Design History Society

Handwerk/Kunsthandwerk Author(s): Stefan Muthesius Source: Journal of Design History, Vol. 11, No. 1, Craft, Modernism and Modernity (1998), pp. 85-95 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Design History Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1316165 . Accessed: 27/03/2013 12:11
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Stefan Muthesius

HandwerklKunsthand

This article sounds out some of the meanings of two importantGermanterms. It deals with their recenthistory and compares the developmentsof the crafts in Britain and Germany.'Das Handwerk'is equivalentto aspects of 'the crafts'and 'the trades' and is thus a term of much greater importancein Germanart and economic life than either crafts or trade are in Britain. termand its twentieth-centurymeaning is morenarrowlyequivalentto Arts and is a late nineteenth-century 'Kunsthandwerk' Crafts and, later, studio crafts. Keywords: Arts and Crafts movement-crafts history-crafts terminology-Germany-history of decorative artsModernism

One way of trying to understand the complexities of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western crafts and design is to enquire into their basic terminology and to reflect on their terminologies in different languages. It is essential to state, at the outset, that for this exercise it is not enough simply to present English 'translations of foreign words', certainly not in the case of the major terms. Rather, what is needed are definitions, using a wide vocabulary of adjacent words as well as their etymology, which means going backwards and forwards between languages. We need to be aware, throughout, of the common roots of Germanic, or Romance words, which, of course, simply reflect the shared Western social and cultural history of all major concerns in the fields of art and techniques. An English speaker does not need to know much German in order to get at the basic meaning of 'Hand Werk' or 'hand work'; on that general level English and German are still simply the same language. And yet we must be cautious at precisely this point. To translate literally Handwerk as handiwork ('hand work', curiously, lacks meaning) could be rmisleading, because the latter, if retranslated into twentieth-century German as 'Handarbeit', has the very much restricted meaning of ladies' needlework (useful as well as ornamental).' Handwerk, in all German-speaking lands, is the chief twentieth-century umbrella term for anyJournalof Design History Vol. ii No.
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thing which does not come under 'Industrieproduktion' (industrial production). A better twentieth-century English equivalent is thus another old Germanic word, craft, or 'the crafts' (its modern German derivative, 'Kraft', however, cannot be used in our context because it means, very generally, force, strength or energy). Like craft, Handwerk can be seen in opposition to the products of 'industry', i.e. it is perceived to possess values which are different from, and that better than those of industry-although opposition is not nearly as strong as in the case of crafts. Like crafts, Handwerk can, furthermore, be understood in opposition to design, although, because of the vagueness of the term design, the juxtaposition of Handwerk with Design is often nebulous, too. We shall come back to this when we mention some of the German twentieth-century equivalents and variants of 'design'. On a basic level, Handwerk can also be opposed to Kunst.2 However, as one is acutely aware of the perennial European confusion reigning within the semantic field of arts, of the fine, applied and technical 'arts', it is not suprising to note that the Germans could create the seemingly paradoxical combination 'Kunst Handwerk'. But this happened only during the later nineteenth century and hence our second term is very much easier to understand in English-speaking countries. The German Kunsthandwerk movement of the late
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? 1998 The Design History Society

