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Witness History

The creation of the modern kitchen

Witness History

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, History

4.51.6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 January 2026

⏱️ 12 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1926, Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky created the modern kitchen. It was called the Frankfurt Kitchen and was something she didn’t like to talk about as she had done so much more - she was her country's first female architect, she championed women's rights and played a role in the Austrian Communist resistance against the Nazi regime. She once said, “If I had known that everyone would keep talking about nothing else, I would never have built that damned kitchen!"

Christine Zwingl, an architect and expert on Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, tells Gill Kearsley about Margarete’s remarkable creation.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.

(Photo: The Frankfurt Kitchen in 1926. Credit: ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Transcript

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Your Dead to Me, is back for a new series.

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Yes, we'll explore Emperor Nero's notorious reign with Professor Marybeard and Patton Oswald.

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We'll dissect the decadent life of Philippe Duke-Dolion with Tom Allen.

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I've often tried to pretend I'm an aristocrat and being very quickly knocked down.

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0:43.2

Hello, welcome to witness history with me, Jill Kursley. If this is already one of your

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