Albert Reimann was born to Jewish parents in Gnesen, Prussia (now Gniezno, Poland) in 1874. He studied carving and modelling at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Berlin, where in 1923 he established the successful and progressive Reimann Schule, offering more than 30 courses in applied arts. Escaping Nazi persecution, he settled in London in 1938, joining the Reimann School and Studios, successfully established in exile by his son, Heinz, in 1937. The school's teaching methods were adapted to suit English students, influencing a new generation of art schools from the 1940s onwards; among its tutors were the pioneering English painter and collage artist Richard Hamilton and the American-born textile designer Marion Dorn.
Sculptor and art school founder Albert Reimann was born to Jewish parents in Gnesen, Prussia, part of the German Empire (now Gniezno, Poland) in 1874. The family moved to Berlin when Reimann was a small child, where he finished his schooling. He then studied carving and modelling at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Berlin, and after working for various small firms as a cabinetmaker and taking occasional jobs in decorative painting, he established his own studio in 1898. His early works, mainly bronze plaques and reliefs, were characterised by the influence of the contemporary French Art Nouveau style as opposed to the German Jugendstil. In 1902 he established his school Schülerwerkstätten für Kleinplastik, known as the Reimann Schule from 1923. By the 1930s the school numbered around 1500 students (Dorte 'Dodo' Bürgner, Dorrit Dekk, Heinz Kiewe, Lottie Reizenstein and Elisabeth Tomalin (all represented in the Ben Uri Collection or archives) were among its graduates), a teaching staff of 50 and offered more than 30 courses in applied arts, such as photography and filmmaking, fashion design, engraving and sculpture. Most of the classes were held in the studios and lecture rooms at the school's Bauhaus building in Berlin's Schöneberg district. Tuition was liberal and progressive in the sense that, after Reimann's personal advice, students could choose which skills they wanted to develop, and which and how many courses they took. The school was renowned for its annual fancy dress ball for which the students designed elaborate costumes, as drawn by Dodo Bürgner. After Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Reimann was unable to work as an artist, his Jewish identity excluding him from the state-sponsored Fachkammer der bildenden Künste (Chamber of Fine Arts). However, he was able to retain his position as a teacher in the school for some years, but was subjected to regular inspections by the Sturmabteilung (Hitler's paramilitary unit) both in his home and at work. The Nazis also banned the school's influential magazine Farbe und Form (Colour and Form) in 1934, which Reimann himself had founded and published. Eventually, in a process of Aryanization, he relinquished the school to the architect Hugo Häring in 1935.
Reimann and his wife, Clara, finally fled Nazi Germany and settled in London in 1938, where he joined the Reimann School and Studios established in exile by his son, Heinz, in 1937, in Pimlico, SW1. Reimann's teaching methods were adapted to suit English students and were also influential on a new generation of art schools from the 1940s onwards. Among Reimann tutors were the pioneering English painter and collage artist Richard Hamilton and the American-born textile designer Marion Dorn. Hamilton recalled the Reimann Studios as: ‘[…] a slightly commercialised version of the Bauhaus that moved from Germany in the early 1930s. The Studios were based on the idea that you had high-quality practitioners in a practical environment; there was a display studio, a fashion studio and a photography studio. The commercial studios were kept separate. I learned how to do a lot of things, such as cut lettering for exhibition stands, but the main quality of the place was that I met people who were exceptionally talented in their field’ (Tate Gallery interview with Richard Hamilton). Unfortunately, the School's building was destroyed in the Blitz, and this trauma led Reimann to relocate to Leeds for a period, before returning to London in his later years, where he settled in Golders Green. His passion for teaching filled his life, and he strongly believed that the arts should be accessible to all, thus sacrificing his own artistic career to the benefit of art education at large. His later works, mainly household objects, were influenced by the utilitarianism of the German New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) movement.
During the war years, Reimann was a member of the Association of Austrian Painters, Sculptors and Architects, a section of the Austrian Centre (AC), a left-leaning cultural forum for Austrian refugees. Postwar, Reimann was also a board member of the Association of the Jewish Refugees (AJR), founded in 1946 to support Jewish refugees in the UK and publisher of an important journal for the exiled community; the AJR Information regularly reviewed his activities and in October 1951 noted his willingness at an event to read from his autobiographical manuscript History of the Reimann Schule, an account which was finally published in German in 1966.
Alfred Reimann died at home in London, England in 1976 at the age of 101. In UK, the only public collection currently holding a work by Reimann, a brass candlestick, is the British Museum, London. Internationally, his work is represented in the Jüdisches Museum, Berlin and Minneapolis Institute of Arts, USA.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Albert Reimann]
Publications related to [Albert Reimann] in the Ben Uri Library