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Four times freedom – the Meis­ter­zimmer in Leipzig

The early morning view from the giant picture windows is one of endless brick façades, rail tracks and a yard, with an expansive sky looking down over it all. Before my eyes, artists wander in and meet the cameras of the day’s first tourists.

by Ulrich Knoll in February 2018

I wonder just where it is I have come to. It feels like I’m sitting in my own private version of the song “Am Fenster” [By the Window] by City – an unof­ficial anthem of the former East Germany. Back then, in 1977, all thoughts of freedom had to be sup­pressed, or coded as in the lyrics of this song.
While in the here and now, I sit enjoying my com­plete freedom in the love­liest rooms in the Baum­woll­spin­nerei, the Leipzig Cotton Spinning Mill complex, one of Leipzig’s most vibrant loca­tions, in the city where the Monday Demons­tra­tions heralded the demise of the dic­ta­torship in the autumn of 1989.

Manfred Mül­haupt, who runs the Meis­ter­zimmer, is ori­gi­nally from West Germany, but made his home and found his own freedom here after German reuni­fi­cation. Or you could say he passed this freedom on to us, his guests.
He designed the four very indi­vidual loft-style studio apart­ments that have come into being over the course of recent years. On the one hand, the “Meis­ter­zimmer” testify to the cul­tural history of the place, rea­ching back to the indus­trial past, while also making a totally unique con­tri­bution to today’s creative incar­nation of the Spin­nerei, a true focal point of the art world.

His guests spend the night in rooms that once housed the women’s changing rooms, a workshop and even a trans­former room, but are now at the heart of one of Germany’s best-known creative quarters. It makes this accom­mo­dation the perfect place to sit and find your own muse, or use as a base from which to go out and be inspired in the num­erous gal­leries and studios, the cinema, the theatre and the various cafés and shops on the site. Or, of course, to do both.

The freedom of empty spaces

Like most of the twenty buil­dings that remain on the site, Sheds 18 and 20, which house the Meis­ter­zimmer, are in very good struc­tural con­dition. Brick walls over a metre thick cha­rac­terise most of the complex, along with cast-iron casement windows and cork insu­lation beneath moss-covered roofs. These are so extensive that in the Second World War, bomber pilots mistook them for fields, thus ensuring that the Spin­nerei remained largely unda­maged.

When Manfred Mül­haupt moved here in 1994 with a number of fellow artists, the majority of the 100,000 m² useable space was standing empty, and the present-day slogan “From cotton to culture” was as much a distant dream as con­stant room tem­pe­ra­tures and other such luxuries.
But what was there in abun­dance was a wealth of empty space, vast expanses and the freedom to expe­riment.

Wild Wild East

But let us go back to the beginning. Born in the south-western corner of West Germany in 1966, Manfred Mül­haupt com­pleted an electrician’s app­ren­ti­ceship before stu­dying Fine Art in Freiburg. “In West German society, which was satu­rated in all aspects” he saw no chal­lenges and also no freedom. “Ever­y­thing had already been done, there was no need for any­thing else.”

While at the Städel art museum in Frankfurt am Main in 1994, he met Peter Bux, also an artist and son-in-law of Regina Lenk, who was manager of the Spin­nerei at the time. She was the one who invited them to use space in the Spin­nerei as studios. So, to Leipzig!

Or, as he puts it: “And here it was: a city as empty as I was. A city that still had space to spare and was looking for ideas. I felt at home here imme­diately. And in the middle of this vacuum was the Spin­nerei, one of its light­houses of emp­tiness and desertion. Gigantic, massive and full of pos­si­bi­lities.”

At the time, what is now Meis­ter­zimmer #1 in the Spin­nerei served as his studio and base from which to dis­cover the city, its empty houses and fac­tories. “You could wander around undis­turbed for days, always coming back with some­thing: impres­sions, images and finds from a past civi­li­sation.”

He also sought and found fri­end­ships with new artists. He began to draw again, con­s­tructed his own revolving lamps and began to erect struc­tures in the available rooms. Found pieces of fur­niture were upcycled, fit­tings installed and light intro­duced to every corner.

Land­lords with passion, but no fixed inten­tions

He met his partner, the artist Jana Gunst­heimer in 2005. She lived in Jena, but they spent their weekends tog­ether expe­ri­menting at the Spin­nerei, pro­ducing early struc­tures and artistic inven­tions.

For example, they began to make mobile beds on wheels, fol­lowed by the first large instal­la­tions for their exhi­bi­tions. They found the mate­rials for these in the huge aban­doned sheds, on foraging mis­sions just a stone’s throw away from their own kitchen sink. In the large, empty spaces and ante­rooms of the Spin­nerei, Jana and a group of artist friends installed dys­topian sce­narios that often dealt with the history of East Germany and the hope­l­essness and lack of moti­vation they observed; these became an essential part of their body of work.

In 2008, after a few years of com­muting, Jena was chosen as the place on which they would focus their lives. But what about Leipzig – about this space, one of the most beau­tiful on the whole of the Spin­nerei site? Without really believing it was pos­sible, they began to think about letting rooms, partly with the hope of being able to stay there them­selves, too.

