Early Life

Anni Albers is born Annelise Else Frieda Fleischmann at 5 Lessingstrasse in the Charlottenburg section of Berlin on June 12, 1899. She is the eldest of three children born to Siegfried Fleischmann (1873–1963) and Toni Ullstein Fleischmann (1877–1946). Around 1912, the family moves to a large apartment at 7 Meinekestrasse, near the Kurfürstendamm, and Anni’s mother arranges for her to have an art tutor, Toni Meyer, who comes to the house and has her draw nude figures. As a teenager, Anni knocked on famed Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka’s door and asked him if she could apprentice under him. In response to the young woman and the paintings she had brought with her, Kokoschka scoffed, barely giving her the time of day. From 1916 to 1919, Anni studies painting with Martin Brandenburg, an Impressionist painter. In 1921 she attends the Kunstgewerbeschule (school of applied arts) in Hamburg for two semesters. She considers the textile methods there “sissy stuff.” A friend, Olga Redslob, gives her a brochure for the newly formed Bauhaus in Weimar. In 1922 Anni moves to Weimar and applies to study at the Bauhaus, where she was initially turned down.