Walter Gropius
Biography
Walter Gropius, born in Berlin on 18 May 1883, founded the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar in April 1919 and directed it through its six Weimar years, until the school moved to Dessau in 1925. He came from Peter Behrens's office and the Fagus factory at Alfeld of 1911; in Weimar he merged the art academy with Henry van de Velde's arts and crafts school, wrote the manifesto whose first line reads that the ultimate aim of all creative activity is the building, put each workshop under a craftsman and an artist together, and staged the exhibition of 1923 with the Haus am Horn. His own Weimar building is the Monument to the March Dead of 1922. He handed the school to Hannes Meyer in 1928, emigrated to England in 1934 and to Harvard in 1937, and died in Boston on 5 July 1969.
Berlin 1883, Behrens's office 1907, the Fagus factory 1911
Gropius was born in Berlin on 18 May 1883. In 1907, through Karl Ernst Osthaus, he joined the office of the architect and industrial designer Peter Behrens, where Mies van der Rohe also worked, and in the same year became a member of the Deutscher Werkbund. His first significant building was the Fagus shoe-last factory at Alfeld an der Leine, under a contract of 13 May 1911, whose glass-and-steel front made his name before he had ever taught.
Weimar, April 1919: the Staatliches Bauhaus
In 1919, on the proposal of Henry van de Velde and as his successor, Gropius was appointed director of the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Fine Arts in Weimar and gave the new school the name Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar. The first of April 1919 counts as its foundation; on 12 April he formally merged it with the dissolved arts and crafts school van de Velde had built up. His programme of April 1919, the six-page leaflet called the manifesto, opens with the sentence that has stood for the school since: Das Endziel aller bildnerischen Tätigkeit ist der Bau! — the ultimate aim of all creative activity is the building.
1919–1925: Werkmeister and Formmeister, the preliminary course
The teaching was new in its form: in each workshop a craftsman as Werkmeister and an artist as Formmeister led the training together, and every student began with the Vorkurs, a trial semester that tested personal aptitude and taught the foundations of craft and design. Gropius called the masters — Feininger, Itten, Klee, Kandinsky, Schlemmer, Muche, Moholy-Nagy among them — and demanded a new beginning of building culture in place of academic teaching.
1921–1922: Haus Sommerfeld, and the Monument to the March Dead
With Adolf Meyer he designed and built the Sommerfeld house in Berlin in 1921. In 1922 his Monument to the March Dead was unveiled at Weimar's main cemetery, commissioned by the trade unions in honour of the workers killed resisting the Kapp Putsch of 1920 — a bolt of concrete driven up out of the ground. The National Socialists destroyed it; the monument standing at the cemetery today is the replica of 1946.
1923: the Bauhaus exhibition and the Haus am Horn
The Bauhaus exhibition of 1923 was the school's first great presentation of itself, staged by Gropius, and the Haus am Horn was built for it — the first surviving architectural testimony of the early Bauhaus. Its design is Georg Muche's, the youngest master, whom Gropius had appointed in 1920; Gropius's own building office executed it.
Steubenstraße 32, 1920–1925: where he lived
On arriving, Gropius lived with his first wife Alma Mahler and their daughter Manon in the Hotel Elephant on the market square. From 1920 to 1925 he lived on the second floor of Steubenstraße 32, the corner house at the street that now carries his name; a plaque marks it, and the house is listed among Weimar's cultural monuments.
1925–1969: Dessau, Harvard, Boston
After the Thuringian election of 1924 the school's budget was cut by half at once and the masters' contracts cancelled as of 31 March 1925; in December Gropius and the masters gave notice themselves, and in 1925 the Bauhaus moved to Dessau, where he designed its building of 1925–26 and the masters' houses. In 1928 he handed the directorship to the Swiss architect Hannes Meyer. After the National Socialists attacked the Bauhaus in 1934 as a church of Marxism he emigrated to London, and in 1937 to the United States as professor of architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design; in 1946 he founded The Architects Collaborative. He died in Boston on 5 July 1969, aged eighty-six, an American citizen.
Questions visitors ask
- Who founded the Bauhaus, and when?
- Walter Gropius, in Weimar in April 1919: appointed director of the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Fine Arts on Henry van de Velde's proposal, he renamed it Staatliches Bauhaus, with 1 April 1919 as the founding date and the merger with the arts and crafts school on 12 April.
- Where did Gropius live in Weimar?
- First in the Hotel Elephant on the market square, with Alma Mahler and their daughter Manon; from 1920 to 1925 on the second floor of Steubenstraße 32, where a plaque marks the house.
- Why did the Bauhaus leave Weimar?
- After the Thuringian election of 1924 the new majority cut the school's budget by half and cancelled the masters' contracts as of 31 March 1925. Gropius and the masters gave notice themselves in December 1924, and the school moved to Dessau in 1925.
- What did Gropius build in Weimar?
