Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Dodo designer

Dodo was born Dörte Wolff into an upper middle-class Jewish family in Berlin, Germany in 1907. She studied design at the progressive Reimann Schule from 1923–26, then worked in Berlin as a fashion illustrator and contributed to the satirical magazine ULK. In 1936 she immigrated to England, where she undertook fashion, packaging and greeting cards commissions and illustrated children’s books under the name ‘Dodo Adler’.

Born: 1907 Berlin, Germany

Died: 1998 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1936

Other name/s: Dörte Clara Wolff, Dörte Bürgner, Dörte Adler, Dodo Adler


Biography

Designer Dodo was born Dörte Wolff into an upper middle-class Jewish family in Berlin, Germany on 10 February 1907. From 1923–26 she studied fashion and graphic design at the progressive Jewish-owned Reimann Schule in Berlin, and a number of her student designs for the School's famous annual costume ball (probably deposited during her Berlin years, but unseen for many decades) are held by the Sammlung Modebild-Lipperheidesche Kostümbibliothek part of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. In 1928 she designed costumes for cabaret singer and actress Margot Lion and a young Marlene Dietrich, who performed together at the height of Weimar's risqué cabaret scene. After graduation, Dodo began a successful commercial career working for Berlin fashion houses; however, in an early change of direction, between 1927 and 1930, she created more than 60 caustic genre scenes of Weimar's glamorous high society for the left-leaning weekly satirical magazine ULK, published by the Jewish-owned Berliner Tageblatt. In them, she narrated the sophisticated life of the modern urbanite (and her own take on the 'battle of the sexes'); her colourful, multi-figured compositions in gouache, set against dynamic metropolitan backgrounds, such as cafés, bars, theatres, and nightclubs, share stylistic similarities with the work of German artist and fellow ULK contributor, Jeanne Mammen (1890–1976). Inspired by Josephine Baker's scandalous Revue Negré, which had performed in Berlin, Dodo also gradually introduced black figures into her complex narratives, sometimes including a black alter ego. During this period, she also began signing her works as ‘DODO’ or ‘DoDO’, a nickname since birth, which she felt was more suited to her appearance as a 'very dark Jewish little girl' (Krümmer 2012, p. 183); she was known for her stylish, boyish appearance.

In 1929 Dodo married a much older, Jewish lawyer, Dr Hans Bürgner (1882–1974) but after the marriage faltered, she began an affair with the Jungian psychoanalyst, Dr Gerhard Adler (1904–1988), at a time when she was undergoing analysis with Jung's assistant in Zurich; her often hallucinatory artwork of the early 1930s (see Verkündigung (Annunciation), Ben Uri Collection) reflects her troubled state of mind (although she also produced illustrations for a number of Jewish community publications from 1934). Following Hitler’s accession to the Chancellorship and the introduction of increasingly difficult anti-Semitic legislation which made it difficult for her to secure work, Dodo immigrated to England in 1936, followed in 1938 by Bürgner and their two young children. In 1936 she divorced Bürgner and married Adler the same year, then divorced Adler and eventually remarried Bürgner in 1946, regaining some stability in her family life. After her arrival in London, Dodo was employed briefly as a – not very competent – domestic, and was fortunate not to be interned in 1940. She subsequently supported herself with commissions for packaging (including for Ackerman's Chocolates, owned by a fellow German émigré in Hampstead); fashion designs for English firms such as John Lewis, piece work, and greeting cards for Raphael Tuck & Sons, as well as illustrating children’s books under the name ‘Dodo Adler’. Post-war she increasingly focused on her own art, taking classes in Hampstead (where a fellow classmate on one occasion was a certain Gerhard Adler), drawing and painting still lives, landscapes and nude studies. In later years, she completed tapestries of her own design. Dodo died in London, England on 22 December 1998, aged 91. In the UK her work is held in the Ben Uri Collection.

Although her career was long overlooked and her oeuvre largely forgotten, Dodo was rediscovered in the 2000s by Dr Renate Krümmer, a Hamburg-based collector, with a particular interest in German art of the 1920s, after some of Dodo's Weimar drawings were offered at auction in the UK. The first retrospective of her work, Dodo (1907–1998) – A Life in Pictures, was held at the Kunstbibliothek – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (1 March – 28 May 2012), curated by Dr Adelheid Rasche (accompanied by a catalogue edited by Krümmer), before transferring in part to Ben Uri Gallery and Museum later the same year as The Inspiration of Decadence – Dodo Rediscovered: Berlin to London 1907–1998. This show contextualised Dodo's work with that of other émigré artists from the Ben Uri Collection and also with private collection works by women artists including Bettina Ehrlich.

Related books

  • Rachel Dickson and Sarah MacDougall, Finchleystrasse: German Artists in Exile in Great Britain and Beyond 1933–45 (London: Ben Uri Gallery and Museum in association with the German Embassy London, 2018)
  • Rachel Dickson, Dodo Bürgner (1907–1998): From Weimar Berlin to Post-War London – A Journey through Art and Design, Institute for German and Romance Studies, London University (unpublished lecture, May 2013)
  • Dr Renate Krümmer ed., Dodo: Leben und Werk / Life and Work 1907–1998 (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2012)
  • Gertrude M. Salinger, Good Fun Singing Games [illustrated by Dodo Adler] (London: J. Burrow & Co, 1947)
  • Gladys Malvern: The Dancing Star [illustrated by Dodo Adler] (London: Collins, 1944)
  • Joan Haslip, Fairy Tales from the Balkans [pictures by Dodo Adler] (London: Collins, 1943)
  • Gertrude M. Salinger, Keep-Fit Singing Games [illustrated by Dodo Adler] (London: Evans Brothers, 1938)

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Reimann Schule (student)
  • ULK (contributor)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Finchleystrasse: German Artists in Exile in Great Britain and Beyond 1933–45, Ben Uri Gallery in association with the German Embassy London (2018)
  • Liberators: Extraordinary Women Artists from the Ben Uri Collection, Ben Uri Gallery (2018)
  • Refugees: The Lives of Others, Ben Uri Gallery (2017)
  • Ben Uri: 100 for 100, Christie's South Kensington (2016)
  • The Inspiration of Decadence: Dodo Rediscovered, Berlin to London 1907–1998, Ben Uri Gallery (2012)
  • Dodo (1907–1998) – Ein Leben in Bildern 1907–1998, Kunstbibliothek – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (2012)
  Dodo
   
Ben Uri collection

Dodo in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Dodo]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Dodo] in the Ben Uri Library