Adam Gottlieb Hermann Muthesius (April 20, 1861 - October 29, 1927), known as
Hermann Muthesius, was a
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
architectAn architect is trained and licensed in planning and designing buildings, and participates in supervising the construction of a building. Etymologically, architect derives from the Latin architectus, itself derived from the Greek arkhitekton , i.e. chief builder...
,
authorAn author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created...
and
diplomatA diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organisation. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...
, perhaps best known for promoting many of the ideas of the
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
Arts and Crafts movementThe Arts and Crafts Movement was a British, Canadian, Australian, and American aesthetic movement occurring in the last years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century...
within Germany and for his subsequent influence on early pioneers of German
architectural modernismModern architecture is art with similar characteristics, primarily the simplification of form and creation of ornament from the structure and theme of the building. The first variants were conceived early in the 20th century...
such as the
Bauhaus' is the common term for the ', a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933....
.
Muthesius was born in 1861 in the village of Gross Neuhausen near
ErfurtErfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and is the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nürnberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...
and received early training from his father, who was a builder.
Adam Gottlieb Hermann Muthesius (April 20, 1861 - October 29, 1927), known as
Hermann Muthesius, was a
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
architectAn architect is trained and licensed in planning and designing buildings, and participates in supervising the construction of a building. Etymologically, architect derives from the Latin architectus, itself derived from the Greek arkhitekton , i.e. chief builder...
,
authorAn author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created...
and
diplomatA diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organisation. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...
, perhaps best known for promoting many of the ideas of the
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
Arts and Crafts movementThe Arts and Crafts Movement was a British, Canadian, Australian, and American aesthetic movement occurring in the last years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century...
within Germany and for his subsequent influence on early pioneers of German
architectural modernismModern architecture is art with similar characteristics, primarily the simplification of form and creation of ornament from the structure and theme of the building. The first variants were conceived early in the 20th century...
such as the
Bauhaus' is the common term for the ', a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933....
.
Early life
Muthesius was born in 1861 in the village of Gross Neuhausen near
ErfurtErfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and is the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nürnberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...
and received early training from his father, who was a builder. After a period of military service and two years studying
philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned...
and
art historyArt history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and look. This includes the "major" arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture as well as the "minor" arts of ceramics,...
at
Frederick William UniversityThe Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...
in
BerlinBerlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union...
, he enrolled to study architecture at
Charlottenburg Technical CollegeThe Technical University of Berlin is located in Berlin, Germany....
in 1883, while also working in the office of Reichstag architect
Paul WallotPaul Wallot was a German architect of Huguenot descent, best known for designing the Reichstag building in Berlin, erected between 1884 and 1894...
.
Following completion of his studies Muthesius spent three years in
Tokyo, officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan and is located on the eastern side of the main island Honshū. The twenty-three special wards of Tokyo, each governed as a city, cover the area that was once the city of Tokyo in the eastern part of the prefecture, totaling over 8 million people....
as an employee of a German construction firm, where he saw his first building completed—a German Evangelical church—and travelled extensively across
AsiaAsia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the earth's total surface area and with approximately 4 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population.Asia is traditionally defined as part of the...
. He returned to Germany in 1891 where he spent periods working as a public architect and as the editor of a construction journal.
London
In 1896 Muthesius was offered a position as cultural attaché at the
German Embassy in LondonThe Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Court of St. James's is Germany's diplomatic mission to the United Kingdom.The embassy is currently located at 23 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PZ, in Belgravia. It occupies three of the original terraced houses in Belgrave Square and a late...
, from where he was to study report on the ways of the British. He focused the next six years investigating and residential architecture and domestic lifestyle and design, ending with a three volume report published as
Das englische Haus. Although his subjects were wide-ranging, he was particularly interested in the philosophy and practices of the English
Arts and Crafts movementThe Arts and Crafts Movement was a British, Canadian, Australian, and American aesthetic movement occurring in the last years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century...
, whose emphasis on function, modesty, understatement, individuality and honesty to materials he saw as alternatives to the ostentatious
historicismHistoricism refers to artistic styles that draw their inspiration from copying historic styles or artisans. So, after neo-classicism , the 19th century saw a new historicist phase marked by a return to a more ancient classicism, in particular in architecture and in the genre of history painting....
and obsession with ornament in German nineteenth century architecture, and whose efforts to bring a sense of craftsmanship to
industrial designIndustrial design is a combination of applied art and applied science, whereby the aesthetics and usability of mass-produced products may be improved for marketability and production...
he saw as a significant national economic benefit. He visited
GlasgowGlasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
to investigate the innovative work of the
Glasgow SchoolThe Glasgow School was a circle of influential modern artists and designers who began to coalesce in Glasgow, Scotland in the 1870s, and flourished from the 1890s to sometime around 1910...
exemplified by the designs of
Charles Rennie MackintoshCharles Rennie Mackintosh was a Scottish architect, designer, and watercolourist. He was a designer in the Arts and Crafts movement and also the main exponent of Art Nouveau in the United Kingdom...
