In Conversation

News from Aschau: Nils Holger Moormann

The legendary “berge” in Chiemgau has reopened. In an interview, the designer told us what else is on his mind and how he views the design industry and his career in retrospect.

by Jan Hamer and Ulrich Stefan Knoll in May 2026

It’s been a while since we last spoke – great to see that the guest­house berge is getting a fresh lease of life!

Yes, through a series of for­t­unate coin­ci­dences, we’ve now found Nicole Mar­tinsohn as the new tenant and ope­rator. Since then, we’ve been working tog­ether with great deter­mi­nation to further strengthen the quality and stan­dards of berge. Four or five years ago, we sold our fur­niture company Moormann, and since then we’ve no longer been running berge our­selves.

In what way are you and your wife involved with berge again – more in terms of con­sulting and design, or also ope­ra­tio­nally?

As the tenant and ope­rator, Nicole Mar­tinsohn is free to do wha­tever she wants. But because we value her highly, we’re doing what design has always needed most: giving it our who­le­he­arted affection and full energy. If you only delegate, you even­tually lose the authentic feel and per­sonal signature. So at the moment, we’re sup­porting her in getting ever­y­thing refined again. You know how it is: some­thing only works when every aspect is honed to a fine point. That has always been the strength of berge as well – the sum of its details.

We’re keeping our fingers crossed and are delighted that the house is once again a partner of HOLIDAYARCHITECTURE!
For those of our readers who may not know the full back­story, could you briefly tell us how you came to design and to berge?

The story of how I got into design in the 1980s is some­thing you can ulti­m­ately read almost any­where: through hitch­hiking – and, amusingly enough, through a land­scape architect. He told me that a friend of his was making designer fur­niture out of steel. As a com­plete auto­didact and having aban­doned my law studies, I became incre­dibly curious. That’s how it all began – with a great deal of curiosity, naivety and enthu­siasm for the whole thing. Of course, it was dif­ficult to become self-employed without any formal training, without a budget and without a proper business plan. For a long time, I did this as a part-time job, but in the end it worked out well. At some point, someone came along and said: you’ve got a fan­tastic coll­ection. I hadn’t really rea­lised it myself – because I was always wan­dering through the world in a state of ama­zement, com­pletely naïve. True to my favourite saying: “Too much know­ledge isn’t always wise either.” In other words: just do it, give it a try.

From all this, a company emerged that, remar­kably enough, held its ground in the market, wea­thered many rough patches and con­tinued to fill me with joy and immense curiosity right to the end. One major issue for us, however, was that the company just kept on growing ste­adily. I’ve always loved small-scale struc­tures and never wanted levels of hier­archy. But this couldn’t be avoided entirely, because I never really managed to kill off that eternal law of growth either. As space became incre­asingly limited, the whole issue of building and expanding even­tually arose and grew ever more pressing.

One day, the old house opposite the company building – what is now berge – came up for sale. That was inte­resting because it stood on a fairly large plot of land. Our idea was to build a com­mercial warehouse there and upgrade the house just enough to store cata­logues or smaller items. And then the idea occurred: “Hang on, we have guests here all the time, and it’s often not that easy to accom­modate them. Why don’t we put in one or two guest rooms?” Back then, the project was internally called Grand Hotel Aus­sichtslos (translator’s note: the German word “aus­sichtslos” means both “hopeless” and, playfully in the context of a hotel, “without a view”).

Inci­den­tally, people were able to stay with us at a very early stage – for 10 euros… admit­tedly, there were no cei­lings installed yet, we handed out hard hats, and in the morning the pneu­matic drill would start up. But nobody com­plained. I enjoyed that: an early-guest dis­count, so to speak (laughs).

At some point, however, it became clear that even the newly planned warehouse would already have been too small for our requi­re­ments. And that – I really should have finished that law degree after all! – a section of the plot, what is now the accommodation’s garden, was subject to a building ban.

But the tiny houses are now standing in the garden of berge, aren’t they?

