Student - Life - at - The - Bauhaus - 1919 - 1933 - MASTER RAD PDF

STUDENT LIFE AT THE BAUHAUS
1919-1933
A Thesis Presented
by
ERIC C. CIMINO
Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies and Research,

University of Massachusetts Boston, in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
August 2003
History Program
i
Copyright 2003 by Eric C. Cimino
All rights reserved
ii
1919-1933
A Thesis Presented
By
Eric C. Cimino
Approved as to style and content by:
Paul Bookbinder, Associate Professor

Chairperson of Committee
Woodruff Smith, Professor

Member
Nancy Stieber, Associate Professor, Art Department

Member
Spencer Di Scala, Program Director

History Program
iii
ABSTRACT

1919-1933
August 2003
Eric C. Cimino, B.A., University of Delaware

M.A., University of Massachusetts Boston
Directed by Professor Paul Bookbinder
This study examines student life at the Bauhaus in Germany, arguably the most
important art school of the twentieth century, in order to further explore the dynamics of
the institution and its relation to the Weimar Republic. Chapters 2 and 4 focus on the
general student experience, first in the town of Weimar (1919-25) and then in
Dessau/Berlin (1925-33). Chapters 3, 5, and 6 deal with the themes of mysticism, student
politics, and women at the Bauhaus. The main primary sources for this thesis are the
three major English language documentary collections on the Bauhaus, various published
accounts by Bauhaus masters and students, and a series of interviews with former
students.
I found that the students were a vital part of the Bauhaus, contributing in
important ways to its development and success, as well as to the ever-present controversy
that surrounded the school. The students also provide a striking example of modern life
in early 20th century Germany. Throughout the six chapters, and particularly with the
thematic chapters, the Bauhaus’s relationship to modernity is shown to be constantly in
flux and sometimes contradictory, in many ways like Weimar society itself.
iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For permission to quote from interviews in the Judith Pearlman Archive at the
Getty Research Institute, I would like to thank Wim de Wit from the Getty Research
Institute, Yael Aloni representing Gunta Stoelzl, Marianne Herold of the Lis and Roman
Clemens Foundation, Brenda Danilowitz from the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, and
Caitlin Miller from Artists Rights Society (representing Max Bill).
Special thanks are given to my thesis committee at the University of
Massachusetts in Boston: Professors Paul Bookbinder, Woodruff Smith, and Nancy
Stieber. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the History Department, who
provided a former mathematician with the opportunity to become a historian.
Finally, it is important to have encouragement from those whom you love when
pursuing such a challenging project. I thank my family and my soon-to-be wife,
Suzanne, for their unwavering support and interest in what I do.
E.C.C.
Boston, MA
July 13, 2003
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………... v
LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………………. vii
INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………. 1
CHAPTER
1. PRE WAR GERMAN ART EDUCATION REFORM

AND THE FOUNDING OF THE WEIMAR BAUHAUS…….. 9
2. STUDENT LIFE: WEIMAR, 1919-25………………………… 14
3. MYSTICISM AT THE BAUHAUS………………………….... 36
4. STUDENT LIFE: DESSAU AND BERLIN, 1925-33………… 49
5. STUDENT POLITICS…………………………………………. 73
6. WOMEN AT THE BAUHAUS………………………………... 96
CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………….. 112
BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………….. 114
vi
LIST OF TABLES
Table
1. Bauhaus Students in Weimar, 1919-25…………...…..…………….. 19
2. New Students per Year, 1927-33…………………….……………... 53
3. Percentage of New Male and Female Students per Year, 1927-33… 55
vii
INTRODUCTION
Up until the 1980s our knowledge of the Bauhaus was primarily transmitted to us
by its famous émigrés such as founder Walter Gropius and his wife Ise, Laszlo Moholy-
Nagy, and Josef Albers, all of whom obtained prominent positions at important American
colleges or, in Moholy’s case, a school of his own creation.1 Gropius in particular, with
the help of Alfred Barr, the first director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, strongly
advocated the association of the Bauhaus with the beginning of a new, modern approach
to architecture,2 which came to be known as the International Style or Bauhaus Style.3
The founders’ emphasis on the school’s architectural and design legacy came at the
expense of recognizing the Bauhaus’s turbulent social and political history.
So in the 1980s, after most of its main protagonists had died, some revision began
in Bauhaus history. The art historians Frank Whitford and Gillian Naylor contributed
two of the most significant English language works in this revision.4 Whitford’s is a
good introduction to the Bauhaus’s existence in the Weimar Republic. The book’s most
1
Moholy started the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937.
2
As a result, the Bauhaus is primarily known for its innovations in architecture, although it also
contributed to, among other things, the reform of art education and the modernization of designs for
household goods. For published works on the Bauhaus by its former leaders see Herbert Bayer, Ise
Gropius, and Walter Gropius, eds., Bauhaus 1919-1928 (Boston: Charles T. Branford Company, 1959) and
Walter Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965). For more on
Alfred Barr, MoMA, and the Bauhaus see Elaine Hochman, Bauhaus: Crucible of Modernism (New York:
Fromm International, 1997).
3
According to Kenneth Frampton, the International Style denoted “a cubistic mode of architecture… which
generally favored lightweight technique, synthetic modern materials and standard modular parts so as to
facilitate fabrication and erection.” Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, Third Revised
Edition (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992), p. 248.
4
Frank Whitford, Bauhaus (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984). Gillian Naylor, The Bauhaus
Reassessed: Sources and Design Theory (London: The Herbert Press, 1985).
1
important contribution is its portrayal of the various stages of the Bauhaus’s early
development, making it clear that the school was a dynamic institution.5 Naylor’s book,
Bauhaus Reassessed, is one of the earliest critical histories of the Bauhaus, which firmly
roots the institution in a long line of reformers in art, craft, and architecture. In addition,
Naylor raises the question of why so little architectural work was actually done at a
school that claimed to organize all artistic pursuits around architecture. She characterizes
the school as more of a crafts and technical institution than one based on architecture.
Soon after her book, the former American Bauhaus student, Howard Dearstyne, followed
with an account that raised similar issues and challenged the accuracy of how Gropius
presented the school to the public.6 Since Dearstyne had studied with the Bauhaus’s third
director, Mies van der Rohe, he was able to articulate Mies’s contribution to the Bauhaus,
which had long been ignored.
These works set the stage for further critical looks at the Bauhaus in the 1990s,
beginning with translations of German scholar Magdalena Droste’s Bauhaus: 1919-1933
and Hungarian Bauhaus specialist Éva Forgács’s The Bauhaus Idea and Bauhaus
Politics.7 Forgács’s work is particularly noteworthy for bringing to light the diversity of
ideas that were held by the various Bauhaus masters, such as Gropius, Johannes Itten,
Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Hannes
Meyer. While Gropius’s vision for the school carried the most weight, his aims were
constantly tested and debated by his faculty who had their own ideas of how a Bauhaus
5
The book’s main weakness is that Whitford virtually ignores the final two directors of the Bauhaus,
Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, which makes his portrayal incomplete.
6
Howard Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus, David Spaeth, ed. (New York: Rizzoli International Publications,
1986).
7
Magdalena Droste, Bauhaus: 1919-1933, Trans. by Karen Williams (Berlin: Benedikt Taschen Verlag
GmbH & Co. KG, 1990). Éva Forgács, The Bauhaus Idea and Bauhaus Politics, Trans. by John Bátki
(New York: Central European University Press, 1995).
2
utopia should look. Forgács also seriously examines Meyer’s tenure as Bauhaus director
and emphasizes his impact on the school’s ideology. Toward the end of the decade,
Elaine Hochman wrote the most comprehensive English-language history of the
institution, utilizing previously off-limit archives in the former East Germany.8 In her
introduction she writes, “What has been missing from general view for more than fifty
years is not so much an awareness of the Bauhaus’s interaction with its society, but an
account of the school’s daily affairs that could verify and confirm it.”9 She thoroughly
describes the Bauhaus’s ongoing struggle for existence in the Weimar Republic, how the
fortunes and accomplishments of the school ebbed and flowed with the politics of the
times. When this experience was ignored in the United States, the Bauhaus became
primarily associated with a style; its social and political dimensions largely ignored.
With comprehensive histories having been written, scholars have now started to
examine specific aspects and themes relating to the school’s history. In 2000 a major
collection of essays by 32 primarily German scholars appeared.10 This collection, edited
by Jeannine Fiedler and Peter Feierabend, devotes substantial time to the social history of
the school, analyzing, among other topics, the roles of music, parties, love, gender, and
8
Hochman, Crucible of Modernism.
9
Ibid., p. 4. It is common for historians to see the Bauhaus as representative of the various experiments in
art, architecture, technology, and reason that took place in the Weimar Republic. See Peter Gay, Weimar
Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), John Willett, Art and Politics in the
Weimar Period: The New Sobriety, 1917-1933 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), and Paul Bookbinder
and Judith Bookbinder, The Weimar Republic: The Republic of the Reasonable (New York: Manchester
University Press, 1996). Hochman is concerned with providing exact details of the Bauhaus’s existence so
that historians and art historians will have a sounder basis on which to make their generalizations.
10
Jeannine Fiedler and Peter Feierabend, eds., Bauhaus (Cologne: Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH,
2000).
3
mysticism at the Bauhaus.11 It also deals with the compatibility of Bauhaus modernism
with Nazism and considers other negative aspects of modernity, topics which most
Bauhaus literature treats only cursory. The most recent study is cultural historian Anja
Baumhoff’s The Gendered World of the Bauhaus, which is the first monograph on the
school to deal exclusively with one aspect of its social history.12 Baumhoff found that the
Bauhaus engaged in active discrimination against its female members, which
contradicted its stated egalitarian and modern goals.
To sum up, only in the past twenty years has a critical literature begun to emerge
on the Bauhaus, which examines in-depth the various stages of its development and roots
these stages amongst the diverse ideas and experiences of its members, as well as the
turbulent society of the Weimar Republic. Through this more mature presentation, our
understanding of early modernity is enhanced as well. Continuing along these lines,
particularly the path of Fiedler and Feierabend and Anja Baumhoff, my study focuses on
student life at the Bauhaus with the goal of further exploring the dynamics of the school
and its relation to the Weimar Republic.
Arriving at the Bauhaus during a time of unprecedented turmoil, the students
believed they carried nothing less than their own and Germany’s future on their
shoulders. As artists of all sorts, they rallied around the school’s call to unite the arts
11
According to Fiedler and Feierabend, “The Bauhaus as a focal point for the radical modernization of
everyday life became in the 1920s the catalyst of a new self-awareness.” Its achievement lay in bringing
together a variety of different attitudes and “… establishing them, in an unconventional manner, in an
actual school. New styles in fashion and new forms of living together, modern concepts of the body,
esoteric theories and techniques such as Mazdaznan, experiments in free love, … and the Bauhaus parties
as seismographs for the spirit of the age and its delight in experimentation – these were the life-enhancing
recipes for the élan of the Bauhaus and for an undiminished vitality…” Bauhaus, p. 10.
12
Anja Baumhoff, The Gendered World of the Bauhaus: The Politics of Power at the Weimar Republic’s
Premier Art Institute (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang GmbH, 2001). The book is based on her doctoral
dissertation at John Hopkins University.
4
with society in pursuit of a new way of life, free from war and chaos; although how this
was to be achieved was a source of great contention among students and masters alike.
Chapters 2 and 4 are organized chronologically to describe student life at the
Bauhaus in the town of Weimar (1919-25) and Dessau/Berlin (1925-33). Central to
Chapter 2 is capturing the students’ initial expectations and their perceptions of the
school when they arrived in Weimar, as well as how they proceeded to establish a
community. The lifestyles of the first batch of students set the tone for those coming
after them and provided the world with a striking example of modern life.
Chapter 4 focuses more on the artistic experience of the students from 1925-33.
This is the period where the Bauhaus’s program and its relation to industry and the needs
of society were most clearly defined. It was also when its first architectural department
was established. An examination of the student experience in the workshops and in the
new department is essential for a description of student life during this time and is also
necessary to accurately describe the work being done at the Bauhaus.
Chapters 3, 5, and 6 are thematic essays dealing with the topics of mysticism,
student politics, and women at the Bauhaus. The presence of mysticism and
Expressionism was a subject that in later years Gropius tried to distance his school from.
The two did not match nicely with Gropius’s emphasis on industry and technology.
From 1920-23 Gropius’s leadership of the school was challenged by Johannes Itten, an
Expressionist artist and educator, and also a practitioner of the mystic religion
Mazdaznan. His influence extended deep into the student body and a sect formed around
him. These students made up his core group of followers and cemented Itten’s
prominence at the Bauhaus. However, there were those students who did not follow
5
Mazdaznan and a rift soon developed, making the debate over the future course of the
Bauhaus a heated affair.
Chapter 5 deals with the important topic of student politics. The life of the
Bauhaus cannot be separated from the politics of the Weimar Republic. The school’s
very existence was political to its opponents on the right, who saw the school as a
Communist institution. But what was the Bauhaus’s political orientation really? A look
at student political involvement shows a clear slant toward the left, but only during the
late 1920s was there a strong link to Communism. Once operational, the Bauhaus
Communist cell proved to be one of the most powerful and influential groups on campus.
In the 1930s the school took an active stance against its Communist members. At the
same time, a nationalist student group emerged, including some Nazis. The political
nuances of the Bauhaus were irrelevant to the public however, who consistently saw it as
a political symbol to rally against. However, once the Nazis were firmly in power,
overtures were made to the Bauhaus to keep the school operational under certain
conditions. Stripped of its ideological components, the Bauhaus’s achievements in
design and architecture fit well with the Nazi’s own concept of modernity.
Finally, Chapter 6 considers the experience of women at the Bauhaus. Included
in the Bauhaus’s mission statement was the modern goal of equality between the sexes:
“Any person of good character whose previous education is deemed adequate by the
council of masters will be accepted without regard to age or sex…” Yet, early into the
school’s existence, Walter Gropius and the Council of Masters reversed this goal and
began to limit the amount of women accepted. If admitted, women were to be
6
encouraged to enter the traditionally female domain of weaving. Still, women managed
to carve out a niche for themselves at the Bauhaus and were a vital part of its community.
Historian Detlev Peukert ascribes the following characteristics to Weimar
modernity: industry, functional aesthetics, political democracy, social reforms, civil
rights, and individual freedom.13 The Bauhaus possessed all of these characteristics. I
am interested in the degree to which they were possessed during the various periods of
the school’s history. As a corollary of this investigation, values that appear to contrast
with modernity are also discovered at the Bauhaus. Nationalist students even found in
the school something that they could believe in and, later, so too did the Nazis, which
illustrates modernism’s compatibility with the right as well as with the left. The thematic
chapters in particular demonstrate that the Bauhaus’s relationship to modernity was
constantly in flux and sometimes contradictory, in many ways like Weimar society itself.
****
The main primary sources used in this thesis are the documentary collections from
Hans M. Wingler, Frank Whitford, and Eckhard Neumann.14 Wingler’s book is a 700-
page compilation of documents and images taken from the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin. It
is rich with official papers, correspondences, and newspaper articles that relate to the
student experience. It also contains the most complete list of Bauhaus students, which is
13
Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity, Trans. by Richard Deveson
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1992).
14
Hans. M. Wingler, The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago, Trans. by Wolfgang Jabs and Basil
Gilbert, Joseph Stein, ed. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1969). Frank Whitford, ed., The Bauhaus: Masters
& Students by Themselves (Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1992). Eckhard Neumann, ed., Bauhaus
and Bauhaus People: Personal Opinions and Recollections of Former Bauhaus Members and Their
Contemporaries (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970).
7
particularly helpful in determining enrollment statistics. Whitford’s collection is similar
to Wingler’s, but it is more concise and also includes new documents that were
previously unavailable. In Bauhaus and Bauhaus People, Eckhard Neumann has
assembled personal recollections from a variety of students, masters, and other
contemporaries, which contain lively accounts of life at the Bauhaus. Also important to
this thesis are a series of interviews conducted by Judith Pearlman with former students
over a five year period, 1980-1985.15 Four of these interviews with Gunta Stoelzl, Anni
Albers, Max Bill, and Roman Clemens are utilized throughout these six chapters. For a
complete list of works cited and other relevant texts, refer to the Bibliography.
15
Judith Pearlman, “Interviews of Bauhaus Masters and Students,” 1980-5, Transcripts, Judith
Pearlman Archive, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (acc. # 920069).
8
CHAPTER 1
PRE WAR GERMAN ART EDUCATION REFORM