.
As well as his official reports, Muthesius also developed a career as an author, communicating his ideas and observations in an influential series of books and articles that saw him become a significant cultural figure in Germany, culminating in his most famous work
Das englische Haus ("The English House"), published in 1904. He wrote about the
Willow TearoomsThe Willow Tearooms are tearooms at 217 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, Scotland, designed by internationally renowned architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which opened for business in October 1903...
for an issue of
Dekorative Kunst published in 1905 almost entirely devoted to
A Mackintosh Tea Room in Glasgow, saying that "Today any visitor to Glasgow can rest body and soul in
Miss Cranston's Tea RoomsCatherine Cranston , widely known as Kate Cranston or Miss Cranston, was a leading figure in the development of the social phenomenon of tea rooms...
and for a few pence drink tea, have breakfast and dream that he is in fairy land." At the same time he lamented Mackintosh's unrewarded struggle to "hold up the banner of Beauty in this dense jungle of ugliness."
The "Muthesius Affair" and the Deutscher Werkbund
Muthesius returned to Germany in 1904 and established himself as an architect in private practice, while retaining a role as an official advisor to the Government of Prussia. Over the next two decades he designed a series of houses throughout Germany, drawing upon and cementing the principles and practices expounded in his famous book.
By this time Muthesius was widely recognised as an admirer of English culture, but this also laid him open to accusations of divided loyalties. In 1907 he was accused by the
Fachverband für die wirtschaftlichen Interessen des Kunstgewerbes ("Association for the Economic Interests of the Arts and Crafts") of criticising the quality of German industrial products in a lecture in Berlin. The resulting controversy saw several influential designers and industrialists withdraw from the association and set up the
Deutscher WerkbundThe Deutscher Werkbund was a German association of artists, architects, designers, and industrialists. The Werkbund was to become an important event in the development of modern architecture and industrial design, particularly in the later creation of the Bauhaus school of design...
, explicitly aimed at bringing the highest standards of design to mass-produced output.
The Deutscher Werkbund was a major influence on the early careers of
Le CorbusierCharles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, who chose to be known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and also painter, who is famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called Modern architecture or the International Style...
,
Walter GropiusWalter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....
and Mies van der Rohe, but although Muthesius was in many ways its spiritual father and served as its chairman from 1910 until 1916, he had little sympathy with the emerging early-modernism, considering both
Art NouveauArt Nouveau is an international movement and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that peaked in popularity at the turn of the 20th century . The name 'Art nouveau' is French for 'new art'...
and the later designs of the
Bauhaus' is the common term for the ', a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933....
to be just as much superficial styles as those of the nineteenth century.
Muthesius was one of the major architects who built Germany's first
Garden CityThe Garden city movement is an approach to urban planning that was founded in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were intended to be planned, self-contained, communities surrounded by greenbelts, containing carefully balanced areas of residences, industry, and...
,
HellerauHellerau is a quarter in the City of Dresden, Germany. It was the first garden city in Germany.Based on the ideas of Ebenezer Howard, businessman Karl Schmidt-Hellerau founded Hellerau near Dresden in 1909. The idea was to create an organic, planned community...
, a suburb of
DresdenDresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
, founded in 1909. Its foundation was closely related with the activities of the Deutscher Werkbund, too. Among the many employees of Muthesius was the German Socialist city planner
Martin WagnerMartin Wagner was a German architect, city planner, and author, best known as the driving force behind the construction of modernist housing projects in interwar Berlin.- Germany :...
, who applied the lessons of the garden city to Berlin on a huge scale, from 1924 to about 1932.
Later career
Muthesius continued designing houses and writing about domestic architecture until 1927, when he died in a road accident after a site visit in Berlin.
Major Built Works
- Bernhard house, Berlin-Wilmersdorf, (1906)
- Cramer house, Berlin-Zehlendorf, (1913)
Major Publications
- Stilarchitektur und Baukunst ("Style-architecture and Building-art") (1902)
- Das englische Haus ("The English House") (1904)
- Wie baue ich mein Haus (" How do I build my house") (1915)
External links