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Willi Baumeister
Foto: schwarz-weiß: Porträt Willi Baumeister

The Frank­furt Pro­fes­sor­ship
1928 to 1933

I cor­dial­ly con­grat­u­late you on Frank­furt. It is even with spe­cial per­son­al sat­is­fac­tion since I intense­ly pro­mot­ed you for oth­er posi­tions, but nev­er got through … I very much regret that we will lose you in Stuttgart. Also, teach­ing is no unfet­tered bliss.“

Thus wrote Adolf Hölzel to his for­mer stu­dent Willi Baumeis­ter at the end of 1927 after the lat­ter had accept­ed a teach­ing posi­tion at the Munic­i­pal School of Applied Arts (Städelschule) in Frank­furt am Main in Novem­ber.
This was pre­ced­ed by a num­ber of impor­tant exhi­bi­tions dur­ing the twen­ties in Paris, Berlin, Mannheim, and oth­er cities and after he had declined a teach­ing posi­tion in Bres­lau in 1927. Friend­ships with impor­tant avant-gardists such as Le Cor­busier, Fer­nand Léger or Amedée Ozen­fant had been forged. In 1929 he even turned down an offer from the Bauhaus in Dessau.

The most cru­cial rea­son for his employ­ment in Frank­furt, though, was Baumeis­ter’s role as one of the excep­tion­al typog­ra­phers of the time. Since 1919 – along with artists such as Wal­ter Dex­el, Lás­zló Moholy-Nagy, and Kurt Schwit­ters – he had con­sid­er­ably con­tributed to giv­ing com­mer­cial art a new direc­tion. The great­est suc­cess here was his var­ied par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Stuttgart Werk­bund Exhi­bi­tion “Die Woh­nung” (The Dwelling) in 1927, whose atmos­phere of a new begin­ning is evinced by the still extant Weis­senhof Estate.

Tasks in Frank­furt

On April 1, 1928, Willi Baumeis­ter took up his posi­tion at the [Munic­i­pal] School of Applied Arts in Frank­furt am Main. Also known as the Städel’sche School of Arts, the insti­tute was one of the most impor­tant schools of pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion of its time and in a very short time had become a cen­ter of new design. Baumeis­ter did not teach the sub­ject of paint­ing, though, which Max Beck­mann cov­ered, but was hired as head of the class for com­mer­cial graph­ics and typog­ra­phy. Made pro­fes­sor in Octo­ber 1928, he also took on the sub­jects of weav­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy in 1930.

Art and Com­mer­cial Art

Baumeis­ter by no means per­ceived it as a slight that he was not employed as a painter in Frank­furt. On the con­trary: for him com­mer­cial graph­ics had such a high esteem that he even declined to men­tion paint­ing on his let­ter­head of 1924. Since the turn of the cen­tu­ry, unit­ing art and every­day life, remov­ing the divi­sion between the applied and fine arts, was the declared goal of many painters, graph­ic artists, and archi­tects, and, among oth­er things, led to the foun­da­tion of the Ger­man Werk­bund (1907) and the Bauhaus (1919).
This notion of syn­the­sis was thus one of the fun­da­men­tal bases and con­tents of Baumeis­ter’s class­es. The for­mer direc­tor of the school, Dr. Fritz Wichert, explained the appoint­ment at the end of 1927, not­ing that Baumeis­ter belonged

… to a ten­den­cy with­in art that above all set itself the task of clar­i­ty and the strictest reg­u­lar­i­ty of pic­ture appear­ance. This atti­tude also cor­re­sponds with the aims of our school inso­far as it brings itself into uni­son with the endeav­ors of mod­ern archi­tec­ture in the best fash­ion.“

Baumeis­ter as art politi­cians in the cen­ter of the build­ing indus­try

In addi­tion to Stuttgart, Frank­furt was a cen­ter for cur­rent events when it came to mod­ern town plan­ning in Ger­many. Since 1925, Ernst May (1886–1970) had been City Mas­ter Builder and ini­ti­at­ed among oth­er things, the large-scale hous­ing pro­gram, “Neues Frank­furt” (New Frank­furt ), with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of many pro­gres­sive archi­tects and for which May empha­sized the cen­tral impor­tance of all arts to help solve the social ques­tion. Thus, he and Baumeis­ter – who were about the same age – worked hand in hand from dif­fer­ent sides on real­iz­ing a soci­etal con­sen­sus.

