Jugendstil

The Darmstadt Artists' Colony is a remarkable collection of Jugendstil buildings created beginning in 1899 by Ernest Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse, a grandson of Queen Victoria, to promote both commerce and the arts. He brought together a group of designers to create his new community, including Peter Behrens, Hans Christiansen, and Joseph Maria Olbrich.[3] The Colony architecture represented a complete break with the earlier floral style, and was much bolder in its design. Behrens and several of the other architects built their own houses there, and designed every detail, from the doorknobs to the dishes.[4]

The most impressive building of the Colony is the Ernst-Ludwig House, named for the Grand Duke, which contained the workshops of the artists. It was designed by Olbrich, with an entrance in the form of a three-quarter circle, flanked by two statues, Force and Beauty, by Ludwig Habich (1901).

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  Armchair and aluminum bronze doors designed by Peter Behrens for his music room at Darmstadt
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  The Mathildenhöhe – Glückert House (1901)
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  Behrens' house
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  Entrance to the Ernst-Ludwig House, the workshop of the artists at the Darmstadt Colony, by Joseph Maria Olbrich (1901)
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  Olbrich's house, reconstructed in a simpler style after it was destroyed in World War II. Only the colored checkerboard design is original.
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  Exhibition Building (1901)
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  Wedding Tower (1901)

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  Interior of Room 6 of the Arts Palace, Düsseldorf by Henry van de Velde (1902)
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  Porcelain plate by Henry van de Velde for Meissen factory (1903) (Darmstandt Museum)
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  Silver terrine by Henry van de Velde (1905–06)

The city of Weimar was another important center of the Jugendstil, thanks largely to the Belgian architect and designer Henry van de Velde. Van de Velde had played an important role in the early Belgian Art Nouveau, building his own house and decorating it in Art Nouveau style, with the strong influence of the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He was a known in Germany for his work in Belgium and Paris, and began a new career in Dresden in 1897, with a display at the Dresden Exposition of decorative arts. His work became known in Germany through decorative arts journals, and he received several commissions for interiors in Berlin, for a villa in Chemnitz, the Folkwang Museum in Hagen, and the Nietzsche House in Weimar for Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, the sister of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. He settled in Weimar in 1899 and produced a wide variety of decorative works, including silverware and ceramics, all in strikingly original forms. His silverware was particularly unusual: each piece had its own form, with sleek curving lines, but together they formed a harmonious ensemble. In 1902, he decorated the apartment of Count Harry Kessler, a prominent patron of the Impressionist painters.[5]

In 1905, with the patronage of the Grand Duke of Weimar, he created the Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar. He created a showcase of applied arts for the Dresden Exposition of Applied Arts in 1906, decorated with paintings by Ludwig von Hofmann, intended as the main room of a new museum of decoration in Weimar. He transposed the characteristics of his silverware, dishes, and furniture into the architecture. Van de Velde left off the curling vegetal lines of Art Nouveau decoration and replaced them with much simpler, more stylized curves which were part of the structure of his buildings and decorative works.[6]

In 1907, van de Velde became director of the a new school of decorative arts in Weimar. His remake of Art Nouveau into a more functional and simplified style very different appeared in his door handles, his chairs, and the facades of his buildings. The ornament merged into the structure.

The importance of Weimar as a cultural was broken in 1906, when its main patron, Count Harry Kessler, commissioned Rodin to make a nude statue for the Grand Duke. The Grand Duke was scandalized, and Kessler was forced to resign. The Weimar school of design lost its importance until 1919, when it returned as the Bauhaus under Walter Gropius, and played a major part in the emergence of modern architecture.[7]

The architect and designer Peter Behrens (1868–1940) was a key figure in the final years of the Jugendstil, and in the transition to modern architecture. Born in Hamburg, where he studied painting, Behrens moved to Munich in 1890 and worked as a painter, illustrator and bookbinder. In 1890, he was one of the founders of the Munich Secession. In 1899, he was invited to participate in the Darmstadt Artists' Colony, where he designed his own house and all of its contents, including the furniture, towels and dishes.

After 1900 he became involved in industrial design and the reform of architecture to more functional forms. In 1902, he participated in the Turin International Exposition, one of the first major Europe-wide showcases of Art Nouveau. In 1907, Behrens and a group of other notable Jugendstil artists, including (Hermann Muthesius, Theodor Fischer, Josef Hoffmann, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Bruno Paul, Richard Riemerschmid, and Fritz Schumacher, created the Deutscher Werkbund. Modeled after the Arts and Crafts movement in England, it was goal was to improve and modernize the design of industrial products and everyday objects. He first major project was AEG turbine factory in Berlin (1908–1909). Behren's assistants and students at this time included Mies van der Rohe, C. E. Jeanerette (the future Le Corbusier), and Walter Gropius, the future head of the Bauhaus. The work of Behrens and the Werkbund effectively launched the transition from the Jugendstil to modernism in Germany, and the end of the Jugendstil.[8]

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  Music room of Behrens' house in Darmstadt (1902)
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  AEG turbine factory in Berlin, by Peter Behrens (1908–1909)