Wilhelm Wagenfeld
Biography
A student for two years, and the maker of the one object that says "Bauhaus" to people who have never heard of Gropius: the glass and metal table lamp of 1924.
A silversmith who went back to school
Born in Bremen in 1900, Wagenfeld came to the Bauhaus in 1923 already trained: an apprenticeship in the drawing office of a Bremen silverware factory, the local school of arts and crafts, and a scholarship at the drawing academy in Hanau. At the Bauhaus he did the basic instruction and metalwork until 1925 — two years, as a student, and they are the two years everything else rests on.
The lamp
In 1924 he made the table lamp: a nickel-plated shaft, a round base, a globe of opal glass. The Klassik Stiftung, which holds it as MT 9, gives it to Wagenfeld and Carl Jacob Jucker together — Jucker's earlier design reworked into the form that stuck. It is the most reproduced object the school ever made and it was made by a student in his second year.
He stayed when the Bauhaus left
After the Weimar Bauhaus was dissolved on 1 April 1925 he joined the Deutscher Werkbund and took an assistant's post at the successor school in Weimar, the Staatliche Hochschule für Handwerk und Baukunst, where he was leading the metal workshops by 1928. The Bauhaus went to Dessau; its most famous object's designer stayed in town and kept teaching in the same city.
Design for factories
He taught at the art academy in Berlin, directed the Vereinigte Lausitzer Glaswerke from 1935 to 1947, worked with WMF and other manufacturers, and in 1954 founded a development workshop for industrial models in Stuttgart that ran until 1978. He died in Stuttgart in 1990, having spent a career doing what the Bauhaus said it wanted: designing things factories could actually make.
Notable Works & Achievements
the table lamp MT 9 (1924, with Carl Jacob Jucker)
glassware for the Vereinigte Lausitzer Glaswerke
Connected Places in Weimar
Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 8, 99423 Weimar
He studied metalwork in the school's Weimar buildings from 1923 to 1925 — and stayed on in its successor institution.
Stéphane-Hessel-Platz 1, 99423 Weimar
The table lamp he and Carl Jacob Jucker made in 1924 is here — the object most people picture when they hear the word Bauhaus.
Historical Context
A student of the Weimar years, and the designer of the lamp the period is recognised by.
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
1900
1990
German
In Weimar's history
In Weimar's history
An election, a halved budget, and contracts cancelled to 31 March 1925: the school left for Dessau after six years.
When the school was dissolved he did not go to Dessau: he joined the successor school in Weimar.