- The Monument to the March Dead at the main cemetery, unveiled in 1922 for the workers killed resisting the Kapp Putsch, destroyed under the National Socialists and rebuilt as a replica in 1946. The Haus am Horn of 1923 was designed by Georg Muche and executed by Gropius's building office.
- Where is the Bauhaus museum in Weimar?
- The Bauhaus-Museum Weimar of the Klassik Stiftung, Stéphane-Hessel-Platz 1, opened in 2019 for the centenary and shows the oldest Bauhaus collection in the world, begun by Gropius in the 1920s. Open Wednesday to Monday, 10 to 18; adults 11 euros.
- What does the Bauhaus manifesto say?
- Gropius's programme of April 1919 opens: Das Endziel aller bildnerischen Tätigkeit ist der Bau! — the ultimate aim of all creative activity is the building. Architects, painters and sculptors were to learn again to know the building in its whole and its parts, and the crafts were to be reunited under it.
Famous Quotes
“The ultimate goal of all visual artistic activity is construction! Architects, painters and sculptors must learn again to know and understand the multi-faceted form of building in its entirety as well as its parts.”
Notable Works & Achievements
Bauhaus Manifesto (1919)
Fagus factory, Alfeld (1911)
Haus Sommerfeld, Berlin (1921, with Adolf Meyer)
Monument to the March Dead, Weimar (1922)
Bauhaus building, Dessau (1925–26)
The Architects Collaborative (1946)
Connected Places in Weimar
Stéphane-Hessel-Platz 1, 99423 Weimar
He began the collection in the 1920s, while he was still directing the school it came from.
Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 8, 99423 Weimar
He founded the Bauhaus here in 1919 and his reconstructed director's room is in the main building.
Weimar's main cemetery (Hauptfriedhof), Berkaer Straße, 99425 Weimar
He designed it in 1922, while directing the Bauhaus in the same town — his most political Weimar work.
Theaterplatz 2, 99423 Weimar
He was commissioned to design it in 1921, while directing the Bauhaus and advising the state on artistic questions.
Am Horn 61, 99425 Weimar
His building office ran the construction and he staged the 1923 exhibition the house was built for.
Historical Context
He founded the school in Weimar in April 1919 and directed it through the whole Weimar period, until the move to Dessau in 1925.
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
1883
1969
German-American
Events
Events
Fridays and Saturdays at 14:00, and Wednesdays too from 21 March to 1 November
Founded the school here in 1919, in rooms someone else had designed.
Historical figures
Historical figures
1881–1929 • architect • master of architecture at the Bauhaus • teacher
Office chief from 1910, and the man who ran his building office at the Bauhaus.
1895–1987 • painter • Bauhaus master • head of the weaving workshop
Gropius appointed him in 1920 and gave him the 1923 exhibition to lead.
1889–1981 • sculptor • Bauhaus master • head of the ceramic workshop
Gropius appointed him in 1919, among the first masters he called.
1863–1957 • architect • designer • founder of the Weimar arts and crafts school
He recommended Gropius as his successor before leaving Germany in 1917.
1888–1967 • painter • art teacher • Bauhaus master
Gropius appointed him in 1919 and lost him in 1923 over differences the school did not survive unchanged.
1893–1948 • sculptor • typographer • Bauhaus master
Gropius's offer of a Jungmeister post at Dessau outbid the Weimar contract in 1925.
1888–1976 • painter • designer • teacher
Gropius called him into the college of teachers in 1923.
1895–1946 • artist • photographer • Bauhaus master
Gropius called him as a master in March 1923.[^bauhauskooperation-moholynagy]
1886–1966 • playwright • painter • head of the Bauhaus stage workshop
Gropius called him to Weimar as a master in 1921.[^bauhauskooperation-schreyer]
1886–1969 • architect • furniture designer • last director of the Bauhaus
Gropius proposed him as director in 1930, hoping to steady the school after Hannes Meyer's removal.
1871–1956 • painter • printmaker • Bauhaus master
Gropius called him in May 1919, among the first masters of the new school.
1902–1981 • furniture designer • architect • Bauhaus student, then master
Gropius taught him in the carpentry workshop and made him Jungmeister in 1925.
1893–1983 • designer • metalworker • photographer
She worked in his architectural office in 1929, after the Bauhaus diploma.
1888–1943 • painter • sculptor • choreographer • Bauhaus master
Gropius appointed him in January 1921, among the first masters he called.[^bauhauskooperation-schlemmer]
1866–1944 • painter • Bauhaus master • teacher
Gropius called him to the Bauhaus in June 1922.
In Weimar's history
In Weimar's history
Six folded pages with a cathedral on the front — the document that told Weimar what the new school was for.
He wrote it, in April 1919, as the programme of the school he had just been given.
Walter Gropius took over a grand-ducal art school in a defeated country and renamed it the Staatliches Bauhaus.
He was appointed director on 1 April 1919 and renamed the school.
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 staged it, as director of the school.
An election, a halved budget, and contracts cancelled to 31 March 1925: the school left for Dessau after six years.
He resigned with the masters in December 1924 and took the school to Dessau.