Alma Siedhoff-Buscher
Biography
One room of the Haus Am Horn was designed for people too short to reach the windows, and it is the room visitors remember: the children's room, by Alma Siedhoff-Buscher.
The children's room at Am Horn
For the 1923 exhibition she designed the fittings of the children's room in the experimental house — the one part of that building conceived for a user who cannot read the label on the wall. She also took part in Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack's colour-light plays, the school's experiments with projected light, which places her in the two most public things the Bauhaus did that summer.
Toys as design problems
In the same years she made children's toys — the Kleines Schiffbauspiel, a boat-building game, and a puppet theatre among them. Toys are where a design school's claims get tested hardest: a child will not humour a badly made object, and the pieces had to be cheap enough to sell and strong enough to be thrown.
At the school, 1922 to 1927
She was born in Kreuztal near Siegen in 1899, joined the Bauhaus in 1922 and stayed until 1927, following the school to Dessau. She died at Buchschlag near Frankfurt am Main in 1944.
Notable Works & Achievements
the children's room in the Haus Am Horn (1923)
the Kleines Schiffbauspiel
a puppet theatre
Connected Places in Weimar
Am Horn 61, 99425 Weimar
She designed the children's room in the model house — the only room in it made for someone who cannot reach the door handle.
Historical Context
At the school from 1922 to 1927, in the years when the workshops had to show what they could make.
The Bauhaus was founded in Weimar in 1919 and voted out by 1925 — time enough to change what a design school is, and not enough for the town that made it to keep it.
Read more about this period →Quick Facts
1899
1944
German
In Weimar's history
In Weimar's history
The weeks in which the Bauhaus put itself in front of the public for the first time, in three buildings and one house it had to build first.
Her children's room was part of the model house the exhibition was built around.