Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Biography
He never taught in Weimar. He is here because his furniture is in the collection this town keeps, and because the school Weimar founded ended under him.
What of him is in Weimar
The Klassik Stiftung names furniture by Mies van der Rohe among the pieces of the Bauhaus-Museum's collection, beside the Wagenfeld and Jucker lamp, Marianne Brandt's teapot and Marcel Breuer's slatted chair. That is the whole of his presence in this town, and it is worth stating plainly, because a visitor who meets his name in the museum will reasonably assume he worked here. He did not: he was called to the Bauhaus in 1930, five years after it had left Weimar for Dessau.
The last director
Gropius proposed him, hoping his standing would steady a school shaken by the removal of Hannes Meyer. Under political pressure the concessions came quickly — the teaching more regulated, experiment reduced, workshops merged, the preliminary course abolished. A city council with a National Socialist majority closed the Dessau school in 1932; Mies tried to carry it on as a private institute in a disused telephone factory in Berlin-Steglitz.
How it ended
In July 1933 the council of masters under Mies decided, after years of painful and at times desperate political compromises, not to reopen the school on the National Socialists' terms; it was formally dissolved on 10 August 1933. The institution founded in Weimar in April 1919 was therefore closed by its own teachers fourteen years later, and the man who signed off on that is in this collection because of a chair.
Notable Works & Achievements
furniture in the Bauhaus-Museum Weimar's collection
Historical Context
Called to the school in 1930 as its last director, five years after it left Weimar; his furniture is in the collection here.
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
1886
1969
German-American