Alexander Koch

Alexander Koch (1860–1939) was the editor and publisher of leading German decorative arts journals Innendekoration and Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration. He also organised the 1901 House for an Art Lover competition and in 1902, was a member of the organising committee of the Turin International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art.

Educated in Cologne and Stuttgart, Koch began his career in the Darmstadt wallpaper manufacturing firm of his father-in-law, Carl Hochstätter. There he developed the idea of a specialist trade journal. In 1887 he established his own publishing house in Darmstadt, the Verlagsanstalt Alexander Koch, from where the Tapeten-Zeitung (Wallpaper News) appeared from 1888. His interests in contemporary decorative arts, and in interior design as a whole, led to the publication of the journals Innendekoration from 1890 and Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration from 1896, as well as further, more specialist journals and many illustrated monographs from 1900 onwards. Early on, Belgian architect Henry van de Velde contributed substantially to Innendekoration and for some years a French-language edition of the journal also appeared. Koch's journals included work from across Europe and, like many German-language publications of the period, showed a strong interest in up-to-date British design. For a time, Koch appears to have been particularly fond of Mackintosh and M. H. Bailie Scott. Their 'House for an Art Lover' designs, and those of Leopold Bauer, were each published in folio format by Koch as Meister der Innen-Kunst. Haus eines Kunstfreundes in 1901–2.

Koch's journals promoted and were supported by the avant-garde fine and decorative art and architecture movement at the Darmstadt Artists' Colony on the Mathildenhöhe, established in 1898 under the patronage of Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hessen. It is thought that the Mathildenhöhe may have been the site envisaged for the House for an Art Lover, should a design ever have been selected for construction, and that behind the competition's notional client was Koch himself, revealed in the provision in the competition conditions of bedrooms and living rooms for specific family members on the first floor of the house. Koch was father to eight daughters and a son from two marriages, to Anna-Maria Hochstätter from 1886 to 1911, and Elizabeth von Sichartshoff from 1914 until his death. Koch did build a House for an Art Lover, albeit in a very different form in 1926. That year he published an illustrated monograph titled Das Haus eines Kunstfreundes, documenting his own recently completed home in Darmstadt, designed by young German architect Fritz August Breuhaus.

The Verlagsanstalt Alexander Koch was moved to Stuttgart in 1932. Its premises, including the archive, and Koch's house in Darmstadt, were destroyed in 1944; however, the firm was subsequently rebuilt by his son, a daughter and a son-in-law, until it was taken over in 1971. 1

Koch the German publisher should not be confused with the Swiss architect Alexander Koch (1848–1911), who was probably best known in the UK as editor of Academy Architecture and Architectural Review, which he founded in London in 1889. 2