Bauhaus. 1919-1933. Michael Siebenbrodt

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      When Hannes Meyer succeeded Walter Gropius, what was supposed to be avoided at the Bauhaus had already been extensively established: the “Bauhaus style.” Even chequered underwear advertised the Bauhaus style. How had this happened? Gropius proclaimed his design principle of nature research on the basis of the unification of art and technology in 1925. This nature analysis was, however, not carried out according to empirically scientific criteria in the Bauhaus under Gropius, as was discovered by Gropius researcher Winfried Nerdinger. The nature of an object, according to Nerdinger, was sought for in its purpose. By equating purpose and nature, the purposeful form was aestheticised without further questioning, and that initially meant geometric forms.

      Thus the products which were meant to serve the “new man” in a “new time” were subject to a vocabulary of geometric forms based on the design theories of art teachers, and Meyer initially sought to fight the “Bauhaus style” after taking office as director.[11] He put forward an analysis of social and economic questions which should eventually form the beginnings of the design process. Yet he did not succeed in fully communicating his approach, so it found its way into only a few elements of design practise. On the one hand, previously lacking engineering sciences were integrated into the curriculum, but on the other hand, the expansion of the art classes of the teachers of the Bauhaus and the “free painting classes” by Klee and Kandinsky eventually meant less of an integration and more of what seemed like the intentional exclusion of a specific field of learning. For Meyer, “art was strangling life” in the Bauhaus of his predecessor, which is why he wanted to limit the artists’ influence. The path was to lead “from formal intuition to construction science education”.[12] Meyer wanted education at the Bauhaus to be functional, constructive and collectivist, thus conditioning the school for the times ahead.

      The nine-semester education system was structured as follows: Mondays were reserved for music education, while scientific subjects were scheduled for Fridays. In the time between, work was carried out all day in the workshops, reminiscent of a factory setting. Saturdays were reserved for sports. A specialisation then followed in the architecture department, which Meyer had subdivided into construction theory and building department. The two educational goals were now called “artist” or “production or construction engineer.” Work and classes in the workshops as preparation for work in architecture thus corresponded completely to Walter Gropius’s original approach. Under Meyer’s leadership, the school’s limits were stretched when the number of students increased to two hundred, whose acceptance into the school was facilitated by the exclusion of some of the most talented people. The reason for this was the intention, according to the pedagogics of the Bauhaus to enable the “real” integration of a maximum number of people in society. In many points Meyer agreed in principle with the conceptual approach of his predecessor. Thus, for both men, building was a truly social development of “organisation of life processes” (as Gropius put it). But where Meyer’s concept was different from Gropius’s was in its affinity towards co-operative movements and the associated views going back to Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi regarding the sense in building “small circles” – family, work associations of artists and designers. For Gropius, the principle of nature research applied, while for Meyer the systematic determination of the need was the basis of design. From the basis of this concept, Meyer did not only design his architecture but also organised the “vertical brigades” within which students of different levels of education worked on one project from the drawing board to the building site. In terms of enthusiasm for co-operatives as well as for building commissions, the city of Dessau provided a good opportunity with the commission of the Laubenganghäuser (Balcony Access Houses). Other buildings produced from 1928 to 1930, such as the complex for the Federal School of the ADGB (General German Federation of Labor Unions) in Bernau near Berlin and the Nolden House in the Eifel were also successful. The exhibition Bauhaus Housing for the People, which had been designed by the Bauhaus and was travelling the country in order to open up a market for Bauhaus products, gained much attention but not the hoped-for sales. Only the Bauhaus wallpaper created by Bauhaus students in Dessau in 1929 became a sales hit.

      Hannes Meyer failed. This failure was mainly a result of the fact that he had permitted a left-wing political radicalisation to develop within the student body starting in 1928 and was not able to mediate the process enough to prevent damage to the institution’s image. The school’s practise of open discourse, its general love of experimentation, including discussion of political and social problems was, as it turned out, hard to convey to the general public. In fact, the general public did not permit it. When an organised group of Communist students, which had been banned under Hannes Meyer’s directorship following outside pressure, eventually called publicly for participation in the “world revolution” and 60 % of the school’s students participated in a KPD demonstration, the relationship between the Bauhaus and the Dessau city elders, who feared a loss of votes with such a “red Bauhaus”, became intolerable. With the support of anti-communist Bauhaus teachers such as Josef Albers and Wassily Kandinsky, who saw their positions threatened by Meyer’s restructuring, and also of Walter Gropius, who disliked Meyer’s criticism of the Bauhaus, as well as the mayor Fritz Hesse and his state curator Ludwig Grote, Meyer was discharged from his post of director of the Bauhaus in August 1930. Initially, Meyer successfully fought the discharge but resigned from his post as a result of an arbitration settlement.

      Portrait of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, c. 1931

      The Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Era

      Hannes Meyer, fallen into political and governmental disfavour, had after his discharge taken critical stock of his Bauhaus time in an open letter to the Mayor of Dessau entitled My Discharge from the Bauhaus and shortly thereafter had gone to Moscow with a “red Bauhaus brigade.” In his post, he was succeeded by the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Earlier, the attempt to reinstall Gropius as director had failed, as had the appointment of architect Otto Haesler (1880–1962), suggested by Gropius.

      Ludwig Mies van der Rohe had drawn attention to himself one year earlier with the design of the German pavilion for the World Exposition in Barcelona. In 1926/1927, he directed the planning of the Weißenhof housing development in Stuttgart, a unique summary of achievements of the so-called Neues Bauen (New Building), with the participation of seventeen leading modern architects from all over Europe. With Mies van der Rohe, the Bauhaus was to focus on teaching at a time when economic and thus political problems intensified in Anhalt following a spreading world economic crisis and the increasing instability of the Weimar Republic. At the time of his installation, he announced: “I do not want marmalade, not workshop and school, but school.” Politically, the Bauhaus was no longer to make itself visible. The school was temporarily officially closed and reopened for the autumn 1930 semester. What remained of the Bauhaus were the name and the building. Everything else was changed in agreement with the city: budget, programme, constitution, content and structure. The students had to reapply. Some were expelled, the politically radical sifted out. School fees were increased, living studios closed. “Five of the most deserving foreign Bauhaus students” were expelled by the Dessau magistrate without explanation.СКАЧАТЬ