Ilse Fehling

Ilse Fehling was born on April 25, 1896, in Danzig-Langfuhr, Germany. In 1919, Fehling enrolled at the Reimann School in Berlin, where she studied art and fashion design. While in Berlin, she additionally studied at the city's Kunstgewerbeschule.[1] It was there that Fehling began to study sculpture.[2]

In 1920, Fehling matriculated at the Bauhaus Weimar, where much of her work focused on theatre design. Additionally, she studied sculpture, painting, and theory of harmonization [3] under a number of prominent artists including Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee, and Gertrud Grunow.[4] [5] Out of her work at the school, Fehling's best known is the rotating round puppet stage she designed and later patented[6] in her theater class with Lothal Schreyer.[7]

In 1923, she left the Bauhaus for Berlin to work as a freelance sculptor and stage and costume designer.[4] Fehling married Henry S. Witting the same year. In 1928, Fehling gave birth to a daughter, Gaby; she divorced Witting a year later.[1]

Fehling received the Rome Prize from the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1932; she later studied in Rome using a grant associated with the award.[1] In the following years, her work took influences from Cubism.[4]

Following the Nazi rise to power, Fehling's work was deemed degenerate and its exhibition was banned.[4] Much of her work was lost due to bombing and confiscation during World War II.[1]

Ilse Fehling had begun working as a costume designer in 1926 [8] and continued this work after the 1933 rise of Nazism in Germany, working on propaganda films including Der Herrscher.[9]

In 1940, Ilse Fehling began work at Tobis-Europa as the chief outfitter.[10] Here she optimized the costume department by expanding and continuing to develop it.[11] While working there, Fehling implemented a system for reusing previously-worn costumes.[12] During World War II, she published an article on creative costume reuse in the popular fashion press as an inspiration to women living under rationing.[13]

By 1946, Fehling lived in Rottack before returning to Munich in 1952 where she lived out the rest of her life.[14] Fehling opened her own studio after settling in Munich, where she worked on sculptures, stage sets, and press drawings.[15] Fehling did some additional work in Geneva, where her daughter was an international student.[16] Her final design project was for the Cologne cinema Die Lupe in 1965, where she conceptualized the interior design.[17]

Fehling died on February 25, 1982.