After 14 years of having to cycle down various cor­ridors to reach the “smallest room”, Manfred Mül­haupt installed a toilet in the bathroom – but not until they had moved out. And against expec­ta­tions, people began to come and stay. Unfort­u­nately, this was often at times they really wanted to be there them­selves.

So they decided to provide a second, third and fourth Meis­ter­zimmer, since they had come to find they enjoyed both the building work and wel­coming guests.

With their unique approach to indi­vidual, often self-made interior design, without kitchen islands or design classics, they have now created four com­pletely distinctive studio apart­ments. They are cha­rac­te­rised by unique fix­tures and fit­tings, an indus­trial feel and con­tem­porary art instal­la­tions – with a dif­ferent focus for each room.

Unique, indi­vidual and full of irony – the Meis­ter­zimmer
Or: the art of artis­ti­cally inspired interior design

All the fix­tures and fit­tings now to be found in Meis­ter­zimmer #1 are the product of sheer joy in building.

The host worked on the con­version himself – living, building and rebuilding on site, app­lying his distinctive mix of ambition and relaxed attitude to ensure that the project was allowed to take its time where needed. This room has grown over many years. It is where the history of the Spin­nerei is at its most evident, with num­erous ori­ginal found items from the times when cotton was still spun on the site and the Meis­ter­zimmer them­selves were fur­nished with arti­ficial leather seats.

Room #1 is also the most variable room in the truest sense of the word, and not only because of the moveable wheeled beds that dominate. It is also where sub­stantial changes are made first, still ongoing today. A “garden hut”, which was con­s­tructed on the raised platform, has since been dis­mantled and exists only as the memory of a beau­tiful, but done and gone, instal­lation idea.

The design of Meis­ter­zimmer #2 (2011), ori­gi­nally a rather austere room without much visible history, is strongly defined by its unusual dimen­sions: 16 x 4 metres. Planning the con­version during a trip to Venice, the room’s owners saw it as the body of a ship.

In the “stern”, the bathroom and kitchen are located like supply units. From the upper level above this, there is a view like that from a ship’s bridge, out over the whole of the “front deck”, where there is a table and array of seating as well as a work space. Here you can sit as though leaning on the front rail of a ship and gaze out at the won­derful view through the huge casement window. You could almost believe that beyond the panes is not the Spin­nerei site, but the far ocean horizons. The actual window is mir­rored by a painting by Jana Gunst­heimer, which trans­ports guests into a com­pletely dif­ferent land­scape.

The artistic influence of the owners can be felt most strongly in the last two rooms. In Meis­ter­zimmer #3 (2013), as in Meis­ter­zimmer #4 (2014), art is not viewed as an aftert­hought to improve or decorate a finished room. Here, the instal­la­tions formed part of the plan from the start, and the rooms were designed tog­ether with, and for, the art. In both of these Meis­ter­zimmer, art­works by Jana Gunst­heimer and friends of hers can be found. A neon work by Jana Gunst­heimer in Meis­ter­zimmer #3 pro­claims “Thank God It’s Abs­tract”, an ironic comment on current trends in con­tem­porary art – the more abs­tract, the better it sells.

With its won­derful window seat, the room is designed like an outdoor space indoors. The brick walls with all wires and pipes visible could also be the external walls of a building, and the raised areas are arranged like stages in a public square. The room is visually divided by a solid box that houses the bathroom.

As a general feature, mul­ti­purpose raised plat­forms are distin­gu­ishing fea­tures of these most recently created rooms. They can be used either as stages or simply places to sit. They could even provide a space to display a sculpture.

On entering Meis­ter­zimmer #4, your attention is imme­diately drawn by three objects. The observer may not at first know exactly what they are, but these are glass-fronted noti­ce­boards, which were once used to keep workers at the Spin­nerei informed of the latest news. Unu­sually, these backlit ori­ginal finds do not have any hidden artistic meaning in them­selves, but give the room a distinctive atmo­sphere at all times of day.

But there are some hidden mea­nings to be dis­co­vered: from the rear section of the room, guests catch sight – imme­diately or at some time during their stay – of a robust door above the bathroom com­partment that looks like a safe. This mys­te­rious piece is the work of Jana Gunst­heimer and could represent the ent­rance to a par­allel world.

Thank God it’s art! So if you feel restless while staying in one or other of the Meis­ter­zimmer, it must be your creative juices beginning to flow!

Good to know

Manfred Mül­haupt still enjoys designing and building, including the creation of web­sites. And he curr­ently has plans for a new project – still under wraps! – in an old fire station near Jena. Maybe you will be hearing more about him soon on urlaubsarchitektur.de.

Jana Gunst­heimer is now Pro­fessor of Expe­ri­mental Painting and Drawing at the Bauhaus Uni­versity, Weimar.

If you are inte­rested in reading more about the history of the Meis­ter­zimmer, you will find a fasci­nating account by Manfred Mül­haupt here: Masters and Journey men — a little story

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By Ulrich Stefan Knoll, February 2018

The place