Between Vision and Reality: The 1919 to 192 °Construction Phase

      After Belgian artist Henry van de Velde had submitted his petition for release from his post as Director of the Großherzogliche Kunstgewerbeschule (Grand-Ducal School of Arts and Crafts) to the Weimar Grand Duke on 25th July 1914, just a few days after the outbreak of World War I, his contract finished on 1st October 1915, the date that the school closed. As his successors, Van de Velde recommended to the Grand-Ducal Saxon State Ministry the German architect August Endell (1871–1925) and Walter Gropius, as well as the Swiss sculptor Hermann Obrist (1863–1927). Since October 1915, a lively correspondence had developed between Fritz Mackensen (1866–1953), the painter and director of the Großherzoglich Sächsische Hochschule (Grand-Ducal Saxon Academy of Fine Arts) in Weimar, and Walter Gropius regarding the attachment of an architecture and visual arts department, of which Gropius was to be the head. He was staying in Weimar in December and was granted an audience with the Grand Duke to discuss the appointment. On 25th January 1916, Gropius, at the request of the Weimar State Ministry, submitted his Suggestions for the Founding of an Educational Establishment as an Artistic Advice Centre for Industry, Trade and Crafts.[1] One year later, the professorial staff of the Academy of Fine Arts submitted a list of reform suggestions to the State Ministry, particularly asking that the educational programme be extended to include architecture, arts and crafts and theatre arts.

      On the 3rd November 1918, revolution began in Germany and reached Weimar five days later. On the 9th, the social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann (1865–1939) proclaimed the “German Republic” in the Reichstag, and two hours later Karl Liebknecht proclaimed his “Free Socialist Republic” at Berlin Castle. The Kaiser and all the German princes abdicated without any far-reaching radical social changes.

      On 3rd December 1918, the first meeting of the November Group took place in Berlin. It was an association of artists and architects such as Lyonel Feininger (1871–1956), Wassily Kandinsky, Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and also included Max Pechstein (1881–1955), Otto Dix (1891–1969), George Grosz (1893–1959) and Hans Poelzig (1869–1936), who wanted to make their contribution to the building of the young republic. Parallel to this gathering, the Working Council of the Arts was formed, including a group intent on reforming the education system led by architect Otto Bartning (1883–1959), with whom Gropius also collaborated. A central question was the creation of equal opportunities for all students by means of a unified school, in connection with the idea of a working school. Special emphasis was placed on the reform of fine arts academies. The results of these discussions were also expressed in an only slightly modified form in Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus Programme and Manifesto, which appeared in April 1919 with Lyonel Feininger’s woodcut on the cover. The reunification of all artistic principles in building, in combination with manual trades and workshop as educational fundamentals were the focal point of its aims and objectives. The Masters, Journeymen and Apprentices of the Bauhaus were to be closely in touch with industry and public life and strive for friendly relationships amongst themselves outside of classes as well as in them, with theatre, lectures, music and “ceremonious merriment at these gatherings.”[2]

      The first Bauhaus signet, the “matchstick star man”, which led student Karl Peter Röhl (1890–1975) to win the student competition, was a special symbol of this departure from convention. It its centre is an abstract line drawing of a man with his arms raised, consciously following Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452–1519) Vitruvian Man in a circle and square, but reminiscent at the same time of the Old Germanic double-rune “man-woman” with a circular head, which with its black and white halves represents the highest degree of abstraction of the Chinese yin and yang. This Bauhaus man carries a pyramid as the antique symbol of the unity of society, art and religion. He is orbited by the sun as a swastika, the Buddhist symbol of love, and the moon and stars – world cultures and world religions form the humanistic backdrop for the Bauhaus’s visions of the future.

      The foundation of the Bauhaus coincided with the first elections in the newly founded Free State of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach on 9th March 1919, and the formation of a new provisional republican government by the Social Democrats (SPD) and the German Democrats (DDP). In February and March, Gropius travelled to Weimar on several occasions for negotiations and gained support for his appointment as Director and the new name Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar (State Bauhaus in Weimar) from the Fine Arts Academy staff. On 1st April 1919, the Weimar Lord Chamberlain’s office signed the contract with Gropius and also agreed to the institution’s renaming on 12th April.

      In the merger of the former Academy of Fine Arts and the Academy of Arts and Crafts, Gropius had to take on the remaining professors of the Academy of Fine Arts, Richard Engelmann (1868–1957), Otto Fröhlich, Walther Klemm (1883–1957) and Max Thedy (1858–1924). The appointment of the new international faculty of avant-garde artists took all of four years. In 1919, Lyonel Feininger, Gerhard Marcks (1889–1981) and Johannes Itten (1888–1967) joined, then one year later Georg Muche (1895–1987). In 1921 came Paul Klee (1879–1940), Oskar Schlemmer (1888–1943) and Lothar Schreyer (1886–1966), then Wassily Kandinsky in 1922 and László Moholy-Nagy replacing Itten as late as 1923.

      As early as the autumn of 1919, Bauhaus opponents in Weimar – conservative craftsmen, academic artists, members of the right-wing conservative educated class and politicians – formed the Free Association for City Interests and publicly attacked the “… Spartacist and Bolshevist influences” in the Bauhaus. At one such meeting the Bauhaus master student Hans Groß lamented the lack of a nationalist, “German-minded” leadership personality