Worpswede is a municipality in the district of Osterholz, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated in the Teufelsmoor, northeast of Bremen. The small town itself is located near the Weyerberg hill. It has been the home to a lively artistic community since the end of the 19th century, with over 130 artists and craftsmen working there.
In 1884, Mimi Stolte, the daughter of a shopkeeper in Worpswede, met Fritz Mackensen, a young student of arts, while she was staying with her aunt in Düsseldorf. Since he was destitute, she invited him to Worpswede to spend the holidays with her family. In 1889, he settled in Worpswede, accompanied by other painters such as Hans am Ende and Otto Modersohn, and followed by others such as Fritz Overbeck, Carl Vinnen, and Paula Becker (who married Otto Modersohn). Other artists came, for example the writers and poets Gerhard Hauptmann, Thomas Mann, and Rainer Maria Rilke and the sculptor Clara Westhoff (who was married to Rilke). Fritz Mackensen remained a good friend of Mimi Stolte’s family to the end of his life. A memorial tablet created by Mackensen can be seen in front of the Kaufhaus Stolte.
In 1895 Heinrich Vogeler joined the first artists around Fritz Mackensen. He was not only a painter but also a draftsman, designer and architect. Since the growing industrialization made it necessary to find new ways of transporting goods and all sorts of materials, the idea came up to build a railway through the Teufelsmoor-area. So Vogeler was charged with the building of railway stations along the route. In 1910 the railway station at Worpswede was opened.
In 1895 Vogeler bought a cottage and planted many birch trees around it, which gave the house its new name: Barkenhoff (Low German for Birkenhof, literally translated Birch-Tree-Cottage). It became the cultural centre of the artistic scene of Worpswede.
The first generation of artists was followed by a second one. The probably most important of them was Bernhard Hoetger, the creator of the Böttcherstraße in Bremen. Like Vogeler he was a ‘Jack-of-all-trades’. Many buildings in Worpswede have been built by him: examples include the Lower Saxony Stone (Niedersachsenstein), Kaffee Verrückt, Grosse Kunstschau and his own house Hinterm Berg. He also created many sculptures, such as the Bonze des Humors, the Träumende, Schlafende, Wut etc.
