Georg Muche
Biography
The one house the Bauhaus built in Weimar was drawn by a painter, and this is the painter.
Youngest master, 1920
Georg Muche was born in Querfurt in 1895 and appointed by Walter Gropius in 1920 as the youngest master of the Staatliches Bauhaus — young enough that his first work was organisational and pedagogical rather than a workshop of his own. He took the preliminary course alongside Johannes Itten in 1921–22, which is the closest thing the school had to an apprenticeship in how to teach it.
The weaving workshop, 1921–1925
From 1921 he ran the weaving workshop as form master, and kept it until the school left Weimar in 1925. It is the workshop Gunta Stölzl learned her trade in, under him, from 1921 — before she ran it herself in Dessau from 1926 to 1931. The succession says something about the school: a painter who had never woven was set over the looms, and the weaver he taught ended up leading them.
1923: an exhibition and a house
In the same year he did the two things Weimar remembers him for: he led the school's first large exhibition, and he supplied the designs for the experimental house Am Horn that was its centrepiece. A painter designing the Bauhaus's only realised building sounds like an accident of history; at a school arguing that art and building are one problem, it was the point.
Half a floor on the Steubenstraße, 1920–1925
The city's register of Bauhaus sites has him occupying the right-hand half of the first floor of a private house at Steubenstraße 40 during his Weimar years — the same street Gropius lived in, at number 32. The masters did not live in a colony: they took flats in the same ordinary streets as everyone else, and two of them happened to land on one.
Dessau, and out, 1925–1987
He moved with the school to Dessau, kept the weaving workshop until 1927 and built the Steel House with Richard Paulick in 1926, then left after the internal quarrels that ran through the Dessau years. He died at Lindau on Lake Constance in 1987.
Questions visitors ask
- What did Georg Muche design in Weimar?
- The Haus Am Horn, the only building the Bauhaus actually realised in Weimar, as the centrepiece of the school's first major exhibition in 1923.
- What was Georg Muche's role at the Bauhaus?
- Its youngest master, appointed by Walter Gropius in 1920. He co-ran the preliminary course with Johannes Itten in 1921–22, then led the weaving workshop from 1921 until the school left Weimar in 1925.
- Did Georg Muche teach anyone notable?
- Yes — Gunta Stölzl learned weaving under him from 1921, before running the workshop herself in Dessau from 1926 to 1931.
- Can I visit places connected to Georg Muche?
- Yes: the Haus Am Horn, which he designed, and Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, where he taught the preliminary course and led the weaving workshop.
Notable Works & Achievements
Haus Am Horn, Weimar (1923)
Steel House, Dessau (1926, with Richard Paulick)
the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition
Connected Places in Weimar
Am Horn 61, 99425 Weimar
He drew it — the only building the Bauhaus realised in Weimar.
Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 8, 99423 Weimar
He taught in van de Velde's buildings, which the school had taken over: the preliminary course with Itten, then the weaving workshop.
Historical Context
Youngest master of the Weimar school, from 1920 to the move to Dessau.
The Bauhaus was founded in Weimar in 1919 and voted out by 1925 — time enough to change what a design school is, and not enough for the town that made it to keep it.
Read more about this period →Quick Facts
1895
1987
German
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.
He led it, and designed the house that was its centrepiece.
An election, a halved budget, and contracts cancelled to 31 March 1925: the school left for Dessau after six years.
He moved with the school and kept the weaving workshop in Dessau until 1927.