The end of the Weimar Bauhaus, 1924/25
An election, a halved budget, and contracts cancelled to 31 March 1925: the school left for Dessau after six years.
The Weimar Bauhaus did not fail; it was defunded, and it left six years after it was founded.
An election, then a halved budget
In the 1924 elections the right-wing Thüringer Ordnungsbund won a majority in the state parliament. The school's budget was halved at once and the teaching staff's contracts were cancelled with effect from 31 March 1925 — a decision taken by a legislature, not a jury.[1]
The masters resigned first
Gropius and the masters answered in December by resigning themselves: an act of self-assertion. The school then looked for a city that wanted it, and the teachers settled on Dessau, governed by the SPD and offering the better economic prospects.[1]
What Weimar kept
The university that holds the founding building today puts the reason for the move bluntly: in Weimar's nationalist milieu, the attacks on an internationally minded reform school with self-confident teachers, radical ideas and new ways of teaching kept growing.[2] What stayed behind were two buildings, one house at Am Horn, and a set of arguments the town would spend the next century deciding how to feel about — before putting the name on its university in 1996.
Sources
- Weimar – Die Bauhaus-Phasen — Bauhaus Kooperation, retrieved 29 August 2026
- Geschichte — Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, retrieved 29 August 2026
Historical figures
Historical figures
1893–1948 • sculptor • typographer • Bauhaus master
He is one of the people the town lost with the school: the Weimar contract was signed and then declined.
1900–1990 • designer • silversmith • industrial designer
When the school was dissolved he did not go to Dessau: he joined the successor school in Weimar.
1883–1969 • architect • founder and director of the Bauhaus • teacher
He resigned with the masters in December 1924 and took the school to Dessau.
1888–1943 • painter • sculptor • choreographer • Bauhaus master
One of the masters whose contract the state cancelled to 31 March 1925; he went on to Dessau.
1895–1987 • painter • Bauhaus master • head of the weaving workshop
He moved with the school and kept the weaving workshop in Dessau until 1927.
Historic sites
Historic sites
Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 8, 99423 Weimar
The buildings stayed; the school did not. They are UNESCO World Heritage today as its founding sites.
Period
In Weimar's history
In Weimar's history
The weeks in which the Bauhaus put itself in front of the public for the first time, in three buildings and one house it had to build first.
The exhibition made the school visible; the reaction that closed it here followed.