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nineteenth or certainly the twentieth century was in both German- and English-speaking countries pretty much the equivalent of our Arts and Crafts was much simpler. There is actually a German movement, and of today's studio crafts. equivalent to trade, and that is 'Gewerbe'. An old Kunsthandwerk will be discussed further below synonym to Gewerbe is 'Gewerke', its nucleus and we first turn to Handwerk as such, although simply being 'Werk' (work). An old equivalent we have to be aware that some Arts and Crafts to modern German 'arbeiten', and the corresvalues were instilled into plain Handwerk, too. A pondent for 'to work', is, indeed, 'werken'. We further English term comes to mind-'artisan'shall come below to the way in which nineteenthtogether with the French 'artisanat'. The way it and twentieth-century applied art and design refers to the skilled worker, in contrast to the ideologues put special emphasis on certain unskilled one, indeed corresponds to the notion terms and made them sound powerful: 'Werk' of skill in Handwerk; but as it was the designation was certainly one of those. Up to the last decades of the step on the social status ladder that was the of the nineteenth century Gewerbe/Gewerke, chief purpose of the term artisan, and as it was and, for that matter, Industrie, covered everymainly used in the nineteenth century, its com- thing, from the roughest kinds of large-scale parison with the broadly used Handwerk is of production and the finest kinds of manufacture limited value. ('Manufaktur' is a German term, too, but its use At the outset we must stress that Handwerk has been restricted to 'Porzellanmanufaktur') comprises a vastly greater sphere of activities than down to the small jobbing craftsman or trader.4 twentieth-century English 'crafts'. Handwerk is a The big change came, as everywhere else, with term that has a firm position in the realm of industrialization. Its main phase, in Germany, is economics and statistics. A Handwerker is the witnessed later than in Britain and its impact was generic term for the person who repairs one's more sudden. Full 'Gewerbefreiheit'-the complumbing, who cuts one's hair; the baker belongs plete freedom to set up any kind of business, to the 'Bickerhandwerk', the bricklayer to the anywhere-was only introduced in L869, in antici'Bauhandwerk'. Bauhandwerk is opposed to pation of the complete economic and political 'Bauindustrie', although here, in particular, the unification of Germany. Modern industry had borderlines between Handwerk and Industrie are finally swept away the remnants of the old guild increasingly difficult to draw. Another English restrictions. It soon, however, appeared that this term needs to be introduced here-'trade'. Hand- might spell disaster for the future of all those werk comprises the 'trades', such as in the 'build- manufacturing branches which had not acquired, ing trades'; it shares some of the imprecisions of or saw no prospect of acquiring, large-scale workthe term 'trade', including (and contrary to what force or machinery. There would seem to be has been said above) the blurred borderline nothing left to do for the smaller trades, everytowards industry. On the whole, though, thing was to be made by machine; only repair modern German Handwerk usually tries to play work would remain for the impoverished jobbing down any purely commercial element. Thus, at its artisan. Large branches of trade, even the whole of very briefest, Handwerk comprises both crafts Handwerk could be defined negatively, as that and trades. One could branch out here into gen- which was left behind by modernization. It was eral perceptions of German products, the ethos now that Handwerk began to reflect on its state and myth of 'Made in Germany', by reflecting on and status and rapidly built up its modem ethos, the ways in which a properly trained, 'profes- terminology and complex organization. sional' Handwerker combines the best of the German social stratification models, being 'trader' and of the 'craftsman', being the conduc- somewhat different from those which are nortor of a small business with his or her feet on the mally used in Britain, speak of the 'class of the ground, but also practising individualistic, con- Handwerker', or the 'class of the peasant farmer'. templative or arty ways of making, designing and The class of the Handwerker (Handwerkerstand) inventing.3 was held to be very largely part of the middle If one goes back 150 or 200 years, the situation class (Mittelstand), of the bourgeoisie. It was
86 Stefan Muthesius