AND THE FOUNDING OF THE WEIMAR BAUHAUS
Pre War German Art Education Reform
Prior to World War I there was movement in Germany to incorporate craft training
into the traditional art education system. Where possible, architecture and engineering
were to be included as well. This desire for change was, in part, due to Germany’s
reliance on its skilled labor force to produce high quality products that could compensate
for the country’s lack of raw materials and its weakness in mass production as compared
to its competitors England and the United States.1 Designers and craftsmen were critical
to this effort. By 1914 sixty-three out of eighty-one art schools had craft departments
alongside the fine arts. However, many of the craft departments were small. The pre-
Bauhaus schools that most successfully incorporated the fine arts, architecture, and crafts
were the Düsseldorf School of Arts and Crafts run by Peter Behrens and the Breslau
Academy directed by Hermann Poelzig.2
1
Whitford, Bauhaus, p. 27.
2
Ibid., p. 28. Behrens’s school was significant because it also contained a strong industrial component,
which he sought to integrate with the study of art, craft, and architecture. Marcel Franciscono, Walter
Gropius and the Creation of the Bauhaus in Weimar (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), p. 32.
This approach was a major tenet of the Werkbund, a group of reform-minded architects, designers, and
teachers led by Hermann Muthesius, to which Behrens was a member. Muthesius believed that “modern
means,” particularly industry, were necessary to meet “modern needs.” Naylor, Bauhaus Reassessed, p. 39.
Gropius, who also was in the Werkbund, shared this train of thought and it shaped his pre-war views on
architecture and art education. However, industrial considerations did not factor prominently in the early
Bauhaus. The Werkbund ideas influenced the Bauhaus curriculum after 1923.
9
One of the ways that the Bauhaus in Weimar differed from these institutions was
in its curriculum. Previous reform had consisted of adding a crafts school to an already
existing fine arts institution. Usually, the two did not work closely together. The
Bauhaus hoped to change this. It was unsuccessful in working with the Weimar Grand
Ducal School of Fine Arts, but on its own managed to integrate the theoretical approach
of an art academy with the more practical emphasis of a crafts school.3 Workshops at the
Bauhaus were run not only by craftsmen, but by fine artists who served as Master of
Form. Such prestigious artists as Wassily Kandinsky (1922-33), Lyonel Feininger (1919-
32), Oskar Schlemmer (1921-9), and Paul Klee (1921-31) lent their skills to the
workshops, albeit with some reluctance.
Essential to the curriculum was the Preliminary Course, developed by Johannes
Itten in 1919. In this course, which was required of all incoming students, each student
was to unearth his/her creative power by experimentation with various materials, colors,
and forms. Important to Itten was the “recognition and creation” of contrasts. Students
experimented with light and dark colors to arrive at different expressive qualities. They
also worked with contrasting materials – drawing the materials as well as making three-
dimensional constructions with them. When handling the materials, special attention was
to be paid to their physical qualities. This exercise was intended to “sharpen perception
and expand the scope of creation.”4 Discovery and experimentation became a Bauhaus
3
Arthur Efland, A History of Art Education: Intellectual and Social Currents in Teaching the Visual Arts.
(New York: Teachers College Press: 1990), p. 215.
4
Bauhaus Archive Berlin, Museum of Design: The Collection, Trans. by Helen Adkins (Berlin: Bauhaus
Archive Berlin, 1999), p. 44. Naylor, Bauhaus Reassessed, pp. 77-8.
10
trademark, providing it with the foundation “to create either functional or expressive
forms.”5
Another important difference between the Bauhaus and other early reformed
schools in Germany was its social outlook. Faculty and students at reformed art schools
were primarily concerned with breaking away from the traditional art school curriculum
and modernizing craftwork and architecture. So too was the Bauhaus, but its core
members not only saw themselves as art reformers, but as societal reformers as well – a
stance that was common to many artists who were part of the post-war Expressionist
movement. In its early years the Bauhaus produced handcrafted items, whose
Expressionist designs represented the new utopian hopes of the era. Later, the Bauhaus
became more concerned with issues such as low-cost mass housing and the design of
functional and affordable household products and other items for daily life.
The Town of Weimar and the Founding of the Bauhaus
Weimar was a town of 40,000 inhabitants. It was best known for a few of its very
famous past residents, such as Goethe, Bach, Schiller, and Liszt. The town’s economy
primarily relied on agriculture. Several craft-based industries played a prominent role as
well.6 Politically, Weimar was a conservative town, virtually unfazed by the November
Revolution of 1918. The townsfolk were proud of their storied past and did not view
positively the changes brought on by the revolution.
In terms of art education, Weimar was a typical example of the times. Pre World
War I, it housed a traditional School of Fine Arts, but alongside it stood a new School of
5
Efland, A History of Art Education, p. 218.
6
Naylor, Bauhaus Reassessed, p. 49.
11
Arts and Crafts, headed by the progressive designer and architect Henry van de Velde.
Van de Velde, of Belgian origin, was forced out of Germany during the war, which
resulted in the closing of his craft school. But after the war, the art academy sought to
reestablish a craft school in Weimar.
In normal times, Walter Gropius would not have thought of Weimar as an ideal
place for a radical architect to find work. But times after the war were anything but
ordinary. Due to the economic crisis, his prospects of finding architectural work in
Germany were slim.7 However, the closing of Van de Velde’s School of Arts and Crafts
had created a gap in Weimar’s art education and also left the goal of updating its craft
industries unfulfilled. His architectural practice might have to be put on hold, but
Gropius saw Weimar as his best chance for employment and as the best place to
implement his ideas on artistic and societal reform.
The Bauhaus opened in April of 1919. The new institution was essentially a
merger of the Grand Ducal School of Fine Arts and Van de Velde’s defunct School of
Arts and Crafts, under the direction of Walter Gropius. It received its funding from the
Social Democratic (SPD) controlled Thuringian government. Gropius acted quickly to
assert his influence over the new institution, leaving no doubt that craftwork would take
the lead in the school’s curriculum. Some of the old academy faculty stayed on; they
could even teach their old classes. However, when it came to the new curriculum,
Gropius hired local craftsmen and modern artists to share the teaching. Unless they
7
Hochman, Crucible of Modernism, pp. 43-4.
12
agreed with Gropius’s vision, the old faculty were to be phased out.8 Very quickly the
academy faculty became opponents of the Bauhaus.
Along the way, the Bauhaus would also count as adversaries the local
bureaucracy and the citizens of Weimar, who resented the state government funding a
progressive art school in their conservative town, as well as representatives of local
trades, who saw the Bauhaus as a threat to their business. It was not so much the
Expressionist aesthetics of the Bauhaus that irked Weimar, rather it was their goals for
radical change in art education and in society, which were associated with the political
left, that were particularly disturbing.9 As architectural historian Elaine Hochman writes,
“[Gropius and the Bauhaus] gripped the past to forge a better future; Weimar, the
apotheosis of Wilhelminian conservativism, gripped the past to avoid the future.”10
At least initially, the Bauhaus was partly to blame for its hardships, particularly in
regards to Gropius’s handling of the old faculty. The academy faculty deserves credit for
agreeing to bring Gropius in to head the new institution. His quick neglect of their
interests and his single-mindedness in his artistic pursuits rightfully angered the
professors. From then on, it was to be an uphill battle for Gropius, the faculty, and the
students as they struggled for legitimacy in Weimar.
8
Barbara Miller Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918-1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1968, 1985), p. 71.
9
Ibid., p. 70. Naylor, Bauhaus Reassessed, p. 60.
10
Hochman, Crucible of Modernism, p. 44.
13
CHAPTER 2
STUDENT LIFE
WEIMAR, 1919-25
How They Came to Weimar
We begin with a description of how three students, all of whom later became
young masters1, made their way to Weimar. Their stories illuminate a common thread
that runs throughout many recollections of the Bauhaus: young people, searching for a
new approach to life and to art, saw in the Bauhaus a vision similar to their own.
For the first three years of World War I, Gunta Stoelzl was a student at the School
of Arts and Crafts in Munich. Shortly after she turned twenty years old in 1917, she
became a Red Cross nurse and served in France and Italy for the remainder of the war.
When her service was complete, she returned to school where she and her fellow students
were inspired by the wave of uprisings that were taking place throughout Germany. With
changes occurring around them, they looked for change at their own institution.2
During a meeting with the Munich school’s director, Richard Riemerschmid, she
happened to glimpse the manifesto of the new Bauhaus in Weimar. She eagerly asked
Riemerschmid if she could have it. After having read it through, she told her parents, as
if on a quest, “I have to go to Weimar.” So that spring of 1919 she left with her portfolio
1
Bauhaus students who became teachers when the school moved to Dessau were called “young masters.”
2
Gunta Stoelzl, Interview by Judith Pearlman, 11 November 1982, Transcript, Judith Pearlman Archive,
Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (acc. # 920069).
14
of “decorative sketches and designs” and traveled to the Bauhaus to seek admittance.
There she met with Walter Gropius, who looked favorably on her work. Stoelzl was
admitted for the fall of 1919.3
Joost Schmidt did not have to travel far at all when he joined the Bauhaus. In
1910 he began studying at the Weimar Grand Ducal School of Fine Arts. There, he
found that “l’art pour l‘art” dominated the thinking of his instructors, making the
curriculum “very monotonous.” One started by “drawing with painful precision Greek
heroes, gods and demi-gods… After that drawing and painting from life: nudes, portraits,
people in costume. For months, years.” Throughout this time, he learned the most from
his fellow students. With them he could discuss such issues as the “nature of colour and
form, about laws of composition,” topics which the faculty ignored.4
While his artistic sensibility was changing,5 he began to notice the craftwork that
was happening next door at the School of Arts and Crafts, headed by Henry van de
Velde. After attending a lecture by Van de Velde, Schmidt began to question why he was
studying at a fine arts college. Perhaps he should be turning his attention to the crafts?
He writes, “A so-called fine-artist can give vent to his feelings in his picture
thoughtlessly, whereas someone who wants to design a piece of furniture must discipline
his creative urges much more.”6 It seemed only natural that after service in World War I,
3
Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (acc. # 920069). Gunta helped establish the
weaving workshop and eventually became its director in 1927. She was one of the most successful
weavers of her era.
4
Joost Schmidt, “How I Experienced the Bauhaus in Weimar,” 1947, in Whitford, Masters & Students,
p. 22.
5
Unlike Gunta Stoelzl, the war and subsequent revolution were not major influences on Schmidt’s change.
6
Schmidt, “How I Experienced the Bauhaus in Weimar,” p. 23.
15
Schmidt would return to Weimar and make the transition to Gropius’s new school, which
built its curriculum around craftwork.7
Besides official publications and other public relations efforts by the Bauhaus,
word of mouth, though not always accurate, played a prominent role in attracting
students. In the early 1920s Herbert Bayer was an architectural apprentice in Darmstadt,
whose views on art were largely inspired by Wassily Kandinsky’s book About the
Spiritual in Art (1912). Although Kandinksy would not join the faculty until 1922, Bayer
believed him to already be teaching at the Bauhaus in 1921. Since well-known figures
such as Johannes Itten, Lyonel Feininger, and Oskar Schlemmer had been hired by the
Bauhaus, it was not a stretch for the young Bayer to believe that Kandinsky was there as
well. This false impression peaked Bayer’s interest.8
Also capturing Bayer’s imagination were the fascinating stories being told about
the Bauhaus. One in particular motivated him to apply. He writes about a rumor
concerning an unusual admissions practice: “the applicant is locked up in a dark room.
thunder and lightning are let loose to get him into a state of agitation. his being
admitted depends upon how well he expresses this experience by drawing or
painting.”9 Images like this, while frightening to some, greatly appealed to many
potential Bauhäuslers (as members of the Bauhaus came to be called) who were looking
for something out of the ordinary.
7
At the Bauhaus, Schmidt specialized in woodcarving, sculpture, typography, and graphic design.
8
Herbert Bayer, 1967, in Whitford, Masters & Students, p. 112.
9
Ibid., p. 112. This passage is presented in a typographic style similar to one designed and used by Bayer,
which has no capital letters and a “sans serif” font.
16
Enrollment Figures for the Bauhaus in Weimar
Determining exact enrollment statistics for the Bauhaus in Weimar is a difficult
task. According to H. M. Wingler, former Director of the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin and
editor of the major documentary collection The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin,
Chicago, “A complete, official list of all the students of the Weimar Bauhuas is evidently
no longer in existence… Thus, … the list of names is incomplete up to the closing of the
Weimar Bauhaus.”10 Wingler was able to assemble a list of some 600 Weimar Bauhaus
students, which is the best estimate we have as to how many students attended during the
period 1919-25.11 Unfortunately, this list does not indicate the exact dates when each
student attended. Therefore, in order to piece together the year-by-year enrollment, we
must consult other sources.
In the 1919 debut issue of the Bauhaus student newspaper, Der Austausch (The
Exchange), it was reported that 150 students formed the Bauhaus’s first entering class.12
This may well have been the peak enrollment. There were students who did not make it
past the first two years. Many students from the previous Weimar School of Fine Arts
left because they, unlike Joost Schmidt, did not accept the Bauhaus’s radical break with
tradition. Other students withdrew because the school had failed to meet their
expectations, while some could not cope with the dire conditions in Weimar after the war.
In March of 1921 master Oskar Schlemmer noted that students continued to quit the
Bauhaus and that applications were down. He blamed the current decline on the growing
controversies surrounding the Bauhaus, as well as the influence of a traveling preacher
10
H. M. Wingler, Bauhaus, p. 615.
11
See H. M. Wingler, Bauhaus, pp. 615-21.
12
Johannes Auerbach in Der Austausch (Weimar), May 1919, in Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus, p. 48.
17
named Hausser, who encouraged students to drop out and travel to Italy on a
pilgrimage.13 The years after 1921 were hard on the Bauhaus as well. The disastrous
inflation that plagued Germany, particularly during 1922-3, forced some students to cut
their studies short. By 1924 Walter Gropius claimed that there were approximately 132
students at the Bauhaus: 89 apprentices (beginning students) and 43 journeymen and
other advanced students.14 This is a decrease of 18 from 1919, which indicates that
students leaving the Bauhaus outnumbered those entering in the school’s first four years.
However, the Bauhaus’s last year in Weimar ended on a high note, with enrollment very
close to, or surpassing, its original total.15
In order to determine the ratio of male to female students at the Bauhaus, we
again turn to Wingler’s list. Sex can be determined by examining the names of the
students. Most first names are obvious as to which sex they refer to, but some are not.
Additionally, in some cases, only the initial of the first name is given or no first name is
provided at all. As a result, the statistical breakdown of male and female students is only
a rough estimate. Keeping this in mind, I have determined that 240 female students (40%
of the student population) were enrolled between 1919 and 1925 (see Table 1).
During wartime, while the male students were away at the front, women had the
Weimar Grand Ducal School of Fine Arts to themselves and, at war’s end, many chose to
13
Oskar Schlemmer, Cannstatt to Otto Meyer, 3 February 1921 and Schlemmer to an unknown recipient, 2
March 1921, in Tut Schlemmer, ed., The Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer (Middletown, CT:
Wesleyan University Press, 1972), pp. 98, 100. The preacher Hauser will be discussed in Chapter 3.
14
Walter Gropius, “The Stattliche Bauhaus and the Thuringian Landtag,” Deutschland (Weimar), No. 114,
24 April 1924, in H. M. Wingler, Bauhaus, p. 85. Gropius states that 129 students were at the Bauhaus in
1924, but the data he provides adds up to 132 students, which is the figure that I am using.
15
There were 130 students who followed the Bauhaus when it relocated to Dessau in April 1925. Since
there were students who chose not to accompany the school, one can assume that enrollment for the winter
semester, 1924-5, was higher than 130, probably at 150 or above.
18
remain.16 The Bauhaus inherited this large female population. A specialist on women at
the Bauhaus, Anja Baumhoff, has written that Gropius disapproved of the high number of
women at his school (approximately 50% or above) and that within the first year the
Council of Masters instituted an unofficial policy to bring the percentage down to 30%.17
We know that women made up only 22% of the 130 students who followed the Bauhaus
to Dessau in 1925.18 So, it appears as if the policy was successful and that the number of
women gradually began to decline as early as 1920.
Table 1
Bauhaus Students in Weimar, 1919-25
600 Total Students
240
(40%) Female
360 Male
(60%)
16
Anja Baumhoff, “Women at the Bauhaus – a Myth of Emancipation,” in Fiedler and Feierabend,
Bauhaus, p. 97.
17
Baumhoff, Gendered World of the Bauhaus, p. 62.
18
19
Initial Student Reaction to the Bauhaus
The Ultimate Aim of all creative activity is the building! The decoration of
buildings was once the noblest function of the fine arts, and the fine arts were
indispensable to great architecture. Today they exist in complete isolation, and can only
be rescued from it by the conscious co-operation and collaboration of all craftsmen.
Architects, painters and sculptors must once again come to know and comprehend the
composite character of a building both as an entity and in terms of its various parts. Then
their work will be filled with that true architectonic spirit which, as ‘salon art’, it has
lost.19
So wrote Walter Gropius in the opening paragraph of his “Manifesto and
Programme of the Bauhaus,” a declaration of the purpose and extraordinary goals of his
new school.20 After his initial statement, he goes on to explain that traditional art schools
have been unable to achieve the desired harmony between art, craft, and architecture.
Therefore, he declares, “Schools must be absorbed by the workshop again.”21 Gropius
then issues a call to all artists: “Architects, painters, sculptors, we must all return to
crafts!” The end result was to be the combination of architecture, sculpture, and painting
into “a single form which will one day rise towards the heavens from the hands of a
million workers as the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith.”22
19
Walter Gropius, “Manifesto and Programme of the Bauhaus,” Weimar, April 1919, in Whitford, Masters
& Students, p. 38.
20
The manifesto was printed and sent to art, craft, and architectural schools for recruitment purposes.
Perhaps this is the brochure that Gunta Stoelzl saw in 1919 that inspired her to come to Weimar?
21
The Bauhaus workshops included print-making, bookbinding, weaving, stone, wood-carving, carpentry,
metal, pottery, and mural and glass painting. There was also a theater department.
22
Gropius, “Manifesto and Programme of the Bauhaus,” p. 38. Absent from the manifesto was a
prominant role for industry, which was a break from Gropius’s pre-war thinking in the Werkbund.
Gropius’s views began to change in 1913-4 when he was part of a feud with Werkbund leader Muthesius.
In this debate Gropius advocated for the primacy of individual creativity over that of industry and
standardization. His experience in the war and his connection afterwards with Expressionist avant-garde
artists, particularly Bruno Taut, completed this shift away from industry. Gropius became president of the
radical Arbeitsrat für Kunst, where his writings foreshadowed the medieval, utopian aims of the Bauhaus
Manifesto. Some of his earliest appointments at the Bauhaus were Expressionist artists like Lyonnel
Feininger, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Johannes Itten. See Forgács, Bauhaus Idea, Chapter 2 and
Franciscono, Gropius and the Creation of the Bauhaus, Chapters 1-4.
20
When students arrived in Weimar that April, if they did not already know the extent
of Gropius’s radical views, they were soon acquainted with them. Student opinion was
mixed. The first edition of the Bauhaus student newspaper, Der Austausch (The
Exchange), debuted in May 1919. Its editors and contributors were largely in favor of
Gropius’s aims for the Bauhaus. E. Schrammen, an ex-Weimar School of Fine Arts
student, wrote a front-page article illustrating his affinity with Gropius. He reinforces
Gropius’s position that the Bauhaus stands in contrast to the “old, easygoing art school,”
that by looking back to the guild system of the Middle Ages, the Bauhaus points “forward
to new, high goals.” He then relates the founding of the Bauhaus to the effects of the
war. He believes the school will provide “a hope of freedom” and its activity will be
“worthy of human beings: constructive work after being compelled to devastate and
destroy unworthily…” Like Gropius, he also issues a rallying call: “Arise, human beings,
fellow human beings, join in the reconstruction of our common life… work community,
community work!”23
Another student, Johannes Auerbach, supported Gropius’s desire to tear down the
barrier between artist and craftsmen. Auerbach adds a strong political edge to his
commentary, saying that artists must join with the craftsmen and members of the laboring
classes, whose actions will determine the future of Germany, otherwise “it will… be our
fate to miss the path of true vitality and culture, just as those who, when the political and
cultural power passed from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie, sought to deny the progress
of world history and became mired in old forms.”24
23
E. Schrammen in Der Austaush (Weimar), May 1919, in Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus, pp. 46-7.
24
Johannes Auerbach in Der Austausch (Weimar), May 1919, in Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus, p. 48.
21
Not all the contributors to the newspaper agreed wholeheartedly with Gropius.
Heinrich Linzen, another student leader who had attended the Weimar School of Fine
Arts, primarily accepted the Bauhaus’s stated goals, yet he was not ready to give up on
traditional art. He writes, “But let us not forget to accord respect and recognition to those
who pursue old, exalted aims which will always be vital, and for whom art, also in the
form of the ‘salon painting’ is the highest revelation of life.”25 There were other
holdovers from the Weimar School of Fine Arts who shared Linzen’s view and opposed
the Bauhaus’s emphasis on crafts and architecture.
Despite some of the lofty rhetoric used in Der Austausch to show affinity with
Gropius, it appears that numerous students, not just from the old academy, found it
difficult to let go of what was familiar to them. In June of 1919, after the Bauhaus’s first
student exhibition, Gropius castigated the student body for ignoring craftwork, design
issues, and the social implications of their work. Most of the student art was sculpture or
painting. Gropius’s remarks caused quite a stir. There was a rush of resignations of the
top student leaders, including E. Schrammen and Heinrich Linzen. Arguments erupted
over what the true purpose of the Bauhaus was. Käthe Brachman was concerned by the
increasing turmoil so she wrote an open letter to her fellow students in Der Austausch.
She begins, “Dear comrades – It is almost ironic to address you in this manner for
comradeship is in a damn bad way with us…” The letter ends, “Dear Bauhaus students,
here we are in the most beautiful building that one can imagine but, so far, we are not
25
Heinrich Linzen in Der Austausch (Weimar), May 1919, in Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus, p. 49.
22
worthy of it.”26 Debates over the nature of the Bauhaus continued throughout that first
year and never really ended.
Conditions in Weimar
The experience of the new students was made all the more difficult by the awful
economic conditions that prevailed in Weimar after the war. Gunta Stoelzl recalled that
most of the male students arrived at the Bauhaus with little more than their old army
uniform as clothing. To help them fit in, the female students would “take off the collars
and stitch them with red thread so they wouldn’t look so militarylike.”27 Some lucky
students received funds from their parents, others had to work outside of school to
support themselves. One student remembered that several of his schoolmates worked
nights in a factory, producing Thuringian peasant paintings. When the inflation peaked
in 1923, things became even worse - so bad that Gropius had to supply many with shoes
and trousers since they could not afford their own.28
The Bauhaus itself also suffered under these conditions, particularly when it came
to purchasing equipment for the workshops. Gropius wrote to the Thuringian Cultural
Ministry, “If help does not come quickly I am pessimistic about the existence of the
Bauhaus.” He feared that without the necessary tools, students would leave.29
26
Käthe Brachman in Der Austausch, (Weimar), July 1919, in Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus, p. 50.
27
28
Whitford, Bauhaus, pp. 45-6.
29
Walter Gropius, Weimar to the Thuringian Cultural Ministry, Weimar, 31 March 1920, in Whitford,
Masters and Students, p. 46.
23
When it came time to secure coal for the upcoming winter at a price the institution
could afford, the Bauhaus administration and the students had to work together. Gropius
informed the Student Council in October 1919 that he had been given permission to use
two lorries for the purpose of transporting coal directly to the Bauhaus from the local
mine. Since the school could not afford to have a third party deliver the coal, the students
would be responsible for this duty. If the incentive of direct access to cheap coal was not
enough, Gropius enticed the students with the promise of a free lunch. Interestingly, he
reminded the student leaders to keep their mouths shut when in town.30 An already
skeptical and antagonistic public would not appreciate the Bauhaus having such direct
access to an essential resource in these financially tough times.
Coupled with the economic problems, there was also a housing crisis throughout
Germany. Weimar was no exception. In the initial years, it was hard for the town to
absorb the influx of young people. Most of the students, until they found a place of their
own, stayed at the local youth hostel.31 Even if there was an apartment available, there
was no guarantee it could be obtained. The student, George Adams, was advised by his
older peers not to admit he was a Bauhaus student, rather he should say he attended the
Academy of Music – the locals had a reputation for not renting to the bohemian
Bauhäuslers.32 If a student was lucky enough to find a place to live, it was bound to be
cramped. The weaver, Anni Albers,33 mentioned a time when Gropius came to visit her
30
Walter Gropius, “Confidential Memorandum to the Student Council,” 14 October 1919, in Whitford,
31
32
George Adams, “Memories of a Bauhaus Student,” Architectural Review, Vol. 144 (Sept. 1968): p. 193.
33
Like Gunta Stoelzl, Anni Albers was a constant presence in the weaving workshop and had a very
successful career.
24
future husband, Josef, in his rented room. They had so little space that Gropius squeezed
under the table in order to find room to sit.34 The cheapest and most convenient housing
option belonged to the young masters, who had permission to live in their workshops
next to the Bauhaus.35
These conditions made early life at the Bauhaus very difficult. To some, the
conditions could not be overcome. While to others, the challenges brought forth a sense
of camaraderie, a feeling that this was a shared struggle for a higher purpose.
The Student Community
As discussed earlier, many of the male students arrived at the Bauhaus still
dressed in their army uniforms. Others arrived after having taken part in the
Wandervogel movement,36 identified by their exceptionally long hair. Gradually as the
students spent more time together, they began to dress alike too: their sense of fashion
predictably owing more to the Wandervogel movement than to the military. George
Adams describes the style that developed:
We were a strange sight, dressed for reasons of poverty and individual taste in the most
startling garb. Russian type blouses with belts, trousers often frayed and sandals. The
girls had loose hair falling over their shoulders and hand-woven skirts – it must have
been galling for the very respectable citizens of Weimar.37
34
Anni Albers, Interview by Judith Pearlman, 22 May 1982, Transcript, Judith Pearlman Archive, Research
Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (acc. # 920069).
35
Herr Kämmer (Bauhaus business manager), Weimar to Walter Gropius, Weimar, 15 April 1919, in
Whitford, Masters and Students, p. 43. In Weimar, the title of “young master” was given to senior students
who transferred from the Weimar School of Fine Arts and to those new students with exceptional
experience.
36
Wandervogel was a youth movement which was very popular both pre- and post-World War I. Its main
features included a shared love of nature among its members and opposition to the adult world. Gay,
Weimar Culture, p. 77. Also see Chapter 5 of this thesis for the political implications of the Wandervogel
movement.
37
Adams, “Memories of a Bauhaus Student,” p. 193.
25
Soon, however, the women at the Bauhaus abandoned their long hair and cropped it
short, which set them apart from the local Weimar girls. The Wandervogel men also cut
their long hair. One of them, Alfred Arndt, a student in the wall-painting workshop,
writes of a hair cutting ceremony held at a dance in the school’s early years: “usually a
pot was put over the person’s head and the hair cut off around it. some had their hair
shaven off completely. the baldness stimulated ideas, such as painting one’s shaven
head with black squares for a party.”38 Later, both the baldness and the aforementioned
manner of dress became associated with the Mazdaznan student cult that surrounded
master Johannes Itten. The style served to set Mazdaznan followers apart from the other
non-Mazdaznan students. But at this early stage, Bauhaus style appears to have had
nothing to do with Mazdaznan, uniting rather than separating the student body.
When Gropius created the Bauhaus, he envisioned an educational experience
encompassing more than just artistic pursuits. The student experience of living together
was to be just as important. He hoped that the combination of art and a strong
community would nurture his students and prepare them for life after graduation, when
they could bring the Bauhaus way of life to the rest of society. To more actively engage
the students in school affairs, he gave them two seats on the Bauhaus Council of Masters.
He also encouraged the formation of a student union, comprised of elective
representatives from each workshop.39 Sport and exercise also were seen as important
community building activities. The Bauhäuslers were encouraged to live a “healthy,
physically aware lifestyle” to complement their artistic development. Group gymnastics
38
Alfred Arndt, “Life at the Bauhaus,” in Whitford, Masters and Students, p. 113. Like Herbert Bayer,
Arndt uses no capital letters and a sans serif font in his writing.
39
26
were particularly popular. About thirty students took a class taught by a local Weimar
woman Margarethe Trenkel. There was even talk of establishing a gymnastics team at
the Bauhaus.40
The canteen (cafeteria) soon assumed the role of social center. It was a place
where students could gather and discuss their thoughts on the new school, as well as the
current social and political developments in Germany. A commission of five students ran
the canteen and several students also worked in the Bauhaus garden where the food was
grown.41 Meals were cheap for all and free to those students who qualified for assistance.
Pottery student Johannes Driesch wrote, “The canteen is the most wonderful thing I’ve
seen until now…” For the small charge of 3.5 Marks, Johannes could buy himself all
three meals of the day, plus coffee at four o’clock.42 On occasion Gropius and other
Bauhaus faculty dropped in on the canteen to dine with the students.43
The canteen was not only used during school hours, as Walter Gropius found out
one October night in 1919. Late in the evening, Gropius was awakened by a band of
Bauhaus students, Johannes Driesch among them, who had gathered under his bedroom
window, serenading him with violins, lutes, one-string fiddles, mouth organs, and
saucepan lids. Gropius appeared at his window and acknowledged his crowd of
admirers. They beckoned for him to come down and join them, which to their surprise,
he did. They then hoisted him upon their shoulders and carried him all the way to the
40
Ute Ackermann, “Body Concepts of the Modernists at the Bauhaus,” in Fiedler and Feierabend,
Bauhaus, pp. 88-91. Unfortunately the plan for a gymnastics team fell through. It is unclear if one was
ever formed.
41
“Report on the Audit of the Bookkeeping at the Staatliche Bauhaus in Weimar,” Weimar, September
1924, in H. M. Wingler, Bauhaus, p. 89. Whitford, Bauhaus, p. 47.
42
Johannes Driesch, Weimar to Lydia Driesch-Foucar, 10 October 1919, in Whitford, Masters and
Students, p. 42.
43
Oskar Schlemmer to Tut Schlemmer, 13 July 1920, in Tut Schlemmer, Letters and Diaries, p. 85.
27
canteen where a party in his honor was already raging. There, they partied and danced
until 4am. “It was wonderful,” Driesch recalled.44
However, the canteen was not always used for such joyous occasions. It was also a
place where conflicts between students could be disputed. Gunta Stoelzl saw arguments
between the new Bauhaus students and those from the School of Fine Arts over the
latter’s “old-fashioned attitude… towards the principles of the Bauhaus.” In fact the
debates often turned violent with chairs being thrown about the canteen. 45
Bauhaus Dances and Festivals
While the canteen was the hub of everyday campus life, the weekly dances and
quarterly festivals also provided important community building time. Ute Ackerman
stresses the significance of these gatherings: “Social life at the Bauhaus developed more
rapidly than the workshops could be set up and refurbished. This is not surprising, for
while the latter depended on state funding, enthusiasm and hope were the foundations on
which the Bauhaus community was able to prosper.”46
Dancing was a big part of the Bauhaus social scene. Anni Albers said she always
felt like an outsider at the Bauhaus, not the least because she could not dance.47 The
students held their own dances on Saturday nights, usually at the Ilm Chalet in Belvedere
Allee, Weimar. A reporter, Kole Kokke, captured the mood of a dance party in 1924.
44
Johannes Driesch, Weimar to Lydia Driesch-Foucar, 16 October 1919, in Whitford, Masters and
Students, p. 42.
45
46
Ute Ackermann, “Bauhaus Parties – Histrionics between Eccentric Dancing and Animal Drama,” in
Fiedler and Feierabend, Bauhaus, p. 133.
47
28
The chalet had a medium sized ballroom, which was extravagantly decorated with
paintings from the 1880’s (young maidens playing the harp in a meadow). This begged
the question: “Do the disciples of Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee really want to
dance there?” Within a “half an hour of eager participation” all dogmas were thrown out
and all that mattered was having fun. Supplying the music was the famous Bauhaus
band, a fixture at all Bauhaus parties. Kokke described the group as “the best jazz band I
have ever heard… Never has the ‘Bannana Shimmy’ been played better; nowhere do the
‘Java Girls’ come off more saucily… One dance follows another, almost without
interruption.” Kokke was impressed with the high energy level and contrasted it to the
usual “blasé manner” of traditional masked balls. He also commented that the dance was
never out of control, maintaining a good balance between civility and pleasure.48
The four main festivals, or parties, that were held in Weimar were the Lantern
Party in May (it was first held in June of 1920, but was later switched to May to coincide