Con­se­quent­ly, Baumeis­ter’s employ­ment is to be under­stood not only in artis­tic, but also in polit­i­cal terms. May and Wichert saw Baumeis­ter’s role in train­ing a gen­er­a­tion of com­mer­cial artists who knew how to approach the social phe­nom­e­na of demo­c­ra­t­ic Ger­many – a chal­lenge to which Baumeis­ter him­self undoubt­ed­ly felt a call and for which he was also pre­pared.

Accord­ing­ly, besides his teach­ing activ­i­ty, begin­ning in 1930 Willi Baumeis­ter was also respon­si­ble for the design of the mag­a­zine “das neue frank­furt” (The New Frank­furt, est. 1928), one of the most impor­tant jour­nals for the cul­tur­al redesign­ing of the state.

Teach­ing con­tent


In 1929 Baumeis­ter out­lined the con­tent of his teach­ing, where­by the intro­duc­tion of pho­tog­ra­phy must be seen as antic­i­pa­to­ry:

  • Gen­er­al train­ing in the artis­tic han­dling of the two-dimen­sion­al sur­face. Ele­men­tary com­po­si­tions with black and white, col­or, line, writ­ing, fig­ure, pho­to­graph. — Nude draw­ing. — Designs for the entire field of adver­tis­ing, con­sid­er­ing the meth­ods of repro­duc­tion.
  • Tech­ni­cal train­ing in [type]setting, print­ing, wood­cut, and linocut.
  • The book­bind­ing work­shop teach­es tech­ni­cal train­ing in all branch­es of this craft.
  • Com­ple­men­tary instruc­tion in the sub­ject of adver­tis­ing, the study of mate­ri­als, col­or the­o­ry, his­to­ry of art.
  • The addi­tion of a pho­tog­ra­phy work­shop is planned.
  • Evening class­es for print-shop assis­tants with instruc­tion in type­set­ting, let­ter­press, wood- and linocut print­ing.


Aside from his remarks on typog­ra­phy, only few of Baumeis­ter’s own assess­ments from those years have sur­vived – in con­trast to his teach­ing activ­i­ty after 1945. Direc­tor Fritz Wichert, how­ev­er, com­ments on this, too: “Pro­fes­sor Baumeis­ter attempts to teach his stu­dents … the appli­ca­tion of gen­er­al laws of the pla­nar sur­face and, through the strictest demands regard­ing col­or and fig­u­ra­tive com­po­si­tion, to pro­tect them from the pre­vail­ing neglect. … Every­thing that takes place in it [his class], is aimed at coun­ter­ing the slip­page in this field of design into the vul­gar and art­less­ness through refine­ment and mas­tery.”

This eval­u­a­tion large­ly cor­re­spond­ed to the appraisals of the Frank­furt press and art crit­i­cism.

It is also inter­est­ing to see how for­mer stu­dents expe­ri­enced being instruct­ed by Willi Baumeis­ter. His stu­dent Mar­ta Hoepffn­er remarked on this sub­ject after 1945 in a com­men­tary about her stud­ies at the Frank­furt art school.

… no unfet­tered bliss

Baumeis­ter’s class for com­mer­cial art and typog­ra­phy was among the best attend­ed at the school. Between 1928 and 1933 he super­vised an aver­age of 27 stu­dents. Thus Adolf Hölzel seems to have been right – Willi Baumeis­ter wrote to Oskar Schlem­mer in 1932:

In the morn­ing I am con­tin­u­al­ly bur­dened with 25 stu­dents, review­ing, also school-like super­vi­sion about arriv­ing punc­tu­al­ly, admon­ish­ing unex­cused tru­an­cies, remind­ing, scold­ing, a hideous drill-sergeant job. In addi­tion, the very com­pli­cat­ed work­shops, large com­pos­ing room, pho­to, spray­ing, print­ing, design­ing diplo­mas for the city, super­vis­ing print­ing, being respon­si­ble…. On two after­noons [I give] ongo­ing instruc­tion for begin­ners and fash­ion class. The oth­er after­noons remain for me to work? or inci­den­tal­ly paint, as one can call it. In the evening at home I some­times pull myself togeth­er to make pen­cil draw­ings. My draw­ings, espe­cial­ly the new ones, are the best that I have made up to now. … Should I ever be relieved of this tor­ture, I will be well-trained, like the run­ner who for train­ing runs with 10-pound weights in order to one day dis­card them for the final sprint.“

