Loheland

The Loheland women’s settlement is a document of the modernist European reform movement. It was founded as 'The Loheland School for Physical Education, Agriculture and Crafts' at the same time as the Bauhaus in 1919. By 1934, the settlement on Herzberg near Fulda grew to include some twenty buildings and it would be enlarged again at a later date. The ensemble is now a listed historical monument.

The initiative behind the founding of Loheland goes back to Louise Langgaard and Hedwig von Rohden. The two women had offered “classic gymnastic” classes at various locations since 1912 and founded the Loheland School in 1919 as a holistic educational facility. The school was not only concerned with physical education, dance and music but also handicraft and artistic activities as well as experiments with biodynamic agriculture and horticulture.

Learning, working, and social living in a community—about twenty-four teachers lived in Lohelandin the 1920s—came together in the settlement’s concept. In the process, however, the buildings deviate considerably from the Bauhaus structures of that time. With their pitched roofs, wood sidings, natural stone walls and half-timbered frameworks, they reference traditional native architecture. The Hamburg architect Walther Baedeker among others worked alongside Louise Langgaard on planning the buildings.

Each of the houses has its own individual character. The slender Eva House featuring a pointed gabled roof in which the dancer Eva Maria Deinhardt lived is an example of a Loheland total artwork. The original furniture is still preserved in the house. More experimental in nature is the Waggonia from 1927 that consists of four discarded railroad wagons that were assembled to form a U-shaped structure with wood siding. The Franziskus Building begun in 1924 and enlarged in 1982 recalls examples of ecclesiastical architecture with its natural stone vaulted roof.

The complex now includes some forty buildings distributed over an area measuring fifty-four hectares. A Rudolf Steiner School, a Waldorf kindergarten and the archive of the Loheland Foundation (founded in 1971) are located in the idyllic settlement, where not only women live today but also families and several high school students. Loheland is open to visitors.

[KS]