with Gropius’s birthday), the Summer Solstice, the Kite Festival in October, and the
Christmas Party. The festivals were especially important because, unlike the dances
which involved primarily students, they included the entire Bauhaus community. All of
the parties had a theme and involved students and faculty creating something, be it
musical performances, kites, lanterns, elaborate set designs, or stunning costumes. For a
brief afternoon or night, the festivals brought to life the idea of a Bauhaus utopia.
48
Kole Kokke, “The Bauhaus Dances…,” 8 Uhr Abendblatt (Berlin), 18 February 1924, in H. M. Wingler,
Bauhaus, p. 84.
29
Gunta Stoelzl relates the details of a Christmas Party. In her words:
A beautiful tree, lights and apples, a long white table, big candles, beautifully laid, a big
fir wreath, everything green. Under the tree everything white, on it countless presents.
Gropius read the Christmas story. Emma Heim sang. We were all given presents by
Gropius, so kind and lovely and special to every Bauhausler. Then a big meal. All in a
spirit of celebration and a sense of the symbolism. Gropius served everyone their food in
person.49
Reporting for the Berliner Tageblatt, Marie-Luise von Banceis observed a Kite Festival
in October of 1922. She describes a beautiful sky decorated with kites of all shapes and
sizes, which were created by the Bauhäuslers. “Very beautiful ones boast their splendor:
polygonal monsters playing in a thousand colors, fish with long glittering tails, swaying
and fluttering; strange, cubistic fantasies, crystals, snakes, balloons, suns, stars, blimps,
shells, lamps; small, tiny ones, and giants; kites of the most fanciful forms; marvelous
magic birds out of artistic fairy-tail dreams…”50 Also of interest to her was the large
group of students who gathered on this sunny day – themselves putting on quite a show.
“A peculiar crew, these so-called Bauhäusler of the Weimar school. Well enough known
to the residents that nobody turns to stare anymore at these strange apprentices. But they
still arouse curiosity of strangers…”51
Even though von Banceis believed that the town was accustomed to the
Bauhäuslers, I imagine that the outdoor festivals still managed to peak their interest. A
festival provided one of the few instances where the Bauhaus could be seen as an entire
group. While the public might have been used to individual students wandering around
town, seeing a hundred of them together must have been an entirely different experience.
49
Gunta Stoelzl in Droste, Bauhaus: 1919-1933, p. 38.
50
Marie-Luise von Banceis, “Bauhaus Kite Festival in Weimar,” Berliner Tageblatt, 28 October 1922, in
51
Ibid.
30
Since the Bauhaus was never fully accepted by Weimar, most likely the festivals
cemented the public’s perception of the school as a strange place that the respectful
citizens wanted no part of.
Town versus Gown
The residents of the town of Weimar were suspicious of the Bauhaus from the very
beginning. The call for a new way of life went unheeded in a town very content to live
by the reputation and accomplishments of its one-time inhabitants: Bach, Goethe,
Schiller, and Liszt. The conservative population of Weimar saw themselves as the
defenders of “German” culture against the cultural decadence of the Bauhaus.52 Gropius
was well aware of the obstacles he faced in Weimar, but he believed that, given time, the
townfolk and local bureaucracy could be won over. He was mistaken.
How did the students contribute to the town’s perception of the Bauhaus? For the most
part, the students were seen as proof of the decadence and moral corruption that was
believed to accompany an institution such as the Bauhaus. The public saw in the students
what they wanted to see – young people, probably political agitators, with no inhibitions
who could only serve to jeopardize the town’s lifestyle and reputation. At times, the
students deserved the ire of Weimar, such as when, as a joke, a group of Bauhäuslers
painted over a well-liked sculpture by Adolph Brutt. The town officials did not
appreciate this, nor did the Bauhaus Council of Masters, which promptly disciplined
52
Lane, Architecture and Politics, p. 69.
31
those involved.53 Other times, however, evidence of misconduct was questionable, as in
the case of the nude bathers.
Apparently Bauhaus students were taken to bathing nude in the river Saale in
Dornburg, where the pottery workshop was. The Interior Ministry documented a
complaint that was filed by concerned citizens. A civil servant then contacted Bauhaus
leadership about the problem. Here is an excerpt:
Bauhaus students living in Dornburg are bathing in the River Saale – males and females
together – without any bathing costumes whatsoever and in places accessible to
everyone. People walking past have taken objection and this infringement of decency has
caused public annoyance and represents a danger to morals, especially for young
people.54
The letter ends with the official urging the school’s leadership to stop the offending
behavior.
As expected, the students saw this behavior quite differently. Lydia Driesch-
Foucar, a pottery student, wife of Johannes Driesch, and one of the naked swimmers,
recalled the experience as one of her “happiest memories.” She was confident that the
area was secluded enough to insure the bathers’ privacy. Here is her version of events:
On hot Saturdays and Sundays, but also in the warm evenings after work we would go
down to the Saale to swim together…. The bank was surrounded by trees and tall bushes
so that no-one could see it from the street that was higher up but quite far away…. An
ideal place for bathing!… As though in paradise, the strong, handsome young men and
women disported themselves in the water, the sun and the green surroundings. They
were truly Dionysian scenes and pictures which repeatedly dominate the memories of my
entire earlier life.55
53
Ackermann, “Bauhaus Parties,” p. 130.
54
Staatsrat Rudolph, Weimar to the Bauhaus Direction, Weimar, 4 September 1920, in Whitford, Masters
and Students, p. 115.
55
Lydia Driesch-Foucar, “memories of the beginnings of the Bauhaus Pottery at Dornburg,” in Whitford,
32
For support in dealing with the town of Weimar, the Bauhaus relied on the
Thuringian state government, as well as members of the European avant-garde
community. The “Circle of Friends of the Bauhaus” counted as members Peter Behrens,
Marc Chagall, Albert Einstein, Oskar Kokoschka, Arnold Schönberg, and Franz Werfel.56
However, sometimes support could also be found in Weimar, even from the old nobility.
The reporter, Kole Kokke, while covering the Bauhaus dance in 1924, learned from
Kandinsky that there was a woman in Weimar of noble heritage who “wanted to establish
contact between the educated young people of Weimar and the students of the Bauhaus.”
She invited both groups to her house in hopes that they would recognize their similarities
instead of their differences. But her goodwill was for naught; the prejudices that had
built up over the years were too much to overcome. The educated youths refused to show
up. As a result, the Bauhaus students became even more distrusting of their educated
peers and further isolated themselves.57
The End of the Weimar Bauhaus
During the period 1922-5, the Bauhaus faced exceptionally harsh criticism from its
conservative critics in Weimar, the state of Thuringia, and even from the national level of
the Weimar Republic. What was primarily a local debate in 1919-21 had become an
issue that conservative and nationalist critics believed all of Germany had a stake in. 58
56
“An Invitation to Join the ‘Circle of Friends,’” 1924, in H. M. Wingler, Bauhaus, p. 78.
57
Kole Kokke, “The Bauhaus Dances…,” 8 Uhr Abendblatt (Berlin), 18 February 1924, in H. M. Wingler,
Bauhaus, p. 84.
58
33
In 1923, the worst year of the inflation, political turmoil struck throughout
southeast and central Germany. In Thuringia the Communist party benefited the most
and assumed control of the Landtag in October 1923, joining forces with the SPD. The
quick success of the Communists alarmed the federal government, who sent in the
Rechswehr to remove the Communists from power. The Communists were ousted,
which led to another political change, this time in favor of the right. In the February
1924 election, a coalition of the DNVP (German Nationalist People’s Party), DVP
(German People’s Party), and Landbund won the majority of the Landtag seats.59
This was the beginning of the end for the Bauhaus, which previously could have
counted on the Thuringian state government for support. Now with the local and state
governments against it, the Bauhaus was doomed. To weaken the Bauhaus, the
Thuringian Landtag focused on decreasing or, if possible, eliminating the Bauhaus’s
budget, which was set to expire in April of 1925. The budget proposal sponsored by the
DNVP was adopted, which called for a 60% decrease in funds. In addition, the Bauhaus
was ordered to once again join with the Weimar School of Fine Arts, this time in a
subordinate position.60 Of course the Bauhaus, never on a stable financial footing, could
not overcome such a drastic cut in its funding. Nor would Gropius ever agree to merge
back with the art academy. His only option was to move the school to another, more
accommodating, location. It was decided that Dessau, an industrial town, would be the
Bauhaus’s next home once its budget expired in April 1925.61
59
Ibid., pp. 78-9
60
The Weimar School of Fine Arts had ceded from the Bauhaus in 1920 and re-established itself as the
State School of Fine Arts in 1921.
61
Ibid., pp. 78-9, 83-4.
34
When it was announced to the students that the Bauhaus would be leaving Weimar,
they drafted a letter to the Thuringian government in January 1925, expressing their
disappointment with the school’s closing. The students declared that they, too, would be
leaving Weimar in order to “promote the ideas of the Bauhaus by active participation in
other locations.” The students emphasized their “positive action in the general building-
up effort [of Germany after World War I]” and their success in reaching a “clear
agreement in the Bauhaus on the most important problems of design, a fact which finds
its expression in our common work.” Their success was in spite of Weimar and
Thuringia’s refusal to acknowledge “the inevitably new achievements of the present
generation.” The letter ends emphatically: “We state categorically that the government
has impaired our work and has failed to protect us against slander.”62
62
Members of the Bauhaus, Weimar to the Government of Thuringia, Weimar, 13 January 1925, in H. M.
Wingler, Bauhaus, p. 93.
35
CHAPTER 3
MYSTICISM AT THE BAUHAUS
Mysticism and the occult are usually associated with radical right-wing thought,
particularly since much has been written about their connection to the rise of National
Socialism in Germany. Historian George Mosse states that at the turn of the century,
Germans and other central Europeans were turning to mysticism and the occult as “an
explanation and as a solution to man’s alienation from modern society, culture, and
politics,” and as a “specific protest against bourgeois materialism and positivism.”
Mosse stresses that mysticism primarily appealed to “a minority who found a home in the
radical right.” They saw in it a “cosmic life force” centered on the Aryan race.1 After
World War I, mysticism helped rekindle notions of Germany’s glorious past and of the
necessity to reclaim it, and was an influence on early National Socialist thought.
However, the right was not the only section of the population that turned to mysticism
and the occult. Many a modern artist throughout Europe was inspired as well. German
art critic Herbert Kühn, in 1919, made the following statement, which illustrates the
importance of spiritualism and anti-materialism to Expressionism: “Expressionism is – as
is socialism – the same outcry against materialism, against the unspiritual, against
1
George Mosse, “The Occult Origins of National Socialism,” in Mosse, The Fascist Revolution: Toward a
General Theory of Fascism (New York: Howard Fertig, Inc., 1999), pp. 117-8.
36
machines, against centralization, for the spirit, for God, for the humanity in man.”2 The
Dutch abstract artist, Piet Mondrian, was influenced by Theosophy.3 Carel Blotkamp
writes, “In his search for new artistic meaning Mondrian found support in the new
spiritual movements that were flowering throughout the Western world at the turn of the
century, and this is true even if the sources of inspiration seem obscure in comparison
with the directness of his abstract paintings.”4 Many modern artists hoped to obtain, and
lead others to, the utopian ideal of a spiritual community and identity.
At the Bauhaus, which was founded on Expressionist principles,5 mysticism
played a prominent role. Student Helmut von Erffa recalled that in the early 1920s,
“Everybody was reading the German mystics, Suso, Tauler, Meister Eckhardt, Jacob
Boehme, or Buddha’s sermons, or Lao-Tse.”6 Bauhaus students, like other Germans, felt
a deep dissatisfaction with society, particularly after living through a terrible war.
Whereas the right turned to mysticism as a justification for further wars, a group of
Bauhaus students and their mentor Johannes Itten saw it as a means to bring change
peacefully.
Mazdaznan is the mystic religion that is most often associated with the Bauhaus,
but there were others that appeared on campus as well. Both Wassily Kandinksy and
2
Herbert Kühn, “Expressionismus und Sozialismus,” Neue Blätter für Kunst und Dichtung, (May 1919), in
Shulamith Behr, Expressionism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 9.
3
Theosophy combined basic truths of all world religions and philosophies into one common element. It
also incorporated an interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Carel Blotkamp, “Annunciation of the
New Mysticism: Dutch Symbolism and Early Abstraction,” in Maurice Tuchman, ed., The Spiritual in Art:
Abstract Painting 1890-1985 (New York: Abbeville Press, 1986), p. 94.
4
Ibid., p. 89.
5
The language and imagery of the Bauhaus Manifesto has mystical and spiritual overtones. The Bauhaus
claimed to be the “Cathedral of the Future,” which would usher in a “new faith.” This cathedral was
represented by Lyonel Feininger’s Expressionist woodcut that appeared on the front of the Bauhaus
Manifesto. In addition, the name “Bauhaus” has medieval roots, inspired by the word “Bauhutte” with its
references to medieval artists’ guilds and secret lodges.
6
Helmut von Erffa, “The Bauhuas before 1922,” College Art Journal, Vol. 3 (Nov. 1943): p. 16.
37
Gropius’s partner, Adolph Meyer, were influenced by Theosophy.7 The suspicious
Weimar public believed Gropius, too, was involved with mysticism, one newspaper
reporting that he was “full of philosophical, metaphysical, and mystical thoughts.”8 As
for the students, many were taken with the new and strange religions that were brought to
Weimar by traveling preachers. According to Oskar Schlemmer, one such preacher,
named Hausser, came to Weimar in early 1921. He claimed to be an “apostle of truth,”
quoting Jesus Christ, Lao-tse, and Nietzsche. Hausser had left all of his family and
possessions in France after the war and moved from “city to city, from prison to insane
asylum, released each time on the basis of apparently glowing doctors’ reports.” Twenty
students were swept up by his preaching, declared that “art is a grind” and quickly left the
Bauhaus for a pilgrimage to Italy. Others, particularly the female students, were also
influenced by Hausser, but decided not to make the trip. They remained in Weimar, but
could not keep their mind on their studies and their work suffered.9 In March of 1921
students were still apt to quit the school and take off for Italy, following the words of
Hausser.10
But it was the religion of Mazdaznan, as practiced and taught by the master
Johannes Itten, that held the greatest sway over the Weimar Bauhaus community.
Mazdaznan was founded by Otoman Zar-Adusht Hanish, born in 1854, who had
7
Behr, Expressionism, p. 33. Whitford, Bauhaus, p. 52. According to art historian Shulamith Behr,
Kandinsky “saw the artist as a prophet, seer, or healer of society, and as such invested with the capacity to
transform it.”
8
Rose-Carol Washton Long, “Expressionism, Abstraction, and the Search for Utopia in Germany,” in
Tuchman, The Spiritual in Art, p. 208.
9
Oskar Schlemmer, Cannstatt to Otto Meyer, 3 February 1921, in Tut Schlemmer, Letters and Diaries,
p. 98.
10
Oskar Schlemmer to anonymous person, 2 March 1921and Oskar Schlemmer, Weimar to Tut
Schlemmer, 3 March 1921, in Tut Schlemmer, Letters and Diaries, p. 100. Six students left for Italy in
early March.
38
supposedly spent most of his youth in a Zoroastrian order in Tibet. Hanish’s teachings
spread to Germany in 1907 and were popular in major cities there. He also preached in
the United States, dying in Los Angeles in 1936.11 The religion is still active today in
Europe and the United States.12
Mazdaznan claimed to be an “original universal religion.” Like Zoroastrian, it
held that the world was ruled by two primal beings: a supreme God and his adversary, an
evil spirit. The notions of duality and opposites were central to Mazdaznan, as well as to
Itten’s pedagogy.13 Artists were highly valued by Mazdaznan. The artist was to help the
individual overcome the temptations of desire and passion by “presenting earthly models
of spiritual or physical perfection or of developing such qualities in men and women,
thereby awakening a desire to emulate what is noble and beautiful, and to keep the
memory of this alive.”14 Norbert Schmitz suggests that the significant role allotted to
artists, who otherwise were not given many opportunities to take the lead in anything
outside of art, enabled Mazdaznan to have a particular appeal to members of the modern
avant-garde, who shared similar utopian dreams for mankind.15
Johannes Itten had first encountered Mazdaznan in 1906, but it was not until 1920
that he began practicing it as a way of life.16 At the Bauhaus, in addition to teaching the
famous Preliminary Course, he was also form master for several of the workshops. With
his wide range of authority, Itten rivaled Gropius as the school’s leader in the early
1920s. His power allowed him, with the help of master Georg Muche, to introduce
11
Norbert Schmitz, “Mazdaznan at the Bauhaus – the Artist as Savior,” in Fielder and Feierabend,
Bauhaus, p. 121.
12
Visit www.mazdaznan.org for information on Mazdaznan in its current form.
13
Schmitz, “Mazdaznan at the Bauhaus,” pp. 121-2.
14
Otoman Zar-Adusht Hanish in Schmitz, “Mazdaznan at the Bauhaus,” p. 122.
15
Schmitz, “Mazdaznan at the Bauhaus,” pp. 123-4.
16
Ibid., pp. 120-1
39
Mazdaznan into the curriculum17 and the social life of the school. At the time,
Expressionism was the dominant artistic mode at the Bauhaus. Central to Expressionism
was the idea of the artist leading the reform of society. As mentioned previously, this
was also the case with Mazdaznan, so the match with Expressionism made sense.
However, apart from Muche, the master Lothar Schreyer, and the instructor Gertrude
Grunow, none of the other faculty showed an interest in the religion. It was primarily
with the students that Mazdaznan had its chief impact. As a result, a religious sect soon
formed around Itten, which helped cement his power and Mazdaznan’s influence at the
Bauhaus.
Close to twenty students from Itten’s previous school in Vienna accompanied him
to the Bauhaus in the summer of 1919. In late 1920 or early 1921 they became the
Bauhaus’s earliest Mazdaznan converts.18 The sect grew to include other students and
soon the followers began to set themselves apart from their secular peers. One way they
did this was by adopting a common manner of appearance. The men shaved their heads
since hair was associated with sin, while the women kept theirs very short. The masters
wore “monk-like garments;” the male students, baggy shirts and trousers; and the women,
short skirts.19 Apparently when Itten and his followers walked so attired through town,
17
Helmut von Erffa describes one example of how Mazdaznan was incorporated into the Preliminary
Course. “He [Itten] began by making his students relax. He had them use Indian clubs to gain physical
relaxation; then he had them draw circles in charcoal with a full arm’s sweep, next from their elbows, and
finally small circles with their thumbs and second fingers. Then followed exercises in expressiveness…
One’s creative ability was tested by drawing with charcoal the abstract feeling of rain, the feeling of spring
or winter… While we put the charcoal on paper we were to be filled with the feeling of rain or snow.”
From “The Bauhuas before 1922,” p. 17.
18
Droste, Bauhaus: 1919-1933, p. 32.
19
Naylor, Bauhaus Reassessed, pp. 78-80.
40
they drew quite a crowd of awestruck Weimarers.20 The students’ obvious participation
in mysticism added further fuel to the local opposition’s complaints against the school.
Students were simultaneously derided as being both Communists and mystics;21 the
combination of the two was not seen as contradictory.
Followers of Mazdaznan were to strictly abide by a vegetarian diet based on
garlic, which was to be combined with cleansing and fasting rituals. This regimen
wrecked havoc on many of the students. The painter Paul Citroen22 remembered
suffering from constant “stomach and intestinal trouble” and appearing “green and gray
whenever my innards were upset, which was often enough.” But Citroen, at the time,
believed that all this suffering was worthwhile. He writes, “Great demands were made on
our self-denial… on the whole we felt happy and privileged to have the firm support of
our doctrine, to know the right way so that we did not, like the others, collapse in the
general chaos.”23 One of the earliest signs that the religion was expanding beyond the
student sect was that the canteen began serving an exclusively Mazdaznan diet to all
Bauhäuslers in early 1921.24 The non-adherents were not thrilled, but since they were
exempt from participating in the rituals, they gradually came to tolerate the cooking. The
same cannot be said for the strong smell of garlic that pervaded the entire campus.
Although the non-Mazdaznan students endured the cooking, there was tension
between them and their religious peers, particularly over Itten’s handling of the
20
Lothar Schreyer, “memories of Der Sturm and the Bauhaus,” 1966, in Whitford, Masters and Students,
p. 68.
21
Long, “Expressionism, Abstraction, and the Search for Utopia in Germany,” pp. 212-3.
22
Besides being a painter, Citroen was an innovator in the development of the new photomontage
technique.
23
Paul Citroen, “Mazdaznan at the Bauhaus,” in Neumann, Bauhaus and Bauhaus People, pp. 47-8.
24
Oskar Schlemmer to anonymous recipient, 2 March 1921and Schlemmer, Weimar to Otto Meyer,
7 December 1921, in Tut Schlemmer, Letters and Diaries, pp. 100-1, 113-4.
41
Preliminary Course and his increasing influence at the school. Itten believed Mazdaznan
had an important place in the classroom. “Mazdaznan is not a sect or an association or an
external organization of any kind, but constitutes a system of teaching and upbringing the
goal of which is man’s basic pre-servation and higher development.”25 However, Oskar
Schlemmer noted that Itten was “differentiating between the adherents and the non-
adherants on the basis of ideology rather than on the basis of achievement. So apparently
a special clique has formed and is splitting the Bauhaus into two camps…”26
George Adams was part of a large contingent of students who started applying
pressure on Bauhaus leadership to adopt a more rational and practical artistic vision,
which they believed would better allow the Bauhaus to meet the needs of society.27 They
were also angry over Gropius’s decreasing presence on campus. “They claim he is no
longer what he was at the beginning, when he lived – and suffered – in true communion
with them, a Father Gropius!”28 Their complaints gained relevance due to the presence in
Weimar of Theo van Doesburg, a Dutch De Stijl artist who cast himself as the opposite of
Johannes Itten, insisting on “order and harmony” to usher in a new style based on
mechanization and composed of “horizontal-vertical coordinates.”29 Student unrest and
the harsh criticism of Van Doesburg, combined with Gropius’s own power struggle with
25
Johannes Itten in Schmitz, “Mazdaznan at the Bauhaus,” p. 121.
26
Oskar Schlemmer, Weimar to Otto Meyer, 7 December 1921, in Tut Schlemmer, Letters and Diaries,
pp. 113-4.
27
George Adams, “Memories of a Bauhaus Student,” Architectural Review, Vol. 144 (Sept. 1968):
pp. 193-4.
28
Oskar Schlemmer to an unknown recipient, 2 March 1921, in Tut Schlemmer, Letters and Diaries,
p. 100.
29
Forgács, Bauhaus Idea, p. 67.
42
Itten,30 soon had the desired effect. By March 1922 there was a noticeable drop in Itten’s
influence at the school.31
Later that year Itten managed to briefly rebound after he returned from a retreat
to Herrliberg, Switzerland, the European center of Mazdaznan. Upon his return, Citroen
noticed an increase in activity, including “Lectures, exercises, religious services,
councils, [and] meals,” in which Itten revealed many of the secrets he had learned in
Herrliberg.32 But this revival was short lived. It was clear to Itten that the Bauhaus
wanted to head in a different direction. In 1923 he left the Bauhaus and, soon after, the
Mazdaznan student group dissolved, unable to maintain itself with the departure of its
leader. The Bauhaus was then organized along more rational and industrial principles,
leaving mysticism and Expressionism behind and adopting the slogan “Art and
technology- a new unity.”
30
By 1921 Gropius was growing concerned with Itten’s influence on campus. Besides feeling that his
leadership was threatened, he also feared that the school, if it continued to follow Itten’s mysticism and
Expressionism, was in danger of shutting itself off from the outside world. At this point, his pre-war
Werkbund views were emerging from behind his post-war Expressionism. For a detailed account of the
conflict between Itten and Gropius, see their correspondence during the winter of 1921-2 in Franciscono,
Gropius and the Creation of the Bauhaus, pp. 291-7.
31
Oskar Schlemmer to Otto Meyer, 13 March 1922, in Tut Schlemmer, Letters and Diaries, p. 116.
32
Citroen, “Mazdaznan at the Bauhaus,” pp. 46-7.
43
Jewish Students in the Bauhaus Mazdaznan Sect
The supremacy of the white race was an important component of Mazdaznan.
“The Gospel of the White Race” is a section found in Otoman Hanish’s book, Mazdaznan
Theory, Master Lectures, and Itten wrote that the white race was the highest form of
civilization. Itten also produced a lithograph called “House of the White Man” in 1920. 33
According to George Mosse, the mystic religions of the time placed great emphasis on
the “Aryan race.” Judging from the above language, one would think that the Mazdaznan
concept of “white race” was consistent with that of “Aryan race.” The evidence from the
Bauhaus suggests otherwise. Gropius believed that the nearly twenty students who
followed Itten from Vienna to the Bauhaus were Jewish. Two of the students, Franz
Singer and Margit Tery-Adler, were thought to be the leaders of this group, which by
1921 was immersed in Mazdaznan.34 The Jewish presence indicates that Mazdaznan’s
definition of “white race” was broader than that of “Aryan race,” which excluded Jews.
Before the Jewish students were even involved with Mazdaznan, they were a
controversial group at the Bauhaus, drawing criticism from the school’s opponents. In
December 1919 a group of concerned citizens and former Weimar School of Fine Arts
students, backed by the National People’s Party, led a campaign against the Bauhaus.
Their complaints were many. Among them was an allegation “that elements alien to the
race, specifically Jews, were unduly pushing themselves into the foreground and were
33
Schmitz, “Mazdaznan at the Bauhaus,” p. 122. Droste, Bauhaus: 1919-1933, p. 32.
34
Walter Gropius, Weimar to Lily Hildebrandt, no date, believed to be January or February 1922, in
Reginald Isaacs, Gropius: An Illustrated Biography of the Creator of the Bauhaus (Boston: Little, Brown,
and Company, 1983, Reprint 1990), p. 91. Isaacs believes this letter was written in December 1920, but I
disagree. In the letter there is a clear reference to Itten’s threat to resign from the Bauhaus, which, from
documents in Franciscono’s Gropius and the Creation of the Bauhaus (pp. 292-4), we know took place in
January 1922. The letter must have been written near this date.
44
seeking to lead and dominate the Bauhaus with their ideas.”35 The Ministry of Culture
investigated their complaints and issued a report, specifically alluding to the Jewish
students as “Itten students.” The ministry found no evidence of Jews overstepping their
bounds. Any conflict between the Itten students and the others was mainly over
“different conceptions of educational requirements” and not related to race.36
The fact that the conservative population of Weimar viewed their conflict with the
Bauhaus in racial terms should not be surprising. But that their accusations were so
similar to those later made by Gropius, when he too was discouraged by events at the
Bauhaus, is unexpected. He wrote in January or February 1922, “It’s like this: the brainy
Jewish group, Singer-Adler, has become too presumptuous and has unfortunately also
influenced Itten considerably. With this lever they are trying to get the whole Bauhaus
into their hands. Against that the Aryans revolted, of course. I have to reconcile them
now.”37 Such a simplified explanation could not have been accurate at this time. The
Mazdaznan group by 1922 was well established and had grown to include more than just
Jewish students. In addition, no student account that I have found mentions any Jewish
connection to their complaints against Itten’s group. The suggestion that the student sect
was influencing Itten is also not a possibility. It was well known at the Bauhaus that Itten
was the undisputed leader of the Mazdazan cult and the students revered him as so.
So where did this accusation come from? It was not the first time in his life that
Gropius used the Jews as a scapegoat. Writing from Vienna in 1918, Gropius blamed the
35
State Ministry of Culture, Weimar, “The Dispute over the Staatliche Bauhaus,” 1920, in H. M. Wingler,
Bauhaus, p. 41.
36
Ibid. More about the December 1919 controversy can be found in Chapter 5 of this thesis.
37
Walter Gropius, Weimar to Lily Hildebrandt, no date, believed to be January or February 1922, in Isaacs,
Gropius, p. 91. See footnote 34 for an explanation concerning the date of this letter.
45
Jews for weakening the war effort through their actions on the home front. “The Jews,
this poison which I begin to hate more and more, are destroying us. Social democracy,
materialism, capitalism, profiteering – everything is their work and we are guilty that we
have let them so dominate our world. They are the devil, the negative element.”38 And
in 1919, writing to his wife Alma Mahler, he blamed her lover, Franz Werfel (who was
Jewish), for corrupting her and ending their marriage. “Your splendid nature has been
made to disintegrate under Jewish persuasion which overestimates the word and its
momentary truth. But you will return to your Aryan origin and then you will understand
me and you will search for me in your memory.”39 As he blamed the Jews for the failure
of war and his marriage, so too could he, in an emotional moment, blame the Jews for an
extremely complex situation that was consuming the Bauhaus.40
****
Beginning around the turn of the century, sections of the European population
began turning away from political liberalism, materialism, and science: the hallmarks of
the Enlightenment and modern development. They began to advocate for “subjectivism,
emotionalism, nonrationalism, and vitalism.”41 The combination of these virtues often
led to beliefs in mysticism, which in turn had strong ties to racism. Most often, we
38
Walter Gropius, Vienna to his mother, January or February 1918, in Isaacs, Gropius, p. 54.
39
Walter Gropius, Weimar to Alma Mahler Gropius, 12 July 1919, in Isaacs, Gropius, pp. 81-2.
40
Generally speaking, it would be hard to label Gropius an anti-Semite. Without a doubt, he had
internalized the stereotypes of Jews that were common in Germany. Particularly during moments of anger
or confusion, he invoked them. But throughout his life, many of his close friends were Jewish, as was his
mistress Lily Hildebrandt. The Bauhaus’s most significant patron, Adolf Sommerfeld, was also Jewish.
During the Nazi era, while living first in England and then the United States, Gropius tried to help his
Jewish friends flee Germany. For more on his efforts, see chapters 6 and 7 in Isaacs, Gropius.
41
Stanley Payne, A History of Fascism: 1914-1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), p. 24.
46
associate the proponents of these beliefs with the political right, since many of the groups
displayed intense nationalism. Although they differed with those on the right on many
issues, avant-garde Expressionist artists and architects were part of this turn from
rationalism and also had connections to mysticism and racism, which in Germany
continued into the Weimar Republic. However, most German Expressionists did not see
themselves as opposing modernity, but rather as revising it. They believed they could
contribute, on a more radical level, to the development of certain features of “classical
modernity,” a term used by historian Detlev Peukert.42 Whereas most modernists during
the “classical” phase (1890-1933) used reason when dealing with democracy, civil rights,
social reform, and individual freedom, the Expressionists believed personal emotion and
faith were the key.
The first four years of the Bauhaus attest to the ambiguity of the times, where
seemingly rival factions shared particular characteristics. The Bauhaus began under
Expressionist principles, led by Walter Gropius and Johannes Itten, and mysticism was an
essential component of the school’s early experience. During this period, it was in no
way a foregone conclusion that the Bauhaus would embrace the additional elements of
Peukert’s modernity such as industrialization, mass production, and their relevant
aesthetics as it did in 1923. Nor was it out of the question for these elements to co-exist
42
Peukert, The Weimar Republic. Not all of the features of “classical modernity” were compatible with
Expressionism. For instance, Expressionists rejected heavy reliance on technology and industrialization,
which Peukert includes in his definition. This was less true for Expressionist architects who took
advantage of improved technology to create their fantastical structures. However, for them it was more the
final product, not its means of construction, which would inspire the faith essential to the restructuring of
society. Frampton, Modern Architecture, pp. 116-8.
47
with mysticism or irrationalism, as the Nazis and others certainly showed was possible.43
There were many students who were comfortable with Itten’s teachings, considering
them modern and consistent with the goals laid out in the Bauhaus Manifesto. But there
were those who were against Itten as well and sought a more rational definition of
Bauhaus modernism. Eventually those students and masters who opposed mysticism
won out, but it was a tense negotiation, and it would not be the last time the Bauhaus
flirted with beliefs that were also claimed by the political right-wing.
Concerning Gropius’s racism toward Jews described at the end of the chapter, it
had little to do with mysticism and more to do with the Jewish stereotypes that were
common throughout Germany. Gropius’s feelings serve as an important reminder that
racism was not only found among conservative nationalists and the radical right, but in
diverse sections of the general population.
43
The Nazis embraced modern technology and industry, but rejected most other aspects of the
Enlightenment and modernity. Jeffrey Herf calls this “reactionary modernism.” See his book, Reactionary
Modernism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
48
CHAPTER 4
STUDENT LIFE
DESSAU AND BERLIN, 1925-33
The Neue Sachlichkeit
With the resignation of Johannes Itten and the hiring of his replacement, the
Hungarian constructivist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, in 1923, the Bauhaus said goodbye to
mysticism and Expressionism, and adopted the slogan “Art and technology: a new unity.”
This was the result of an internal struggle at the Bauhaus between two competing groups
of students and between Itten and Gropius. Most of the other masters only reluctantly
took the side of Gropius and were not prominent players in the conflict.
The debate over Expressionism was not unique to the Bauhaus. Many of the era’s
social reform oriented, avant-garde artists were Expressionists. However, almost
immediately they began to face criticism from other artists who did not see
Expressionism as the answer to the current problems facing the Weimar Republic. In
1919 the poet Rainer Maria Rilke opposed the Expressionist idea of radical change. He
wrote, “It is so comprehensible that people have become impatient – and yet, what do we
need more now than patience? Wounds need time, and are not healed by having flags
planted in them.” 1 This early dissatisfaction with Expressionism gradually led artists,
like the Bauhaus students, to question its effectiveness for the tasks at hand. When the
1
Rainer Maria Rilke, 1919, in Gay, Weimar Culture, p. 121.
49
Bauhaus changed direction in 1923, it contributed to the end of Expressionism’s leading
place among the artistic avant-garde. In 1924 Paul Kornfeld, a former Expressionist, best
described the prevailing attitude: “No more about war, revolution and the salvation of the
world. Let us be modest and turn our attention to other and smaller things.”2 This
outlook formed the basis for the movement known as “Neue Sachlichkeit” (roughly
translated as New Objectivity). The coiner of the term, the art critic G. F. Hartlaub,
explains its meaning:
It was related to the general contemporary feeling in Germany of resignation and

