The Bauhaus in Weimar, founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius, was more than just an art school; it was a revolutionary movement that sought to transform society through art, design, and communal living. Emerging in the aftermath of World War I, the Bauhaus was driven by the question: “How will we live, how will we settle, what form of community do we want to aspire to?” This guiding principle shaped its philosophy, encouraging collaboration, social responsibility, and a radical rethinking of artistic creation. The main idea of Bauhaus was to rethink art, offering it to all people, not just the wealthy elite.
Gropius envisioned the Bauhaus as a collective of artists, designers, and architects who would work together to develop new forms of expression that merged art with craftsmanship and technology. However, early students did not immediately grasp this vision. In the first Bauhaus student exhibition of 1919, Gropius was disappointed, describing it as “many pretty frames, splendid presentation, finished pictures.” He had hoped for sketches, projects, and communal works rather than individual artistic displays. This setback did not deter the Bauhaus from pushing forward in its pursuit of innovative social and artistic ideals.
A group of students, committed to the idea of collective living, took Gropius’s vision further. In 1919, they formed a cooperative and designed plans for a Bauhaus settlement, including houses, furniture, and communal spaces that embodied their belief in a solidarity-based society. Although the settlement never materialized, the concept of communal living became a reality. Bauhaus members cultivated gardens at the Haus Am Horn and managed a communal cafeteria, embodying their ideals through shared labor, learning, and celebration.
The Bauhaus was the fruit of versatile input from both well-known avant-garde artists and aspiring junior masters, more than 1,250 students from 29 countries and their friends and families. Under Hannes Meyer, the second Bauhaus director (1928–1930), the school reinforced its commitment to social responsibility. Meyer emphasized “the needs of the people over the needs of luxury,” restructured the curriculum to align with industry, and introduced cooperative housing projects. His leftist political views, however, led to his abrupt dismissal in 1930, reflecting the growing political tensions that would soon engulf Germany.
With the rise of National Socialism, the Bauhaus faced increasing hostility. The Nazis saw its progressive ideas as a threat to their ideology. The repression culminated in the removal of works by modernist artists like Franz Marc, Oskar Kokoschka, and Paul Klee from the Weimar Museum. Harry Graf Kessler (1930) lamented this cultural destruction, stating, “If Weimar, which was of German intellectual life for a centre one-and-a-half centuries, now settles for being forcibly reduced to a small town of no consequence, then that is regrettable […] It is, however, a German concern of the utmost priority if the mentality in Weimar, which is emptying the museums and laying waste to the once-flourishing art school on the strength of a narrow-minded and muddled ideology, spreads all over the German cultural world.” By 1933, the Nazis forced the Bauhaus to close, effectively silencing one of the most influential movements of the 20th century. However, Bauhaus ideas lived on. When National Socialism drove Bauhaus artists and designers into exile, the movement found a new home in the United States, where its principles flourished and shaped modern architecture, design, and art worldwide.
*The quotes and the main information is taken from de Weimar Bauhaus Museum
Serra Húnter Fellow of Sociology at Universitat Rovira i Virgili.
Former DAAD-Gastprofessorin at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg