Lena Meyer-Bergner's socially transformative concept of modernism in the global social upheavals of the first half of the 20th century.

• Applicant: Dr. Sandra Neugärtner
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 453020043

The central objective of the proposed project is to use the example of Lena Meyer-Bergner (1906–1981) to develop a new concept of modernism that takes into account the central importance of social and political ideas, concepts and processes. Meyer-Bergner, born Helene Bergner, was a member of the „Wandervogel-Bewegung“ and worked in the „Landerziehungsheim“ Haubinda before she studied at the weaving class at the Bauhaus in Dessau from 1927 to 1929. A peculiarity of her studies is its expansion to the advertising workshop and to technical subjects. She also completed two internships, first in a dyeing school, then in the East Prussian hand weaving mill in Königsberg, where she took over the management after completing her studies in 1930. In 1931 Bergner went to the USSR, where Hannes Meyer, whom Bergner married in the course of the year, led the pro-Soviet group of former Bauhaus members. Meyer-Bergner worked as a textile designer in a Moscow furniture fabric factory. In 1936 she went to Switzerland with Meyer, where they had to adapt to completely new professional and political conditions. In 1939 Meyer-Bergner followed her husband to Mexico. The attempt to gain a foothold as a textile designer in the newly founded "Instituto de Urbanismo y Planificación" failed – as did the implementation of a teaching concept for a weaving school that Meyer-Bergner had developed for the Otomí, an indigenous ethnic group in Mexico. In cooperation with Meyer, she contributed to the establishment of state educational programs in the graphics and exhibition area and participated – integrated into the network of European exiles – in the international fight against fascism. At the same time, with Meyer, she propagated the socialist structure and cultural development in the USSR. After her return to Switzerland in 1949, she and Meyer could not continue their professional career. The project is devoted to the question of how Meyer-Bergner's concept of art-modernism developed in the first half of the 20th century depending on various socio-political developments. Her efforts to combine collective social change with her approach to design should be critically examined for her various creative phases. It is about a differentiated exploration of her artistic position, which is not without controversy. The societal nature of her work should be examined in connection with her transdisciplinary approach to design, which is based on exchange processes between weaving and graphics and encounters with folk art. An important goal in researching Meyer-Bergner's notion of modernism is also to counter the deficient historiography of the Bauhaus under his left-wing director Hannes Meyer – for the first time from a female perspective and in such a way that Meyer-Bergner's biography forms the historical horizon.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants