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For the first time in over 30 years, a major exhibition will be dedicated to furniture designer, Bauhaus member and Burg teacher Erich Dieckmann (1896-1944), which will open in Halle (Saale) on Friday, 11 February 2022 and will be on display at the Berlin Kulturforum from May. The rediscovery of this influential designer, who, like Marcel Breuer, experimented with shapes and materials and developed type furniture programmes based on strictly geometric forms, is a joint idea of the Museum of Decorative Arts and the Art Library of the National Museums in Berlin, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation with the Art Foundation of the State of Saxony-Anhalt and Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle. Dieckmann had worked in both Berlin and Halle (Saale).

The project is largely funded by the state of Saxony-Anhalt. The exhibition architecture was created by Munich designer Stefan Diez, the typography by Erik Spiekermann. The exhibition in the Burg Galerie im Volkspark is being organised by Burg students together with visiting professor Konrad Lohöfener.

The exhibition entitled Chairs: Dieckmann! The forgotten Bauhaus designer Erich Dieckmann can be seen at two locations in Halle, namely in the rooms of the Art Foundation of the State of Saxony-Anhalt at Neuwerk 11 and in the Burg Galerie im Volkspark at Schleifweg 8a. In addition to furniture, prints, designs and drawings by Dieckmann from the collections of the Museum of Decorative Arts and the Art Library of the National Museums in Berlin, contemporary works that deal with Dieckmann's creative approaches will be exhibited.

After studying architecture in Gdansk and painting and drawing in Dresden, Erich Dieckmann came to the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1921 to complete an apprenticeship as a carpenter. After the Bauhaus moved on to Dessau in 1925, Dieckmann remained at the successor institution, the Staatliche Bauhochschule Weimar under Otto Bartning, where he became head of the carpentry workshop in the same year. In 1931, he followed many former Bauhaus students such as Marguerite Friedlaender and Gerhard Marcks to the Burg Giebichenstein School of Arts and Crafts in Halle (Saale). He ran the carpentry workshop there from 1931 until he was dismissed by the National Socialists in 1933. After that, he struggled through his illness with clerical and consultant jobs until he died in November 1944 at the age of just 48.

His first chair can be seen in the exhibition at the Kunststiftung. It is the wooden chair with rush weave that Dieckmann designed as a Bauhaus student in 1923. This is followed by standardised furniture that he developed around 1930 for the furnishing programmes and used to furnish entire rooms, such as workrooms, living rooms and bedrooms. The corresponding designs and historical photos comment on the construction and the placement and effect of the furniture in the room. However, Dieckmann did not stop at the strongly geometric designs, but went on to show curvilinear models, as demonstrated by his bentwood, tubular steel and wicker furniture. Dieckmann utilised the possibilities of the material with his creative approach. The tubular steel chairs and armchairs in particular show new curved, dynamic forms. His reduced wicker furniture became quasi prototypes for garden furniture and was repeated and copied several times by others. At the end is a light blue armchair with clear signs of wear, which Dieckmann took with him on his life's journey from Weimar to Berlin.

Sabine Thümmler, Director of the Museum of Decorative Arts, explains the concept of the exhibition: "We want to provide a detailed and vivid insight into the life and work of this great designer using archive material, design drawings and the furniture he produced. Throughout his life, Dieckmann did not hide his design concepts as a teacher and author. Allowing his designs to enter into a dialogue with contemporary positions will open up new perspectives on the design of the interwar period and provide new insights into contemporary questions of design."

Moritz Wullen, Director of the Art Library, adds: "Our collection of Erich Dieckmann's drawings is simply fantastic. Line by line, you can see how Dieckmann allowed things to take shape in his creative mind, constantly changing and perfecting them. With funding from the BKM, we have succeeded in making this treasure digitally accessible to the public as a first step. Now, thanks to funding from the state of Saxony-Anhalt, the most beautiful drawings will finally be on display in the original."

The Art Library acquired extensive parts of Dieckmann's estate in 1970. These include more than 1,600 of his prints, sketches and drawings, which have now been digitised, documented and made accessible online.

The Art Foundation of the State of Saxony-Anhalt is approaching Erich Dieckmann's work with its own exhibition format, in which Erich Dieckmann's furniture can be reproduced, restaged and - used, even "occupied". Several pieces of furniture have been recreated according to original designs. The artist Margit Jäschke and the designer Stephan Schulz have developed a completely usable room concept in a commissioned production entitled Living like Dieckmann. They also explored the question of how to design and realise sustainable, artistic and useful everyday objects in the 21st century. Both have decided not to design a clearly defined functional space, but a kind of living space. Visitors should be able to experience the effect of furniture, read and lie down there and simply feel what it means to sit in a piece of design history.

