Born: May 6, 1906, Dresden, Germany
Died: April 25, 1964, Bonn, Germany
Matriculated: 1927
Locations: Egypt, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, USA
Wera Hanna Alice Meyer-Waldeck—the most significant of the few female architects trained at the Bauhaus—was born in Dresden, but her family moved to Alexandria, Egypt, in 1908, when she was only two years old, and lived there until 1915. The First World War forced her father, a former managing privy councilor for the Prussian Government, to move with his wife and children to the canton of Graubünden in Switzerland. Wera and her sisters were homeschooled following the German curriculum. Young Meyer-Waldeck left Switzerland in 1921 to complete her final years of higher education in Dresden; from 1922 to 1924 she trained in childcare and nursery school teaching, and then transferred to the Dresden School of Arts and Crafts for three years.
In 1927 she moved to Dessau to enroll at the Bauhaus, where she would come to believe firmly that architecture could shape a new understanding of the world. In her interview with the bauhaus, the school’s in-house journal, in 1928, she asserted that the Bauhaus course content was less significant than the methods of teaching. To Meyer-Waldeck, it was essential that students be taught first to think and act for themselves before focusing on acquiring knowledge. She also believed in a specifically Bauhaus mindset that was not present in any other school. Meyer-Waldeck saw the Bauhaus’s unique approach most clearly in the preliminary course (Vorkurs) which fostered students’ creative thinking rather than merely teaching them concrete skills. This class also, she believed, offered its female students something they could not attain elsewhere: unprecedented access to a range of technical and artistic subjects, taught prior to their matriculation into the various specialist areas. In Meyer-Waldeck’s interview, she asserted that, even if it were the only class offered, the preliminary course alone would make studying at the Bauhaus worthwhile.
Meyer-Waldeck was curious about everything she studied, yet also strove to maintain a critical perspective. She appreciated the significance of technical know-how—learning to calculate the structure of a building or solve an algebraic theorem—and she recognized the comforts offered by modern technology. But Meyer-Waldeck also insisted on the importance of beauty in art, since it alone could provide dignity to these new designs. This interest in reconciling art and technology was typical of the Bauhaus under Walter Gropius’s directorship. This changed when Hannes Meyer became director, as he was focused on other challenges, especially architecture and engineering.
Technology promised a new world that would draw modern people’s full attention. Yet this future seemed to be one in which women were either ignored or, at best, appeared as assistants to male engineers. At the Bauhaus, some of the female students, including Meyer-Waldeck, decided that they too wanted to be part of this technological elite without abandoning emotion or intuition. Thanks to her work in the carpentry workshop she became a certified carpenter through the Dessau Carpenters Guild in December of 1931. She subsequently continued studying construction and graduated in 1932 as a certified architect. For her degree, she completed two final design projects, one for a sixty-bed children’s home and another for an eight-classroom school. Director Ludwig Mies van der Rohe signed her architecture diploma, which detailed her involvement in the carpentry department in the Erwin and Hildegard Piscator apartment in Berlin, the Hahn House in Dessau-Törten, and the Gropius-designed Employment Office Dessau.
Axonometric elevation produced with Meyer-Waldeck’s working drawings for her Bauhaus end-of-course project, 8-Klassige Volksschule (Eight-Classroom School). Not built.
Despite her extensive qualifications, Meyer-Waldeck was not initially able to find work as an architect, so she began her professional career at the Junkers company in Dessau, where she made drawings for airplane construction from 1934 to 1937. From there, she moved to Berlin, to the architectural department of the National Highways Office (Oberste Bauleitung der Reichsautobahn), where she completed architectural designs for bridges, rest stops, and office buildings. From 1939 to 1941, she worked on designs for Berlin railroad stations through the National Railroads Directorate (Reichsbahnbaudirektion). Meyer-Waldeck’s archives contain a job-offer from the Siemens company in 1942 that she appears to have declined. Instead, from 1942 to late April 1945 she headed the planning and construction department at the Karwin Mining Company in Upper Silesia.
