Archivalia of the month - December 2025

Otti Berger

OTTI BERGER (Zmajevac, October 4, 1898 - Auschwitz, 1944)

Textile artist, designer and professor, at one time also assistant to Lilly Reich, the closest collaborator of the famous Mies van der Rohe.

In 1922 she enrolled at the Royal Academy of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb (Vanka, Kljaković, Becić), and continued her education at the Bauhaus in Dessau.

When she began her studies, in 1926, her teachers included Kandinsky, Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, among others.

She left the Bauhaus in 1932 and opened the 'Textile Studio' in Berlin. Otti was the first textile designer to patent the fabric pattern 'Lame - Plume' (London) in 1938.

In 1944 she was deported to Auschwitz, where she died.