An exhibition that expanded Empress in Augusta Horizont in 1912

The choice of the place was no coincidence: when the empress rose from her chauffeur car on February 24, 1912 in front of the “Exhibition Halls at the Zoo”, she was impressed accordingly like the other guests. In the following four weeks, the facade of the huge hall, in which the exhibition “The woman in the house and work” took place, for which she had taken over the patronage, was decorated with elegant draperies and green garlands.

Two huge gas flames burned on both sides of the entrance (a clever move, because the gas lobby was the main sponsor of the event), which led to two large halls in which tens of thousands of objects and thousands of ideas were presented. Grouped in 22 pools and all with a common denominator: everyone was created by women.

The exhibition, which took place at the same time as the German Women’s Congress in 1912, was a tribute to the female contribution in the various areas of daily life, but also in art and science. So it was about more than the four ks of the emperor. It was about recognizing their presence and work in these areas.

Everything in and around 1912 was organized, designed and designed by women. Starting with the general conception, to spatial planning, creating the focus of interests and the actual, physical design.

On 9200 square meters, Else Oppler-Legband (one of the leading artistic designers at Wertheim and head of the higher technical college of the German Werkbund in Berlin), Fia Wille (co-owner of a successful Berlin design office and author of a number of exhibition designs that represent Germany abroad), Ilse Dernburg (a brilliant interior design and drama),), Lotte Klopsch (representative of the group applied decorative graphics, which also designed the bourgeois apartment), and Lilly Reich (young artist who worked for Wertheim as a clothing designer and was already on the way to becoming one of the leading German exhibition designers as a lecturer at the Werkbund University. Science, agriculture, industry and social work led in the second hall.

By showing women not only as consumers, but also as active designers, and combining the “female taste”, with a “practical look” (like Lilly Reich’s design for a two-room worker apartment with cheap but tasteful pine furniture, a foldable baby bed and without “dust catcher”), the show “The woman in the house and work” encouraged other women, also outside the boundaries of children’s kitchen. see. Far from the dust catchers.