‘Mein Hessenland blühe und in ihm die Kunst’. Ernst Ludwig’s Darmstädter Künstlerkolonie: Building Nationhood through the Arts and Crafts

Abstract

Ernst-Ludwig Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine (1868–1937), dubbed the ‘Revolutionary Prince’ or the ‘Red Grand Duke’, was determined to revive the fortunes of his principality by personally leading an artistic renaissance. Anglophone by birth and inclination, Ernst Ludwig recognised both the economic and cultural potential of reforming and beautifying the life of his citizens. The transnational venture of the First Darmstadt Exhibition of Fine and Decorative Art convinced him that the economic fortunes of his principality could be revived through the arts and crafts. The artists’ colony he initiated on the Mathildenhöhe was expected to stimulate local manufacturers. By forging a Darmstadt Jugendstil ethos, Hesse-Darmstadt would be lauded as a beacon of modernity, leading to the Bauhaus and German Modernism.

Against the conservatism of Prussia, the sub-national identity of Hesse-Darmstadt was invested in regional cultural reform and economic development. On an international stage, the enlightenment nurtured by Ernst-Ludwig was projected in terms of German nationalism; the first exhibition on the Mathildenhöhe was entitled A Document of German Art. Yet the distinctive regional cultural identity of Hesse-Darmstadt has also been preserved and enshrined in the buildings of the Künstlerkolonie and the Sprudelhof, Bad Nauheim.

‘May my Hessen flourish and the Arts in Hessen too’. Frank Lorenz Müller (2016) ‘The German Monarchies’, in Matthew Jefferies (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Imperial Germany (London and New York: Routledge), 67.