Exactly. If you’re creative, you don’t let yourself be stopped – they’re all movable houses, some of them are even mounted on rails.

So today’s guest­house is essen­tially the result of a bad purchase and a for­t­unate coin­ci­dence?

Yes. At some point, out of the whole mess, the idea of a larger guest­house emerged simply because the building was there. I was always incre­dibly lucky to have won­derful people in the company who could pro­fes­sio­nally translate my cryptic ideas into reality. We began gutting the house, which had been com­pletely remo­delled and ruined over the years. It took me more than a year just to under­stand the building at all. Whenever I was away on business trips, I’d doodle ideas on beer mats… “Maybe the staircase could go here, alt­hough actually that wouldn’t work either…” and so on, until things slowly began to take shape.

As a lay­person, I gave our design department the task of essen­tially building a dolls’ house. So they recreated berge as a card­board model, and that was fan­tastic. Step by step, we gra­dually worked our way towards a solution, and it also slowly became clear that while the idea of a design hotel or art hotel sounded appe­aling, it ulti­m­ately wasn’t really our thing.

It’s always a bad sign when you have to add a description to a hotel to explain what it is sup­posed to be.

True. Looking back, all the com­pli­ca­tions during the course of the project were actually very positive. Because of all the chal­lenges, we had the time to question many things. And in the end, such a process leads to a solution that is both prag­matic and very clean. My good fortune was that my small design department was simply fan­tastic and incre­dibly ver­satile. The architect looks at the volume, the form and the func­tional aspects of the building; the interior designer already starts con­sidering how the staircase might run and how the handrail should be exe­cuted; and the designer starts ques­tioning every single baluster. As fur­niture manu­fac­turers, we also had a great deal of expertise, as well as the right sup­pliers and craft­speople.

We can only say: a fan­tastic result. Once you’re there in person, you can really see the pre­cision.

Yes. Alt­hough it has to be said: now you can see it again. For quite a while, we hadn’t really been taking care of it our­selves, and a house like this doesn’t forgive being neglected. Since the new tenant took over, there’s been a new sense of energy.
And the won­derful thing – one that genuinely makes me proud – is when a place achieves the highest pos­sible degree of tim­e­l­essness. You can see that, for example, in the unt­reated sur­faces. Our floors made from alpine spruce, with its very tight growth rings, have become more beau­tiful over the years. The whole house is like that. It has a strong sense of – alt­hough I don’t par­ti­cu­larly like the word – fun­da­mental honesty. It doesn’t pretend to be more than it is, and all the mate­rials are simple. A lovely side effect is that the indoor climate in the rooms with clay plaster feels noti­ceably dif­ferent from, for ins­tance, the large parlour, where con­ven­tional plas­ter­board had to be installed for fire safety reasons.

The house is now 20 years old, and it seems to be smiling at me from every corner. I wouldn’t change a thing – quite the opposite: just keep it con­sis­t­ently well main­tained and don’t add any­thing. Back then, we con­sciously reduced the house entirely to the basics, and even today I still believe that was abso­lutely the right and important thing to do.

We think berge is an ideal house for groups. On the one hand, because it simply works well that way. And on the other, because you then ine­vi­tably get to see and under­stand all the rooms with their dif­ferent inter­pre­ta­tions.

Yes, abso­lutely. The large parlour down­s­tairs is perfect for sitting tog­ether, cooking or working as a group. Remar­kably, we have a lot of guests from Switz­erland – they love this house. And many guests come from the greater Munich area. Strangely enough, they really do come out to the coun­tryside for a few days, despite the rela­tively short distance.

Far enough away to create that holiday feeling, yet still easy to reach. Another question: how did you approach the whole subject of hos­pi­tality? Did you already have any expe­rience in that field?

