A
1929-30
Bundesschule des Allgemeinen Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes, Bernau

Hannes Meyer, director of the Bauhaus between 1928 and 1930, designed the buildings for the Federal School of the General German Trade Union Federation in Bernau in 1928 together with Hans Wittwer. Various departments of the Bauhaus were involved in the implementation. Anni Albers was commissioned to design a textile wall covering for the school’s auditorium. This was intended to help improve the hall’s inadequate ­acoustics and lighting. Albers developed a light-reflecting and sound-absorbing fabric made of cotton, chenille and cellophane.

“This is interesting in a specific way because it is utilitarian in a very ­specific way. The second director of the Bauhaus, an architect, Hannes Meyer, had an echo in the auditorium of a school ... and the usual way of subduing an echo at that time was to put velvet on the walls. ... Well, he turned to me and asked if I could think about it and possibly do something about it. And I came up fortunately with this material, which has a sound-subduing quality in the back. It’s a kind of chenille, velvet-like in character. The front is one of the earlier plastic threads which I had found in Italy in a little hat I bought ... and unraveled—a straw-like kind of thing—and I made the first sample with that and of course later it had to be bought in great quantities.”