Germany (Lonely Planet, 6th Edition) - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [179]
Today, a smattering of postgrads from an urban studies program use some of the building but much of it is open to the public. The gift shop sells cool trinkets, books, posters and postcards.
You can hire an English-language audio-guide (adult/concession €4/3) and tour the building by yourself, but it may be worthwhile joining the one-hour German tour (adult/concession €4/3; tours 11am & 2pm daily year-round, also noon & 4pm Sat & Sun mid-Feb–Oct) to get inside the auditorium, Gropius’ office and other rooms that are otherwise off limits.
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BAUHAUS: DESIGN FOR LIFE
‘Less is more’ asserted the third and final Bauhaus director, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Given that this school survived fewer than 15 years yet exerted more influence on modern design than any other, one has to bow to his logic. As Frank Whitford put it in Bauhaus: World of Art (1984): ‘Everyone sitting on a chair with a tubular steel frame, using an adjustable reading lamp or living in a house partly or entirely constructed from prefabricated elements is benefiting from a revolution…largely brought about by the Bauhaus.’
Founded in Weimar in 1919 by Berlin architect Walter Gropius, this multidisciplinary school aimed to abolish the distinction between ‘fine’ and ‘applied’ arts, and to unite the artistic with the everyday. Gropius reiterated that form follows function and exhorted his students to craft items with an eye toward mass production. Consequently, Bauhaus products stripped away decoration and ornamentation and returned to the fundamentals of design, with strong, clean lines.
From the very beginning, the movement attracted a roll call of the era’s greatest talents, including Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer, plus now legendary product designers Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer and Wilhelm Wagenfeld. After conservative politicians closed the Weimar school in 1925, the Bauhaus crew found a more welcoming reception in industrial Dessau.
Even here, though, right-wing political pressure continued against what was seen as the Bauhaus’ undermining of traditional values, and Gropius resigned as director in 1928. He was succeeded by Swiss-born Hannes Meyer, whose Marxist sympathies meant that he, in turn, was soon replaced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The latter was at the helm when the school moved to Berlin in 1932 to escape Nazi oppression. To no avail. Just one year later, the Nazis dissolved the school and its leading lights fled the country.
But the movement never quite died. After WWII, Gropius took over as director of Harvard’s architecture school, while Mies van der Rohe (the architect of New York’s Seagram Building) held the same post at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Both men found long-lasting global fame as purveyors of Bauhaus’ successor, the so-called International Style.
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MEISTERHÄUSER
On leafy Ebertallee, a 15-minute walk west of the Hauptbahnhof, the three remaining Meisterhäuser (Masters’ Houses; www.meisterhaeuser.de; admission to all 3 houses adult/concession €5/4, combination ticket with Bauhausgebäude €9/6; 10am-6pm Tue-Sun mid-Feb–Oct, 10am-5pm Nov–mid-Feb) line up for inspection. The leading lights of the Bauhaus movement lived together as neighbours in these white cubist structures that exemplify the Bauhaus aim of ‘design for living’ in a modern industrial world.
Originally there was a stand-alone home for Gropius, plus three duplexes, each half of which provided a living/working space for a senior staff member and his family. Gropius’ home was destroyed in WWII, along with one-half of the neighbouring duplex. In the febrile environment of the 1920s, you could sit at home here with the Kandinskys, on furniture donated by Marcel Breuer, and with the possibility that Paul Klee or László Moholy-Nagy might drop by for tea.
Unfortunately, the interiors are largely bereft of original furniture, which is too expensive to replace today. All this said,