Otti Berger (Oct 4, 1898 – exact date of death unknown in 1944)

 Portrait of Otti Berger / Photo: Lucia Moholy, Dessau 1927–1928. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin / © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

“To become an artist, one has to be an artist and to become one when one is already an artist, then one comes to the Bauhaus, and the task of the Bauhaus is to make  a human being of this ‘artist’ again.”
https://pinsndls.com/2012/09/13/mystery-monday-solved/

Otti Berger was a Croatian designer whose artistic and creative potential had, to a great extent, been shaped by the Textile workshop of the Bauhaus. She was born in 1898 in Zmajevac, in the region of Baranya, which at that time was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Due to the fact that in some documents Zmajevac is listed by its Hungarian name – Vörösmart, she is often regarded as a Hungarian artist.

Otti Berger temporarily served as head of the weaving workshop at the Bauhaus. After failing to receive a permanent appointment, she opened her own ‘Atelier for Textiles’ in Berlin. She established successful cooperation with numerous textiles companies which were producing materials based on her innovative solutions. In 1936, she was banned from working in Germany due to her Jewish origins, and was forced to close her company down.

It was in that period that the majority of the Bauhaus professors, including her fiancée Ludwig Hilberseimer, managed to obtain visas and leave for America. Otti Berger tried to do the same because in 1938 László Moholy-Nagy invited her to join the New Bauhaus in Chicago. Looking for work and waiting for the visa she had spent several brief periods in London. Her mother’s sickness, the inability to find work in England (she did not speak the language, was of impaired hearing, with no friends – for the English she was a German), in 1938 she came back to Zmajevac. Sadly, in April of 1944 she was deported to Auschwitz together with her family, and she died there.

https://www.bauhaus100.de/en/past/people/masters/otti-berger/

Otti Berger in the studio apartment at Bauhaus Dessau (1930
photo by Gertrud Arndt

Otti Berger on a balcony at the Bauhaus school.

Photo: Gertrud Arndt

https://www.nasjonalmuseet.no/en/stories/explore-the-collection/otti-berger-og-norden-eng/

Otti Berger. MUSIC (1927)

Otti Berger, children’s blanket, cotton, Bauhaus Dessau, 1929.
Photo: May Vogt / Bpk/Kunst-sammlung Chemnitz.

Otti Berger, textile, cotton, produced by De Ploeg, Bergeijk, the Netherlands, 1933–1937.
Photo: RIDS Museum, Rhode Island, USA

Otti Berger, rya-rug, Bauhaus, 1928–1929.

Photo: Atelier Schneider / Bauhaus -Archiv, Berlin.

“Fabric can be understood through the hands as much as a colour through the eye or a sound through the ear.”
– Otti Berger, from her essay “Stoffe im Raum” (1930)

The Weavers on the Bauhaus Stairway Dessau 1927 From left going up the stairs: Lena Bergner; Grete Reichardt Centre top: Gunta Stölzl; next to her: Lijuba Monastirsky Coming down: Otti Berger, Lis Beyer On her right: Elisabeth Mueller and Rosa Berger Ruth Hollos behind, Lisbeth Oestreicher in front. Photo: T. Lux Feininger

Weaving Workshop Graduation Day, 1927

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