A Revolution In The Woman’s Sphere

Grete Lihotzky and the Frankfurt Kitchen

Susan R. Henderson (1996)
What is woman’s sphere

The patriarchal ideology of separate spheres, based primarily on notions of biologically

determined gender roles and/or patriarchal religious doctrine, claims that women
should avoid the public sphere – the domain of politics, paid work, commerce and law.
Women's "proper sphere", according to the ideology, is the realm of domestic life,
focused on childcare, housekeeping, and religion.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_spheres

ACCOUNTING
COOKING
BUSSINES
CLEANING
POLITICS
CHILDCARE
MILITARY
HOUSEWORK
PUBLIC SPEAKING
History of Woman’s Sphere
The years between 1890 and 1918 were pivotal in the struggle for the rights of German women. The feminists of
this radical period worked primarily within the political parties of the left, where they argued for total social and
political equality for women. The leadership officially supported a limited progressive plank in the concept of
separate-but-equal spheres. Thus, when the Social Democrats unexpectedly came to power in 1918, they fulfilled
the political promises of the revolutionary days more from political embarrassment than conviction. The Weimar
Constitution declared women to be the equals of men and granted them the vote.
New Woman

On the other hand, the introduction of new constitutional rights was

paralleled by the advent of the New Woman. Young women, it seemed,
attempted to match the rising cult of modernity and their new freedoms
with a model of contemporary woman of their own making. Their ideal
was shaped by the images of women in advertisements and American
films as sexually and socially liberated free spirits as much as by the
growing numbers of young working mothers.

Even as an idealization, the New Woman was a phenomenon that

seemed to portend a problematical fulfillment of constitutional promises.
Though in her many incarnations she was not an overtly political being,
the New Woman embodied an independence and a modernity that was
an anathema to the many self-appointed conservators of the home.
Female Redomestication

This combination of factors – the veiled misogyny of the New Woman

scare along with class and economic issues – resulted in a state
policy called “female redomestication”. Rather than striving to
apportion women the same “basic duties and rights” as men, a
loose coalition of interest groups sought to reassert the
woman’s sphere.

As part of this program, state agencies and the liberal wing of the
women’s movement forged an ideal of the household as the
“professional workplace” of women. The Weimar Republic became
known not as an era when women joined the world of men, but as a
time of modernization in the household sphere.
The strategic solution and promise of domestic reform was the elimination of drudgery. The
“new housekeeping” took less time, was reputedly less tedious, and freed the housewife for
more uplifting endeavors.
According to the experts, professionalization in the domestic sphere would be realized through simplified household
design and the introduction of labor-saving appliances. Guided by the principles of scientific management that
operated in modern industry, designers and reformers reshaped the household. The end product was quantifiable:
an increase in productivity and less “wasted effort”, resulting in a stable home life, a contented husband, and more
and healthier children. Middle class women could now envision themselves pursuing housework with ease and
grace, while working women could be expected to maintain two jobs with dexterity.

American women in the mid-nineteenth century had introduced the first reforms in household self-sufficiency and
time-saving techniques.

Using time charts, meal plans, and inventories, women would become plant managers as Frederick rearmed the
kitchen to become the woman’s factory work station.

In the modernist model, technology and the cult of rationalization were the methodological linchpins that ensured
that progress was being made. And always in the back and forth between domestic scientists and architects was the
presumption that the best social purpose of managerial and technical expertise was to bolster the existing model of
the family and woman’s role within it.
 Weissenhof Settlement

The New Frankfurt

Only twenty miles from Stuttgart, the city of Frankfurt am Main had gained international recognition
for developing the social ideal of the Neues Leben (New Life) within a belt of modern settlements.
In 1927, the city architect Ernst May invited the thousands flocking to see the Weissenhof
Settlement, the complex of modern housing built at the Werkbund Exhibition, to take tours of the
new parks and housing estates of Frankfurt.
Frankfurt Kitchen

Ernst May viewed the woman’s sphere primarily in terms of

housekeeping, which extended from the household to the kitchen.
His design team studied psychology, material and product
evaluations, and, of course, scientific management principles as
applicable to the home. They scrutinized every aspect of
household design to produce efficient and content housewives:
color brightened the housewife’s world, making housework more
tolerable; enameled surfaces made for easy cleaning; and furniture
with smooth lines eliminated dusting in hard-to-reach places

Modernizing efforts focused on the kitchen above all. The center of

household labor, it became the professional “office” of the
housewife and the subject of endless technological
improvements. During the program’s five years, several different
designs were installed in the settlements, including Franz
Schuster’s all-purpose cupboard kitchen of 2.3 square meters and
Anton Brenner’s foldout model, both for use in small flats.
Undoubtedly the best known project, however, was Margarete
(“Grete”) Schütte-Lihotzky’s 1926 Frankfurt Kitchen
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky

“And, again, I was part of a group that stood up for certain

principles and architectural ideas, and fought for them
uncompromisingly.”

