Bauhaus University main building
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Transcript
The Bauhaus was founded in Weimar in 1919 under Walter Gropius by combining traditions of art school and applied arts education. Its ambition was not to create a particular chair shape and then sell it expensively in museum shops. It wanted to rethink the relationship between art, craft, technology and modern life.
The school brought together painters, architects, designers, craftspeople and students in experimental workshops. Famous names later associated with it include Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy and others, but the institution was larger than its celebrity list.
The Bauhaus also existed inside political conflict. Conservative and nationalist forces in Thuringia attacked its radicalism and public funding. In 1925 the school left Weimar for Dessau, where its architectural identity became even more famous.
That departure is important. The Bauhaus's global reputation can make Weimar seem destined to recognise its value. Local politics helped drive it out.
Look at the university building, associated with the earlier art school and later Bauhaus history. Modernism did not emerge from nowhere in 1919; it grew from reform movements already challenging traditional academic boundaries.
There is an irony in walking here after Goethe's house. Both Weimar Classicism and Bauhaus were later canonised as national cultural treasure, but each involved argument, experiment and dissatisfaction with existing forms.
A culture becomes safe only after the controversial people are dead.
Our next stop, Haus am Horn, is the Bauhaus idea translated into domestic architecture. It asks a practical question grand manifestos often avoid: what would modern life actually feel like in a house?