cynicism after a period of exuberant hopes (which had found an outlet in
expressionism). Cynicism and resignation are the negative side of the Neue
Sachlichkeit; the positive side expresses itself in the enthusiasm for the immediate
reality as a result of a desire to take things entirely objectively on a material basis
without immediately investing them with ideal implications. This healthy
disillusionment finds its clearest expression in Germany in architecture.3
It is within this context that we can best understand the Bauhaus slogan of “Art
and technology: a new unity.” According to Gropius, “The Bauhaus could become an
island of introverts, if it were to lose contact with the work and working methods of the
rest of the world.”4 Where the previous goal was the unification of the fine arts and
crafts, now art was to be united with technology, artist with engineer. The workshops
were to design models for industrial production that could then be mass-produced, with
the hopes of meeting the immediate needs of society. Architecture was to be organized
along similar principles based on standardization. This shift toward industry, while
curtailing the bold proclamations of the Bauhaus Manifesto, did not signal a retreat from
utopianism. Having previously advocated for sweeping changes, now the Bauhaus
2
Paul Kornfeld, 1924, in Gay, Weimar Culture, p. 121.
3
G. F. Hartlaub to Alfred H. Barr, July 1929, in Frampton, Modern Architecture, p. 130.
4
Walter Gropius to the Council of Masters, Weimar, 3 February 1922, in Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus,
p. 69.
50
planned a different approach: to introduce into society, item-by-item, its products and
designs, and their accompanying values, with the goal of having them accepted as part of
everyday life. When this assimilation was accomplished, a “New World” would be
achieved.5
Progress was made during the last two years in Weimar, but it was in Dessau where
“Neue Sachlichkeit” took center stage and shaped the entire experience of the students.
Enrollment Figures for the Bauhaus in Dessau and Berlin, 1925-33
To determine enrollment figures for the Dessau and Berlin periods of the
Bauhaus’s history, we again turn to H. M. Wingler’s Bauhaus.6 The record keeping
during this time was much better than in Weimar, but unfortunately we still do not have a
year-by-year breakdown of total enrollment. However, we do have a yearly summary of
the number of new students from 1925-33, which helps us determine how successful the
Bauhaus was at attracting students.
The period 1925-33, as compared with the Weimar years, was a time of unusual
stability in terms of enrollment. One hundred and thirty Bauhaus students followed the
school from Weimar to Dessau in April 1925, which, considering the enrollment trouble
of the previous six years, was quite an accomplishment. The school had hoped to
increase this total by the start of the winter semester in October,7 but, according to the
records, the first incoming class of new students was not until the summer term of April
5
6
H. M. Wingler, Bauhaus, pp. 622-5.
7
“The Bauhaus in Dessau,” 1925, in H. M. Wingler, Bauhaus, p. 106
51
1927. It is unclear what caused this delay, but it is possible that the Bauhaus decided to
wait until their new school building, which included a housing unit, was officially opened
in the winter of 1926-7 before admitting students.
With the first incoming class of 74 students joining the former Weimar students,
the Bauhaus began five and a half years of steady enrollment. A total of 520 new
students came to Dessau (1925-32) and Berlin (1932-3). Table 2 provides a year-by-year
account of each incoming class. Hannes Meyer, Gropius’s successor as director from
1928-30, had the most successful period in terms of attracting students. Under his watch,
the Bauhaus had what was probably the largest incoming class in its history at 96
students, occurring oddly enough during the first year of the Great Depression.
Matriculation dropped only slightly after that, remaining close to 80 per year until the
school, in turmoil, moved to Berlin in 1932.8
8
Why did the Bauhaus have such success during the Depression? One reason was that attending the
Bauhaus offered students a chance to make money by selling their designs to industry, which was
encouraged under Hannes Meyer. Meyer believed that with proceeds gained from sales, 100 students in
1929 were able to pay 35% of their annual expenses. Considering the mass unemployment at the time, the
option of attending school and earning money was very attractive.
H. Meyer, “Bauhaus Dessau 1927-30: My Experience of a Polytechnical Education,” 1940, in Claude
Schnaidt, Hannes Meyer: Buildings, Projects, and Writings (Stuttgart: Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1965), p. 113.
52
Table 2
Overall, 650 students attended the Bauhaus during this period. Max Bill, an
architectural student in Dessau until 1929,9 believed there to be no more than 150
students at the Bauhaus per year.10 But this appears to be an underestimate. Particularly
from 1927 to 1932, 150 students seems to be the minimum that was maintained, with a
maximum near 200. We do have total enrollment statistics for the conclusion of the
summer 1932 semester, which preceded the move to Berlin. It was reported that 168
students were in attendance, and of these students 135 were German and 33 were
foreigners, including 8 Americans, 4 British, and 6 Swiss.11 80% of the Bauhaus was of
9
Bill went on to cofound the Ulm Institute of Design in 1950.
10
Max Bill, Interview by Judith Pearlman, 19 April 1981, Transcript, Judith Pearlman Archive, Research
Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (acc. # 920069). Permission to use the Max Bill
interview was granted by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Pro Litteris, Zurich © 2003.
11
Lord Mayor Fritz Hesse, “The Fate of the Bauhaus – a Final Hour Account,” Volksblatt für Anhalt
(Dessau), 20 August 1932, in H. M. Wingler, Bauhaus, pp. 178-9. Also during this time there were Italian,
Scandinavian, Japanese, Jewish, and Slavic students at the Bauhaus.
53
German origin, which countered the notion that foreigners dominated the school. Still, a
20% international population must have appeared even greater during a time when
anyone of non-German origin was suspect.
It was suggested in Chapter 2 that in the first years of the Weimar Bauhaus, the
percentage of women was 50% or higher, but then gradually began to decline, due in part
to Gropius’s policy of limiting female enrollment. We see the result of this decline in the
fact that only 29 women out of 130 students (22%) accompanied the Bauhaus from
Weimar to Dessau. During the Dessau and Berlin periods, women made up 26% of the
student population (166 out of 650). They were also 26% of those students who were
new to the Bauhaus (137 out of 520). Table 3 shows the percentage of new male and
female students per year from 1927-33. One can see that women made up no more than
30% of any given incoming class, which was Walter Gropius’s stated goal. In fact from
the summer of 1927 through the summer of 1929, their percentage was exactly 30%. It
appears that women were never able to regain their early inroads at the Bauhaus.
54
Table 3
A “Haus” for the Bauhaus
Members of the Bauhaus began arriving in Dessau at the end of March and early
April 1925. Despite the students’ declaration that they would leave Weimar with the
Bauhaus, some in fact chose to stay and enrolled in Otto Bartning’s State College of
Crafts and Architecture, the Bauhaus’s replacement.12 One hundred and thirty did make
the trip and were the first to enroll in Dessau. The majority of the craft masters remained
in Weimar, but almost all of the form masters, such as Schlemmer, Klee, Kandinsky, and
Moholy-Nagy, decided to continue. As a temporary home, the Bauhaus set up shop in an
old department store on the Mauerstrasse, which it planned to occupy until Gropius’s new
Bauhaus building was completed.13
12
13
55
Gropius set to work immediately on planning the Bauhaus’s new home. A great
deal was riding on this building. It was essential that the architectural design meet the
needs of the workshops, departments, and students it was to house, while simultaneously
articulating the Bauhaus’s shift toward industry and technology. The design was to be
both functional and symbolic in this respect. Éva Forgács calls the building “the
equivalent of a manifesto.”14 The process of construction was also important since it
would serve as the Bauhaus’s first large scale demonstration of the workshops’ role in the
building effort. The students were therefore given critical assignments to design and
execute interior and exterior decorations and furnishings appropriate to Gropius’s
architectural plan. The students in the wall-painting workshop painted the exterior façade
and the interior walls; the metal workshop executed all of the lighting fixtures in the
assembly hall, dining room, and studios; and the joinery workshop produced the
building’s tubular steel furniture, designed by student and young master Marcel Breuer.15
The building was ready for use in October 1926 and was officially dedicated on
December 4, 1926. Forgács provides an excellent description:
One wing of the brick- and glass-covered, reinforced concrete structure consisted of
workshops and classrooms. At the level of the second and third floors a bridge supported
by four pillars joined this to the other wing, which housed office space, faculty rooms,
and additional classrooms… Offices took up the lower level of the bridge; the upper
level was reserved for the future architecture department and for Gropius’s private office.
There was an exhibition area in the workshop wing, and on the ground floor, near the
entrance, a large lecture hall, theatre and cafeteria were clustered so that the three could
be combined into one large space. Through this area one approached the six storey
dormitory building, the basement of which included a gymnasium and shower rooms. 16
The building combined all spheres of life in one structure, from residing, eating, and
working to entertainment and sports. Such a holistic approach had been promoted in
14
15
Isaacs, Gropius, p. 120. Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus, pp. 148-9.
16
Forgács, Bauhaus Idea, pp. 133-4.
56
Weimar, but now the school had a home that was specifically designed for this purpose
and could serve as a highly visible symbol of the Bauhaus’s new version of cooperative,
utopian living, based on industry instead of crafts. The building certainly did attract
attention. In 1928 it was estimated that there were between 100 and 250 visitors a week,
hailing from Europe and America.17
The canteen was still central to student life, but now it was rivaled by the
dormitory/studio wing: the first on-campus housing effort in the history of German art
schools and universities.18 Students recalled how the studio contributed to the lively
communal spirit of the school. Xanti Schawinsky writes, “All you had to do to call a
friend was to step out onto your balcony and whistle.”19 Gunta Stoelzl remembered
gathering around a gramophone and listening to music or chatting over tea or coffee with
her friends.20 Exercise continued to be vital to Bauhaus life. In 1928 the instructor Karla
Grosch regularly led the students in calisthenics on the studio’s roof.21 The studio did
cause some problems however. Hannes Meyer noted that it only accommodated 28
students, which created some resentment between those who were selected to live there
and those who were not.22
17
H. M. Wingler, Bauhaus, p. 9
18
Isaacs, Gropius, p. 120.
19
Xanti Schawinsky in Forgács, Bauhaus Idea, p. 134.
20
21
Ute Ackermann, “Body Concepts of the Modernists at the Bauhaus,” in Fiedler and Feierabend,
Bauhaus, pp. 88-9. In the Johannes Itten era, exercise at the Bauhaus was organized under principles
associated with “metaphysical, religious, and Lebensreform ideas.” In Dessau the exercise routine was part
of a larger trend affecting Germany that emphasized a healthy and beautiful body. Taken to the extreme, it
resulted in the cult built around the ideal German Aryan – blond, blue eyed, and perfectly sculpted - which
was later promoted by the Nazis. But the idea of achieving physical perfection was not the exclusive
property of the far right and appealed to other members of the population, including the avant-garde.
Ibid., p. 91.
22
57
Curriculum Reform
In Weimar, Walter Gropius had hoped to reveal to the public the school’s new
practical approach to art, craft, and architecture at the 1923 Bauhaus Exhibition. The
plan was for the exhibit to highlight the Bauhaus’s transition from detailed, hand crafted
products to those of clean, functional forms, which emphasized the new technological
possibilities of the era. However, since the shift toward industry had occurred only
recently, student contributions were of mixed success. For instance, the metal workshop
had to contract a local craftsman to produce some of the higher quality goods on display.
In addition, metal work for the experimental “Haus am Horn” was done by Gropius, his
associate Adolf Meyer, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy; the metal students produced nothing
for the house.23 Bauhaus specialist Elaine Hochman comments, “For every stripped-
down, machine-planned product displayed, there were twice as many terra-cotta pots –
perhaps even more – whose tormented forms made them ill-suited for mechanical
reproduction.”24 Just as students in 1919 had declared their sympathy with Gropius’s
radical aims, but failed to immediately live up to them, so too in 1923 were many
students unprepared for the challenges they had only recently asked for.
It was not until the move to Dessau that the Bauhaus was able to institute
widespread curriculum reform and better familiarize the students with its new principles.
The workshops were reduced in number; those that the Bauhaus felt least suitable to
industry were purged. Glass painting, bookbinding, and pottery were eliminated and
stone- and woodwork were combined to form a sculpture workshop. Joinery (furniture),
metal, and textiles (weaving) remained, although redirected to produce prototype designs
23
Baumhoff, Gendered World of the Bauhaus, pp. 134-5.
24
58
for industry. The wall painting workshop ceased its picture painting and focused on
adding texture and color to architecture. Printing, too, was kept, and reflected the new
possibilities associated with advertising.25
Four students from the Weimar Bauhaus were named young masters of workshops:
Hinnerk Scheper (wall painting), Marcel Breuer (joinery), Joost Schmidt (sculpture), and
Herbert Bayer (printing/advertising).26 Later, in 1927, Gunta Stoelzl was promoted to
young master of the textile workshop, becoming the school’s first female master. These
students, in theory, should have been equal parts artist and craftsman. Therefore, there
was no longer the need to have both a master of craft and form in each workshop. The
young masters could serve both roles and head the shops by themselves. Indeed, Frank
Whitford claims that the young masters were “equally at home in the workshop and
studio…, and determined to demonstrate that there is no essential difference between fine
art and the crafts.”27 However, Anja Baumhoff more recently has stated that they were
more artist than craftsman, reflecting the dominant role played by the master of form in
the Weimar workshops.28
With the young masters acting as heads of the workshops and Preliminary Course,
it meant that former students were now in official leadership positions and could, to an
extent, directly shape the future of the Bauhaus. A stronger bond was created between
student and teacher, since many of the current Bauhaus students knew the ex-students,
25
Droste, Bauhaus:1919-1933, p. 147.
26
Josef Albers, a former student, had been teaching the Preliminary Course with Moholy-Nagy since 1923.
In Dessau he retained this position and was considered a young master. In 1928, when Moholy left, he
took over sole teaching responsibilities of the course.
27
28
Baumhoff, Gendered World of the Bauhaus, see Chapter 2.
59
now their teachers, very well.29 This led to greater cooperation in the workshops.
However, the young masters were not as close with their superiors. Both Gunta Stoelzl
and Anni Albers maintained that there was a clear gap between the old and new masters
in status. For example, the old masters (Feininger, Klee, Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy, and
Schlemmer) inhabited new homes designed by Gropius, while the young masters had to
fend for themselves on the housing market.30 Occasionally they would be invited to
socialize with their elders, but it was uncommon. This division highlighted the fact that
the old masters were still the ones calling the shots. In terms of social life, the young
masters primarily looked to themselves and the current students for companionship.31
Stoelzl even hinted at a love affair between her and Breuer.32
The true test of the workshops was to see if their products could indeed be sold to
industry and mass-produced. A product or design could not be considered a success
entirely on its own terms; it also had to have practical applications. The Bauhaus made
steady progress with this goal under Gropius. However, the most significant output and
contact with industry came during 1928-30 when Hannes Meyer was the director.
Accompanying this success was a change in the Bauhaus’s character.
29
In Weimar some of the form masters had been known as “corridor masters” because they were seen more
in the hallways than in the classroom.
30
See above for a similar situation that occurred between students living in the new studio building and
those living elsewhere.
31
Gunta Stoelzl, 11 November 1982 and Anni Albers, 16 May 1982, Interviews by Judith Pearlman,
Transcripts, Judith Pearlman Archive, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
(acc. # 920069). Oskar Schlemmer is said to have been friendly with the young masters. He too was never
fully embraced by the other teachers. It should also be mentioned that while Marcel Breuer and Walter
Gropius had an up and down relationship at the Bauhaus, they still managed to form a close bond that
lasted for the rest of their lives. After fleeing Germany in the 30’s, they were neighbors in Lincoln,
Massachusetts and worked together at Harvard University. Herbert Bayer was close to Gropius as well.
32
In 1982, since Breuer was now dead, she felt it ok to admit she had been “very close” with him. Ibid.
60
Meyer was an extreme functionalist, whose philosophy is summed up in his
personal manifesto that appeared in the 1928 periodical bauhaus.
all things in this world are a product of the formula: (function times economy)
all these things are, therefore, not works of art.
all art is composition and, hence, is unsuited to achieve goals.
all life is function and is therefore unartistic….
building is a biological process. building is not an aesthetic process. in its design