Well, let’s put it this way: as someone who is a great believer in con­sis­tency, it was important to me that the house should be genuinely chal­lenging and, in a way, resist the con­ven­tional idea of a hotel. Per­so­nally, I’m usually touched by things that have rough edges and imper­fec­tions, because they force me into a kind of con­fron­tation with them. When I con­verted berge, I knew abso­lutely nothing about the hotel industry – which is pro­bably con­nected to the fact that I only stay in hotels when I can’t avoid it. I’m simply a die-hard camper. That has nothing to do with fru­gality – I just don’t like staying in hotels. I’m an extreme indi­vi­dualist and I need my freedom.

We remember! At one of our very first partner mee­tings, we were slightly irri­tated because you hadn’t booked a hotel room. When we asked you about it that evening, you simply looked at us and said: “Why? My car is parked outside.” Appar­ently, everyone in the industry already knew that about you – except us at the time.

Well, that was, after all, our first meeting in person! (laughs)

How do you look back on your company and on the design industry in general?

On the one hand, it was cer­tainly strange to sell the company. On the other hand, I had no real dif­fi­culty letting go, because the industry has changed con­siderably in recent years. I still come from the classic era, when there were locally rooted retailers with a strong affinity for archi­tecture and design who were much more than mere retailers. They were more like ambassadors, with enormous expe­rience and know­ledge – they were just as eccentric as we were. Enthu­si­astic, full of per­so­nality, and any­thing but simple product dis­tri­butors. Unfort­u­nately, there are fewer and fewer of them around because they can hardly with­stand the ruthless com­pe­tition any longer.

I really miss them, but right now it simply doesn’t seem to be the right moment. Perhaps it’s similar to what happens in other disci­plines, such as archi­tecture or art. They also go through phases that are unbe­arably dull. Everyone paints the same picture, everyone paints it expres­sively, perhaps a little more poin­tedly than before – but nothing actually happens. And then, at some point, someone comes along and triggers a small revo­lution. Some­thing genuinely new always has to emerge again: a new longing, some­thing even the scene itself doesn’t fully under­stand yet. These periods come and go, and they will return, because we all cherish our indi­vi­duality and per­sonal expression.

At the time, I felt those new impulses were missing from the market – the chee­kiness and rebel­lious spirit, the courage to expe­riment. Towards the end, what incre­asingly bothered me per­so­nally was the fact that the company auto­ma­ti­cally had to keep growing and I never really knew how to control that. My guiding prin­ciple was: we want to grow like crazy, but in terms of content. I would much rather have remained small and distinctive, pene­t­rating the market in a dif­ferent way. But that became incre­asingly dif­ficult, and at the same time the company became more and more imper­sonal to me as it grew larger.

When selling the company, the most important thing for me was that the buyers should not be investors purely driven by profit maxi­mi­sation. Thank­fully, we even­tually found a brother-and-sister team who genuinely want to run the company them­selves. That impressed me.
Alt­hough, for me, that chapter is truly closed. I’m hardly in contact with them anymore. And almost none of my former employees are still with the company either.

In the meantime, you’ve reno­vated a house in Italy. Will that also be rented out?

That’s right. And before you know it, four years have passed and it’s already finished (laughs). During the reno­vation process, however, we decided that our house in Friuli would remain entirely private. Even for visitors, we only created what we call a “guest-tole­ration area” – accom­mo­dation that is just about accep­table to impose on our guests – meaning: the ideal guest should feel com­for­table, but after one or two days should natu­rally feel inclined to leave again.

So you spend roughly half the year there and half the year in Aschau?

Yes, exactly. The distance is less than 400 kilo­metres, which is perfect. You don’t need to fly and you can decide very spon­ta­neously.

If you were starting all over again today, what would you do dif­fer­ently in retro­spect?

Nothing. Life can’t really be planned. There may be people for­t­unate enough to stumble rela­tively early upon what they are truly good at or what genuinely moves them. But I think they are the exception. That’s why we all end up going to career coun­selling.

