Ulli Kampelmann

Ulli Kampelmann

Ulli Kampelmann is a Florida based film maker, luxury watch designer and artist.

Early life

Ulli was the fifth of six children born to Wilhelm Heinrich Kampelmann and Elsa (née Pilz) in Halle (Saale), Sachsen Anhalt, East Germany.

Since she can remember, Ulli was drawn to the arts. Sculpture, painting, design and even dancing and singing were strong interests as she matured.

When Ulli was eleven, her mother taught her how to make jewelry. Delighted and enamored with the beauty of all forms of jewelry, she made and sold bracelets and necklaces to her friends, family and teachers; earning her first income.

She wished to become a professional artist or designer but to do so she had to have an education. Unfortunately, she and her siblings were disqualified from receiving any university education. Higher education was reserved for upstanding and loyal citizens of the Socialist state. But her family were Catholic which, though allowed at the time, was yet heavily frowned upon. Secondly, her father, a master metal-smith, was one of the very few self-employed craftsmen in a society where men and women worked for the state as a rule. Since his services were desperately needed, his small company was allowed to exist though he did have to pay 90% income tax. Lastly, the family had attempted to escape in 1959 when Ulli was only seven. She, her mother and her two brothers successfully arrived in West Berlin but her father and older sister were arrested by the Stasi and he was imprisoned in the Roter Ochse prison. So, the family all returned to their home to await the father's release some two years later.

In 1969, Ulli's father received a request from the Teaching University in Halle for some special metal work. He agreed to carry out their project on the condition that his youngest daughter be allowed to take the entrance exam for the school. The school relented and ultimately Ulli passed and went on to receive her Master's Degree in education with an emphasis on art education.

However, Ulli was always free-spirited and rebellious and she repeatedly clashed with the stifling strictures of Socialism. Risking prison and possibly death, she successfully escaped to West Berlin in the tiny trunk of a friend’s Renault 4.

After working for a short time as a teacher in The Reinfelder School for deaf children, she moved to Münster to continue her training as an artist and eventually to Stuttgart. She hired on with the Stuttgart Opera House where she designed and created costumes, crowns and jewelry for the "royalty" on stage. However, she presently began to focus her artistic talents on modern art rather than design and she moved on to develop her career as a sculptor and painter.

Now Ulli has returned to her earlier passion for creating jewelry, which has matured specifically into high-design luxury timepieces.

Artistic career

Previous to her foray into watch design, Ulli became successful as a professional artist in the state of Baden Württemberg under the pseudonym Ulli Bernstein with her public and private artworks. She prefers modern and abstract styles for her artworks and her medium for the last two decades has been architectural flat glass. Painting and etching large glass sheets for installation into buildings made gained her a modicum of success in and around Stuttgart, Germany. Her artworks adorn a number of banks and businesses including the public bath Vierordtbad in Karlsruhe, the lobby of Corporate Express, the Golf club house at Domäne Niederrutin owned by Carl, Duke of Württemberg and the Bistro within the Mercedes-Benz showroom in Stuttgart.

She currently has an ongoing art exhibition within the City of Clearwater, Florida Municipal Services Building.

Ulli Kampelmann's research for new and unusual materials and technologies for use in her artworks brought her across an emerging yet still mostly unknown technology of laminating LEDs inside glass panels. Besides using this material in a number of her works, she founded the company LEDs in Glass to promote and sell the actual panels for use in architectural, artistic and decorative installations. Blain Brownell happened across her work and included mention of the products in his yearly architectural materials catalogue 'Transmaterial'.

Author

Ulli was a contributing author for Imago Magazine for six months with her article titles, “Ulli on Art”. With her husband, she authored a full length screenplay detailing the adventures surrounding her three escapes from East Germany. (Ulli is likely to be the only person who successfully escaped from East Germany three times.)

Educator

Ulli spent her first two years in the United States writing a complete visual art education for schools, which has been purchased by two private schools so far. As a licensed provider for continuing education to architects, Ulli delivered a number of speeches on the subject of art and design in architecture.

Filmmaker

In 2010, Ulli expanded her interests into film making. She produced a short documentary The Car is Born - a documentary about Carl and Bertha Benz which depicts the events that lead up to the invention of the automobile by Carl Benz as well as the historic road trip made by his wife Bertha Benz and their two sons Eugen and Richard in 1888.

She has another project in production: a documentary named That Damned Wall chronicling various conditions of life in East Germany and detailing her adventures and experiences which culminated in her daring escape to West Berlin in 1975.

External links

• [1] Official website of Ulli Kampelmann Timepieces
• [2] Official website of Ulli's artworks
• [3] Blog about Ulli Kampelmann
• [4] Official Website of the documentary about life behind the Iron Curtain
• [5] Official website for the documentary about Carl and Bertha Benz - the Car is Born