Grete Schütte-Lihotzky on coming to Frankfurt in 1926

Grete Lihotzky was the only woman architect on May’s design team, but
she gained international recognition for her design of the Frankfurt Kitchen.
Lihotzky was a socialist activist who dedicated her professional life to the
embetterment of the working classes, After completing her studies at the
Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule am Stubenring (Vienna School of Arts and
Crafts), she began work in 1920 under Adolf Loos when he assumed the
leadership of the Vienna Housing Authority. For the next five years, she
worked for the city designing housing and new domestic facilities
In the first article of her career, Lihotzky published a modular kitchen
– a concrete, factory-assembled model, installed on site by crane,
just as the Frankfurt Kitchen would be.10 In 1925, May invited her to
become part of his design team in Frankfurt, where he would direct
one of the largest housing programs in the country.

Lihotzky’s Frankfurt Kitchen became one of the most acclaimed

creations of the Weimar housing programs. In its gleaming metal
surfaces, its high imagability, the specificity of its interlocking parts,
its modular totality, and its largesse of technical fittings, it epitomized
the transformation of everyday life in the modern age. Above all,
Lihotzky’s kitchen created an immediate photographic impact.
Intricately coordinated and tightly on figured, the Frankfurt Kitchen
was the realization of the kitchen as machine.
Its tiny plan of 1.9 by 3.44 meters was “scientifically” calculated as A square of open circulation space in the center of the kitchen
the optimal dimensions by which every movement was totally was adjacent to the sliding door that led into the living room.
efficient and every operation coordinated.

Though several different versions were designed, including two Thus, as the housewife moved the meal to the table, her
larger ones for middle-class families with either one or two ambulatory movements were neatly confined to this small area.
servants. Continuous counter space encircled the Light from the end window filled this cube of space, which
worker/housewife; at the short end of the room was the cutting Lihotzky freed from cabinets on the upper walls to create a feeling
board fitted with its own small waste bin and directly lit by a of spaciousness.
window, and on one end a wooden plate holder, attached to the
underside of the glass-faced cupboards, allowed wet dishes to drip
in the drainage tray and sink below. Above, a row of hooks
provided easy access to an array of special tools, and to the side
eighteen labeled metal drawers stored flours and other staples.
Schooling for the modern housewife

The goal to rationalize housework will come to total fruition only in the next
generation. The more we achieve widespread instruction within the
Mädchenschulen on questions of labor-saving household operations, the more
comprehensive this realization can become.
The most important teaching tool in domestic economy instruction is in the school
kitchen. The transformation … of the kitchen … must be reflected in the
arrangement of instruction rooms in which cooking is learned. Recently many labor-
saving layouts and devices have been applied to the instructional kitchen. The
entire planning of the space results from an analysis of the labor transaction.
Grete Schütte-Lihotzky
Conclusion

Recently, the subject of the house as workplace has again been taken up and researched, primarily by parts of the
women’s movement. On the one hand, one viewpoint advocates moving away from rigid house plans since they only
strengthen stereotyped social roles. The champions of this position have thereby also viewed the Frankfurt Kitchen as a
synonym for the oppression of the housewife, banished to the isolated kitchen, whereas (they believe) the new Wohnküche
really can be liberating. Others, on the other hand, defend the opinion that the dissolution of the sex-specific practices of
role behavior can in no way be expected from such an architectural/ spatial transformation.

Grete Schütte-Lihotzky, 1980

Throughout her career, Lihotzky’s belief in the importance of eliminating household drudgery through rationalization
remained firm. In more recent times, she has proposed that with the reemergence of the “country kitchen”, women have
sacrificed efficiency and practicality to the whimsy of fashion and have left themselves with even a longer list of tedious
chores.

In the 1920s, however, the issue was much greater than a design fashion and concerned the technical and social
transformation of an entire society. It is ironic that a politically engaged Lihotzky seemed to view the kitchen as the motor
for change, rather than as a manifestation of larger redomestication issues.