Margarete Dambeck-Keller

Margarete Dambeck-Keller, née Dambeck, was born in Göppingen on 5 June 1908. She attended a vocational school for women, occupying herself with fashion and drawing. Encouraged by Georg Hartmann, a Bauhaus student from her hometown, she decided to become a student in the Bauhaus Dessau weaving workshop in 1927. In addition to textile design, she also experimented with photography, cyanotypes and photograms. Objects from the weaving workshop are often visible in the studies she created for Walter Peterhans’s classes. In 1930 she completed her studies with a diploma. Her degree also marked the end of her experimental engagement with photography. After being employed at a fashion house in Prague and the textile company Cohn & Söhne in Reichenbach, Dambeck-Keller worked as a designer. In 1942 she turned down a position as head of the textile class at a school for art and fashion because she got married and then became a mother shortly thereafter. Her husband Walter Keller died in 1943 as a result of an accident. Dambeck-Keller moved back to Göppingen with her son, where she opened a studio for artistic weaving patterns and concept sketches. Margarete Dambeck-Keller died in Göppingen on 29 April 1952.