Artist’s colony
In 1889 Grand Duke Ernest Ludwig wanted to bring a bit of life to the duchy of Hesse, so he decided to found an artist’s colony. He invited the fashionable young architect Joseph Maria Olbrich — architect of the Vienna Sucession Building – to come and help him. Other artists and craftsmen were invited too. He wanted to make interesting, modern buildings for forward-looking people.
The plan was to have a series of exhibitions in Darmstadt. Olbrich was to design the main exhibition hall. He also designed a studio complex, where the artists could work, adjoining underground apartments where some of them could live. Underground is odd isn’t it?
The artists were able buy property at a favourable rate. The idea was to build imaginative houses and go on to exhibit them. Each house was to be a living example of how to combine art, craft and design in a domestic setting. Mosaic was a feature of the scheme. Sadly, the artists found it a bit tricky to afford the houses, but eight of them were finished in time for the exhibition in 1901. The scheme lost a lot of money. Most of the artists left, but Olbrich stuck it out.
In 1904 they tried again. This time the houses were only temporary constructions. There wasn’t the money to do anything else.
In the third exhibition in 1908 they decided the colony should have housing for the poor as well as the rich. This new area was known as ‘the small residence colony’. Local industrialists paid for homes, none of which was to cost more than 4000 marks for a single person or 7200 marks for two. Sadly, the scheme didn’t take off, and when the show was over the houses were demolished.
The steam went out of the plans for the colony. Quite a bit of it was destroyed in World War Two; a few houses were restored according to the original plans, others were transformed. In the 1960s some artists tried again. Today, although some of the buildings are not what they were, many of them remain architecturally interesting.
Olbrich was an imaginative designer, and the mosaics he had made for the colony — named Mathildenhoehe — are very fine. The cupola of the Exhibition Hall by Olbrich is an art nouveau masterpiece, but there are also interesting mosaics in the Wedding Tower, by Friedrich Wilhelm Kleukens. They commemorate the wedding of the Grand Duke to his bride Princess Eleanore zu Solms-Hohensolms-Lich. What fun it must be to be rich.
Olbrich’s mosaic for the Exhibition Hall
The artist’s studios, by Olbrich. Shouldn’t we all have ones like this?
Simply too fantastic to be believed. Glorious nouveau. Found myself “oh’ing” out loud going through the pictures. Thank you, Emma