The Bauhaus-Margarete Heyman

Also known as Heyman-Loberstein, Heyman-Marks, Grete Marks, or Greta Pottery.
Margarete Heyman was born into a Jewish family on the 10th August 1899 (1990) in Cologne Germany. She was a talented painter and ceramicist and attended the well-known Bauhaus school only for a short period of time, however.
She was a rule breaker and exceeded the mold, her work shows how exceptionally talented and original her designs were and how her thinking was massively ahead of the times. Heyman’s ceramic designs were contemporary Avant Garde and often criticized by Socialists. Sadly, I feel her work and career is overlooked and overshadowed by the vast names that are more well known to us as being the ‘stars’ of the Bauhaus.
Margarete began her artistic journey by attending the local art school in Cologne, then onto Dusseldorf and finally in 1920 at the age of 21 she was accepted into the Bauhaus.
The Bauhaus during this time was directed by Walter Gropius the first director. It was to be the pinnacle of Art and Design schools to attend in Germany and offered vast opportunities to develop and evolve new or existing skills. The Bauhaus boasted of its equality of gender and how this could not determine what craft you could learn-except this was not entirely the case whilst Gropius was in charge, stereotypically he pushed weaving workshops onto women.
Margarete Heyman refused, she wanted to study ceramics and got her way onto the course. Sadly, this venture did not last long, Heyman had a voice and was not afraid to use it, she did not ‘fit in’ to the Bauhaus’s standards. She quarreled with her ceramics tutor and left the school after only one year.
After Margarete left, she married soon after in 1923 to Gustav Loberstein who was an industrialist. Together with the help of Lobersteins brother they rented then eventually bought a factory to produce her pottery designs under the name of Hael-Werkstatten.
Margarete’s work that she was producing was simplistic and modern, consisting mainly of shapes such as circles and triangles. Her most popular and recognizable visuals being teacups and pots that resembled the steep slopes of an upside-down triangle with an ellipse top, and the triangular point cut off to make the base. More specific detailing on her designs were 2 signature circles, one larger than the other, placed on top of one another on the side of the cups, beveled to create a handle then finished off in a wonderful glaze most likely of a pastel color.
Heyman’s business was a success with 120 employees with her work being shipped to London and America to be sold in department stores. In 1928 tragedy struck and Margarete’s husband died from a car accident. She continued to run the business with her 2 young sons to raise but with the economic depression in the 1930’s and Nazi Regime in force she was pushed to sell her factory in 1935, (at an unfair price) mainly because she was from Jewish decent but also as a woman with the Nazi’s classing her work of a ‘degenerate’. Margarete was able to move to Britain in 1936 with the help of Ambrose Heal a client from London.
From here she lived in Stoke on Trent and continued creating her pottery however this venture did not work out due to her modernistic designs. Eventually she got commercial interest from Minton & Co. but again she clashed with her male colleagues and had to be let go, then her final venture was through Grete Pottery which had to close due to WW2. Margaret remarried Harold Marks an English Educator and relocated to London where she still experimented through pottery but instead painted as her primary.
Sadly, Margarete Heyman is an unforgotten piece of the Bauhaus’s history mainly due to her not being there long and also because she did not follow her peers who went on to America, and where Gropius who had a Harvard Teaching post basically shunned artists that he did not class as ‘important’ Bauhaus attendee’s.
Heyman’s turbulent career cannot have been helped by the vast names she came under, this meant she was unable to establish herself. The greatest downside to her career though was something she just could not comprehend, having to battle with numerous life changing altercations and being a daring woman in an oppressed time, for a matter of fact the wrong period of time. Whereas I believe 30 years later and onwards she would have been a great success. At least she is getting the recognition she deserves to this day, and you must credit her persistence to establish herself as a designer and artist.

https://www.margaretalmon.com/a-margaret-of-many-names-margarete-heymann-lobenstein-and-finally-grete-marks1899-1990/
​