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during the later nineteenth century that a large section of the Buergerstand, and with it most of the smaller trades, took a political turn to the right; they became opposed to both liberal internationalism and internationalist socialism; more importantly, many of them, by 9goo, had embarked on an ideological stance of cultural pessimism or scepticism, an ideology of antiModernism and anti-progress as well as a widespread nationalism.5 A reference to the seemingly intact world of the 'medieval craftsman'-a notion that had first been voiced around 18oobecame de rigueur [i]. At the same time, Handwerk gave itself a modern organizational framework with nationwide associations, conventions, cleverly organized publicity and political lobbying. Each town or district established a 'Handwerkskammer' (equivalent to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Industrie- und Handelskammer) or i.e. a 'Handwerksverband/Handwerksverein', associations or societies. At times, the old term was revived, 'Innung', Handwerksinnung, though on the whole the modern organization stayed clear of the other old German term for guild, 'Zunft' (to add to the richness, the Germans also use Gilde). What was modern about this setup was the carefully orchestrated network at regional and national level; 'Professionalization' is another English term (without a precise German equivalent) which could be applied at this point. There were numerous pieces of legislation, especially during the i88os, which attempted
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to continue some of the old rules, or at least the old nomenclature of the guilds, for instance the old system of apprentices and journeymen, and the protection of the term 'Meister'. As with brand names, this was and is a legal protection of the terminology, a reinforcement of its ethos, but not an absolute protection of production monopolies. To this day, Handwerk represents a seemingly firmly defined group of crafts, trades or professions, and at the same time an officially defined social group within German society.6 Another crucial way of helping Handwerk in its 'competition with industry' was to lean towards the art side of manufacturing. As elsewhere, Germans in the second half of the nineteenth century were preoccupied with 'applying art to industry' in as many branches of manufacture as possible. Applied arts is translated as 'Kunstgewerbe', or as Kuenste' and sometimes 'angewandte 'Kunsthandwerk'-all terms, as well as Kunstindustrie, were used interchangeably until the 189os. Kunstgewerbe meant the belief that artistic values in manufacture could be inculcated through education. In the early decades, that is until about 187o-8o, the Kunstgewerbe movement still believed in a comprehensive way of applying art to Gewerbe; i.e. art could be applied to all production processes, to machine and mechanized processes, as well as to hand processes. The art in applied arts was largely understood as 'applied' ornament.7 There was a belief, which was, for instance, still shared by Alois Riegl, namely that good, ornamented products could
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be created without much additional physical effort, without much added cost, simply through a better understanding of ornament and by acquiring good taste ('Geschmack').8 But by the late 1870s, certainly by the midi88os, German critics began to divide industry up. The twentieth-century attempt of Handwerk to define itself as a distinct kind of activity had begun. It was now believed that machine-produced ornament was, or had lately developed a tendency towards the 'cheap' and bad. It was held, furthermore, that it was German products, in particular, which had succumbed to this new trend. French products appeared consistently superior, and, to a growing extent, English ones, too. We now enter the familiar Arts and CraftsModernist trajectory. It is not the purpose of this contribution to rehearse its main tenets and those of subsequent Modern design; on the other hand, it is impossible to understand the meaning and aims of twentieth-century Handwerk and Kunsthandwerk without bearing Modernism in mind. From the 186os-70s onwards it was the organizers of the Applied Art museums, the 'Kunstgewerbemuseen', who provided the tone of the discussion and who pushed arguments forward. In their wake, the writers on the applied arts, merging into what today would be called design criticism, began their powerful discourses,9 appearing mainly in a new type of publication, the arty kind of applied arts journal. The key term was 'Reform'. Reform meant, of course, aiming for the new, but it also aimed at the assurance, or reassurance of quality, artistic merit and a high cultural ranking. The term Kunstgewerbe continued to be used; after 1900 the term Kunsthandwerk slowly gained prominence, though, as we shall see, it was not until about 1930 that it acquired its full presentday use. The well-known key date for all Germanspeaking countries was 1897. In 1897 Jugendstil members of the Munich Secession, the breakaway artists' group founded in 1893, initiated the 'Miinchner Werkstatten'. This represented a twopronged attack on the older and the late nineteenth-century kinds of manufacture of the applied arts. The choice of the term Werkstdtten-as such a perfectly good German termwas very probably influenced by the English
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Arts and Crafts new use of 'workshops', signifying small-scale work organizations. More important in the early years, from 1897 to about 1905, was the insistence on pure artistic input. All products of the movement were designed by named designers, by artists, as was common within the British Arts and Crafts groups. Returning to our term Handwerk, the situation grew more and more complex. A typical Handwerker, say a maker of reasonably up-market furniture in a small or medium-sized firm, now saw himself squeezed not only by industry, or the large manufacturing firms, but also from the other side, so to speak, from a new kind of artistdesigner. The Meister had to watch, but was not able to understand, the meteoric rise of Jugendstil and Secession furnishings which dominated the new smart journals, where those designers-and free the firms who made the pieces-received advertising, and attracted the highest patronage. It seemed all the more paradoxical, as in many ways the smaller class of Handwerker and the new smart designers were sharing the same platform of anti-machine and anti-industry. What the Handwerker did not want to understand was an actual need for a designer; had he not always produced useful and beautiful cabinets whereby the act of designing was integral of the whole process? The second complicating factor was the way in which our new group of critics rediscovered, as in England, what they saw as the old traditions of Handwerk. When we say in German 'das traditionelle Handwerk', we come close to the English term 'traditional crafts'. What this meant, in actual fact, was to project on to old work (as distinct from contemporary work) certain values: a sympathy for the more 'basic' kinds of craft practices and 'simple', 'traditional' ways of life. This was done under the banner of 'Volkskunst'. Folk art and folk crafts, for instance 'peasant furniture', suddenly, from around 1890 onwards, appeared eminently attractive in terms of outline and colour and its quaint, often sparse, motifs of decoration. Furthermore, this furniture was described as 'practical', rationally constructed, it was held to possess a 'sense of the material', honesty. Compared with this, the ordinary Handwerk of the day appeared stuck in the depths of 'meretricious'
Stefan Muthesius