the new dwelling becomes not only a ‘machine for living’, but also a biological
apparatus serving the needs of body and mind. the new age provides new
building materials for the new way of building houses….33
According to Éva Forgács, “The objective of design now became equated with
quantitative increment: providing millions with various objects. Its [the Bauhaus’s]
ideology became a feeling of social consciousness that would motivate further
quantitative leaps in production leading to supplying the needs of millions.”34 With this
agenda, the influence of Bauhaus painters and the fine arts in general, which had
maintained an important role under Gropius, were suppressed, leading to an outcry from
certain masters and students.35 Master Moholy-Nagy and young masters Breuer and
Bayer resigned. To others, like architectural student Max Bill, Meyer’s approach was
viewed as an important and logical progression from Gropius’s less radical social and
artistic vision.36
Some of the accomplishments from the period 1928-30 are as follows. A joinery
co-operative in Brehmen agreed to mass-produce models that were created in the joinery
workshop, marketing them as “Bauhaus” furniture. Additionally, the workshop supplied
33
Hannes Meyer, “building,” bauhaus, 4 (1928), in Forgács, Bauhaus Idea, p. 165.
34
35
The student T. Lux Feininger, Lyonnel Feininger’s son, commented, “The new unity of art and
technology came to a standstill… The dreams of a regeneration of society hardened into specialization.
Authority, structure, re-entered the scene.” In Whitford, Bauhaus, p. 186.
36
61
the furniture for sixty rooms in the Hannes Meyer designed Federal School of the General
German Trades Union.37 The metal workshop designed lamps and other lighting fixtures
that were mass-produced by the firm Körting & Mathiesen in Leipzig. Between 1928
and 1932, the firm sold 50,000 items. The student Marianne Brandt was responsible for
many of these designs, which made use of bronze, brass, steel, and glass.38 The
advertising workshop produced newspaper ads, catalogues, and posters for certain firms.
They also made illuminated signs for the Suchard chocolate factory and for the local
Dessau tourist office.39 Perhaps the school’s greatest success was their wallpaper line,
based on the simple and subdued designs created in the wall-painting workshop under the
direction of Hinnerk Scheper and another former student Alfred Arndt. Luckily for the
Bauhaus, the daughter of Emil Rasch, head of one of the largest wall-paper
manufacturers in Germany, was a student. Scheper worked through her to secure a deal
for the company to manufacture and distribute select Bauhaus patterns.40 Meyer
estimated that in 1929, the year they were introduced, 20,000 rooms in Germany and
neighboring countries were decorated with Bauhaus wallpaper.41
The increased profits allowed the Bauhaus some degree of financial stability for
the first time in its history, coming at an important point when political attacks were
being renewed and the Depression beginning. One third of the profit from a sale went to
the Bauhaus, another third to the workshop that produced the design, and the final third to
37
H. Meyer, “Bauhaus Dessau 1927-30,” p. 111.
38
Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus, p. 193. Bauhaus Archive Berlin: The Collection, pp. 112-3.
39
40
41
62
the student or student group directly involved.42 Meyer believed that with this income a
student could pay 35% of his/her annual expenses, which allowed the Bauhaus to attract a
more socially diverse student body. Payments went out to 100 students in 1929,43 which
likely was over 50% of the population. While 50% is certainly a good figure, it was low
enough to create competition between students over who would produce the coveted
designs for industry and who would be left out. The American student, Howard
Dearstyne,44 recalled a fellow student stealing one of his ideas for a wallpaper pattern,
which was later accepted for reproduction by the Rasch company. Dearstyne’s rival was
given the credit. Dearstyne also remarked that those students with a better business
acumen were often more successful at marketing their ideas and winning a contract.45
Poor Howard never had anything accepted and presumably never made any money at the
Bauhaus.
42
The high student royalty rate of 30% did not last throughout the Depression. One student reported that
their rates were cut to 10% by 1932. ‘M’ (an anonymous architecture student), Dessau to a Swiss architect,
26 June 1932, in Whitford, Masters and Students, p. 290.
43
44
Dearstyne was an architectural student at the Bauhaus from 1928 to 1933. He is the only American to
earn a Bauhaus diploma in architecture.
45
Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus, pp. 149-50.
63
The Architecture Department
A major event in the history of Bauhaus came in 1927 with the establishment of an
architectural department. It is surprising, considering how much stock Gropius placed in
architecture, that it took seven years to create a department. Years later, Gropius
defended his actions by stating that students had to begin with crafts in order to receive “a
good all-round training for hand and eye, and being a practical first step in mastering
industrial processes.”46 Then they could move on to architecture. This may well be what
Gropius intended, but as we saw, the students in the Johannes Itten era received little
training in “industrial processes” and the Bauhaus remained primarily a crafts school
until 1923.47 From 1923-27, Gropius’s claim that crafts were preparing students for work
in industry and architecture holds more weight, but also makes it even more striking that
an architectural department was not created. Gropius was very territorial about his
profession, so perhaps he found it preferable to have students assist him in his own
private practice rather than have them work independently in an official department. A
strong department might have competed with his own office for rare commissions. A
simpler explanation might be that Gropius wished to have the new Bauhaus building
operational before the department began its work.
Assisting Gropius with his private practice was not what some students and
masters had in mind. Master Oskar Schlemmer wrote in 1921, “In the Bauhaus he
[Gropius] has a large private office, and he receives commissions for building villas in
Berlin. Berlin, business, and lucrative commissions, partially or hardly understood by the
46
Walter Gropius in Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus, p. 58. See also Gropius, New Architecture and the
Bauhaus.
47
The authors Forgács, Naylor, and Dearstyne support this position.
64
students (whom Gropius wants to help get jobs this way) – these are scarcely the best
prerequisites for Bauhaus work.”48 Some students felt this way too. In the summer
semester of 1924 a student group petitioned the Council of Masters for permission to
form an architectural cooperative to investigate housing issues. The council agreed and
the students started their club. While researching his book, Howard Dearstyne viewed
some of the cooperative’s designs. He comments that there was excellent work being
done, particular by Marcel Breuer, and indicates that there was enough talent to sustain a
small architectural department.49 Not content with only the cooperative, two students,
Hans Volger and Erich Brendel, wrote a letter to Bauhaus leadership before the start of
the winter semester, declaring that they would leave the school unless architectural
training was improved. “Our continuing to study at the Bauhaus depends on the
introduction… of a course in architecture. We are for the retention of compulsory work
in the Workshops in the mornings, but at the same time we want everything to be done to
train us in architecture. This would do justice to the ultimate and final significance of the
‘Bau’ (building) haus philosophy…”50 Through their various demands, the students
made their thoughts known and Gropius knew that he could not defend the lack of a
proper architecture department for much longer.
The move to Dessau brought new architectural work for the students. In 1926 they
had their first chance to work on a large-scale housing project when Gropius was given
the commission for sixty experimental dwellings meant for low-income workers in
48
Oskar Schlemmer to Otto Meyer, 7 December 1921, in Tut Schlemmer, Letters and Diaries, p. 113.
49
50
Hans Volger and Erich Brendel to the Bauhaus Direction, Weimar, 5 September 1924, in Whitford,
Masters and Students, p. 185. Apparently Volger was satisfied with the outcome of their letter, but Brendel
was not and did not re-enroll when the Bauhaus moved to Dessau.
65
nearby Törten. Students assisted with the building effort, which was one of the earliest
attempts to successfully apply “factory principles to all aspects of construction, from start
to finish.”51 The community consisted of row houses, five-story apartment blocks, and
cooperative stores; all of which were white with flat roofs and horizontal and vertical
window strips.52
An official architecture department was established in 1927 with Hannes Meyer as
its head and a small group of students as its first members. Architectural study
incorporated both building and interior decorating, which included the workshops.53 A
total of nine semesters was required for a diploma of architecture. The Bauhaus leaders
were proud of their new department and gave it the primary spot in their brochure of
1927.54 When Gropius resigned in 1928, he left Meyer to lead the school. Meyer
continued to promote the expansion of architecture at the Bauhaus. Work continued on
the Törten housing project. By 1929 twelve students had built 90 workers’ flats, earning
120-150 marks each. The architectural department also concerned itself with the study of
city planning. Students in a building class analyzed the town plan of Dessau in order to
discover its deficiencies. The students discovered that workers’ housing was situated
nearest to “industrial nuisances,” while the homes of the wealthy were always closer to
cultural institutions. The report was submitted to the local government, who refused to
make the results public.55
51
52
The Törten project was based on the aesthetic and social principles articulated in the Dessau Bauhaus
building. See above.
53
Bauhaus Dessau, “The Course of Training in the Architecture Department,” 1929, in H. M. Wingler,
Bauhuas, p. 151.
54
This brochure is printed in Droste, Bauhaus: 1919-1933, p. 136.
55
H. Meyer, “Bauhaus Dessau 1927-30,” p. 113
66
The third director of the Bauhaus was Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1930-3).
Under Mies building was slow, but he did manage to enhance the architecture department
by completely subordinating the workshops to it. Some say Mies turned the Bauhaus into
an architectural school, paying little attention to anything else.56 Others, like Howard
Dearstyne, saw the added emphasis on architecture as long overdue.57 Mies did not share
Gropius’s or Meyer’s social vision, and the instruction in architecture took on a different
tone, which alienated those students who still wanted to build for the people. Ludwig
Hilbersiemer taught city planning at the Bauhaus, so social questions were not
completely ignored. The students also learned valuable lessons in aesthetic principles
from Mies, whose interest in pure abstract composition contrasted with Meyer’s
functionalism.
Bauhaus Dances and Parties
The Bauhaus traditions of dancing and partying continued in Dessau. As in
Weimar, social functions were crucial to forming the students’ identity as Bauhäuslers
and solidifying the larger Bauhaus community.
The school only had to wait a few weeks for a new version of the Bauhaus band
to assemble in Dessau. The students who played in the band at various times were
Andreas Weininger (the band’s leader), Heinrich Koch, Jackson Jacobson, Clemens
Röseler, Fritz Kuhr, Lux Feininger, Xanti Schawinsky, and Jura Fulda.58 The band is
56
‘M,’ Dessau to a Swiss architect, 26 June 1932, in Whitford, Masters and Students, pp. 290-1.
57
See chapters 16-18 in Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus for his views on the architectural evolution of the
Bauhaus. Dearstyne studied architecture with Mies van der Rohe and believed he was the best of the three
Bauhaus directors.
58
Xanti Schawinsky, “bauhaus metamorphosis,” in Neumann, Bauhaus and Bauhaus People, pp. 157-8.
67
sometimes referred to in current scholarship as a jazz band, but this is misleading. As
Xanti Schawinsky59 explained, their repertoire consisted of quite an eclectic mix of styles
and a wide variety of instruments.
our musical heritage derived from the countries of our birth and origin, germany,
hungary, czechoslovakia, poland, switzerland, russia, the united states; and diverse it
was, it was unified according to the rule of the art in a fanatically rhythmic and
penetrating din. chairs, gunshots, hand bells and giant tuning forks, sirens and pianos
prepared by means of nails, wires, and any kind of tone-modifying materials
supplemented the instrumental outfit, which in its ensemble, from various folk sources
or from homemade compositions, was able to produce guaranteed danceable music
for hours. 60
With the band ready to play, the students then sought a dance hall to replace
Weimar’s Ilm Chalet. A “provincial beer establishment with a suitable dance floor and
stage” was soon discovered and the Saturday dances resumed. Schawinsky writes, “so
the thread that had been broken [in weimar]… is picked up again, people at last felt
reunited in the exchange of ideas, feelings, and temperaments…” 61 While the dances in
Weimar appear to have been student centered, in Dessau masters and special guests often
joined in as well. Masters’ birthdays were celebrated; work by the theater department
was rehearsed on stage using the live music; and guests, like Kurt Schwitters and Arthur
Rother (Dessau opera director), performed musical and theatrical numbers.62
The festival/party tradition also continued with some changes. The parties no
longer followed a schedule based around the seasons, although the Christmas Party and
59
Schawinsky was also a painter and a member of the theater department where he was an assistant to
Oskar Schlemmer. In 1936 he joined Josef Albers at Black Mountain College in the U.S.A. There, he
taught painting and theater.
60
Ibid., p. 157. Bauhaus musicians had a history of playing unorthodox instruments. See Chapter 2 for the
description of Johannes Driesch’s band that serenaded Gropius outside his window in 1919. In addition to
the musical influences of their home countries, a later band member Roman Clemens also credits Josef
Alber’s Preliminary Course for inspiration. Roman Clemens, Interview by Judith Pearlman, 12 November
1982, Transcript, Judith Pearlman Archive, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
(acc. # 920069).
61
Schawinsky, “bauhaus metamorphosis,” p. 158.
62
Ibid., p. 158. Roman Clemens, Interview by Judith Pearlman, 12 November 1982, Transcript, Judith
Pearlman Archive, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (acc. # 920069).
68
Summer Solstice were retained. Now parties were held “according to circumstances
relating to teaching and the Bauhaus’s own history.”63 Parties took place in the Bauhaus
building, planned in cooperation by masters and students. On a suggestion by the
students and young masters, the Bauhaus frequently included the community in their
celebrations with the hopes of fostering good will between town and gown. As a result,
parties included masters, students, and community members with their children.64
Their creative themes and their dreamlike qualities illustrate how closely linked the
Dessau parties were not only to the Bauhaus curriculum and its history, but to its
utopianism and the general modern movement. There was the New Objectivity Party
(December 1925), held in coordination with the opening of the Bauhaus building; the
Tube Party at Giebichenstein Castle (December 1926); the White Party (March 1926), in
which the color white was the main decoration and revelers wore striped, polka doted, or
checkered patterns in red, blue, or yellow; the Slogan Party (December 1927), where
Bauhäuslers poked fun at their reliance on slogans and celebrated both Kandinsky’s
birthday and the one year anniversary of the Bauhaus building; and the Metallic Festival
(February 1929), in which the attendees and rooms were covered with metallic
ornaments.65
One particular party in March 1928 was organized by the Bauhaus band with help
from their fellow students. The band’s popularity had been growing steadily during the
Dessau era and by the late 1920s it was regularly performing outside of town. At one
63
Ackermann, “Bauhaus Parties,” in Fiedler and Feierabend, Bauhaus p. 139.
64
65
Ackermann, “Bauhaus Parties,” pp. 133-8. For a lively description of the Metallic Festival see
Anonymous, “‘Something Metallic’ – Bauhaus Celebration,” Anhalter Anzeiger (Dessau), 12 February
1929, in H. M. Wingler, Bauhaus, p. 157.
69
such performance in Berlin, during the winter of 1928, two businessmen, who liked what
they heard from the young group, approached the band members and offered to organize
and pay for a Bauhaus party in the city at a later date. The band agreed and decided on a
theme – “the Bauhaus Band Beard, Nose and Heart Party.” Schawinsky elaborates,
“heaps of hair were turned into wigs, whiskers in every style – sundermann to chaplin –
trimmed and combed, curled and waved; noses molded – according to the injustice of
nature, hearts invented.”66 Schawinsky was in charge of decorations; the young master
Herbert Bayer designed the invitations; and some of the female students made flower
arrangements to sell at the event.67 The Bauhaus band also booked a second band to
perform. Things were shaping up nicely until it was learned that the two Berlin
businessmen had skipped town without a trace. There was now no money to pay for the
party.68
Having done all the planning, the band decided to go ahead with the party anyway.
To make ends meet they decided to charge an admission price of ten marks each. On
March 31st, 1928, a “whole troop” of Bauhäuslers traveled to Berlin for the big event. In
terms of the performance and atmosphere, Schawinsky recalled attendees describing it as
the “handsomest festival ever mounted in berlin.” But attendance was lower than
expected and the profit was minimal. The band knew they would not have enough
money to pay their expenses, not too mention the second band. Someone thought of
raising money by selling Bauhaus paintings, but this would have been too complicated
since their art was back in Dessau. So they decided to auction off the flower
66
Xanti Schawinksy, “bauhaus metamorphosis,” pp. 157, 160-1.
67
Gendered tasks, such as making flower arrangements, were common to the Bauhaus and are examined in
Chapter 6 of this thesis.
68
Ibid., pp. 160-1.
70
arrangements made by the female students, which proved a success. The second band
was paid and so were any other outstanding debts associated with the event. Of course,
the Bauhaus band took home nothing for themselves, but nobody seemed to mind very
much.69
Forced to leave Dessau in 1932 by the city government, now under the influence
of the Nazi party, the Bauhaus sought refuge in Berlin. Once there, it operated as a
private school for the first time in its history. Without a guarantee of state or city
funding, the Bauhaus had to rely on student tuition, product revenue, and its own fund
raising efforts in order to survive. Thus Bauhaus parties played a major role in helping
the school raise money during its one year in Berlin. Festivities were organized similar to
the aforementioned student sponsored party, where the Bauhäuslers planned it for
outsiders and charged admission. In February 1933, hoping to raise a significant sum of
money, the school threw a large celebration, which was attended by 700 guests. It was
now common for visitors to outnumber Bauhäuslers, with students and masters serving
more as party hosts than as the main participants.70
69
Ibid., pp. 161-2.
70
Ackermann, “Bauhaus Parties,” p. 139.
71
The End of the Bauhaus
Despite the many achievements of the Bauhaus and its attempts to reach out to the
community and society at large, the school’s time spent in Dessau was a tumultuous one.
Gropius left in 1928, feeling that the school was on solid footing, but no longer wishing
to endure the increasingly harsh political battles. Two years later, Hannes Meyer was
forced out by Mayor Hesse, accused of inappropriate left-wing political actions. The
third director, Mies van der Rohe, faced constant pressure from the opposition, led by the
National Socialists. The Bauhaus left Dessau in 1932. It then set up in Berlin, where
things only got worse. Mies closed the school for good in 1933. In the next chapter, we
will examine in more detail the political struggles of the Bauhaus and how student
involvement in politics impacted the school.
72
CHAPTER 5
STUDENT POLITICS
The Bauhaus’s first students in 1919 did not all share a common world view, nor
would the student body ever be unanimous in its thinking. Numerous students came
from the Wandervogel movement, which was itself very diverse and provides a good
example of the various strands of thought typical of Weimar youths. Many Wandervogel
groups were all male, but some included girls. Some accepted Jews, others did not.
Appreciation of nature was a major component. To some, this meant complete devotion
to nature and the fatherland. To others, it meant convening for an occasional stroll
through the woods. There were Wandervogel groups who rejected politics and there
were those, especially after 1918, that had ties to Communism, Socialism, and, later,
Nazism. One thing they all shared was their opposition to the adult world. When the war
ended, the youth blamed the adults for its disastrous results.1
Considering this diversity, it should not be surprising that the Bauhaus harbored
more than just radical leftist students during its first six years in Weimar (1919-25). For
sure a reformist, utopian attitude dominated, but it was not tied to any one political party.
It was based more on a general desire to break from the past and create a new standard of
living, based on innovations in art, craft, and architecture. Although in the minority,
there were students who opposed this plan, primarily from the old Weimar School of Fine
1
Gay, Weimar Culture, p. 77.
73
Arts, but other students were against it as well. While the conservative adult population
of Weimar recognized that there were students with rightist leanings at the Bauhaus, they
still clearly saw it as a Socialist or Communist institution. The language of the Bauhaus
Manifesto shocked them, as did the bold actions of Walter Gropius in defying Weimar
artistic tradition. The strange behavior of the student body and the overt political
activities of a few were seen as further proof of the school’s direct ties to the radical left.
It was not until 1927, after the Bauhaus had relocated to Dessau, that Communism
began to dominate Bauhaus life. Coinciding with the appointment of the Marxist
architect Hannes Meyer, a Communist student group, Kostufra, emerged and made an
immediate impact. Soon after, a nationalist student faction was formed to counter the far
left. The growing radicalism of the Bauhaus in the late 1920s and the early 1930s
mirrored that of the Weimar Republic. However, it differed from most educational
settings, particularly universities, where there was no such battle between left and right.
Most German students, by 1930, had already turned to the right and National Socialism
was becoming increasingly popular.2
2
Wolfgang Zorn, “Student Politics in the Weimar Republic,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 5,
No. 1 (1970), pp. 136-7.
74
The Hans Gross Affair
We begin our investigation of student politics by examining a town meeting that
was held on December 12, 1919, sponsored by a group calling themselves the “Free
Association of Civic Interests.” The claims made against the Bauhaus at this meeting,
often political in nature, and the chaos that they caused were the start of a series of
similar public political attacks that would hound the Bauhaus throughout its fourteen-year
history. One of the major players at the meeting was a Bauhaus student named Hans
Gross. His statements and the subsequent events surrounding him will be described
below.
Hans Gross was a disgruntled ex-student from the Grand Ducal School of Fine
Arts, unhappy with the Bauhaus’s rejection of tradition. He was in attendance, along
with members of the Town Council, other students and faculty from the Bauhaus, and
town residents, at the December 12th meeting.3 One of the most dramatic moments came
when Gross rose and spoke out against his school. Although he mentions the Bauhaus
just once in his speech, his remarks were considered a direct attack. Among other things,
he suggested that only a “man of steel and iron” could best express the “German spirit.”
He implied that Walter Gropius lacked this quality, ignoring the fact that Gropius was a
decorated World War I veteran. Gross continued, “For our age no longer knows any
Germans, and much less an art which is German. We have, after all, denounced
ourselves. We never want to be what we are – Germans!” Then he warned, “The
3
75
revenge is cruel for a people that renounces itself. Bear in mind that you are German!
Think and act!”4
Throughout the meeting other issues were raised having to do with the anti-
German character of the Bauhaus and its “Spartacist/Bolshevist” tendencies5 – making it
clear that the question of the Bauhaus was a political, as well as an artistic, one. Bauhaus
leadership and students recognized the damage that Gross had caused. Immediately after
the meeting, a group of students confronted Gross in the nearby Kaiser Café and
reprimanded him for having spoken out.6 They then called a student meeting and
demanded to know why Gross had not alerted them to his intentions, claiming that all
such actions needed to be first approved by the student representatives. The student
leaders then issued the following statement:
We are not in search of an old or a modern art… but wish to proceed on the road to truth
and purity… We declare our total agreement with the work plan of the Bauhaus, and our
complete confidence in the creator of the Bauhaus concept, Mr. Gropius, and his
associates… We request the population of Weimar… at last to give us the peace required
of our work: that is our wish.7
Walter Gropius also responded to the speech by calling Gross in for a private
meeting. There, Gross contended that Gropius withdrew his scholarship and forced him
to leave the Bauhaus. However, Gropius claimed to only have reprimanded him and not
4
Hans Gross in State Ministry of Culture, Weimar, “The Dispute over the Staatliche Bauhaus,” 1920, in H.
M. Wingler, Bauhaus, p. 40.
5
Cited as evidence of Communist activity was a pamphlet entitled “To All Artists!” that was circulated
among the students, which called for artists to participate in a movement for radical social change. It was
seen as a direct link between Expressionism, Bolshevism, and the Bauhaus. In reality, it was not directly
affiliated with any political party, but was more a general call to action. Hochman, Crucible of Modernism,
pp. 94-5. In addition, it was also said that a prominent Munich socialist, named Sachs, was a frequent
visitor to the Bauhaus. It was later determined that he had only visited the school once, and it was for
artistic reasons, not political ones. State Ministry of Culture, Weimar, “The Dispute over the Staatliche
Bauhaus,” 1920, in H. M. Wingler, Bauhaus, p. 42.
6
Ibid.
7
Bauhaus student leaders in Forgács, Bauhaus Idea, p. 40.
76
to have withdrawn his funding.8 Whatever the case, Gross was now no longer a Bauhaus
student. The town supported Gross’s version of events and filed a petition with the State
Ministry of Culture, asking them to investigate the Bauhaus’s actions against Gross and
the school’s overall behavior.9 Thirteen other Bauhaus students rallied to Gross’s
defense and submitted their own statement of support, calling him a “true German” for
having spoken out. They then resigned in protest over Gross’s treatment.10 Needless to
say, the Bauhaus was in a state of turmoil.
In what would be a rare occasion in the history of the Bauhaus, the report issued
by the Thuringian state government, which was controlled by the Social Democrats, sided
with the school. Concerning the Gross incident, the report found no evidence that
Gropius had withdrawn his scholarship or otherwise mistreated him.11 However, the
damage had already been done. It was clear that much of the town opposed the Bauhaus.
The language used in this conflict would appear again and again, not only during the
Bauhaus’s dealing with Weimar, but eventually in a national context as the Bauhaus
came to be seen as a symbol of the cultural decadence and anti-German activity believed
to be spreading throughout the country.
The Gross affair also highlighted the hostility coming from within the student
body. The Council of Masters, after review of the incident, believed Gross’s opinions
8
Bauhaus, p. 41.
9
Besides singling out the Gross incident, the petition also addressed the Bauhaus’s rejection of the Weimar
art tradition, its favoritism toward “elements alien to the race,” its promotion of Communism, and the
rudeness in conduct and dress of the student body. The government report ruled in favor of the Bauhaus on
all charges. Ibid., pp. 39-42.
10
Forgács, Bauhaus Idea, p. 40. Bauhaus students, “Open letter to the artists of Weimar,” 16 December
1919, in Whitford, Masters and Students, p. 191.
11
Bauhaus, p. 41.
77
primarily were based on artistic grounds. His position was then manipulated by the town
opposition and made political. After speaking with other students, the council found that
most of their criticism was artistically based as well, particularly concerning the
decreased role of easel painting. To pacify the students, the council pledged to maintain
a painting program.12 It was also brought to leadership’s attention that the leftist political
activity of the more revolutionary minded students was worrisome to the nonpolitical,
who thought it would interfere with their studies.13 This claim, combined with the fact
that the town clearly considered the Bauhaus as a left-radical institution, caused the
Bauhaus to ban any further political activity on campus.14 Gropius wrote, “If the
Bauhaus becomes a playground for political games, it will collapse like a pack of
cards.”15
Gropius’s warning went unheeded. Two months later, in March 1920, a group of
Bauhaus students attended a funeral for nine slain workers who had defended the town of
Weimar from an attempted putsch, which occurred at the same time as the larger Kapp
Putsch in Berlin. They were among hundreds of attendees at this politically charged
event, carrying with them political banners that had been made on Bauhaus grounds.
Such visible political activity by the students deeply concerned Gropius and, afterwards,
he wrote to eight of the participants, warning them of further political expression.16 Yet,
Gropius too had been moved by the workers’ defense of Weimar and if his wife Alma
had not convinced him to avoid the funeral, he would have been there as well. A year
12
“Minutes of a meeting of the Council of Masters,” 18 December 1919, in Whitford, Masters and
Students, p. 191. Forgács, Bauhaus Idea, pp. 40-1.
13
Ibid.
14
15
Walter Gropius in Naylor, Bauhaus Reassessed, p. 60.
16
Whitford, Bauhaus, pp. 38-9.
78
later he was commissioned to design a monument to the fallen workers and it was
completed in 1922.17 As this example of Gropius and the Bauhaus students show, it was
difficult for teachers and students to distance themselves from the political strife that
surrounded them, even if they knew the consequences could be damaging. Complete
political avoidance would have limited their ability to act on the school’s stated
revolutionary intentions of 1919, which few Bauhäuslers were ready to give up on just
yet.
1923-25
By 1923 the Bauhaus was trying to distance itself from these revolutionary
impulses. Many students were pleased when the mystic and Expressionistic influences of
Johannes Itten were replaced by the more rational and functional approach associated
with Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. But there were also those who worried that the Bauhaus
would lose its energy and reformist desires if it denied parts of its original purpose.18
Because students continued to associate the Bauhaus with social change, politics were
never eliminated. However, during the last two years in Weimar, there was little in the
way of coordinated political activity. This did not stop the school’s opponents from
continuing to use political attacks, very similar in nature to those made during the Gross
affair, as their best weapon against the Bauhaus. In addition, there were still students
who spoke out against the school in conjunction with the local opposition.
The Bauhaus exhibition during the summer of 1923 provided an occasion for
local critics to speak out against the art and architecture of the Bauhaus. The “Haus am
17
Ibid.
18
79
Horn,” erected especially for the exhibit, was ridiculed as “a mere shack thrown up for
the occasion, without aesthetic value.”19 One Thuringian writer, Arthur Buschmann,
claimed that the emphasis on cubic forms represented “an attempt to return to the
primitive art forms of inferior races” and must be seen as a symptom of cultural decline.20
Later in 1923, after the Reichswehr ousted the Communist government of Thuringia,
Gropius’s house was searched and students were accused of being political activists.21
With a rightist coalition government firmly in place, the local opponents of the Bauhaus
published a brochure in 1924, which came to be known as the “Yellow Brochure.” It
claimed that Gropius was promoting Communism and favoring foreigners, that students
were involved in immoral behavior, and that some had even gone insane. The complaints
differed little from those made in December 1919.22 In Gropius’s and the Bauhaus’s
defense, students printed posters for distribution in town.23 But little could be done to
stop the spread of the “Yellow Brochure” and it provided material for journalists and
critics throughout the year.
During this time, it is unlikely that a large group of students adhered to any one
particular political ideology at the Bauhaus. The nationalist/conservative opposition
exaggerated the Communist influence at the school. However, there is evidence that
some Communist ideas could be found among the students. In Weimar, nine students
had been members of the local Communist party and a portrait of Lenin can be seen
hanging on a wall in a photograph taken at a student celebration of Gropius’s birthday in
19
20
Arthur Buschmann in Lane, Architecture and Politics, pp. 76-7.
21
Naylor, Bauhaus Reassessed, p. 122. For more on the political situation in Weimar and Thuringia during
1923-4, see Chapter 2 of this thesis.
22
Lane, Architecture and Politics, pp. 80-1. Isaacs, Gropius, p. 112.
23
Walter Gropius, Weimar to Lily Hildebrandt, no date, believed to be spring 1924, in Isaacs, Gropius,
p. 112.
80
1924.24 Perhaps one of the politically active students was Fritz Schleifer, who in 1925,
the year after he left the Bauhaus, submitted a design of a worker’s club to an
architectural competition held in the U.S.S.R. The design bore the insignia of the
German Communist Youth Movement.25 Since Schleifer had already left the Bauhaus by
this time, we do not know if he was a youth movement member while he was attending.
However, it is clear that he saw his Bauhaus training as relevant to the Communist
movement.
Besides directly accusing students of being Communists, some opponents tried to
convert students to their side of the debate. In 1924, guild leaders, supporters of
traditional art education, and politicians tried to convince students that they were being
used by the Bauhaus to further the institution’s own political ambitions. This approach
proved successful with certain students, who then singled out Moholy-Nagy and Wassily
Kandinsky for criticism. These two were the most obvious choices because of their non-
German origins (Moholy was Hungarian and Kandinsky was Russian), which made them
prime suspects for being Communists. The outspoken students apparently raised quite a
fuss and Gropius had to call a meeting to placate the situation. Things did gradually calm
down, but tensions between the students and the two masters remained.26
Toward the end of 1924 the Bauhaus’s situation became untenable. The final
straw was the 60% reduction of the school’s budget by the Thuringian government. One
of the many reasons for the cut was that the Thuringian State Treasury had determined
24
25
The design is printed in Whitford, Masters and Students, p. 94.
26
Isaacs, Gropius, p. 110. Even though politics rarely infiltrated his teaching, it was not a stretch to
consider Moholy a Communist. Kandinsky, however, had left Bolshevik Russia because he had opposed
Communism. Now, his Russian origin was the only tie to the ideology.
81
that only seven Bauhaus students were actually from Thuringia, which called into
question the relevance of the state continuing to fund the school.27 With such a drastic
cut of its budget, the Bauhaus decided to close its doors in Weimar when its current
budget expired on April 1, 1925.
The “Kommunistische Studentenfraktion” and Hannes Meyer
For the first year in Dessau, the Bauhaus continued to try and distance itself from
politics. Political activity among the students was discouraged. But by 1926, with rising
unemployment among Dessau’s workers, the students were moved to act and political
activity became more visible. Dessau’s mayor, Fritz Hesse, was concerned about reports
that students were holding political meetings in the canteen. The Dessau city council
pressured him to close the canteen to limit the options for large student gatherings. Over
the course of 1926-27, Mayor Hesse was a frequent visitor to the Bauhaus, meeting with
Gropius on this and other related issues.28
However, student political involvement only increased. In July 1927 Bela
Scheffler organized the first Communist student cell at the Bauhaus, known as Kostufra
(short for Kommunistische Studentenfraktion).29 Elaine Hochman, in Chapter 14 of her
book Bauhaus: Crucible of Modernism, provides detailed information on the student
Communists and her work will be utilized here.
27
Thuringian State Treasury, “Report on the Audit of the Bookkeeping at the Staatliche Bauhaus in
Weimar,” Weimar, September 1924, in H. M. Wingler, Bauhaus, p. 89.
28
29
Hochman, Crucible of Modernism, p. 223. The Communist cell formed only three months after the
arrival of Hannes Meyer, who was to head the new department of architecture. Meyer was a Marxist and
Communist supporter, and was the most political Bauhaus faculty member.
82
Director Walter Gropius knew of the Communist cell’s existence and allowed it to
continue, as long as it did not try to influence the internal functioning of the Bauhaus.30
Some of the group’s early activities included collecting signatures in protest of Sacco and
Vanzetti’s conviction in the United States, obtaining clothing and monetary donations for
striking coal workers, and recruiting members for workers’ assistance organizations. By
1928, under the leadership of Albert Burke, the group had fifteen full members and could
count on the support of one quarter of the student body. It was encouraged by the
Bauhaus’s new director, Hannes Meyer, and was also recognized as an operational
Communist cell by the local Dessau Communists.31 Yet, the student Communists were
still not acknowledged as an official Bauhaus organization, which would have brought
instant criticism from the Dessau city council as well as from the growing nationalist
opposition that was taking root throughout the Weimar Republic.32 Meetings and
lectures were often held off-campus in order to avoid suspicion.33
The growing politicization of Bauhaus students occurred alongside the increasing
radicalization of Germany. By 1929 many Germans were giving up on the republic and
looking to the radical right or left as the only answer to the perceived failures of
democracy. The onset of the Great Depression only heightened the population’s anxiety
and led to more urgent demands for change. The effects of the Depression and the
30
Ibid., p. 225
31
Ibid., pp. 223-5.
32
By 1928 the new architecture associated with the Bauhaus and many other architects in Germany was
consistently evoked in the larger political debates occurring in the Weimar Republic. Nationalist
architectural critics saw the new architecture and its promoters as products of Bolshevism that must be
eliminated. In place of soulless flat roofs and bare surfaces, architect Alexander von Senger called for a
style “with a soul, filled with national, religious, racial … mythic and symbolic components.” This view
also became popular with the right-wing and radical right-wing presses and with the German Nationalist
People’s Party (DNVP). Lane, Architecture and Politics, pp. 137-45.
33
83
intense politics of the time were felt in Dessau and made an impact on the Bauhaus
students. Gunta Stoelzl recalls that behind the Bauhaus building there was a park - “This
was the hangout of the unemployed, grey-faced men with their children and wives. They
were a dreadful sight.” Another group, “the political agitators,” also hung out there.34
Max Bill remembered the increasing militarization of Dessau, which was particularly
obvious during a parade held in honor of President Hindenburg: “the whole city was in
uniform.” The socialists were there, attired in their military garb, and so was the far
right.35 At the Bauhaus the idea of remaining “objective” was losing ground and the
school began to return to its revolutionary roots. Participation in the far left increased
and later a rightist faction, including some Nazis, emerged. Such diversity was rare
among student populations in the later Weimar Republic. University students, distressed
over their perceived lack of job prospects upon graduation, overwhelmingly turned to the
right and radical right.36
At this time membership in Kostufra grew to 36 students and it was now the most
important group at the Bauhaus.37 In addition, its activities outside the Bauhaus became
more militant. Kostufra joined with the banned Red Front Line Soldiers’ Union on
several occasions.38 Those students who wanted to avoid politics found it increasingly
34
35
Library, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (acc. # 920069).
36
Peukert, The Weimar Republic, p. 94. Contrary to the rightist university students, the actions of Kostufra
suggest that Bauhaus students were more concerned with the plight of the workers than their own
employment opportunities.
37
Hochman, Crucible of Modernism, p. 231. Kostufra organized the political education of students,
managed the canteen, supported applications of working-class students, and recruited other students to join
the Communist Party. The group also was a firm supporter of Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer and, at
times, even influenced his actions.
38
Ibid.
84
difficult to do so. Both Anni Albers and Roman Clemens recollect there being two
competing groups on campus: the nonpolitical and the political.39 Albers lost a friend,
Otti Berger, who became a die-hard leftist and was unwilling to tolerate anyone who did
not share her views. In many instances the nonpolitical often found themselves caving
into peer pressure. For example, Albers and her husband, Josef, gave lodging to a sick
person because they had extra space in their house. “It was bourgeois to have extra
rooms and permit them to remain unused… there was peer pressure for this sort of
thing.”40 Some held firm however. One student, who was a Social Democrat, tried to
persuade Howard Dearstyne to march through the streets of Dessau at a rally. Dearstyne
refused and proudly remarked in his book: “…during my six years in Germany, I
sedulously avoided any and all political activity.”41
In 1930 the Nazi party began to take interest in the debate over the Bauhaus and
in the wider debate concerning the new architecture, of which they had previously
avoided. They recognized that the conservative, nationalist attacks on the Bauhaus and
radical architecture touched on themes very important to Nazi party ideology and could
be adapted to fit the party’s needs. When the Nazis gained a significant victory in the
1930 elections in the state of Thuringia (the Bauhaus’s old home), they were allowed to
appoint two state ministers, one of whom was Wilhelm Frick. Frick’s priority in office
was to institute a program of “moral and spiritual renewal” with the aim of eliminating all
39
Anni Albers, 22 May 1982 and Roman Clemens, 12 November 1982, Interviews by Judith Pearlman,
Transcripts, Judith Pearlman Archive, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
(acc. # 920069).
40
Anni Albers, Interview by Judith Pearlman, 10 June 1982, Transcript, Judith Pearlman Archive, Research
41
Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus, p. 100. Since the protesting student was believed to be a Social
Democrat, this suggests that Communism was not the only left political ideology with a presence at the
Bauhaus.
85
“immoral and foreign racial elements in the arts.”42 To carry out this mission, he enlisted
the help of Paul Schultze-Naumburg, a conservative architect who was one of the
harshest critics of the radical architecture popularized by the Bauhaus. Opposition to the
new architecture and the Bauhaus became an important part of official Nazi policy and its
propaganda efforts, which strove to present the party as the only alternative to the
influence of Jewish Bolshevism and societal decadence. The combination of the Nazi
propaganda machine and the party’s success in the polls allowed its views to reach a
larger audience than the previous attacks from the other conservative forces had.43
Members of the Bauhaus faculty, too, were concerned with the growing
Communist presence at the school, as well as with Hannes Meyer’s wish to eliminate
painting from the curriculum. Wassily Kandinsky made his feelings known to Dr.
Ludwig Grote, the state supervisor of monuments, who passed them on to Mayor Hesse.44
Allegations of Communist activity from a Bauhaus faculty member could not be taken
lightly and, in March 1930, Hesse called a meeting with Hannes Meyer, who agreed to
curtail the political activity. Some students were expelled and the Communist cell
dissolved. However, the Communist students continued to meet in what they called
Marxist “working teams.” 45 Soon after, they issued their own statement addressed to the
entire student body, declaring “open warfare” against those who wished to cleanse the
42
Wilhelm Frick in Lane, Architecture and Politics, p. 156.
43
