For yet another week we’ll continue the voyage into the phenomenon of Bauhaus. Having thus far dealt with the women of Bauhaus represented by Anni Albers and its connection to Greece, exemplified by Jan Despo (Ioannis Despotopoulos). Today we’ll have a look on the tragic side of Bauhaus, as not all of its teachers survived WW2. So let’s get to opening this week’s Crate without further ado.

1. Friedl Dicker-Brandeis was born in Vienna in a working class family and lost her mother in an early age. Having studied graphic arts and joined the school of Johannes Itten in Vienna, Friedl and a number of other students followed Itten to Weimar after he moved there to teach in Bauhaus. Her interests tended to gravitate towards painting, color theory, theatre stage design, and art pedagogy that she started practising already whilst in Bauhaus. Her involvement with the Communist Party led her to move to Czechoslovakia later on, and despite having obtained a passport to Palestine, before the eve of WW2, she remained there, as her husband Pavel Brandeis was unable to get one. In 1942 both of them were sent to Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp. There Friedl Dicker-Brandeis spent the last 2 years of her life teaching art to hundreds of children using a modified Bauhaus system, designing theatre sets and painting as much as available supplies allowed. Two years later, she was sent to Auschwitz and gassed. After her death over 5,000 drawings of her students were found – most of which are now if the Jewish Museum in Prague.

2. Occasionally intimidated by the requests for ‘native speakers’ of a language in any capacity? Apparently you shouldn’t be. When it comes to communication, the non-native speakers actually have an advantage.

3. How well do you actually see color? Take this test to find out.

4. When it comes to relationships, there are in fact not two but three kinds of people – takers, givers and matchers. (by Ness Labs)

5. When you look at the supermarket shelves these days, it’s easy to get an impression that there are only about 5 kinds of apples in existence. However, there used to be hundreds.

6. And to finish off for this week, here’s Tom Gauld’s take on Princess Bookworm and Count Dracula.

And that’s it for this time. Happy reading and until next week!

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