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late nineteenth-century ornamentation and copyism. Thus, paradoxically, the new art movement, especially in interior design, would throw in the works of the contemporary, the 'ordinary' cabinetmaker-Handwerker with 'bad taste' and the unoriginality of late nineteenth-century mass-produced items.10 By about 1905 a strong polarization can be observed. There was avant-garde Modernism in design, and there were the forces of the oldfashioned, the remnants of the nineteenth century [2]. This was the line taken by Hermann Muthesius who gathered most of the avant-garde designers behind him. As a critic put it in the 1920s: 'The Handwerker is stubborn [ein Dickkopf]; he wants to make everything beautiful, and that means he adds ornament . . . [through] imitation ." By 1907-1o the situation was further complicated by the way in which many of the new artist-designers united with the very newest ideas in design reform, namely that machine work could be good, if it were appropriately designed, such as with the 'kunstlerische Maschinenmbbel' designed by the top Munich artist-designer Richard Riemschmid in 1905. The next catchword of this group was 'Typenmobel'-type furniture.12
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The new group of critics, artists and also some manufacturers then began to use an evocative term, by combining the ring of the powerful 'traditional' word Werk with the even more archaizing term 'Bund', which means a close-knit, brotherly group. Like the term Bauhaus a decade or so later, these artificially constructed but seemingly natural names stick in everybody's mind, although, taken literally, they say little and may even be misleading. The Deutsche Werkbund's platform was that the vast majority of German products, whether Handwerk or industry, were bad from the point of view of art or taste and even in their practical functionality. It must be noted that all these controversies were conducted, on both sides, among a small elite; there was a broad spectrum of producers up and down the country who created work which was never dealt with in the critical press. On the other hand, there were the numerous professional associations, mentioned earlier, who saw it as their task to discuss publicly the new problems. Some of those who did not adopt Modem styles of design and did not belong to the Werkbund united and protested. For the Handwerker, a redefinition of his or her role and values was
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now imperative. Under the banner of Kunst, here, too, a process of stratification took place. We are henceforth concerned with the somewhat separate group of those trades which concerned themselves with interior design. The fact was-and this needs much further investigation-that at least the domestic furnishing branch of Handwerk consolidated itself to a large extent during the years 1910-25. This demonstrated a new openness in two directions: firstly, there was no need to condemn outright the use of machines; in woodwork, for instance, their use for the roughest kinds of work would not harm the image of quality. Secondly, some of the larger firms had begun to employ some of the new designers on a free-lance basis. Furthermore, many of the ideas of the once assertive early Jugendstil phase were now being rejected by new avant-garde trends, and their designers had had to shed some of their pride. Above all, Handwerk managed to consolidate its image by catering for the higher and the highest segments of the market. It gave itself an image of absolute quality. By the early 1920S, both Handwerk and much designer Kunstgewerbe demonstrated a certain reversal of the 1goo radical = artistic = high-classposition-unornamented and a return to a more traditional hierarchy of decoration. An expensive interior of 1920 would be praised for its 'nobel' and restrained decor. This was then coupled with an emphasis on 'craftsmanship' or 'fine craftsmanship'; the Germans introduced a more official-sounding term, 'handwerkliche Qualitdt' (craftsman-like quality). 'Quality', pure and simple, had been one of the Werkbund's watchwords; but there seemed no absolute, indivisible quality; each group of producers could add the prefix that suited them. Occasionally, 'handwerkliche Qualitat' could actually be used in the negative sense, namely by those who meant 'only handwerkliche Qualitdit',in contrast to top-class industrial design. Handwerklich meant high dexterity, finish and, especially during the 1920S, the demonstrative use of expensive materials-in other words, 1920S 'art deco', a term that had not yet arrived on the scene. Handwerk's aspiration to high culture was underlined by the term 'Handwerkskultur'. 'Nobel', 'vornehm' were the German equivalents of 'refined', a key value in France and England, too [3].13
90

There was, besides all this, much production of furnishings in the 'Volkskunst' style, based on some of the ideas of the Volkskunst revival of 1goo, mentioned a while ago-or in the 'Heimatstil' (using the German evocative combination of home and homelands); but this now acquired, in conjunction with greater precision in folklore studies, a more specific and thus restrictive regional ethnic categorization. Looking at Englishspeaking countries, there was, and is, a vast amount of 'Crafts-Shop' crafts in Germany (for a long time, and confusingly, this branch of work continued to be referred to by the nineteenthcentury term Kunstgewerbe). To sum up: from 1920 until almost the present day there are a number of principal strands in the production of interior design and objects of daily use: i) volume, or mass manufacture; 2) localized small-trade manufacture, called Handwerk, quasi