For more on Nazi architectural policy and propaganda see Chapter 6 in Lane, Architecture and Politics.
44
For an in-depth look at Kandinsky’s and other faculty members’ role in criticizing Meyer and informing
outsiders of internal Bauhaus activities, see Hochman, Crucible of Modernism, pp. 229-30, 232-4, 237 and
Forgács, Bauhaus Idea, pp. 179-81.
45
86
Bauhaus of its political spirit. Communist activity continued with students participating
in various strikes and collecting money to aid families of striking workers.46
In June 1930 the Communist students delivered a collection of money and
clothing to strikers in Waldenburg, Silesia. It was later reported by the Anhalter Anzeiger
in July that the students had contributed 155 marks, 50 of which came from Hannes
Meyer.47 This was seen as direct evidence that Meyer was supporting the Communist
students who, only recently, he had promised to suppress. Feeling pressure from the
Dessau right and worried about maintaining what little clout the SPD currently held,
Mayor Hesse, on July 29, demanded that Meyer resign in order to avoid further
controversy. Meyer refused, and two days later, Hesse announced Meyer’s resignation
for him. He was to be replaced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Meyer resisted and
rallied support among international left-wing artists and among his students, who planned
a strike for the upcoming semester.48 Despite a strong showing in his favor, nothing
could be done to save Meyer’s job.49
46
Ibid., pp. 234-5, 237.
47
Ibid.., p. 238.
48
Ibid., p. 242.
49
Meyer left the Bauhaus with between ten and twenty students and went to the U.S.S.R. in 1930. Meyer
and his group contributed to the new building and town-planning efforts under Stalin’s first and second
five-year plans. As Stalin gradually became more and more paranoid, foreign architects were viewed with
suspicion and constructivism was replaced by neoclassicism. In 1936 Meyer sensed the change and left,
unharmed, for his home in Switzerland. Schnaidt, Hannes Meyer, p. 33. Some of the ex-Bauhaus students
in the U.S.S.R. were not as lucky. Some were murdered by the regime and one student, Philipp Tolziner,
spent years imprisoned in the Gulag. Bauhaus Archive Berlin: The Collection, p. 174.
87
The Continued Communist Presence and the Emergence of Nationalism
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was very near the opposite of Hannes Meyer. He
shared none of Meyer’s extreme functionalism, social vision, or political interests, the
latter being particularly important to Mayor Hesse. The Communist students were
unhappy with the drastic change in Bauhaus leadership and continued with their plans to
oppose Meyer’s dismissal. This included intense criticism of Mies van der Rohe. They
were very concerned about his apolitical nature. In a speech delivered at the conference
of the German Werkbund in 1930 Mies had said: “The new age is a fact; it exists entirely
independently of whether we say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to it. But it is neither better nor worse than
any other age.”50 Responding to these remarks in their student journal, the Communist
students were outraged at Mies’s passivity and unwillingness to work for change. “Only
a self-centered person who has lost all contact with the rest of the world would be able to
view the world in this way.” They considered the decision of saying “yes” or “no” as
having a direct impact on whether the “new age” would be better or worse. They hoped
to influence the course of the “new age” and vowed to “take a stand” against Mies’s
position.51
Soon after Mies arrived on campus, the Communists organized a large group of
students and occupied the canteen, refusing to leave until Mies met with them and
exhibited his work. The students wanted to judge for themselves if he was suitable to be
their director. Mies refused and the Communists and their followers continued their
50
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “The New Age,” Die Form, No. 15 (August 1, 1930), in H. M. Wingler,
Bauhaus, p. 169.
51
Anonymous, “The new Director! The new Course?,” bauhaus: voice of the students, no. 3 (1930), in H.
M. Wingler, p. 170.
88
occupation. Seeing no other option, Mies called the Dessau police and had the students
removed from the canteen.52
Mies’s actions were some of the most controversial in the history of the school
and did little to help bring the students around to his point of view. Hochman, in her
book Architects of Fortune: Mies van der Rohe and the Third Reich, remarks that almost
half a century later many students still resented Mies for involving the police.53 Howard
Dearstyne writes, “I have always looked upon this drastic action of Mies as an error in
judgment. Hannes Meyer or Walter Gropius, in a similar situation, would have
confronted the students, reasoned with them, and probably pacified them. Mies was not
cut out to be an administrator.”54
On September 9, 1930, with the Bauhaus still in turmoil, Mies temporarily shut
down the school. Five students who were close to Meyer were expelled with no
explanation.55 Mies scheduled the school to reopen in October. Before returning, all
students had to sign a statement agreeing to abide by the new rules, which were put forth
by the Council of Masters and Mayor Hesse.56 Then, once they arrived back on campus,
they had to personally interview with Mies, who was looking to weed out any students
who still swore political allegiance to the Communists or to Meyer. Students were also
52
53
Elaine Hochman, Architects of Fortune: Mies van der Rohe and the Third Reich (New York: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1989), p. 96.
54
Dearstyne, “Mies van der Rohe’s teaching at the Bauhaus in Dessau,” in Neumann, Bauhaus and
Bauhaus People, p. 224.
55
Droste, Bauhaus 1919-1933, p. 204.
56
Paul Klee, Dessau to Lily Klee, 13 September 1930, in Whitford, Masters and Students, p. 289.
The statement that the students had to sign read in part: “With my signature I undertake to attend the
courses regularly, to sit in the canteen in the evening no longer than the meal lasts, not to stay in the
canteen in the evening, to avoid political discussions, and to take care not to make any noise in the town
and to go out well dressed.” Whitford, Bauhaus, p. 193.
89
removed from the Council of Masters, which was renamed the “Conference.”57 The
Bauhaus’s new operating conditions were shocking to most students, who under Gropius
and Meyer had been allowed various degrees of freedom to pursue politics and were
given a say in campus affairs.
Even with the expulsions, the signed agreement, and interviews, Mies was unable
to eliminate the Kostufra’s influence from the school. The Communists took their
operations further underground and continued to issue attacks on Mies, who was called a
“fascist” for his recent actions.58 Criticism was also aimed at faculty members, like
Kandinsky and Josef Albers, who they correctly believed had sought to undermine the
authority of Hannes Meyer and to stop Communist activity at the Bauhaus. Not all
students continued to oppose the new administration. In December 1930, the less radical
students presented Mies with a medal at the annual Christmas party, “For bravery in the
face of the Bauhaus.” 59
Though the Bauhaus now had a new, more authoritarian director, attacks from the
right did not cease. In the fall of 1931, the Nazi party gained control of the Dessau
legislature and was determined to eliminate the Bauhaus’s funding. Mayor Hesse still
believed in the school and fought the Nazis on this issue. The local Communist party
joined him and together they made sure a budget was passed through the legislature. The
assistance from the Communists meant that the school’s fate still rested with a leftist
57
58
Hochman notes, “It is ironic how often Mies’s single-minded pursuit of the apolitical politicized him in
the eyes of his opponents: to the left, he seemed nothing less than a “fascist,” while to the right, he
remained a “cultural bolshevist.” Hochman, Architects of Fortune, p. 97.
59
Ibid., pp. 96-7.
90
government. This emboldened the student Communists and weakened Mies’s efforts at
depoliticization.60
The continual presence of Communism at the Bauhaus led to the emergence of a
group of nationalist students, representing “everyone from members of the ‘Youth
Group’ to Nazis.”61 Gunta Stoelzl had two girls in her weaving workshop who had
strong Nazi inclinations. In addition, twenty years later she found out that her craft
assistant, Wanke, was “one hundred percent Nazi.”62 According to one student, the rival
political factions at the school fought each other “like cats and dogs.”63 Hochman has
found no evidence that Mies tried to suppress the nationalists as he did the Communists.64
They were probably viewed as a useful force to minimize the Communist influence at the
school. In addition, their presence indicated that Bauhaus modernism was relevant to
groups outside the left-wing political spectrum, a fact that Mies would have welcomed.
One of the few examples we have of actions taken by the Bauhaus nationalists is a
petition dated July 1932 to the republic’s president, Paul von Hindenburg, protesting the
Dessau city council’s decision to close the Bauhaus on October 1st. The nationalists
appealed to Hindenburg to stop the partisan attacks on the Bauhaus and ensure that the
school was kept operational. They noted the Bauhaus’s unique position within the realm
of German and international education, which the president should be interested in
maintaining. “In Germany and in the world there is no educational institute to equal the
Bauhaus. Particularly during the past two years the relationship between teacher and
60
Ibid., pp. 97-8.
61
‘M’ (an anonymous architecture student), Dessau to a Swiss architect, 26 June 1932, in Whitford,
62
63
‘M’, Dessau to a Swiss architect, 26 June 1932, in Whitford, Masters and Students, p. 290.
64
Hochman, Architects of Fortune, p. 98.
91
student has developed here in Dessau into such close collaboration as can be achieved in
no other German school.” At the end of the petition, the students downplayed their own
and their Communist opponents’ political activity. “We students are in no way oriented
toward any partisan political activity and hence demand that our claim for the completion
of our course of studies not be set aside for any one-sided partisan political
considerations.”65 The appeal was unsuccessful and the Bauhaus in Dessau was closed
on October 1, 1932.
The Bauhaus only spent one year in Berlin, 1932-33. Mies and the remaining
students tried valiantly to survive, running the Bauhaus as a private school. The Nazis
made the school’s existence very difficult, culminating in a raid on April 11, 1933.
Hundreds of Gestapo troops surrounded the Bauhaus looking for evidence of Communist
activity. Fifteen students and faculty were carted off to jail and the school was
“temporarily” closed.66 Mies made outreaches to the Nazi official, Alfred Rosenburg, to
have the school reopened. His initial efforts proved fruitless. However, in July 1933, out
of the blue, Mies received a letter stating that the Bauhaus could reopen, under certain
conditions. This was proof to Mies that the Nazis no longer perceived the Bauhaus as a
political threat and were willing to give the new architecture a chance. The Bauhaus also
received a certification of “racial purity” from the Office of Racial Research. Yet, the
financial losses the Bauhaus had incurred over the past year made it impossible for the
school to reopen and the Bauhaus came to an end.67
65
The Students of the Bauhaus in Dessau, “Petition to the Reich President,” July 1932, in H. M. Wingler,
Bauhaus, p. 177.
66
Hochman, Architects of Fortune, pp. 107-8.
67
Ibid., pp. 156-8.
92
While the majority of the masters fled Germany during the Third Reich, most of
the students remained. They sought employment with varying degrees of success. Many
of Mies van der Rohe’s architectural students adapted well to the Nazi’s preference for
monumental classicism in public architecture. Some worked on, for example, the
enormous Rimpl office complex and the Deutsch Reichspost (German Reich post
office).68 When it came to the new architecture, Mies was right; it did have a place in
Nazi society, although not to the degree he had hoped.69 The Bauhaus style was most
appropriate in the sphere of industrial architecture, which is where those architects who
still wanted to use modern forms found the majority of their work under. An extreme
example is Fritz Ertl, who contributed to the planning of the Auschwitz concentration
camp.70
Unlike modern architecture, which was generally only acceptable in the industrial
sphere and to some degree in public housing, Bauhaus product and advertising design
was accepted by the Nazis as “official cultural representation.”71 Students Wilhelm
Wagenfeld and Herbert Bayer, although they opposed Nazism, enjoyed success under
Hitler.72 Wagenfeld was the artistic director of the Vereinigte Lausitzer Glasswerke
(United Lausitz Glassworks) and Bayer worked for the Dorland advertising agency.73
68
Bauhaus Archive Berlin: The Collection, p. 172.
69
This is consistent with Jeffrey Herf’s claim that certain aspects of modernity were compatible with
National Socialism if they were stripped of their left-radical connotations. In addition, he maintains that
the Nazis did not take advantage of industrialization only out of necessity, but rather it held an important
place in their ideology and was crucial to accomplishing their long-term goals of genocide and world
domination. Herf, Reactionary Modernism.
70
Ibid.
71
Paul Betts, “The Bauhaus and National Socialism – a Dark Chapter of Modernism,” in Fiedler and
Feierabend, Bauhaus, p. 38.
72
Other students who opposed Nazism took a more active stance against it. Two such students were the
Communists Willi Jugmittag and Josef Knau: both were killed by the regime. Bauhaus Archive Berlin: The
Collection, p. 172.
73
Ibid.
93
Products from students like Marianne Brandt and Marcel Breuer were featured in home
decoration books and Bauhaus items were displayed in international expositions as proud
representatives of German achievement.74
One would not have expected the right or far right to have anything to do with the
Bauhaus once in power. Throughout the Bauhaus’s existence conservative nationalists
and, later, the Nazis criticized the school’s program, lifestyle, and ideology as being un-
German and, worse, Communist. The actual political nuances of the school – from left-
leaning, to Communist, to competing left-right factions – were of little concern. The
main issue was that the Bauhaus was a cultural enemy on the left, which advocated a
lifestyle and ideology that the right viewed in opposition to their own. As it turned out,
in certain cases Bauhaus architecture, products, and designs could be tolerated if their
accompanying values were eliminated.
To the students, politics was both a means to put the social aspects of their
education into practice and a way for them to solidify alliances with the Bauhaus’s
supporters. Participation did not always translate into joining a political party, but
students often acted with the left: the options being the KPD (Communists), SPD (Social
Democrats), or DDP (Democrats). A Communist cell emerged at the Bauhaus in 1927
and, encouraged by Hannes Meyer, it dominated student life for a period. The fact that a
nationalist group formed to counter the Communists is significant because it contradicted
the notion of the Bauhaus as exclusively a left-radical institution and foreshadowed its
later relevance to the Nazis. The Bauhaus nationalists, while opposing Communism,
were still supporters of the school’s curriculum. They generally accepted the Bauhaus’s
new, modern program and its relevance to German life. From all political viewpoints in
74
Betts, “Bauhaus and National Socialism,” pp. 37-8.
94
the student body, the basic philosophy of working for change was present; it was the
degree and character of this change that was a source of debate throughout the school’s
fourteen years.
95
CHAPTER 6
WOMEN AT THE BAUHAUS
In 1919 the Weimar Republic established its constitution, which was quickly
hailed as one of the most democratic in the world. Included in the constitution were new
rights for women. They gained adult suffrage and were guaranteed equal rights.
Additionally, the constitution pledged protection for families and offered the promise of
decent work and housing for all Germans. Yet remnants of old imperial law remained.
Abortion was illegal and access to birth control was limited. Women’s rights in marriage
and divorce were also restricted.1
In terms of jobs, new careers were opened up to women in the fields of medicine,
law, and lower-level salaried positions such as secretaries, salesgirls, telephonists, and
office workers. However, there were people who viewed the new opportunities offered
to women as proof that they had profited unfairly from the war at the expense of men.
Therefore, they were considered as part of the “stab in the back” myth.2 For the most
part, the traditional roles of housewife and mother remained the norm and, in fact, were
preferred by many women.3 Surrounded by this ambivalent atmosphere, women pursued
1
Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann, and Marion Kaplan, eds., When Biology Became Destiny: Women in
Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984), p. 5.
2
Bridenthal et al., When Biology Became Destiny, pp. 5, 8.
3
Baumhoff, “Women at the Bauhaus,” in Fiedler and Feierabend, Bauhaus, p. 97.
96
their studies at the Bauhaus. Their experience reflects the various viewpoints and
achievements of women in the Weimar Republic, as well as the challenges they faced.
The Female Students
During wartime, women took advantage of the openings left by men at the
Weimar art schools and composed the majority of students at the Grand Ducal School of
Fine Arts and the Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts. When these two institutions
merged to form the Bauhaus, many of the women remained, making them the majority of
the new school’s first class.4 Through contributions to the student newspaper, Der
Austausch (The Exchange), women articulated their goals and expectations for study at
the Bauhaus. We see both a bold determination to succeed on equal terms with men and
a doubt as to the possibility of success and equality.
Käthe Brachmann wrote in May 1919, “So we women, too, came to this school
because we, every one of us, found work to do here, which we durst not neglect! May no
one begrudge us this work! Thanks to those who already accord it to us.”5 And Dörte
Helm declared, “It is wrong to look for differences between the sexes here. It’s a matter
of human beings who have come together to work and inspire each other.”6 However,
other female students did see differences between the sexes, noting distinct “feminine
feelings” that might hamper their work. According to Resi Jäger-Pfleger, “We women
4
Baumhoff, “Women at the Bauhaus,” p. 98.
5
Käthe Brachmann in Der Austausch (Weimar), May 1919, in Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus, p. 49.
6
Dörte Helm, “Erwilderungen an Käthe Brachmann,” Der Austaush (Weimar), June 1919, in Baumhoff,
Gendered World of the Bauhaus, p. 56.
97
can study just as diligently as the men. But how far we can go in art with our feminine
feelings depends on each individual.”7
In addition to “feminine feelings,” many women also believed there were physical
handicaps that could not be overcome. Anni Albers recalled the difficulties she faced
when deciding what workshop to enter. She did not like the prospects of climbing tall
ladders in the wall-painting workshop, handling the sharp edges in the metal workshop,
or lifting the large and heavy blocks of wood in the carpentry workshop. So she chose
weaving, which she considered for “sissies,” but believed was the only option for her.8
There was also talk of women’s “lack of the spatial imagination characteristic of men.”
Helene Nonné Schmidt, Bauhaus student and wife of Joost Schmidt, wrote, “…the way
the woman sees is so to speak, childlike, because like a child she sees the details instead
of the overall picture… [Despite the women’s movement] let us not deceive ourselves
into thinking that this aspect of her nature will change…”9
These internalized gender stereotypes, as Anja Baumhoff calls them, appeared in
many of the female students.10 The ideals of motherhood and of being a wife were still a
high priority. They did not necessarily want to rid themselves of these feminine feelings,
nor did some think their physical limitations could be overcome. Most of all, Bauhaus
women strongly desired an opportunity to study art among like-minded individuals and to
participate in the postwar reform movement. Their views were
7
Resi Jäger-Pfleger, “Erwilderungen an Käthe Brachmann,” Der Austaush (Weimar), June 1919, in
8
9
Helene Nonné-Schmidt, “Women’s Place at the Bauhaus,” Vivos voco (Leipzig), Vol. V, No. 8/9 (August-
September 1926), in H. M. Wingler, Bauhaus, p. 116.
10
98
consistent with those of what historian Renate Bridenthal labels the “bourgeois women’s
movement,” which believed in “women’s moral superiority and its potential to reform –
but not revolutionize – society.” This was in contrast to the “socialist women’s
movement,” which called for an ending of class and gender inequalities:11 a point of view
that was also present among a minority of female students. While we do not know if the
female students considered themselves as part of a women’s movement or what their
specific political allegiances were, it is helpful to understand their opinions in terms of
these Weimar feminist movements, to which there are clear similarities.
The Admission Policy
The program of the Bauhaus included the statement “Any person of good
character whose previous education is deemed adequate by the council of masters will be
accepted without regard to age or sex…”12 However, the school’s director, Walter
Gropius, and the other male leaders of the school were not pleased with the large number
of women (50% or more) attending their school. In early 1920 the all male Council of
Masters decided to limit the number of female students to no more than 1/3 of the student
body. Those females who were admitted would be encouraged to enter the weaving
workshop, which already was popular with women, to form an unofficial women’s class
at the Bauhaus.13 In 1921 there was even talk of excluding women from the school
11
Renate Bridenthal, “’Professional’ Housewives: Stepsisters of the Women’s Movement,” in Bridenthal et
al., When Biology Became Destiny, pp. 153-4.
12
13
Ibid.
99
altogether. This idea came in the same year as Munich’s conservative art academy was
opening its doors to women.14
What caused the men of the Bauhaus, who clearly saw themselves as avant-garde
societal reformers, to so quickly retreat from their stated aims? In part it was because the
Bauhaus combined its modernism with the medieval concept of the craft guilds, which
excluded women and emphasized the role of a male master who had unquestioned
authority over his apprentices and journeymen. The guild system was also closely linked
to the traditional concept of the family, which was another group headed by a strong male
figure who had authority over his wife and children.15 Gropius assumed the role of father
and his female students were treated like his daughters, subjected to traditional female
roles within the Bauhaus family.
Furthermore, it was generally accepted that women were weaker in three-
dimensional tasks and those requiring heavy manual labor. Gropius considered
carpentry, metal working, and especially architecture as ill-suited for women. In
addition, sending the women to the weaving workshop would guarantee that the “male
workshops” were saved for the male students, who would have a better chance of landing
jobs upon graduation.16 The Bauhaus shared this outlook with other left-leaning groups
in the Weimar Republic. The trade unions, too, were known to favor their male workers
over their female ones.17
14
Ibid., p. 103.
15
Baumhoff, Gendered World of the Bauhaus, pp. 47-9
16
17
Bridenthal et al., When Biology Became Destiny, p. 11.
100
Soon after Gropius and the other male masters decided to limit the number of
female students and channel them into the weaving workshop, there were visible changes
in the admission process. In a letter sent to a female applicant, Gropius writes, “Because
of overcrowding, particularly by ladies, at the Bauhuas, only very few students can be
accepted.”18 In another letter he repeats the above statement and then implies that
women were not suited for craft work and only a very few could be admitted to the
Bauhaus.19 As the data presented in Chapters 2 and 4 suggests, the Bauhaus’s new
admission policy was successful. Enrollment of women steadily declined throughout the
Weimar period and hovered near 30% in Dessau and Berlin.20 Those who were admitted
were strongly encouraged, not necessarily forced, to enter the weaving workshop upon
completion of the Preliminary Course. Very soon, weaving became the women’s
domain.
From Oskar Schlemmer’s letters we see that women adhered to traditional gender
roles outside of the workshops as well. In 1921 Schlemmer noted the positive
contributions of the female students who worked in the cafeteria, “voluntarily giving up
time that might be spent on their art studies.” He then comments on the overall efforts of
the female students in helping with menial, but crucial, jobs at the Bauhaus, “It is
heartening to see how readily the girls recognize these economic necessities and
voluntarily undertake various services.”21 He does not mention what the male students
were doing to help. We do know that male students transported the necessary supply of
18
Walter Gropius to Klara Tiessen, 2 October 1920, in Baumhoff, Gendered World of the Bauhuas, p. 60.
19
20
In addition to the admission policy, the Bauhaus’s greater contact with industry after 1923 took the
school in an even more male oriented direction and helped limit female enrollment.
21
Oskar Schlemmer to unknown recipient, 2 March 1921, in Tut Schlemmer, Letters and Diaries, p. 101.
101
coal to the Bauhaus and probably helped in other areas as well, but it appears that
ordinary day-to-day work was left for the women.
Schlemmer also mentioned other duties which were assigned to the female
students. In 1925, “twelve blond Bauhaus girls” served “beer, open sandwiches, tea, and
coffee” at a reception for the mayor of Dessau to celebrate the opening of the Bauhaus.22
The following year, Schlemmer was in charge of planning the “White Festival” and had
the weaving group, led by Gunta Stoelzl, prepare “fine cakes, beautiful flowers, [and]
eggs.”23 It is unlikely that, for example, the predominantly male metal workshop would
have contributed anything other than something specifically related to their craft work.
It is important to note that women did not necessarily look negatively on their
position at the Bauhaus. Many women were more than happy to assist in any way that
they could, particularly in the school’s difficult early years. As women, they believed
they could contribute in their own special way to the school community and its work.
They were also active participants in the free-spirited environment surrounding the
school, as many of the surviving pictures of the time attest too.24 Social interaction
between male and female students occurred more or less on an equal level. Many were
living apart from their parents for the first time and the traditional barriers erected
between the sexes no longer applied. They swam nude in the river together and, of
course, had sexual relations. In fact, when an illegitimate child was born to an unmarried
female student, the baby was celebrated as a Bauhaus child. The event of the birth was a
22
Oskar Schlemmer, Dessau to Tut Schlemmer, 31 October 1925, in Tut Schlemmer, Letters and Diaries,
p. 181.
23
Oskar Schlemmer, Dessau to Tut Schlemmer, 22 March 1926, in Tut Schlemmer, Letters and Diaries,
p. 191.
24
See the photographs in the “Daily Life” section of Fiedler and Feierabend, Bauhaus.
102
truly joyful occasion.25 In this case, the Bauhaus was clearly ahead of traditional societal
norms. Additionally, there were 71 marriages at the Bauhaus between students and
between masters and students.26
There are several examples of successful Bauhaus women. Among them are
Marianne Brandt, Lotti Weiss, and members of the weaving workshop. Marianne Brandt
broke free of traditional gender roles and achieved success in the male dominated metal
workshop. Lotti Weiss primarily stayed within gender bounds, but still exerted
considerable sway over the Mazdaznan sect and was one of its leaders. And the weaving
workshop, despite the hidden gender policy, firmly established itself on its own merits
and was able to directly influence Bauhaus affairs.
The Weaving Workshop
Originally there was no weaving workshop at the Bauhaus. It was only after
prodding by Gunta Stoelzl and other female students in 1920 that Gropius allowed them
to use a set of old looms that had belonged to the previous School of Arts and Crafts.
“There had to be something especially for girls,” Stoelzl remarked.27 Soon a local
craftswoman, Helene Börner, was hired to be the master of craft and weaving became an
official Bauhaus workshop. Later Georg Muche became the master of form. The
products of the workshop included cushions, tablecloths, piano covers, foot muffs,
25
Ute Ackermann, “The Bauhaus – and Intimate Portrait,” in Fiedler and Feierabend, Bauhaus, p. 112.
26
Ackermann, “Bauhaus Parties,” in Fiedler and Feierabend, Bauhaus, p. 130.
27
Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (acc. # 920069). It was the women
themselves who established the weaving workshop, which was soon to be their unofficial home at the
Bauhaus.
103
children’s clothing, head-caps, blouse fabrics, children’s bedding, carpets, Gobelins, and
wall hangings. As the Bauhaus shifted toward industry, so too did the weaving
workshop, conducting experiments with synthetic fibers such as cellophane and rayon.
The workshop also developed robust steel yarn to be used on tubular steel chairs.28 In
1927 Gunta Stoelzl replaced Georg Muche as the head of the weaving workshop. She not
only re-equipped the workshops, but also created an educational course over eight
semesters that culminated in the title of journeyman and, after 1929, a Bauhaus
diploma.29
Of particular interest are the events leading up to Gunta’s ascension to young
master. Through these events we see the determination and influence of the female
weavers and the power of a united student body. The master of form Georg Muche had
never showed much interest in weaving and Gunta Stoelzl had long been the defacto
leader of the workshop. The weaving students did not take Muche’s disinterest lightly.
When he purchased a Jacquard loom, which was not to their liking, it was the last straw.30
That summer of 1926 the students refused to have Muche as their teacher in a weaving
course, insisting in a “sharply worded” statement that he was “not needed in the
workshop” at all. Oskar Schlemmer believed that Stoelzl was not involved and that the
weavers had the backing of the student body, which was considering this “a test of
whether it still has any say or not.”31
28
Bauhaus Archive Berlin: The Collection, p. 92.
29
Ibid.
30
Baumhoff, Gendered World of the Bauhaus, p. 92. As it turns out, according to Magdalena Droste,
Muche’s decision to purchase the Jacquard loom was a good one. It was more technologically advanced
than the conventional looms currently being used and better suited to the new industrial direction of the
Bauhaus. Droste, Bauhaus: 1919-1933, p. 184.
31
Oskar Schlemmer, Dessau to Otto Meyer, 22 April 1926, in Tut Schlemmer, Letters and Diaries, p. 192.
104
This was not the first time the weavers had challenged one of their masters. They
had previously expressed discontent with their master of craft in Weimar, Helene Börner,
but they stopped short of calling for her resignation.32 So there was precedent for the
weavers to complain when they thought they were being short changed. However, such
an open statement of rejection by a workshop against a master was unparalled at the
Bauhaus. Since they also had the backing of the student body, it was one of the most
cohesive efforts undertaken by Bauhaus students.
The weavers and student representatives were reprimanded for their efforts to oust
Muche, but their protests did ultimately result in his dismissal. It did not help Muche that
amongst the faculty only Kandinsky, Moholy, and Breuer strongly supported him.33
Within a year he left the Bauhaus and Gunta Stoelzl was named as his replacement. Not
only does this instance demonstrate the power wielded by the weavers and the student
body, but it also marked the first time a female had replaced a male as master, which was
not a precedent Gropius wished to set. Stoelzl was not treated the same as the other
young masters, nor was she ever fully embraced by Bauhaus leadership. When three
weavers, continuing the workshop’s tradition of challenging authority, accused Stoelzl of
moral impropriety, she, like Muche, was not entirely supported by the faculty. In 1931
she resigned under pressure from the city of Dessau.34 Still, Stoelzl’s accomplishments
as young master were numerous and, in tribute to her long association with the Bauhaus,
32
Baumhoff, Gendered World of the Bauhaus, pp. 89-90.
33
Oskar Schlemmer, Dessau to Tut Schlemmer, 1 May 1926, in Tut Schlemmer, Letters and Diaries,
pp. 194-5.
34
Baumhoff, Gendered World of the Bauhaus, pp. 95-7. One of Stoelzl’s accusers was the daughter of a
local Nazi party member. The father assisted his daughter in her effort to have Stoelzl removed. The
accusations most likely stemmed from Stoelzl’s relationship with the Jewish Bauhaus student Arieh
Sharon, which resulted in pregnancy and, later, marriage.
105
an entire issue of the school’s magazine was dedicated to her and the weaving
workshop.35
Marianne Brandt
Marianne Brandt is the best example of a female student breaking free from
stereotypes and succeeding in a field outside of weaving. She began her artistic career at
the Grand Ducal School of Fine Arts in 1911, studying painting and sculpture until 1917.
In 1924 she returned to Weimar and joined the Bauhaus. She completed the Preliminary
Course that year and then had to decide what workshop to enter.36 She had managed to
capture the attention of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy who advocated for her to be allowed into
his metal workshop. Baumhoff believes that Moholy’s patronage of Brandt was critical
in establishing her in this traditionally male domain.37
Once admitted, she was not welcomed with open arms by her male peers.
According to Brandt, they felt that “there was no place for a woman in a metal
workshop…” She had to rely on talent and perseverance to convince them that she
belonged. She put up with “all sorts of dull, dreary work. How many little hemispheres
did I most patiently hammer out of brittle new silver, thinking that was the way it had to
be and all beginnings are hard.” Over time, the male students realized the great skill that
Brandt possessed and accepted her fully into the workshop.38
35
Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus, p. 130. Stoelzl also contributed an article, “The Development of the
Bauhaus Weaving Studio,” to this issue of the magazine.
36
Neumann, Bauhaus and Bauhaus People, p. 105. Whitford, Masters and Students, p. 312.
37
38
Marianne Brandt, “Letter to the Younger Generation,” in Neumann, Bauhaus and Bauhaus People,
p. 107.
106
During her career at the Bauhaus from 1924-29, Brandt produced some of the
school’s most recognizable and successful products, rivaling the achievements of most
male students. Her tableware, made of brass, silver, glass, and ebony, was a highlight of
the early “Art and technology” phase and, although handmade, articulated the new
aesthetics appropriate for industrial production. In 1928 she teamed with Hin
Bredendieck and Helmut Schulze and designed metal lamps: two of the more famous
ones were the Kandem desk-lamp, made of bronze and steel plate, and the Kandem
double cylinder hanging lamp, made of nickel-plated brass and opaque glass.39 Her
lamps were mass-produced by the firm Körting & Mathiesen and over 50,000 of them
were sold between 1928-32.40
Brandt’s success is even more striking considering that she was a “very small”
girl,41 who appeared to fit the stereotype of a woman who did not have the strength to
work with metal. She compensated by primarily working with small objects, such as
teapots and cups, or by working as a team with a male student. In addition to Brandt,
there are other examples of undersized students succeeding in a workshop. Felix Klee
(master Paul Klee’s son) was “not very well developed physically,” but was still able to
earn the title of journeyman in the carpentry workshop. Klee credited his older and
stronger fellow students for providing valuable assistance.42 As these two examples
show, Gropius and the other masters should not have assumed that anyone of small
39
Bauhaus Archive Berlin: The Collection, pp. 108, 112-3.
40
Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus, p. 193.
41
42
Felix Klee, “My Memories of the Weimar Bauhaus,” in Neumann, Bauhaus and Bauhaus People, p. 44.
107
stature could not succeed in a workshop believed to require male strength. With help and
determination, physical handicaps could be overcome.
From 1927-28, Brandt served as an assistant in the metal workshop and when
Moholy left in 1928, she was appointed as its temporary head for that year. Gunta Stoelzl
was young master of the weaving workshop at this time, so in 1928 there were two
females heading workshops at the Bauhaus. Brandt left in 1929 and was subsequently
hired by Gropius, who had resigned a year earlier, as an assistant in his atelier.43 She
spent the entire year there and described it as “a happy, if all too brief time.”44 Even
Gropius, who sought to keep women out of male-oriented crafts and architecture, could
not deny Brandt’s unusual talent.
Lotti Weiss
Not much is known about Lotti Weiss. I have only seen her mentioned in one
student account by Paul Citroen. But according to him, she made quite an impression on
the Mazdaznan practitioners and held considerable sway over them, making her one of
the most significant female figures at the Bauhaus in Weimar.
Johannes Itten met Lotti Weiss while he was in Herrliberg, Switzerland for a
Mazdaznan retreat sometime in 1922. There, she was “entrusted by her parents” to
accompany Itten back to the Bauhaus, where she was to study both art and Mazdaznan. It
is hard to imagine any parents entrusting their daughter to a bizarre figure like Johannes
Itten, but apparently Weiss’s parents were no strangers to Mazdaznan themselves. The
43
Neumann, Bauhaus and Bauhaus People, p. 105.
44
Brandt, “Letter to the Younger Generation,” p. 107.
108
family had been practicing the religion for twelve years and Mazdaznan founder Otoman
Zar-Adusht Hanish had even initiated Weiss during his first visit to Europe. Therefore,
Weiss was, compared to the other Bauhaus students, an expert in Mazdazan and quickly
became their mentor.45
Since Itten was often busy with school matters, Weiss was the students’ first
option when seeking guidance on Mazdaznan matters. “Whenever we had some
questions or other, some doubt concerning something in our belief, or needed some
practical thing, we turned… to Lotti Weiss, who always knew the answers.” Weiss was
an expert cook, so she was invaluable for questions on the Mazdaznan diet. She also
imparted advice on “how one should conduct himself according to the rules, what one
should do in any dubious matter.”46 Weiss’s mere presence was inspirational to the
students. Citroen called her “radiant and bright – a shining example of a natural, clean
life. She was living proof of the rightness of the doctrine…”47 No doubt many of the
male students had crushes on Ms. Weiss, as Citroen clearly did. She was also a
significant reason the Mazdaznan student sect had a rebirth in 1922 after a brief period of
decline.
When Itten resigned from the Bauhaus in 1923, Lotti Weiss left with him.
Citroen and the other Mazdaznan followers were devastated by both Itten’s and Weiss’s
departure. On Weiss, Citroen writes, “Our little community was now robbed of her pre-
45
Paul Citroen, “Mazdaznan at the Bauhaus,” in Neumann, Bauhaus and Bauhaus People, p. 48
46
Ibid., p. 49.
47
Ibid., p. 48.
109
eminent strength.”48 With their two leaders gone, the Mazdaznan student sect soon
collapsed.
****
From the beginning, women had their experience at the Bauhaus mapped out for
them. Despite bold claims for equality between the sexes, Bauhaus leadership quickly
reversed its course. It was strongly desired and encouraged for women to enter the
weaving workshop, a traditionally female domain. This policy of gender discrimination
was never made public, so women assumed their gravitation toward weaving was a
natural occurrence. Their internalized gender stereotypes fostered this belief and, for the
most part, weaving was viewed as a desirable option. The secrecy of the admission
policy combined with the stereotypes helped the Bauhaus limit the number of female
students and confine most of them to the weaving workshop, forming an unofficial
women’s class, where they would not interfere with the work of the male students.
Even with this discriminatory policy in place, the Bauhaus was still a pretty good
place for a woman to be. Women made up 40% of the student population in Weimar and
26% of the population in Dessau and Berlin. These are certainly decent figures
considering women had only recently been granted access to higher education. At
universities women were fairing worse. In 1931-2 female university enrollment reached
its highest point yet in the Weimar Republic at 16%. Once admitted, female students
48
Ibid., p. 52.
110
faced stiff resistance from a centuries old patriarchal tradition.49 Bauhaus paternalism,
while formidable, was not nearly as entrenched or all-encompassing as at universities.
At the Bauhaus, the female students embraced the school’s mission of social reform and
its overall artistic vision. They were also active participants in the school’s community
and social life. And, as the examples of Marianne Brandt, Lotti Weiss, and the weaving
workshop show, Bauhaus women were very successful.
The Bauhaus’s unequal gender policy had its parallels in the larger society of the
Weimar Republic, which also acted in contradictory ways concerning issues of sex,
gender, and modernity. According to Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, “Despite the
rhetoric about women’s emancipation, patriarchal ideology continued to dominate all
institutions of German economic and political life.”50 As the Bauhaus demonstrates,
progressive cultural institutions were affected as well. The school’s treatment of women
and their overall experience were deeply rooted in the atmosphere of contradiction and
competition that existed in the Weimar Republic.
49
Peukert, The Weimar Republic, pp. 97-8.
50
Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, “Beyond Kinder, Kuche, and Kirche: Weimar Women in Politics
and Work,” in Bridenthal et al., When Biology Became Destiny, p. 35.
111
CONCLUSION
Students were a vital part of the Bauhaus; rarely were they passive learners. Not
only did they embrace the school’s utopian vision, they were among its prime shapers
and promoters. Cooperative living, a mystic sect, free-spirited dances, incredibly creative
parties, etc.; the students were involved in the most significant aspects of building a
Bauhaus community. Additionally, when they believed it was necessary, students
challenged school leadership and Weimar society. For them not to voice their opinion for
curriculum change, or in opposition to a particular teacher, or for a political cause would
have run contrary to the activist nature of the school and the character of the student
body. There were instances when the masters felt it was necessary to act against the
students but, with the possible exception of Mies van der Rohe, they understood the
importance of, and encouraged, an involved student body. The strength of the student
community was essential to the institution’s survival in the face of fourteen years of
turmoil, particularly in the early years during the post-war economic crisis. At the same
time, however, the students’ strength, confidence, and behavior also frightened those who
opposed the school and contributed to much of the criticism directed toward the Bauhaus.
The Bauhaus students also teach us about the Weimar Republic, particularly the
complexities associated with the development of modernity. The students’ flirtation with
mysticism provides an excellent example of the appeal of spiritualism to those German
artists who would eventually advocate for a republic based on reason. Mysticism did not
112
stand in contrast to their goals, rather it was very much in line with contemporary
progressive thought. There was much talk of the new rights for women after World
War I. But, in many cases, they turned out to be false words. This was the case at the
Bauhaus as well. The school had stated that it would not discriminate between the sexes
in admission but, when it came time to enforce this policy, Walter Gropius did not follow
through. The number of women admitted to the Bauhaus was limited to 30% of the
student body and, if accepted, women were pushed toward the more feminine weaving
workshop. Even for the Bauhaus, the tradition of male authority was difficult to
transcend. The issue of student politics also has its parallels within the larger society. In
the late 1920s, Germans became increasingly radical in their politics and society more
polarized. It was at this time that the first Bauhaus Communist cell emerged and began
to dominate campus affairs. The Communists were soon met by an opposing nationalist
group. The two sides battled over their ideas until the closing of the school in 1933. In
addition, the appearance of the nationalist group is significant because it illustrates the
appeal of some elements of modernism to members of the right, which foreshadowed
later Nazi policy.
113
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
Documentary Collections
Neumann, Eckhard, ed. Bauhaus and Bauhaus People: Personal Opinions and
Recollections of Former Bauhaus Members and Their Contemporaries. New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970.
Whitford, Frank, ed. The Bauhaus: Masters & Students by Themselves. Woodstock, NY:
The Overlook Press, 1992.
Wingler, Hans M. The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago. Trans. by Wolfgang
Jabs and Basil Gilbert. Joseph Stein, ed. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1969.
Books, Articles, and other Writings by Bauhaus Students and Masters
Adams, George. “Memories of a Bauhaus Student.” Architectural Review, Vol. 144

