Bauhaus Dessau: Academy for Design (1925 to 1932)

      Once it became known that the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar was to be closed, several German cities rallied to take it over. It had reached such a degree of fame that cities like Frankfurt-am-Main, Mannheim, Munich, Hagen, Hamburg, Krefeld, Darmstadt and also the City of Dessau wanted to house the school, should the need arise.

      At the time Dessau was the capital of the State of Anhalt. Workers and employees of companies in the growing chemical and electronics industries lived there. These companies, while they may have been an incentive for the Bauhaus, were hardly apt for actual collaboration, as would soon be discovered. The Bauhaus community, and especially Walter Gropius, found the scenically delightful location of the city between two rivers appealing. Furthermore, they had a lot to catch up on culturally. Since there was a lack of apartments, the Bauhaus had good prospects of carrying out here its ideas of New Building, which had remained at the drawing-board stage in Weimar.

      Dessau’s mayor Fritz Hesse (DDP) had first heard of the Bauhaus in a newspaper article which he had received from Dessau’s chief musical director Franz von Hoesslin in 1923. When the school had entered a state of crisis in Weimar in 1924, he sent the Anhalt state curator, Ludwig Grote, to Weimar; Grote returned with a favourable impression and encouraged Hesse to take over the Bauhaus. Following an initial on-site meeting with Wassily Kandinsky and Georg Muche on 20th February 1925, the Bauhaus made a commitment to move to Dessau. Dessau City and Anhalt government representatives for their part travelled to Weimar on 7th March 1925 to get an impression of the school. Henceforth the president of the Landtag, Heinrich Peus (SPD), and the city councillor and later parliamentary president Richard Paulick were so enthusiastic about the Bauhaus that a takeover was considered in more concrete terms. Many Dessau politicians, such as the head of the city planning and building department Wilhelm Schmetzer and the head of the municipal planning and building department Theodor Overhoff, adopted a rather vacillating attitude towards the Bauhaus. Most of the politicians of the DNVP (German National People’s Party) and the DVP (German People’s Party), as well as wide sections of the middle classes, such as the Home Owners’ Party and a citizens’ association were opponents of the Bauhaus. Even during the initial takeover plans, the Bauhaus was attacked by these groups, but without success since a unique political situation had developed in Dessau. The SPD, classified as more right-wing within the political spectrum, had entered into a coalition with the liberal left-wing DDP (German Democratic Party) and on top of that had positive backing in the Anhalt free state. The KPD tried to exploit the Bauhaus as propaganda for their purposes from the start, and to influence it. The Dessau population, mostly industrial workers, adopted either a policy of wait-and-see or scepticism. Prominent representatives of the industries based in Dessau revealed themselves as supporters of the Bauhaus. Among those who turned toward new technological developments and were culturally open-minded was the scientist, businessman and aircraft engineer Hugo Junkers (1859–1935).

      Quite differently from Weimar, narrower and more definite ideas were crystallising in this political and social sphere, which was favoured by a renewed upward economic trend; the city, as the new supporter of the school, expected from the Bauhaus an initiatory effect for its cultural and structural development.

      After overcoming initial concerns on the part of some Bauhaus Masters, the city’s intentions were largely in harmony with the wishes of Gropius and his comrades. The opportunities in Dessau were far beyond those of any other city. In March 1925, the Dessau city council decided to take over the school. That same month, the city’s finance committee approved the construction of a Bauhaus building and the housing development for the Bauhaus Masters, and thus modified its earlier decision for the reconstruction of a local school for arts and crafts with which the Bauhaus was to merge.

      The Bauhaus Masters had not anticipated this offer from Dessau. Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, Georg Muche and Oskar Schlemmer moved to Dessau, only Gerhard Marcks staying in Weimar. Not all the students followed. Former Weimar Bauhaus graduates who remained at the Bauhaus took over the workshops as Junior Masters, which actually would have allowed for the removal of the workshop leadership separation of Masters of Craft and Masters of Form. But since apprenticeships were to continue, the Master of Craft positions remained filled. Josef Albers ran part of the preparatory course as a Junior Master, Herbert Bayer was head of the typography workshop, Marcel Breuer ran the furniture workshop, Hinnerk Scheper ran the mural painting workshop, Joost Schmidt was head of the sculpture workshop and Gunta Stölzl was in charge of the weaving workshop.

      Walter Gropius, Bauhaus buildings in Dessau, aerial view by Junkers, 1926

      Walter Gropius, Masters’ houses in Dessau, view from the north-west, 1925/26

      Herbert Bayer, Bauhaus promotional brochure, 1927

      The Bauhaus spent seven years in Dessau. During this time buildings and products emerged which to this day continue to shape the image of the Bauhaus all over the world. The clarification process as to content, which had started with the Weimar exhibition in 1923, led to a consolidation in Dessau, on which even the forced change of site had a stabilising effect. The Bauhaus found unique support in Dessau. Here, it became an Academy for Design carried by the community; here, the workshops developed into “laboratories for industry.” But in Dessau, too, there were conservative circles which did not like having the school in town. External and internal conflicts led to the fact that after Walter Gropius, there were successively two more directors. Political, social and economic developments in Germany eventually also had their effects on Dessau.

      The new beginning came during a phase when the country was in an economic upswing; after 1929, the remaining years of the Bauhaus were characterised by rising unemployment and the battles of political forces which radicalised each other.

      Since initially there was no building available which would have been large enough to hold the entire institution, provisional arrangements had to be made so that work could continue. This type of decentralised work corresponded to the situation in Weimar and did not seem to have hindered the new beginning in Dessau. With the express consent of the magistrate, Walter Gropius integrated his own architecture office and the Bauhaus administration into the old building of the Dessau School of Arts and Crafts (called the Technical Institute from 1926) with which a merger was planned in order to give the institution technical backing. Teaching began here on 14th October 1925, and on its upper floor, the plans and models for the construction of the Bauhaus building and Masters houses were created.

      The workshops commenced their work on the upper floors of an annexe to a former Dessau mail-order firm which had been rented for this purpose. Individual studios were set up and art exhibitions organised. In the tower and other rooms of the former Leopold Dank Monastery (today’s Museum for Natural and Pre-History), Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Oskar Schlemmer temporarily set up their studios, in which some of the classes also took place. Until their move into the Masters’ houses, the Bauhaus Masters lived in the Gründerzeit (time of rapid industrial expansion) apartments which were situated in the northern part of the city, while the students mostly lived in the nearby district of Ziebigk. The relationship between the city and the Bauhaus was extremely ambivalent from the beginning. The ideas and new products of the Bauhaus obviously seemed to have asked too much of the majority of Dessau’s population, who were reserved towards this innovative kind of institution and full of hesitant scepticism. The Bauhaus people, on the other hand, tried to reduce those feelings of resentment and misunderstanding by practicing openness and tolerance.

      The Society of Friends of the Bauhaus also lent its support to this cause. Founded in 1924 by Walter Gropius to save the Bauhaus in Weimar, in Dessau it took over the important role of benefactor as well as mediator between the school and the city. As an association of intellectuals and industrialists close to the Bauhaus and a potential “association of sponsors”,

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