Bauhaus placed great importance on collaborating with industry and staff and students were involved with many practical projects outside of the school.
[3] In 1939 together with Hans, Margaretha built a house and workshop in Bischleben, an outer suburb of Erfurt, about 7 km from the city centre.
Margaretha lived and worked there for the rest of her life, producing wall hangings and carpets, and textiles for clothing, curtains and furniture.
[17][18] She gained her Master Weaver's qualification and in 1942 the Thüringen Handwerkskammer (Thuringia Chamber of Skilled Crafts) gave her the authority to teach apprentices.
[3] During the Nazi period Margaretha Reichardt was a member of the Reichskulturkammer,[7] a government agency and professional organisation for all German creative artists.
In 1946 she taught for a year in the textile department of the Meisterschule für Handwerk und Handwertskunst, in Erfurt, a school for applied arts, which succeeded the Kunstgewerbeschule which she had attended as a young woman and was in the same building.
[3] In 1952 Reichardt was admitted to the Verband Bildender Künstler der DDR (VBK) [de] (the artists' association of the German Democratic Republic).
[5] In communist East Germany some small independent businesses like Margaretha Reichardt's weaving workshop were permitted, but there were shortages of raw materials and they were controlled by the government, which favoured state run enterprises.
[1][17] She and her apprentices made carpets, wall hangings, furniture coverings, textiles for clothing and other decorative items.
The home, workshop and contents, including the looms, and the garden were given the status of a protected monument in 1987 and it became an official museum of the city of Erfurt in 1989.
The rooms are as they were when she was alive, and have examples of her carpets and wall hangings, as well as some original Bauhaus furniture, including a Marcel Breuer tubular steel chair with Reichardt's eisengarn fabric.
Since 1992 the Margaretha Reichardt Haus has been managed by the Angermuseum Erfurt, the city's main art gallery.
[3] In 2019 it held the exhibition Vier "Bauhausmädels": Gertrud Arndt, Marianne Brandt, Margarete Heymann, Margaretha Reichardt, 23 March–16 June 2019.
[25] The archive of the present day Bauhaus-Universität Weimar holds 31 drawings and 11 textile items she made while at the Bauhaus in Dessau.