Foundation Director Manon Bursian: "Erich Dieckmann characterised mass taste in his day. This was not just about style, but also about attitude: he spoke of 'warmth and truth' and said: 'Let's also give our modern homes something human'. But what does that mean today, when everyone wants to live not only beautifully and warmly, but also properly, sustainably and healthily? Margit Jäschke and Stephan Schulz ask what determines our design today. Does the discourse always fit the design?"

In an exhibition film, designers Rudolf Horn (East) and Stefan Diez (West) talk about their views on their famous colleagues. The actress Bibiana Beglau reads from letters and documents. Historical files illustrate the conditions of Dieckmann's life and decisions from a different perspective.

In the Burg Galerie im Volkspark in Halle (Saale), the joint exhibition SITZEN neu betrachtet. Designing, observing, staging at the BURG. Students from industrial design, the basic photography course in communication design and art education at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle have explored the furniture designs of Dieckmann, who taught at the BURG from 1930 to 1933. How can Dieckmann's work be categorised and interpreted today? Can the ideas be transferred to the future, developed further and open up new spaces for thought? And what do utopias for the 21st century look like? Historical objects, sketches and furniture from the archives of the art academy and the city of Halle (Saale) served as the basis for a contemporary approach. In several semester projects, the Burg students developed works that deal with the work from today's perspective.

Under the direction of visiting professor Konrad Lohöfener, the semester project Zwischen den Stühlen (Between the Chairs ) from the Industrial Design programme looked at Erich Dieckmann's furniture design. Sixteen students developed contemporary perspectives and ventured a look into the future. What did the visions of the Bauhaus and the castle look like 100 years ago? Where do we stand - sit - today? What does the promise of classical modernism tell us today? In terms of content, the students' work deals with a whole range of ecological, economic, cultural and social issues. How can we use materials sparingly? Can we invent single-origin and sustainable composite materials? How can the ideas of the circular economy be integrated into the manufacture of products? Can we transfer traditional craft techniques and rituals into contemporary designs? How do we negotiate seating in public spaces? And how are we currently responding to the close interdependence of our living and working environments as a result of the changes brought about by the coronavirus pandemic - keyword home office? In addition to the thematic debate, the constructive details of the works are particularly noteworthy and point to the practical design focus in the work process. For the realisation of the exhibition section in the Burg Galerie im Volkspark, students, accompanied by visiting professor Konrad Lohöfener, developed and implemented an exhibition design for the resulting furniture.

Looking at photographs of Erich Dieckmann's furniture designs in the Halle City Archive was the starting point for the basic photography course run by Prof Stephanie Kiwitt and Felix Bielmeier. The photographer Hans Finsler had photographed some of Dieckmann's furniture in the photographic studio at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle in 1931/32. Using other historical and contemporary artistic photographs in which furniture played a role as an object and motif for sitting, the students developed their own questions: How would we photograph chairs today? How do we stage them? What do we sit on and how do we sit? Series of images were created in the photo studio, in private living spaces or in public spaces, which also thematise people and the traces they leave behind as improvising and creative individuals in everyday life.

Students of art education and art studies under Prof Dr Sara Burkhardt developed the SITZEN - BURG Education BOX 02 card collection for the exhibition. The cards serve as impulses for explorations and actions in private and public spaces. They playfully encourage people to observe, draw, document, discuss and exchange ideas and emphasise the fact that sitting can set thought processes in motion. The cards can be used alone or in groups.

Burg Rector Dieter Hofmann on the concept: "For us as an art academy, several aspects of the collaboration are particularly exciting - on the one hand, the opportunity for students to engage with the institution's own design history and, on the other, the chance to take up questions about the design of the 1920s and 1930s around 100 years later and to expand and question contemporary perspectives in an unusual way."

A catalogue designed by Erik Spiekermann with texts by Sabine Thümmler, Manon Bursian, Aya Soika, Katja Schneider-Stief, Laura Gieser, Ingolf Kern, Konrad Lohöfener and Benjamin Sander, among others, will be published by Mitteldeutscher Verlag to accompany the exhibition. The furniture designs developed for the exhibition by Burg students in the footsteps of Erich Dieckmann are presented on the website www.burg-halle.de/zwischendenstuehlen and in a documentation in book form. The card collection SITZEN - BURG Education Box 02 is published by the university publishing house of Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle.

The exhibition in Halle will be accompanied by an extensive supporting programme, which will include talks on Dieckmann's work by designers Rudolf Horn, Stefan Diez and Erik Spiekermann on 2 March. On 16 February, industrial design students will invite visitors to an exhibition tour in the Burg Galerie im Volkspark and provide an insight into how furniture is developed at the BURG today. Sitzen vermitteln is the motto on 9 March, when the BURG BOX card collection will be presented and tested. On 23 March, the focus will be on Dieckmann's relationship to National Socialism. Prof Dr Sabine Thümmler (Kunstgewerbemuseum der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin), Prof Dr Aya Soika (Bard College Berlin), Wolfgang Thöner (Bauhaus Dessau Foundation) and Dr Katja Schneider-Stief (art historian and curator) will be taking part in the discussion.