(Sept. 1968), 192-4.
Bayer, Herbert, Ise Gropius, and Walter Gropius, eds. Bauhaus 1919-1928. Boston:
Charles T. Branford Company, 1959.
Bayer, Herbert. Herbert Bayer. New York: Reinhold, 1967.
Dearstyne, Howard. Inside the Bauhaus. David Spaeth, ed. New York: Rizzoli
International Publications, 1986.
Erffa, Helmut von. “The Bauhuas before 1922.” College Art Journal, Vol. 3 (Nov.
1943), 14-20.
Gropius, Walter. The New Architecture and the Bauhaus. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965.
Itten, Johannes. Design and Form: The Basic Course at the Bauhaus. New York:
Reinhold, 1975.
114
Klee, Felix, ed. The Diaries of Paul Klee. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1964.
Moholy-Nagy, Sybil. Moholy-Nagy: Experiment in Totality. New York: Harper, 1950.
Ness, June, ed. Lyonel Feininger. London: Allen Lane, 1975.
Pearlman, Judith. “Interviews of Bauhaus Masters and Students.” 1980-5. Transcripts.

Judith Pearlman Archive, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los
Angeles (acc. # 920069).
Schlemmer, Oskar, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Farkas Molnar. The Theater of the
Bauhaus. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961.
Schlemmer, Tut, ed. The Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer. Middletown, CT:
Wesleyan University Press, 1972.
Schnaidt, Claude. Hannes Meyer: Buildings, Projects, and Writings. Stuttgart: Verlag
Gerd Hatje, 1965.
Secondary Sources
General Bauhaus Sources
Bauhaus Archive Berlin, Museum of Design: The Collection. Trans. by Helen Adkins.
Berlin: Bauhaus Archive Berlin, 1999.
Baumhoff, Anja. The Gendered World of the Bauhaus: The Politics of Power at the
Weimar Republic’s Premier Art Institute. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang GmbH,
2001.
Droste, Magdalena. Bauhaus: 1919-1933. Trans. by Karen Williams. Berlin: Benedikt

