Herman Muthesius

Adam Gottlieb Hermann Muthesius (20 April 1861 – 29 October 1927), known as Hermann Muthesius, was a German architect, author and diplomat, perhaps best known for promoting many of the ideas of the English Arts and Crafts movement within Germany and for his subsequent influence on early pioneers of German architectural modernism such as the Bauhaus.

Muthesius was born in 1861 in the village of Großneuhausen near Erfurt and received early training from his father, who was a builder. After a period of military service and two years studying philosophy and art history at Frederick William University in Berlin, he enrolled to study architecture at Charlottenburg Technical College in 1883, while also working in the office of Reichstag architect Paul Wallot.

Following completion of his studies, Muthesius spent 1887 to 1891 working for German construction firm Ende & Böckmann in Tokyo. There he saw his first building completed—a German Evangelical church in the Gothic Revival style—and was able to travel extensively across Asia. He returned to Germany in 1891 where he worked for the Prussian Ministry of Public Works, studied for a time in Italy on stipend (in 1895), and served for almost two years as the editor of a pair of official construction journals.

In 1896 Muthesius was offered a position as cultural attaché at the German Embassy in London, from where he was to study report on the ways of the British. He focused the next six years investigating and residential architecture and domestic lifestyle and design, ending with a three-volume report published in 1904 and 1905 as Das englische Haus ("The English House"), his most famous work. Although his subjects were wide-ranging, he was particularly interested in the philosophy and practices of the English Arts and Crafts movement, whose emphasis on function, modesty, understatement, individuality and honesty to materials he saw as alternatives to the ostentatious historicism and obsession with ornament in German nineteenth century architecture, and whose efforts to bring a sense of craftsmanship to industrial design he saw as a significant national economic benefit. He visited Glasgow to investigate the innovative work of the Glasgow School exemplified by the designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and wrote about houses in Birmingham by William Bidlake.

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