Richard Riemerschmid

After completing his Abitur at the Wilhelmsgymnasium in 1886 and military service in the army, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich under Gabriel Hackl and Ludwig von Löfftz from 1888 to 1890[1] and then worked as an independent artist and architect.

With Joseph Maria Olbrich and his friend and colleague Bruno Paul, he designed the 30 luxury cabins of the fast ocean liner SS Kronprinzessin Cecilie, launched in 1906, at the time one of the most ambitious and successful German passenger vessels,[13][14] and he, Paul, and Johann Poppe, house designer for the North German Lloyd Line, were to have co-designed the interiors of the never finished SS Columbus of 1914.

[15] The furniture in his 1899 show interiors was praised for its style, for varying the repetitive verticals by adding a diagonal note to the framing of a glass-fronted cabinet and having chairs taper upwards from a broad base, and above all for remaining true to simplicity.

Riemerschmid designed the site plan, the factory and some of the housing for Hellerau (now part of Dresden), which was the first garden city of the English type to be built in Germany.

One such house, ordered in 1922 at an exhibition and erected in 1923 in Rodenkirchen near Cologne from 4,000 parts, mostly wood but including tiles and heating stoves, was disassembled and stored in Leverkusen in 1978.

A grandchild of the original purchaser had the pieces moved in 2004 to Simbach am Inn, Bavaria and reassembled there at considerable cost, assisted by the Deutsche Stiftung Denkmalschutz (German Foundation for Landmark Protection).

[26] After the Nazi regime came to power in 1933, Riemerschmid was forced out of the Werkbund,[27] and in 1943 Hitler forbade the award of the Goethe Medal for Art and Science to him as urged by Albert Speer.