Ilse Fehling

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.[1] It was there that Fehling studied sculpture.[2]

In 1920, Fehling matriculated at the Bauhaus Weimar, where her work involved theatre. At the school she studied sculpture, theater, painting, and theory of harmonization[3] under a number of prominent artists including Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee, and Gertrud Grunow.[4] Out of her work at the school, Fehling's best known is the rotating round puppet stage she designed and later patented[5] in her theater class with Lothal Schreyer[6].

In 1923, she left the Bauhaus for Berlin to work as a freelance sculptor and stage and costume designer.[4] Fehling married Henry S. Witting the same year. In 1928, Fehling gave birth to a daughter, Gaby; she divorced Witting a year later.[1]

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.[1] In the following years, her work took influences from Cubism.[4]

Following the Nazi rise to power, Fehling's work was deemed degenerate and its exhibition was banned.[4] Much of her work was lost due to bombing and confiscation during World War II.[1]

Ilse Fehling worked as a costume designer for a number of Nazi propaganda films, including Der Herrscher.[7]

In 1940, Ilse Fehling began work at Tobis-Europa as the chief outfitter.[8] Here she optimized the costume department by expanding and continuing to develop it.[9] While working there, Fehling implemented reprocessing costumes for "artistic costume utilization".[10]

By 1946, Fehling lived in Rottack before returning to Munich in 1952 where she would live the rest of her life.[11] Fehling opened her own studio after settling in Munich, where she worked on sculptures, stage sets, and press drawings.[12] Ilse did some additional work in Geneva, where her daughter was an international student.[13] Her final design project was for the Cologne cinema Die Lupe in 1965, where she conceptualized the interior design.[14]

Fehling died on February 25, 1982.