Paula Straus: Vom Kunsthandwerk zum Industriedesign

The German silversmith Paula Straus (1894–1943) was a pivotal figure in shaping the “Golden Twenties” and the creative decades of the Bauhaus. Even early on, her jewelry objects and handmade items of silverware were reviewed with praise in the specialist press, and national and international exhibitions followed. In joining the design studio of the silverware factory Peter Bruckmann & Söhne, Heilbronn, in 1925, an unparalleled career began as Germany’s first woman industrial designer. The silverware she designed — coffee and tea services — for handcrafted as well as machine production stands as an example of her own original style, which is defined by a purist idiom.

Her professional success and her renown as a craftswoman and designer have been completely forgotten due to the national-socialist persecution of the Jews from 1933 and her murder in Auschwitz. The time has now come to rediscover her work.

With contributions by Edith Neumann, Monika and Reinhard Sänger, Joachim W. Storck, Michal S. Friedlander, Christoph Engel, and a foreword by Winfried Kretschmann.

Text in German.