Born: Elisabeth Wilhelmine Karoline Beyer, August 27, 1906, Hamburg, Germany
Died: August 28, 1973, Viersen-Süchteln, Germany
Matriculated: 1924
Locations: Germany
Fashion and the Bauhaus? One usually associates the Bauhaus and its textile workshop with colorful rugs and abstract fabrics. In fact, the school’s weaving workshop was more focused on designing innovative textile products for interiors than on clothing. Nevertheless, two items of Bauhaus-manufactured women’s clothing have survived, including one by the weaver Lis Beyer from 1928. With its fine light-blue-and-white lined pattern and its form-fitting cut, it conformed perfectly to the latest fashion—and did so using Bauhaus fabric.
“Lis” Beyer, as she was known to everyone, came from a middle-class family of merchants from Hamburg. After graduating from high school, at the age of seventeen she applied to the Weimar Bauhaus, where she successfully completed the preliminary course (Vorkurs) run by Johannes Itten, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky in the summer semester of 1924. After the first Bauhaus’s closing, in 1925, she followed the school to Dessau and studied weaving with Gunta Stölzl. In 1927, Beyer passed her journeyman’s examination (Gesellenprüfung) and, as several fellow Bauhaus weavers had done before her, attended a dyeing course in Krefeld. She shared these skills when she herself became an employee of the weaving workshop. At the same time, she designed textile prototypes for the trade industry.
With her bobbed hair and boyish style, Beyer was every bit the “New Woman” and often modeled for her classmates. She was also involved in stage productions and parties, for which she would dress up in creative costumes; her popularity is evident in countless photos preserved in the albums of fellow students. Before the Bauhaus began issuing its own degrees, Beyer passed the master craftsman’s examination in weaving (Webmeisterprüfung)—the only Bauhaus woman to do so—at the Dessau Chamber of Commerce in spring 1929. That same year, she took her first job, serving as director of the apprentice workshop for hand weaving at the Central Polytechnic Society in Würzburg. Two years later, she married fellow Bauhäusler Hans Volger, who had moved with her to Würzburg and established himself as an independent architect. The couple’s first child was born in 1933, their second in 1940.
In Würzburg, the local press remarked on her work’s unique personal style through a focus on an “intense simplicity.” Volger achieved success with her designs, even reporting to Walter Gropius in 1935 that her clientele was growing annually and that she was filling orders for companies in Würzburg as well as abroad, including Japan, the Netherlands, and France. From a present-day perspective, that this promising career ended just a few years later can only be regarded as regrettable. Volger followed her husband to Krefeld in 1938, where he had been offered a position at the department of city planning. From then on, she concentrated on her family and only accepted private commissions. In keeping with the relationship model typical under National Socialism, she assumed all domestic duties so that her husband was free to work.
Lis Beyer-Volger, Bauhaus dress, 1928, cotton, rayon, length 101 cm
Lis Beyer-Volger, blanket, 1934–1935, heavy wool and fine hemp
In 1951, Hans designed a family home for four with a detached studio, in which Lis could continue making her tapestries. The studio is also remembered as the site of various parties and the Volgers were still in touch with Bauhaus friends, as several of them (for instance, the Kadows) taught at the Krefeld School of Textile Engineering.
Hans had joined the Nazi Party in 1937; he was therefore dismissed from public service in 1945. When he asked Walter Gropius for a letter of recommendation, Lis supported her husband and justified his membership of the party. Their efforts failed; Gropius refused to supply the requested reference. Nevertheless, Volger was reinstated at the department of city planning in 1948, where he worked until 1963. The couple retired to the spa town of Bad Krozingen, where Volger died in July 1973 followed just one month later by his wife.