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Otti Berger’s legacy in the Bauhaus-Archiv

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A woman with dark hair and a polka-dot dress looks through tangled threads in a studio or workshop.
Otti Berger at a weaving loom, Bauhaus Dessau, 1930
Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Photo: Gertrud Arndt, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025

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  • The Bauhaus-Archiv’s collection contains documents, photos, carpets and weaving samples that can be clearly traced back to the estate of textile designer Otti Berger, who was murdered at Auschwitz in 1944. When Berger left her home in London for the Yugoslavian province of Baranya in 1938 to care for her mother, who was suffering from cancer, she stored a large portion of her possessions in London. She transferred responsibility for these to her friends Karl (1889–1963) and Ellen Otten (1909–1999), who, like Berger, had fled to England to escape persecution by the Nazis. In 1938 Berger also loaned a selection of works to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York for the Bauhaus exhibition there. After the Second World War, some of these works found their way into the Bauhaus-Archiv’s collection in various ways, the legality of which had to be verified.


  • Read the case history as a PDF.