Marcella Augusta Hempel, (birthname Tilg, first married name Tilg-Senff) (29 December 1915, Berlin, Germany– 9 December 2010, Canberra, Australia) was a textile artist, second generation Bauhaus master weaver and lecturer in textiles. She was one of many émigré artists who came to Australia after the second world war, bringing training and expertise from Europe. She became a respected leader in the Australian Crafts Movement. Hempel designed and wove products such as rugs and scarves which were commissioned or exhibited by Australian companies, private collectors and craft and art galleries. Her work received a gold medal award from the Australian Wool Board. She lectured in Dresden then at the University of Applied Arts in Berlin, taught textile design at East Sydney Technical College, was the inaugural lecturer in textiles at the Riverina-Murray Institute of Higher Education (formerly Riverina College of Advanced Education, now Charles Sturt University-Wagga Wagga campus) and was conferred with a Honoris Causa award of Bachelor of Arts (Visual Arts) after retirement. Her woven travel rugs are held in national art collections.
Life and weaving career
Master weaver and lecturer in Germany
Marcella Tilg studied art in high school and aimed in her post-school life, "To help mankind". Her teacher took the class to a Bauhaus display home showing art in action which impressed Tilg so she decided to study at the Bauhaus when she finished high school. By then, the Bauhas school had been closed by the Nazi Party so Tilg studied weaving in Berlin from 1932 under Bauhaus trained Margaret Leischner at the Berlin College of Textile and Fashion, graduating in 1936 with a degree in handweaving and textile design. She married Georg Friedrich Senff (1908–1944) in 1937, a commercial clerk who in 1934 with 14 other men, had been convicted by the Dresden Higher Regional Court of “preparing to commit treason” against the ruling Nazi Party. She and Senff had one child. Georg Senff died in Poland in 1944. From 1934 to 1946, Marcella Tilg-Senff designed fabrics for German and Danish industry. In 1947 Tilg-Senff gained the Master's Certificate in handweaving and between 1946 and 1950 lectured in Dresden then in East Berlin. Her teaching career in Germany was helped by Mart Stam, designer of the cantilever chair, who was a professor at the University of Applied Arts in Berlin when he appointed her in 1951 as lecturer in weaving then as a panel member for the Institute for Industrial Design.
In 1952 Marcella Tilg-Senff left East Germany and moved to England. The only permit that allowed her to leave East Germany was one to work as a domestic abroad. She worked as a live-in housekeeper in the UK (with her daughter). She maintained her friendship with Leischner, who became a leading teacher and weaver in England, visiting her in the UK in the 1950s before migrating to Australia and again in 1970 just before Leischner's death from cancer. About leaving Germany, in 1990 Hempel said in correspondence with John McPhee, then a curator at the National Gallery of Australia, “I did not want my child to grow up under a totalitarian regime which took the life of my husband, who had been a political prisoner under Hitler... My odyssey ended in Australia, where at last I did not feel in constant hopeless opposition to a regime, which denies its citizens integrity." She married Bruno Hempel in the UK.