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3 'Nobility and Beauty'; Credence by E. Wenz, Deutsche Werkstatten Munchen An example of top-of-the-range furniture of the kind shown at the Munich Deutsche Gewerbeschau in 1922, from Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, vol. XXVI, December 1922,P. 171 Stefan Muthesius

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anonymously producing many of the same goods as l); 3) furnishings by named designers from the Modernist art movements; 4) a more limited range of mostly smaller kinds of products under -the banner of folklore; 5) the beginnings of the Arts and Crafts-minded workshops or individuals making a very limited range of goods; in other words, the beginnings of Kunsthandwerk in the narrower, studio-crafts sense of the word. Kunsthandwerk slowly acquired today's meaning in complex debates with other strands of Modernism. One of the purposes of the noted Werkbund Exhibition of 1924 and the ensuing book of 1925 entitled Die Form ohne [without] Ornament was to please both the industrial design faction and the Handwerk faction.14 'Form' is a powerful word in German twentiethcentury art debates and even a brief definition is difficult. It means, as the title of the 1924 undertaking indicates, that there is an artistically valuable element in the 'body' of a work, of an object, with the ornament left off. Furthermore, form'the deepest expression of inner forces .. . inescapable necessity and the best proof for a liveliness and the health of the times'-also implied the choice of the right style. But what matters most to the authors is that the term form, and especially 'simple form', can be applied and can serve as a system of value for both industrial form, here called 'technische Form' and for its opposite, here called 'primitive' or 'natural' form. It is the latter we are most interested in; we read of the 'warmen bilden aus der Hand ... wachstuemliche Form-warmly creating from hand ... the feelingfor-growth form'. There is a further characterization of technical form as being simple, but 'raffiniert'-here the German word is much closer to to the French 'raffine' than the English 'refined'. Crafts' form, on the other hand, is 'primitive', simple; what is more, examples of 'primitive form' are almost all by women, whereas the best examples of 'technical form' are by men. Predictably, we are told that we need both types of form and that they complement each other.`5 It is, again, important that at this juncture both industrial design and crafts were seen as equally valid spheres of art. The debates went on for many years and are best known from accounts of the Bauhaus. On the one hand, there was the
Handwerk/Kunsthandwerk

central position of Modernism around 1930 which for various reasons ('Zeitgeist', 'education of the masses') went for all-out industrial design. On the other hand, the values of Handwerk, of 'traditional' Handwerk were also reiterated more and more frequently. A Werkbund publication of 193i by the art historian Georg Friedrich Hartlaub was entitled Das ewige Handwerk im Kunstgewerbeder Gegenwart. Beispiele modernen kunsthandwerklichen Gestaltens.15 Its catch-all phrases are indicative of the wobbliness of all those terms. There is: 'the present', but also 'the eternal'; there is the by then, strictly speaking, meaningless term Kunstgeart-at any rate, something werbe-'applied' that Hartlaub does not deal with; there is the most important new term, Kunsthandwerk; there is, for good measure, Handwerk itself. And there is a newish term-'Gestalten/Gestaltung'-which means literally, to give something a 'Gestalt', Gestalt (a fairly common German word) essentially with shape. being synonymous Another term of the same period is 'Formgebung' (giving). The meaning of these terms is, of course, nothing other than that of the international Romance term designing. It is only since 1970 or so that Germans have commonly used 'design' and pronounced it in the English way, with the German words having disappeared. Perhaps the terms 'form-giving' and 'gestalten' were too comprehensive, signifying, as they do, both making and designing. There was, incidentally, yet another paraphrase of Kunsthandwerk, the more seldomly used 'Werkkunst'. Turning the German term for work of art, Kunstwerk, on its head, it illustrates again the well-known German proclivity for producing endless combinations of words, as well as the desire to sound important by sounding basic. The book by Hartlaub again admits to the then 'popular technoid form' but its chief aim is to preach the preservation of the 'ewige (eternal) Handwerk' and to pinpoint those forms and values which are tied to the hand or to Handwerk kinds of production. This now leads to a severe reduction of activities; only a tiny fraction of the sphere of 'traditional' Handwerk is admitted into Kunsthandwerk. It means, first of all, a production of individualized pieces for individual consumers. These individual producers can no longer
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be part of the general run of anonymous commercial, local Handwerk producers, but the Kunsthandwerker is usually a specially trained artist. Only a few materials are under consideration: glass, enamelling, stone-cutting, ceramics, batik, certain textiles, silversmithing. A crucial exclusion at this point is furniture. Clearly, the definition of Kunsthandwerk now approaches the narrow 'studio crafts'-a term without direct German equivalent. Thus by now the essential set of definitions of the twentieth century-Handwerk, Kunsthandwerk and industrial design (although the terms for the latter were only in their infancy)-had been arrived at. To close with a few remarks about later decades: with regard to the later 1930s it has been emphasized by Joan Campbell that the Nazi dictatorship did not mean a very significant break with previous German design policies. Under the Third Reich, writers continued to rail against kitsch, against anything termed dishonest or pretentious. The main characteristic of Nazi pronouncements was simplification; the question of quality seemed solved by simply stating that production by Germans was German 'Wertarbeit' (quality work). Quality work was, furthermore, linked with the concept of the 'enjoyment of work'. There was less concern now for designer names, consultancies, etc. Debates of 'style', about
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modern vs. revivalist; internationalist/technoid style were largely eliminated; there were no competing groups, no Handwerk vs. International Modern industrial design, etc. All design policies, whether industrial or Handwerk, were pronounced by state or party agencies. At the same time, an unproblematic, seemingly natural hierarchy from ornate state representation downwards was upheld. The term design was taken care of, as well as Handwerk, by the formulation 'gestaltendes (form-creating) Handwerk'-the latter not an invention of the Nazis. Theorems returned to the eminently simple: 'form, function, materials', or the 'unconscious feeling for rules and scale'.17 After the Second World War the debates of the inter-war period were reopened, international Modernism had a voice again; on the other hand, divisions between various branches of producers appeared less severe, or controversial, than in the early decades of the century. Handwerk survived as previously defined, or, as most would say, in its 'traditional' structures. Kunsthandwerk, the full notion of studio crafts, now became finally established and institutionalized: 'A Kunsthandwerk is taking shape which neither wants to serve as model to industrial design, nor does it want to serve as Handwerk's alternative to industrial design; Kunsthandwerk means a lebensnotwen11
4 'The good side of the middle class',

