Hermann Muthesius

Adam Gottlieb Hermann Muthesius (20 April 1861 – 29 October 1927), known as Hermann Muthesius, was a German architect, author and diplomat, perhaps best known for promoting many of the ideas of the English Arts and Crafts movement within Germany and for his subsequent influence on early pioneers of German architectural modernism such as the Bauhaus.

Muthesius was born in 1861 in the village of Großneuhausen near Erfurt and received early training from his father, who was a builder. After a period of military service and two years studying philosophy and art history at Frederick William University in Berlin, he enrolled to study architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität Berlin) in 1883, while also working in the office of Reichstag architect Paul Wallot.

Following completion of his studies, Muthesius spent 1887 to 1891 working for German construction firm Ende & Böckmann in Tokyo. There he saw his first building completed—a German Evangelical church in the Gothic Revival style—and was able to travel extensively across Asia. He returned to Germany in 1891 where he worked for the Prussian Ministry of Public Works, studied for a time in Italy on stipend (in 1895), and served for almost two years as the editor of a pair of official construction journals.

In 1896, Muthesius was offered a position as cultural attaché at the German Embassy in London. Muthesius married Anna Trippenbach who was a fashion designer and singer. This gave him the opportunity to study the ways of the British. He focused the next six years investigating residential architecture and domestic lifestyle and design, ending with a three-volume report published in 1904 and 1905 as Das englische Haus ("The English House"), his most famous work. Although his subjects were wide-ranging, he was particularly interested in the philosophy and practices of the English Arts and Crafts movement, whose emphasis on function, modesty, understatement, individuality and honesty to materials he saw as alternatives to the ostentatious historicism and obsession with ornament in German nineteenth century architecture, and whose efforts to bring a sense of craftsmanship to industrial design he saw as a significant national economic benefit. He visited Glasgow to investigate the innovative work of the Glasgow School exemplified by the designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and wrote about houses in Birmingham by William Bidlake.

As well as his official reports, Muthesius also developed a career as an author, communicating his ideas and observations in an influential series of books and articles that saw him become a significant cultural figure in Germany, culminating in Das englische Haus. His wife wrote about Anti-fashion and how she felt that women were being exploited by German clothing industrialists. Her book which incorporated a novel binding designed by Frances MacDonald is considered an important contribution to the Artistic Dress movement.

Muthesius wrote about Glasgow's Willow Tearooms for an issue of Dekorative Kunst published in 1905 which was almost entirely devoted to A Mackintosh Tea Room in Glasgow, saying that "Today any visitor to Glasgow can rest body and soul in Miss Cranston's Tea Rooms and for a few pence drink tea, have breakfast and dream that he is in fairy land." At the same time he lamented Mackintosh's unrewarded struggle to "hold up the banner of Beauty in this dense jungle of ugliness."

Muthesius returned to Germany in 1904 and established himself as an architect in private practice, while retaining a role as an official advisor to the Government of Prussia focusing his time on reforming art and design education in order that more emphasis be put on workshop training.

Over the next two decades he designed a series of houses throughout Germany, drawing upon and cementing the principles and practices expounded in his famous book.