At the end of the Second World War her knowledge of English and French meant she could serve as an interpreter at an American military base in Mining near Braunau, Austria. From Austria she moved back to her home city of Dresden and became a lecturer on interior design at the University of Applied Arts (Hochschule für Werkkunst). After only a few years of teaching, she left East Germany and moved to Bonn, capital of the West German Federal Republic, where she opened her own architecture studio in 1950. She carried out a number of mid-sized projects, including refurbishing the commercial business Teppich-Schlüter with a striking curved staircase, an indication that she had consolidated her knowledge of product display and exhibit flow since her student days.
Wera Meyer-Waldeck, window display and interior design for Teppich-Schlüter, Bonn, 1950
Meyer-Waldeck belonged to the architectural vanguard and wanted to play a part in the rebuilding of Germany after the war. She was keen to learn about new, energy-efficient systems and from 1951 to 1952 she built Bonn’s first prototype building to use lightweight, cellular Ytong concrete blocks. As a member of the board of the League of German Women and president of the Commission for Public Works and Housing, in Bonn she organized one of Germany’s first post-war housing exhibitions, titled So … Wohnen (Living … Like This). Her prestige had already resulted in collaborating with Hans Schwippert on the new Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn.
Recreation of Wera Meyer-Waldeck’s female students’ residence hall in Bonn-Friesdorf, 1962. (Model created from Meyer-Waldeck’s original drawings)
Plans for Dr. Fritz Bockemühl residence in Beuel-Limperich designed by Meyer-Waldeck in 1955–1956
A defining moment in her life was her trip to the United States of America in 1953, where she was reunited with former Bauhaus directors Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. No less important was her contact with the University of California at Berkeley through William Wurster, Catherine Bauer, and Vernon DeMars, with whom she co-taught a class. From Meyer-Waldeck’s point of view, this university had surpassed those in Europe not only because its architects had developed an independent style, but also because it had become a meeting point for European and Asian culture. She visited the first American solar house, designed and built by architect Eleanor Raymond—whom she also met—in collaboration with solar-energy expert Maria Telkes. This in turn inspired Meyer-Waldeck’s design for Dr. Fritz Bockemühl’s house in Beuel-Limperich, near Bonn, completed in 1956. Since sustainable housing and renewable energy were both of great interest to her, she invited Maria Telkes to Germany in order to discuss the possibilities of solar houses with German scientists.
Her involvement in women’s organizations and her numerous contacts with female architects and other female professionals are evidence of her interest in creating female networks. As a member of the German delegation to Finland in 1954 for International Women’s Day, Meyer-Waldeck reported on the state of construction in Germany and also took the opportunity to obtain first-hand information on the architecture of Alvar-Aino Aalto and Kaija-Heikki Siren. Meyer-Waldeck was one of the very few female architects who belonged to the German Association of Architects, BDA (Bund Deutscher Architekten).
In 1957 Meyer-Waldeck contributed a courtyard house in Die Stadt von Morgen (The City of Tomorrow) portion of the Interbau exhibition in Berlin. Her vision of the future included multiple generations and various family configurations. In her writings of this time she warned against segregation, including the potential for social and physical isolation in housing developments for large families, refugees, singles, or elderly people.
In 1962 it was announced that Meyer-Waldeck was to build a magnificent dorm in Bonn-Friesdorf for female university students who would arrive there in their own cars. This building resembled Meyer-Waldeck’s Bauhaus student projects, with its flat roof and large, perfectly modulated windows that leant the design a sober yet relaxed look. It was like starting all over again, but this time as a master herself. It should have been the high point in her career. Unfortunately, Wera Meyer-Waldeck passed away on April 25, 1964, at only fifty-eight years of age, without completing the construction of her most personal and significant work. Instead, others, who significantly altered her designs, completed it. Undoubtedly, this building would have been the beginning of her stage of maturity and professional recognition.