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the Federal Republic and 'Father of the Wirtschaftswunder', the German economic miracle) at the Munich Handwerks Fair, 1954

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Stefan Muthesius

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diges [life-necessary] supplement' (to the other spheres)."8 This is followed by the well-rehearsed juxtapositions: organic/technoid, etc. We now witness the foundation of pressure groups, the organization of prizes and exhibitions for Kunsthandwerk, some by the state, others as cooperatives. In some cases, such as at the renowned Munich Handwerker Messe [41,this support wras, and is still organized under the umbrella of the powerful bodies of Handwerk itself. To 'learn a Handwerk', and that means going through the age-old process of becoming a Meister, is considered the basis for all activities, but does not suffice for the Kunsthandwerker; there has to be subsequent training at an art academy. The Kunsthandwerker sees himself or herself primarily as a 'freischaffender' (free-creating), a freelance artist.'9 Lastly, it has to be emphasized again that party politics did not play much of a role: the development in the GDR was not very different from that in West Germany with regard to Kunsthandwerk and even Handwerk. Much of the organizational structure of Handwerk was preserved, although the central state now had a far greater say. West Germans remarked that this was due to the fact that the still privately run old Handwerk provided efficient services which communist state-run industries were unable to deliver. Apart from a short phase in the mid-195os, when a return to ornament was demanded and certain mildly folksy styles were revived, Arts and Crafts/Modernist notions of 'form', and, later, 'design' prevailed in the GDR, too.20 There is thus little problem in translating present-day German Kunsthandwerk into stud iocrafts, while the divergencies and contrasts, as well as the similarities, of 'das Handwerk' remain. Most important, however, seems the ring of romantic and Modernist mysticism which is contained in both. The role of the Arts and Crafts movements was crucial in both countries, in fact in all Germanic-language countries. Some of its origins lay with early nineteenthcentury German and British Romanticism. In the early twentieth century the various interest groups took these mysticisms into the market place. In support of their claims of quality they conducted discourses in which they tried to maximize the impact of powerful basic words, espeHandwerk/Kunsthandwerk

cially of Werk, in all its combinations. Werk's, or work's impact lies in the way it denotes both the process of devoted working and the satisfying results of working. In the end, two kinds of questions arise from the concerns of this article on terminology. Firstly: what will be the future of the terms work/craft vis a' vis design and art; secondly: what fate awaits rich national and regional terminologies within the increasing globalization of languages?
STEFAN MUTHESIUS