Fur­ther­more, it can­not be over­looked that Wichert clear­ly had increas­ing dif­fi­cul­ties accept­ing an abstract artist along­side the fig­u­ra­tive post-expres­sion­ist Max Beck­mann, which addi­tion­al­ly bur­dened Baumeis­ter’s posi­tion. More­over, begin­ning in 1929, parts of the Frank­furt press also fre­quent­ly polemi­cized against Baumeis­ter.

In light of the work­load, the num­ber of paint­ings in these years decreased some­what, while the draw­ings increased. But Baumeis­ter always took time for new pic­ture ideas, as the Stu­dio Pic­tures around 1932 reveal. How­ev­er, we also know that he ret­ro­spec­tive­ly reject­ed many works from around 1930 because he lat­er saw some com­po­si­tions as unde­sir­able devel­op­ments.

The abrupt end in 1933

After Hitler’s appoint­ment as chan­cel­lor on Jan­u­ary 30, 1933, the events som­er­sault­ed, and not only for Willi Baumeis­ter. They by no means came as a sur­prise, though, as nation­al­ist (völkisch) ten­den­cies had repeat­ed­ly sur­faced in the cul­ture scene since the 1920s. On Feb­ru­ary 13, 1933 the NSDAP assumed con­trol of the Frank­furt city gov­ern­ment, a few days lat­er the (Nazi-par­ty news­pa­per) “Frank­furter Volks­blatt” incit­ed hatred against Baumeis­ter, and at the end of March Fritz Wichert was put on leave.

On March 31, Baumeister’s imme­di­ate ter­mi­na­tion fol­lowed in writ­ing, but with­out fur­ther expla­na­tion via the new direc­tor, Karl B. Berthold: “I inform you that I renounce your fur­ther teach­ing activ­i­ty at the School of Applied Arts. … [I] request … you refrain from any offi­cial activ­i­ty and to evac­u­ate your pre­vi­ous work­ing space by April 8th.”

Willi Baumeis­ter sub­se­quent­ly wrote in his diary: “Accord­ing to the writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the new direc­tor Berthold, he “renounces” my fur­ther teach­ing activ­i­ty. There­with the “Frank­furt” chap­ter clos­es. … I was nev­er polit­i­cal­ly active. (Should I under­take some­thing against the dis­missal? No. -) It is aimed against my “Bol­she­vist” art, which has been cre­at­ed out of spir­i­tu­al free­dom. What can there be that is Bol­she­vist about it? A great deal is char­ac­ter­ized as “Bolsh. & Jew­ish.” What is not imme­di­ate­ly under­stood by infe­ri­ors should now be stran­gu­lat­ed?”

On April 7, 1933 Baumeis­ter drove back to Stuttgart for good. The fate of dis­missal was shared by many, includ­ing Paul Klee, Otto Dix, Ewald Mataré, Karl Hofer, Max Beck­mann, and Baumeis­ter’s friend Oskar Schlem­mer. He remained in Ger­many, though, and by no means gave into res­ig­na­tion. His cre­ative ener­gy remained just as unbro­ken as his atti­tude of rejec­tion toward the new regime.

Even though the doors in Ger­many only reopened for Willi Baumeis­ter in the sum­mer in 1945, these years dur­ing the Sec­ond World War would result in very impor­tant work groups (see the work phas­es 1936–1939 and 1940–1945.) Just a few months after the war’s end, Baumeis­ter’s biog­ra­phy as an instruc­tor con­tin­ued with a new pro­fes­sor­ship in Stuttgart.

Con­tribut­ing to the his­to­ry of the Stuttgart Acad­e­my of Fine Art, Wolf­gang Ker­mer’s book “Der schöpferische Winkel. Willi Baumeis­ters päd­a­gogis­che Tätigkeit” (The Cre­ative Angle: Willi Baumeis­ter’s Ped­a­gog­i­cal Activ­i­ty) appeared in 1992, and treats the years at the Frank­furter Art School at length (see Lit­er­a­ture).