Berger was born in
Zmajevac in
Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day
Croatia). She completed education at the Collegiate School for Girls in Vienna before enrolling in the Royal Academy of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb, now the
Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb. She continued her studies in
Zagreb until 1926 before attending
Bauhaus in
Dessau, Germany. There, Berger studied under
László Moholy-Nagy,
Paul Klee, and
Wassily Kandinsky, among others. Berger has been described as "one of the most talented students at the weaving workshop in Dessau." A core member of the experimental approach to textiles at the Bauhaus, Berger experimented with methodology and materials during the course of her studies at the Bauhaus to eventually include plastic textiles intended for mass production. Along with
Anni Albers and
Gunta Stölzl, Berger pushed back against the understanding of textiles as a feminine craft and utilized rhetoric used in photography and painting to describe her work. During her time in
Dessau, she also wrote a treatise on fabrics and the methodology of textile production, which stayed with
Walter Gropius and was never published. In 1929, Berger attended classes at Praktiska Vävnadsskolan in Stockholm where she wrote a nine-page thesis about Swedish Weaving techniques called 'Schwedische Bindungslehre', which later influenced her published weaving instructing booklet,
Bindungslehre. In 1931, Berger became the new head of weaving at the Bauhaus under the advisement of Stolzl, who had resigned from the position. She began to create her own curriculum, and acted as a mentor to younger Bauhaus students who carried on Bauhaus methods, including Paris-based weaver Zsuzsa Markos-Ney and , who became a hand weaver in South Africa. It was a short-lived position, however, as she was replaced in 1932 by
Lilly Reich, the partner of new Bauhaus director
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. ==Career==