University of East Anglia, Norwich

Notes
1

3 4 5 6

Cf. C. Muller, Das GrosseFachwbrterbuch ffir Kunst undAntiquitlten, WeltDeutsch, Englisch, Franzbsisch, kunst Verlag,Munich, 1982. Cf. W. Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics, The Hague, 1970. J. Campbell,Joyin Work: Work: TheNational German Debate1800-1945,Princeton,1989. E.g. Kohlenbergwerk/coalmine. S. Volkov, The Rise of PopularAntimodernism in Germany:The Urban Master Artisans 1873-1896, Princeton,1978. A. Zelle, Das Handwerk in Deutschland, under the editorship of the Zentralverband(central association) des deutschen Handwerks, published by the Presse und Informationsdienstder Bundesregierung, Bonn, 1953. This pamphlet contains a comprehensive rationale of the term. There were, in West Germany and West Berlin, 720,000 Handwerk/ tradesbusinesses,with a total of 3.8 million working in them. The offical list contains 124 kinds of trades. We are assured that the differentiation between industry and Handwerk is fairly clear and has been well rehearsed,yet there are several attempts to put it before the reader,e.g.: 'While, typically, an the industrial firm is tied down to/is aiming at mass-production,through its specialized machinery and its mostly only semi-skilled [angelernt]workforce,a Handwerkbusiness can, typically,do justice to manifold and high and individual demands' (p. io). Thereis also a category 'gestaltendesHandwerk', designing Handwerk (cf. below), whose task is to supply patterns or models to industry. Throughout, there is a strong sense of promotion of the virtues of Handwerk as such. The literature concerningthe history of Handwerkis considerable. Cf. P. Schnitker (ed.), Der goldeneBoden,Gedanken
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9 10

ii

12

tiber das Handwerk,Stuttgart, 1987. As regards comparable elements in industrial education in England, one might cite the late nineteenth-century attempts to revitalize some of the guild spirit in the City of London Guilds examinations. B. Mundt, Das deutsche Kunstgewerbemuseum im i'. Jahrhundert, Munich, 1974; H. M. Wingler (ed.), Kunstschulreform 1900-1933, Berlin, 1977; for the development of German design ideas and policies and for the English influence, see S. Muthesius, Das englische Vorbild, Die deutschen Reformbewegungen in Architektur, Wohnbau und Kunstgewerbe im spiteren 19. Jahrhundert,Munich, 1974; J. Heskett, Design in Germany, 1870-1918, London, 1986; M. Schwartzer, GermanArchitecturalTheoryand the Searchfor Modern Identity, Cambridge, 1995. A. Riegl, 'Kunsthandwerk und kunsthandwerkliche Massenproduction', Zeitschrift des Kunstgewerbevereins, Munich, 1895, p. 6. See S. Muthesius, 'Riegl and the folk art revival', in R. Woodfield (ed.), Alois Riegl (Series: Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture), G+B Arts International, forthcoming, 1998. E.g. Julius Lessing (Director of the Berlin Kunstgewerbemuseum), Handarbeit,Berlin, 1887. B. Deneke, 'Die Beziehungen zwischen Kunsthandwerk und Volkskunst um 1900', Anzeiger des Germanischen NationalmuseumsNfirnberg, 1968, pp. 140-61; S. Muthesius, Das englische Vorbild;R. Mielke, Volkskunst, Magdeburg, 1896. There was, again, some English influence at play here, this time directly through the writings of Morris, Ruskin and Walter Crane and their utopian socialist views. The term Volkskunst was chosen partly because the term 'social' was politically taboo for most the whole of the German middle classes. Walter Crane's chapter 'Art and Social Democracy' (in his book The Claimsof DecorativeArt, 1892, translated into German literally as Die Forderungender DekorativenKunst in 1896) was rendered as 'Kunst und Volkstum'. J. Campbell, The German Werkbund:The Polictics of Reform in the Applied Arts, Princeton, 1978; F. J. Schwartz, The Werkbund, Yale University Press, 1996; H. Obrist, 'Der "Fall Muthesius" und die Kunstler', Die Kunst, vol. i8 (i.e. vol. XI, Dekorative Kunst), 1908, pp. 42-4; See S. Hubrich, Hermann Muthesius: Die Schriften zu Architektur,Kunstgewerbe und Industrie in der 'neuen Bewegung', Berlin, 1981. 'Dickkopf . . . ', Dr Lotz-Hanau, 'Kunsthandwerk und Kunstindustrie', Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, vol. 55, October 1924-March 1925, p. 73. 'Kunstlerische MaschinenmoSbel' (produced by the Dresdner Werkstatten fur Handwerkskunst), Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, vol. XVII, October

