Ilse Fehling

Ilse Fehling was a German costume designer and sculptor associated with the Bauhaus and Nazi propaganda films.

Education

Ilse Fehling was born on April 25, 1896 in Danzig-Langfuhr, Germany. In 1919, Fehling enrolled at the Reimann School in Berlin, where she studied art and fashion design. While in Berlin, she additionally studied at the city's Kunstgewerbeschule.

In 1920, Fehling matriculated at the Bauhaus Weimar, where her work involved theatre. At the school she studied under a number of prominent artists including Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee, and Gertrud Grunow. Out of her work at the school, Fehling's best known is the rotating round puppet stage she designed and later patented.

Career

In 1923, she left the Bauhaus for Berlin to work as a freelance sculptor and stage designer. Fehling married Henry S. Witting the same year. In 1928, Fehling gave birth to a daughter, Gaby; she divorced Witting a year later.

Fehling received the Rome Prize from the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1932; she later studied in Rome using a grant associated with the award. In the following years, her work took influences from Cubism.

Following the Nazi rise to power, Fehling's work was deemed degenerate and its exhibition was banned. Much of her work was lost due to bombing and confiscation during World War II.

Ilse Fehling worked as a costume designer for a number of Nazi propaganda films, including Der Herrscher.

Fehling died on February 25, 1982.