Bauhaus

Bauhaus. A school of art and design founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919 and closed by the Nazis in 1933 after moving successively to Dessau (1925) and Berlin (1932); in spite of its short life, it was the most famous art school of the 20th century, playing key roles in establishing the relationship between design and industrial techniques and in breaking down the hierarchy that had previously divided ‘fine’ from ‘applied’ arts.

The Bauhaus was created when Gropius was appointed head of two art schools in Weimar in 1919 and united them in one; they were the Kunstgewerbeschule (Arts and Crafts School) and the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst (Institute of Fine Arts). He gave his new school the name Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar (Weimar State ‘Building House'), coining himself the word ‘Bauhaus’ (an inversion of ‘Hausbau'—house construction). His manifesto formulated three main aims for the school: first, to unite the arts so that painters, sculptors, and craftsmen could in future embark on co-operative projects, combining all their skills harmoniously; secondly, to raise the status of the crafts to that enjoyed by the fine arts; and thirdly, to establish ‘constant contact with the leaders of the crafts and industries of the country’ (an important factor if the school were to survive in a country that was in economic chaos after the war).

All students had to take a six-month preliminary course (Vorkurs) in which they studied the principles of form and colour, were acquainted with various materials, and were encouraged to develop their creativity. After that they moved on to workshop training in the field of their choice. Each workshop—in carpentry, metalwork, stained glass, weaving, typography, and so on—was run by two people—a Werkmeister (Workshop Master—a craftsman) and a Formmeister (Master of Design—an artist): ‘The former would teach method and technique while the latter, working in close co-operation with the craftsmen, would introduce students to the mystery of creativity and help them achieve a formal language of their own’ ( Frank Whitford, Bauhaus, 1984). In theory the Werkmeister and Formmeister had equal status, but in practice the Formmeister were regarded as more important. Students were known as ‘journeymen’ and then (after moving to the workshop stage) as ‘apprentices', emphasizing the craft-based nature of the school.

Gropius brought together a remarkable collection of teachers at the Bauhaus. The first head of the preliminary course was Johannes Itten, and when he left in 1923 he was succeeded by László Moholy-Nagy, who replaced Itten's rather metaphysical approach with an austerely rational one. The Formmeister included some illustrious painters, most notably Kandinsky and Klee. Lyonel Feininger was the only teacher to be on the Bauhaus staff for its entire history (although he did little actual teaching for much of that time). Among the few women teachers the most important was the weaver Gunta Stölzl (1897–1983) (see FIBRE ART). Admission was difficult for students and many who did get in were rejected after the preliminary course. On average there were about a hundred students at the Bauhaus at any one time, the total enlistment in its 14-year history being about 1,250. Several students went on to become teachers at the school, notably Josef Albers and Herbert Bayer.

In 1924 right-wingers gained power in the provincial elections and cut funding to the Bauhaus, which consequently moved to Dessau the following year; it was housed in a group of new buildings designed by Gropius (built 1925–6). The school now styled itself a Hochschule für Gestaltung (Institute for Design), teachers were called professors (a term Gropius had previously avoided because it smacked of academicism), and the dual Werkmeister–Formmeister system was abandoned; Gropius had envisaged this last change from the start, for now former students were available to teach both theory and practice: ‘a new previously unavailable type of collaborator for industry, craft, and building, who is the master equally of technique and form'.

The Bauhaus had been involved in architectural commissions from the outset (Gropius's manifesto had begun by saying ‘the ultimate aim of all creative activity is the building'), but it was only in 1927 that an architectural department was established. Students who chose to specialize in this subject after their preliminary course were not obliged to acquire any craft skill. The Swiss architect Hannes Meyer (1889–1954) was appointed first professor in this department, and when Gropius resigned suddenly a year later to devote himself to private practice he named Meyer as his successor as director. It was an unpopular choice with the staff, as Meyer was a Marxist and instituted a sociological approach that changed the whole tone of the school, with politics occupying an important place in the curriculum. Moholy-Nagy resigned immediately and Bayer soon afterwards. Meyer wanted the Bauhaus to supply ‘the needs of the people instead of the needs of luxury’ and encouraged the workshops to make mass-produced goods. His approach earned considerable funds for the school but disaffected most of the staff, who hated the idea of advertising dominating aesthetics. In 1930 Meyer was forced to resign and was replaced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969), one of the greatest architects of the 20th century.

Mies's main task was to rid the school of its political associations and thereby make it a less easy target for its right-wing opponents (the Nazi party was gaining strength throughout Germany). However, there were now a good many committed left-wing students at the school and one of their noisy meetings almost degenerated into a riot. Mies banned all political activity on threat of expulsion, but in 1932 the Dessau parliament closed the school. In an attempt to keep it alive Mies rented a disused factory in Berlin and reopened the Bauhaus there as a private enterprise, but it was closed by the Nazis in April 1933, soon after Hitler assumed power.

In its last few years the Bauhaus was dominated by architecture, but it produced a great range of goods, with many of them (furniture, textiles, and electric light fittings in particular) being adopted for large-scale manufacture. They were highly varied in appearance, but the style that is generally thought typical of the Bauhaus was severe, geometric, and undecorated. The school published a journal (Bauhaus, 1926–31) and a series of books, and its ideas were spread also by the emigration of many of its teachers before and during the Second World War (an exhibition was devoted to the Bauhaus at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1938, and the fact that the school had fallen victim to the Nazis enhanced its status in the democratic world). It has had an enormous influence on art education in the Western world and on visual creativity in general: ‘The look of the modern environment is unthinkable without it. It left an indelible mark on activities as varied as photography and newspaper design … [and] achieved a language of design liberated from the historicism of the previous hundred years’ ( Frank Whitford, Bauhaus).

After the Second World War Dessau became part of East Germany and the Bauhaus buildings were left derelict. In 1976 the school was faithfully restored for the 50th anniversary of its opening in Dessau, and after the reunification of Germany in 1990 it was reopened as a design institution.