Taschen Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, 1990.
Fiedler, Jeannine and Peter Feierabend, eds. Bauhaus. Cologne: Könemann

Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 2000.
Forgács, Éva. The Bauhaus Idea and Bauhaus Politics. Trans. by John Bátki. New
York: Central European University Press, 1995.
Franciscono, Marcel. Walter Gropius and the Creation of the Bauhaus in Weimar.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971.
115
Giedion, Sigfried. Walter Gropius. New York: Dover Publication, Inc., 1992.
Hochman, Elaine. Bauhaus: Crucible of Modernism. New York: Fromm International,

1997.
Isaacs, Reginald. Gropius: An Illustrated Biography of the Creator of the Bauhaus.

Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1983. Reprint, 1990.
Naylor, Gillian. The Bauhaus Reassessed: Sources and Design Theory. London: The
Herbert Press, 1985.
Whitford, Frank. Bauhaus. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984.
Other Relevant Sources
Behr, Shulamith. Expressionism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Berghahn, V.R. Modern Germany. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press,

1982.
Blake, Peter. Marcel Breuer: Architect and Designer. New York: Museum of Modern
Art: 1949.
Bookbinder, Paul. The Weimar Republic: The Republic of the Reasonable. New York:
Manchester University Press, 1996.
Bridenthal, Renate, Atina Grossmann, and Marion Kaplan, eds. When Biology Became
Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany. New York: Monthly Review
Press, 1984.
Efland, Arthur. A History of Art Education: Intellectual and Social Currents in Teaching
the Visual Arts. New York: Teachers College Press: 1990.
Frampton, Kenneth. Modern Architecture: A Critical History. Third Revised Edition.

New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992.
Gay, Peter. Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider. New York: Harper & Row, 1968.
Herf, Jeffrey. Reactionary Modernism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,

1984.
116
Hochman, Elaine. Architects of Fortune: Mies van der Rohe and the Third Reich. New
York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989.
Johnson, Philip. Mies van der Rohe. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1978.
Lane, Barbara Miller. Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918-1945. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1968. Reprint, 1985.
Laqueur, Walter. Weimar: A Cultural History, 1918-1933. New York: G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1974.
Mosse, George. The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism.

New York: Howard Fertig, Inc., 1999.
Payne, Stanley. A History of Fascism: 1914-1945. Madison: University of Wisconsin

Press, 1995.
Peukert, Detlev. The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity. Trans. by
Richard Deveson. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992.
Pevsner, Nikolaus. Academies of Art, Past and Present. New York: Da Capo Press,
1973.
Tuchman, Maurice, ed. The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985. New York:
Abbeville Press, 1986.
Willett, John. Art and Politics in the Weimar Period: The New Sobriety, 1917-1933.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.
Zorn, Wolfgang. “Student Politics in the Weimar Republic.” Journal of Contemporary

History, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1970).
117

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STUDENT LIFE AT THE BAUHAUS

Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies and Research,

Approved as to style and content by:

Paul Bookbinder, Associate Professor

Woodruff Smith, Professor

Nancy Stieber, Associate Professor, Art Department

Spencer Di Scala, Program Director

STUDENT LIFE AT THE BAUHAUS

Eric C. Cimino, B.A., University of Delaware

Directed by Professor Paul Bookbinder

thematic chapters, the Bauhaus’s relationship to modernity is shown to be constantly in

Caitlin Miller from Artists Rights Society (representing Max Bill).

Special thanks are given to my thesis committee at the University of

Massachusetts in Boston: Professors Paul Bookbinder, Woodruff Smith, and Nancy

provided a former mathematician with the opportunity to become a historian.

pursuing such a challenging project. I thank my family and my soon-to-be wife,

Suzanne, for their unwavering support and interest in what I do.

LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………………. vii

1. PRE WAR GERMAN ART EDUCATION REFORM

2. STUDENT LIFE: WEIMAR, 1919-25………………………… 14

3. MYSTICISM AT THE BAUHAUS………………………….... 36

4. STUDENT LIFE: DESSAU AND BERLIN, 1925-33………… 49

6. WOMEN AT THE BAUHAUS………………………………... 96

1. Bauhaus Students in Weimar, 1919-25…………...…..…………….. 19

2. New Students per Year, 1927-33…………………….……………... 53

3. Percentage of New Male and Female Students per Year, 1927-33… 55

to architecture,2 which came to be known as the International Style or Bauhaus Style.3

expense of recognizing the Bauhaus’s turbulent social and political history.

which had long been ignored.

beginning with translations of German scholar Magdalena Droste’s Bauhaus: 1919-1933

Elaine Hochman wrote the most comprehensive English-language history of the

collection of essays by 32 primarily German scholars appeared.10 This collection, edited

Bauhaus engaged in active discrimination against its female members, which

contradicted its stated egalitarian and modern goals.

understanding of early modernity is enhanced as well. Continuing along these lines,

and its relation to the Weimar Republic.

Arriving at the Bauhaus during a time of unprecedented turmoil, the students

Chapters 2 and 4 are organized chronologically to describe student life at the

Bauhaus in the town of Weimar (1919-25) and Dessau/Berlin (1925-33). Central to

necessary to accurately describe the work being done at the Bauhaus.

Bauhaus a heated affair.

conditions. Stripped of its ideological components, the Bauhaus’s achievements in

Finally, Chapter 6 considers the experience of women at the Bauhaus. Included

began to limit the amount of women accepted. If admitted, women were to be

Historian Detlev Peukert ascribes the following characteristics to Weimar

modernity: industry, functional aesthetics, political democracy, social reforms, civil

chapters in particular demonstrate that the Bauhaus’s relationship to modernity was

previously unavailable. In Bauhaus and Bauhaus People, Eckhard Neumann has

assembled personal recollections from a variety of students, masters, and other

PRE WAR GERMAN ART EDUCATION REFORM

Pre War German Art Education Reform

Academy directed by Hermann Poelzig.2

workshops, albeit with some reluctance.

Essential to the curriculum was the Preliminary Course, developed by Johannes

The Town of Weimar and the Founding of the Bauhaus

primarily relied on agriculture. Several craft-based industries played a prominent role as

positively the changes brought on by the revolution.

reestablish a craft school in Weimar.

implement his ideas on artistic and societal reform.