When Hannes Meyer and Hans Wittwer began planning the Trade Union School of the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB) in 1928, they already knew they would be completely designing the building from the inside (for the needs of those who would use the building) to the outside (the floorplan resulting from these needs). That all Bauhaus workshops would be involved was established from the outset—from the Building Department to the Finishing and Completion Workshops for Joinery, Metal and Weaving: everyone was to collaborate on this project. Here students would be able to deepen their theoretical skills and put these into practice directly on site.
 

When the skeleton of the building was in place and the foundation of the square-shaped lecture hall rising over the one-story main building was completed, Meyer and Wittwer identified a fundamental problem with the space: there was a terrible echo and one could anticipate that noises coming from the adjacent dining hall would likely also create difficulties. The poor acoustics were a consequence of the cubic shape of the lecture hall, whose sides were of equal length (just over fourteen meters). The resulting effect can be described as a game of acoustic ping-pong. This phenomenon is still discernable today in the reconstructed Trade Union School lecture hall: the sound of hands clapping bounces off the walls and comes back to the listener multiple times. For events in particular this is of course less than desirable. In addition, the architects had only called for a single row of windows along one side of the lecture hall, just below the ceiling. As a result, the light coming from outside was somewhat unbalanced, even if sufficient for the functioning of the lecture hall. To counteract the undesirable echo effect and to evenly distribute light throughout the room, a material had to be found that could fulfill both requirements. But a material with these properties did not exist yet in 1929. So the Bauhaus quickly commissioned one of its best weavers to develop, as part of her thesis, the material needed for the Trade Union School lecture hall. This was the very material that would later become Anni Albers’s ticket to the newly founded Black Mountain College in the US when she was no longer safe as a Jew in Germany in 1933.
 

Anni Albers was a member of the Ullstein publishing family of Berlin. She arrived at the State Bauhaus in Weimar in 1922 with the intention of becoming a painter. When the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925, she also moved to Saxony-Anhalt. In the interim, along with fellow students Gunta Stölzl and Benita Otte, she helped set up the weaving course at the Weimar State Bauhaus; its idiosyncratic, self-taught experiments with natural materials and new types of fibers turned it into the school’s “biggest hit.” The weavers’ innovations with fabric were based on the eventual users’ needs and functionality—nearly analogous to architectural designs from the building course. In the same way that architecture students translated their building-design analyzes into plans and schematics, weaving also became more science-based at the Bauhaus under Hannes Meyer’s directorship from 1928–30. Anni Albers’s diploma thesis is an outstanding example of this.

For the sake of thoroughness, it must be added here that, in addition to Anni Albers, a significant number of other Bauhaus weavers designed comparable fabric innovations, including Gunta Stölzl (who designed a waffle-structure fabric made of cellophane and cotton for the Kino Urban movie theater in Berlin) and Otti Berger (who patented a variety of washable upholstery fabrics). They documented and published many of their approaches in magazines in an effort to counteract weaving’s dated image and give it a modern look.
 

Anni Albers’s wall-hanging fabric adorned the walls of the lecture hall through the early 1950s, despite showing signs of significant wear and tear. Efforts by the school’s owner at the time, the Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB), to develop the schools into the Trade Union College, coupled with increasing shortages of space in a building designed for 120 participants, lead to the demolition of the lecture hall in order to accommodate expansions to the dining hall, kitchen, and cloakroom. The lecture hall was reconstructed in part during renovations to the Trade Union School between 2002–07. The careful renovations already completed in most other parts of the building complex still need to be carried out here. This includes the silver fabric as well as the wood paneling, both of which have thus far only been color-marked and indicated. Today’s overall appearance of the lecture hall—in actuality a light-filled space with enhanced acoustics—is vastly different: a dreary place where visitors are compelled to ask why the renovations stopped here.
 

In the interim, The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation has commissioned the Berlin-based Dutch firm Jongeriuslab (located not far from today’s UNESCO World Heritage Site) to reconstruct the silver fabric. Its years of Bauhaus research and material experiments have paid off: the fabric developed by Jongeriuslab is astonishingly similar to that of Anni Albers’s. And a larger version of the small, preserved silver fabric samples gives an early idea of the fascinating effects the fabric would have on the entire auditorium. Of course, today’s sound-dampening and light-reflecting standards are no longer those of 1930, which have been far exceeded by new technologies and possibilities. And new requirements such as fire protection also play a major role in how public spaces are furnished.
 

A curiosity still remains for the lecture hall’s former modern and radiant look and the extent to which the silver fabric and Gabon wood panels would improve the acoustics. How things once were can already be appreciated in several locations of today’s UNESCO World Heritage Site following extensive renovations to the glass passageway, dining hall, conservatory, gymnasium and classrooms. Also still unresolved, however, is the overall image for Hannes Meyer and Hans Wittwer’s vision of the ideal educational building at this location.

In the 10th episode of the podcast KNTXT – Bernauer Stadtgespräche (Context –Cultural Conversations in Bernau), Siska Diddens, manager of the Jongeriuslab, talks about the long way from the original pattern of Anni Albers' "Silver Fabric" to its reproduction today.  GERMAN/ENGLISH   

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