History of Bauhaus and Marguerite Wildenhain
During her time at Bauhaus, Wildenhain studied alongside painters Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky and she worked closely with sculptor Gerhard Marcks (her Formmeister or Form Master) and potter Max Krehan (her Lehrmeister or Crafts Master).[5] In 1925, Wildenhain became the first woman to earn the Master Potter certification in Germany.[8]
In 1926, she left the school and moved to Halle-Saale, Germany, where she was appointed head of the ceramics workshop at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design.[8] While there, she also became associated with Konigliche Porzellan-Manufaktur (or KPM), now Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur, for which she designed the prototypes for elegant, mass-produced dinnerware, most notably the Halle tea set and the Burg-Giebichenstein dinner service (both in 1930). The same year, she married a younger ceramic artist named Frans or Franz Wildenhain (1905–80), who had earlier been her classmate at the Weimar Bauhaus and served as her apprentice at Burg Giebichenstein.[8]
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Wildenhain was forced to leave her teaching post because of her Jewish ancestry. With her husband (a non-Jewish German citizen), she moved to Putten, Netherlands, where the couple established a pottery shop called Het Kruikje (The Little Jug), and where, until 1940, they lived by making pottery. In advance of the Nazi invasion, Wildenhain was able to leave Holland in 1940 and to emigrate to New York, but her husband’s concurrent request was denied.[8]
Students of Marguerite stand in front of the BAUHAUS building in Dessau, Germany
Bauhaus Legacy 