1905-March 1906, pp 247-64; 'Typenmobel', Dekorative Kunst, November 1908, pp. 86-95; March 1909,
pp. 258-64. 13 The Werkbund's main 'enemy' was one of the major

14

15

i6

17

i8
19

trades associations, comprising the 'older' (from the Werkbund's perspective 'uncritical') forces of Handwerk, industry and some nineteenth-century Kunstthe Verband gewerbe organizations, ffir wirtschaftliche Interessen des Kunstgewerbes (Association for the economic interest of the Applied Arts); see K. Junghans, Der Werkbund:Sein erstes Jahrzehnt, Berlin, 1982, p. 2; A. Koch, Das neue Kunsthandwerkin Deutschland und Oesterreich unter Berticksichtigung der Deutschen Gewerbeschau in Mfinchen 1922, Darmstadt, 1923 (some of the exhibits were also published in Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, 1922-3, (see [31);E. Redslob, 'Handwerkskultur', Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration,vol. 59, October 1926-March 1927, p. 234; see Campbell, The German Werkbund. Series: Biicher der Form, vol. 1, Stuttgart, Berlin, Leipzig, 1925; cf. G. Naylor, The Bauhaus Re-assessed, London, 1985. Die Form ohne Ornament (Series: Blicher der Form), pp. 6, 9. The most important material at this point for 'free forming' appears ceramics, e.g. the extremely rough work by the otherwise unknown Dorkas Hdrlin, Stuttgart. The Eternal Crafts in the Applied Arts of the Present: Examplesof Modern Arts and Crafts Design, Werkbund Buch, Berlin, 1931. Included are textiles by the Handweberei Sigmund von Weech, Munich and Metalwork by Waldemar Rdmisch, Berlin. Campbell, The GermanWerkbund, pp. 243ff.; see also B. Siepen, Deutsche Wertarbeit, Veriffentlichungen Vortragsreihe Wiirttembergisches Landesgewerbemuseum , Stuttgart, 1938; W. Passarge, Deutsche Werkkunst der Gegenwart, Berlin, 1937. The organizing body of all production was the Deutsche Arbeitsfront, for design its Sektion Schdnheit der Arbeit (German work brigade(s), Section beauty of work). F. Kampfer & K. W. Beyer, Kunsthandwerk in Wandel, Berlin (East), 1984, pp. 8-9. The most important regular shows are held in conjunction with the Internationale Handwerksmesse in Munich and with the Frankfurter Herbst Messe (Autumn Fair), there a Haus des Deutschen Kunsthandwerks was built and the prestigious Hessische Staatspreis ffir das deutsche Kunsthandwerk has been given out (from 1951). See H. W. Hegemann (ed. by Hessisches Ministerium fur Wirtschaft und Verkehr), PreisgkrbntesKunsthandwerk,Wiesbaden, 1965. The Arbeitsgemeinschaft des deutschen
Stefan Muthesius

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Kunsthandwerks, by 1976, had eleven regional groups, comprising a total of 1200 Kunsthandwerker. Most of them were also members, i.e. Meister of a branch of Handwerk; 6o% were working in a fulltime regular job, 40% called themselves 'freischaffender Kiinstler', Cat. 125 Jahre BayerischerKunstgewerberein Munchen, Exh. Cat. MUnchner Stadtmuseum, Munich, 1976, p. 291. In the abovementioned booklet by Zelle we read that 'The Kunsthandwerk is a part of Handwerk as a whole, although it is a particularly valuable one. It presents the handwerkliches Kbnnen (dexterity, capability) in its highest form. As in the Middle Ages we [may] still find the Handwerker who, following his own

20

creative ideas creates products in an independent way [frei gestaltet] and who combines purpose/ function [Zweck], Material, Form and colour into a harmonious unity' (Zelle, Das Handwerk in Deutschland, p. ii). See Catalogues: s.Triennale 99go/9g, Zeitgendssischesdeutsches Kunsthandwerk(contrib. by S. Runde et al.), Munich, 1992; 6.TriennaleZeitgendssisches deutsches Kunsthandwerk, 1994/5, Grassi Museum, Leipzig/Frankfurt-am-Main Museum ffir Kunsthandwerk. See Zelle, Das Handbuchin Deutschland,pp. 35-6; see above Kampfer & Beyer, Kunsthandwerkin Wandel; Deutsches Kunsthandwerk;VeroffentlichungenInstitut ffir Angewandte Kunst, Dresden, 1956.

Handwerk/Kunsthandwerk

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