12 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
February, 1912 
The dining-room in the model house built and furnished by Karl Bertsch. 
The dominating color is Yale blue, but red, green, yellow and even 
purple are used in the wall paper and furnishings 
The newer generation, finding this cold expression of national 
affluence and solidity oppressive, went to the other extreme in 
their methods of house decoration. In trying to introduce a 
more cheerful note, they took to pastel shades, unsubstantial- 
looking furniture built in curves and curling outlines. Scarcely 
a city in the Fatherland fails to show the scar left by the jugend- 
stiehl epidemic in art — if it is only a row of pale yellow houses 
with peacocks perched on the cornices, their graceful tails en¬ 
twining the waterpipe. 
But the reign of this fashion was short. It was too radical, too 
saccharine for the stolid, practical German. The pendulum 
swung back in due time to more simple and more substantial 
things, until to-day the slogan of the school is Simplicity and 
Usefulness. 
The new movement began, of 
course, in IMunich, whence come all ' 
the good as well as the freak innova¬ 
tions in art. As it is of this day and : 
generation it is affected naturally by 
secessionistic principles and ideas, and 
a striking ensemble effect is produced 
in great part through brilliancy of 
color. One might almost say that 
sombreness of form and intoxication 
of color are the paradoxical essentials 
of this new German style of interior 
decoration. 
The ideas of the leaders of the new 
school — artists and architects of re¬ 
nown, such as Karl Bertsch, Richard 
Riemerschmid, Hermann Muthesius, 
Theodor Fischer and others — are put 
into concrete form by a few craft 
workshops {Werkstdtte fiir Hand- 
werks Kunst, they are called in Ger¬ 
man) that manufacture everything for 
the inside of a house from rugs to 
vases and improved pepper-pots. In 
a model town, erected about one of: 
these factories near Dresden, there 
stand two model houses, designed, 
built, decorated and furnished by dis¬ 
ciples of the new school; through: 
them one gets the best idea of the . 
principles for which it stands. The ! 
accompanying pictures all represent 
the Riemerschmid and the Bertsch < 
houses in Hellerau, near Dresden. 
Believing neither in imitation nor in 
A young girl’s room in green tones. The wall is white plaster decorated 
by narrow lines of green and blue irregularly formed dots 