What I know about myself today is that crea­tivity is what triggers me. Even as a child, I would drift off into my own thoughts, looking at tree bark and won­dering: “Why is this one so rugged and coarse, while the other is won­derfully smooth and shim­mering?”
But until I was 28 or 29, I had abso­lutely no idea that I had that in me. So in that sense, it was an enormous stroke of luck to be able to do what I did. And an immense freedom that the timing in my life hap­pened to be exactly right for it.

Of course, being an auto­didact is incre­dibly exhausting, and you need an awful lot of luck to run into serious trouble with the banks early enough to learn only to spend what you genuinely have and not become too dependent.

Apart from the courage to simply set off on your own path: what, in your opinion, helps people become suc­cessful?

One thing is to keep your sense of humour, no matter what the times are like. Humour creates freedom, and it also brings people tog­ether.

And then, around 25 years ago – pro­bably a typical autodidact’s move – I wrote down 20 guiding prin­ciples for myself. Later, they were whittled down to ten. And now, in later life, over the past few years, I’ve reduced them to just three. They’re com­pletely banal, but they work for me:

con­sis­tency, trans­pa­rency, inte­grity.

Do ever­y­thing you do pro­perly, or don’t do it at all. Half-hearted things have always gone badly wrong for me.

The same applies to trans­pa­rency: be as open as pos­sible with your manu­fac­turers, your staff and your cus­tomers. Everyone should know as much as pos­sible: why, how, where from, at what price. There are no great mys­teries. Trans­pa­rency turns other people into partners and conveys app­re­ciation.

And the third mantra comes directly from everyday life: inte­grity. Do things you can genuinely stand behind. Instead of making dubious deals and focusing purely on profit maxi­mi­sation. That simply isn’t right.

If you’re not bru­tally honest about these things, ever­y­thing even­tually turns into a mar­keting show. And that brings neither you nor your cus­tomers and partners any joy. But if you take these prin­ciples seriously, then you achieve the greatest thing pos­sible: meeting each other on equal footing.

But you haven’t retired, have you?

No, that’s impos­sible. Creative people are never retired.

As always, it’s been a great pleasure talking to you. Until next time!

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According to the German news­paper Die Welt, Nils Holger Moormann is like his fur­niture, and his fur­niture is like him – intel­ligent, ascetic, humorous and clever. As an auto­didact, career changer and free spirit, Nils Holger Moormann has been deve­loping fur­niture with a reduced design voca­bulary and precise detailing solu­tions since 1982. In 2020, he placed both his company and the guest­house berge into new hands and has since remained curious about new ven­tures under the label Nils Holger Moormann Art Direction. He con­tinues to share his great passion for good design through num­erous jury appoint­ments, as a mentor to emerging desi­gners, and as a visiting pro­fessor at the Kunst­hoch­schule Kassel.

Interview: The interview was con­ducted by Jan Hamer and Ulrich Stefan Knoll.

Photos: Nils Holger Moormann © Silke Moormann (Cover photo), berge © Stefan Josef Müller (1–4) © Jäger & Jäger (5/6), Abge­mahnt © Nils Holger Moormann Möbel GmbH. Photo: Julia Rotter (7), Vor­stand © Nils Holger Moormann Möbel GmbH (8), Seil­tänzer © Nils Holger Moormann Möbel GmbH (9), Kam­penwand © Nils Holger Moormann Möbel GmbH. Photo: Jäger & Jäger (10), Boo­kinist © Nils Holger Moormann Möbel GmbH (11), berge, his­toric view © Nils Holger Moormann Private archive (12/13/15), berge © Stefan Josef Müller (14/16/17/19, 20–25, 28), berge © Julia Rotter (18), berge © Jäger & Jäger (26) © We Make Them Wonder (27), Cus­tombus © Nils Holger Moormann Art Direction. Photos: We Make Them Wonder (29–32), Walden © Nils Holger Moormann Art Direction. Photos: Jäger & Jäger (33–36), Private project Friaul © Nils Holger Moormann Private archive (37), Kam­mer­spiel © Nils Holger Moormann Art Direction. Photo: Julia Rotter (38)