The Staatliche Schule für Kunst und Handwerk (State School for Art and Craft) was a Saarbrücken art school founded in 1946, serving as a predecessor institution of today’s Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar (HBKsaar).[1] The school operated under this name from 1946 until 1959, when it was renamed Staatliche Werkkunstschule Saarbrücken.[1][2]
Design and History
Documented visual evidence of a dedicated logo or signet for the Staatliche Schule für Kunst und Handwerk is limited. Surviving materials from the period show the school identified itself primarily through printed letterheads and rubber stamps bearing its name. A photograph mount in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, for example, carries a crossed-out black stamp reading “Staatliche Schule / für Kunst und Handwerk / Saarbrücken.”[3]
The school’s graphic design program was led from 1953 by the Swiss-born graphic artist Robert Sessler, who had trained at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich.[4][5] Sessler taught applied graphics at the school and its successor institutions until 1979.[6] While he designed numerous word-signets and corporate marks during his career, including the owl signet for the University of Saarland in 1958,[4] no source confirms that Sessler designed a logo for the school itself in 1946, the year of its founding. Sessler did not arrive in Saarbrücken until 1953.[4]
The school was established in November 1946, offering courses in basic design, architecture, sculpture, graphics, and painting.[7] In 1952 it moved to the Keplerstraße in Saarbrücken.[8] The institution was renamed Staatliche Werkkunstschule Saarbrücken in 1959,[1] and in 1971 it was incorporated as the design department of the newly founded Fachhochschule des Saarlandes.[9] The HBKsaar was established in 1989 as the successor institution.[10]
Meaning and Symbolism
Because no documented signet or emblem for the Staatliche Schule für Kunst und Handwerk has been verified in the available research, no official symbolism can be attributed to a school logo from this period. The school’s identity during its 1946 to 1959 existence appears to have relied on typographic letterheads and stamps rather than a pictorial mark, based on surviving archival materials.[3]
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