“Folkwang” has been a cultural brand name for a long time now, far beyond Germany’s borders. For 90 years it has stood for music, theatre, dance, design, and scholarship, for the interconnection of the arts, for interdisciplinary teaching, learning and producing. Today’s Folkwang University of the Arts was founded in 1927 by the opera director Rudolf Schulz-Dornburg, the stage designer Hein Heckroth and the choreographer Kurt Joos. At that time it bore the name “Folkwang School of Music, Dance and Speech”. In Essen it happened to encounter the “National School of Trade and Applied Arts”, which had already existed since 1911. This would later become the “Folkwang School of Design“ and is now part of the Folkwang University of the Arts.

But the Folkwang’s roots go a long way further back than 1927. They reach at least as far as the birth of Karl Ernst Osthaus – the region’s great cultural mediator, patron of the arts and museum founder – in 1874.