Lotte Collein

Lotte Collein was born as Anny Amely Lotte Gerson in Essen on 17 March 1905. After training in a tailoring workshop in Munich and a hand-weaving workshop in Dachau, she attended the women’s social school in Bremen. In 1927 she began studying at the Bauhaus. She wanted to become an architect. After the preliminary course, she went to the furniture workshop and then switched to the department of architecture and interior design. Collein also began taking photographs during the period she spent at the Bauhaus. She recorded life at the school and documented works by other members of the Bauhaus, such as Erich Borchert. Although she did not attend any photography classes, one of her images was featured in an article about the current state of photography published by Walter Peterhans in the journal “ReD” in 1930. In the autumn of that year, Collein submitted a request for her diploma as an architect, but was rejected. She then left the school and moved to Vienna with the architect Edmund Collein. The two married in 1931, and their child was born that same year. In 1938 the couple returned to Germany. Collein, who was half Jewish and a communist, survived the Nazi period through her marriage to an “Aryan” husband. After the war, the couple moved to the Soviet-occupied sector of Berlin. While Edmund Collein pursued a career as an East German architectural official, Lotte Collein supported his work from behind the scenes. She died in Berlin on 3 May 1995.