Erna Meyer and the modern household
Dr. Erna Meyer (Meir, 1890 Berlin-1975 Haifa) was the most influential household reformer of the New Household in the first half of the 20th century. Her work shaped central concepts of modern housing planning. She disseminated her ideas to the general public, became an important protagonist of the New Household and still occupies a central position in the history of modern kitchen planning today.
Meyer was born in Berlin into a bourgeois, assimilated Jewish family. Between 1908 and 1913, she was one of the first women to study economics at what is now Humboldt University in Berlin and completed her studies with a dissertation based on her father's household accounts. Her breakthrough came in 1926 with the publication of the book Der neue Haushalt (The New Household), which appeared in 42 editions between 1926 and 1932. In this work, she presented concepts of rational work organization to facilitate housework and emphasized the importance of cooperation between architects and housewives for the design of contemporary modern living spaces.
Between 1929 and 1933, Meyer also published the interdisciplinary monthly magazine Neue Hauswirtschaft, which, as a genre in its own right, was neither purely a women's magazine nor purely an architecture magazine and brought together articles by experts from various disciplines such as political science, psychology, economics and social work. She also published numerous articles in architecture journals and women's magazines and advised leading modern architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and J. J. P. Oud, as well as successful furniture manufacturers. She played a leading role in several kitchen designs and was an active member of the Reichsforschungsgesellschaft für Wirtschaftlichkeit im Bau- und Wohnungswesen (RFG). Erna Meyer presented her ideas at important exhibitions on modern living in the Weimar Republic, including the Werkbund exhibition Die Wohnung (Stuttgart 1927), the Heim und Technik exhibition (Munich 1928) and the exhibition at the Gewerbemuseum Basel Die praktische Küche (1930).
When the Thienemann publishing house withdrew the editorship of Erna Meyer's magazine, which she had initiated and managed until then, in 1933, she emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine in December. The 1930s are regarded as her most influential creative period in exile. Despite consulting and teaching activities for organizations such as WIZO (Women's International Zionist Organization) and the Palestine Electric Corporation (PEC), she was unable to achieve an institutional position comparable to that in Germany. Over time, her work was increasingly forgotten.
The German-Israeli research project now examines Meyer's work in the British Mandate of Palestine/Israel for the first time as a direct continuation of her career and academic reputation in Germany. It examines her contribution to the development of modern housing in both countries, taking into account socio-cultural issues, her Jewish identity, national affiliation and the interrelationships between architecture, technology and gender. The aim of the study is to make Meyer's achievements visible and to introduce her to the historiography of local and international modernism
The study is a collaboration with Dr. Sigal Davidi and Dr. Irene Aue-Ben-David, Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem.
Project management: Rector Dr. Andreas Brämer
Scientific project collaborator: Dr. Laura Altmann
