Maria May

Maria May (24 September 190028 October 1968) was a German textiles designer with commercial flair. The scope of her output also embraced other forms of large-format wall art such as mosaics and posters. High-profile commissions included the large mosaic "Tiefsee" ("Deep sea") she produced for the ball room of newly built ocean liner and a large set of sprayed silk wall tapestries that she produced in collaboration with Otto Arpke for the cabin interiors of the LZ 129 Hindenburg airship. Between 1956 and 1966 she served as head of the "Meisterschule für Mode" (Fashion Academy) in Hamburg.

Life Provenance and early years Maria May was born (and just over sixty-eight years later died) in Berlin. "May-Stoffe" was the name used to market a fabric produced using innovative—and industrially applicable—injection printing techniques, and characterised by strong colours and figurative patterns. Above all, the flexibility of May's techniques clearly facilitated a rich diversity of designs.

Between art and industry By 1930 May was engaging increasingly in long-term contracts with her industrial clients, which coincided with a withdrawal from regular teaching commitments. He prominent mosaic on the ballroom wall on board the , widely viewed during the late 1920s as the fastest and best of the trans-Atlantic liners, against which competing designs would be benchmarked during the 1930s, triggered increasing interest in her work among American critics and opinion formers. As early as 1930 the "Art Alliance of America" invited her to exhibit her work in New York, with evident success. By this time May's fabrics had become well known across Germany, and had also brought welcome publicity for the Reimann School at which she had developed her designs and techniques. Her techniques were applied by Vereinigte Werkstätten at their subsidiary location in Munich from 1928, and her designs were also being produced in industrial quantities by the Monachium factory established as part of a government-backed industrial regeneration scheme at Plauen. In 1932 she designed an extensive range of carpets for Rasch Brothers. Like many in Germany with long historical memories, she nevertheless welcomed the fall of France in 1940: "The fashion of the past was Paris—the fashion of the future lies with Greater Germany." In 1937 she took over as head of the "Manufacturing Department" at the German Fashion Institute in Berlin:

After the war May 1945 brought another abrupt change of direction for Maria May, who now returned to a full-time teaching post. The western two thirds of Germany were now divided into four large military occupation zones: May left Berlin and settled in Hamburg, in the British zone. Between 1946 and 1955 she served as head of the class in fabrics painting and textiles design at Hamburg's "Landeskunstschule" (as the Fine Arts University was known at that time). For the Landeskunstschule, having regard to May's record in Berlin during the 1920s, the move was presented as an opportunity to form closer ties to industry. In 1955 she moved to take charge of "Department Design" at the institution then known as the "Meisterschule für Mode Hamburg". The city authorities promoted her to a full professorship. May remained at the "Meisterschule" till her retirement in 1965 . The organisation became an umbrella for a number of locally based equivalent groups: May used her time as president and her formidable marketing talents to push for a stronger and clearer national profile for it.

Final years Following her retirement, in 1966 Maria May returned to the city of her birth. Berlin's political divisions being by this time matched by impenetrable physical divisions, she made her home in the city's western part. She died there just two years later.

Personal Most sources are silent about Marias May's personal life. However, one of them mentions her marriage, to a man called Bernatzik, which ended in divorce during the war.