Bauhaus University Main Building
About This Site
Two buildings by Henry van de Velde stand side by side on the Geschwister-Scholl-Straße, and the Bauhaus was founded in one of them.
Number 8: where the school began, 1904–1999
The main building went up between 1904 and 1911 to van de Velde's plans, as a studio building for the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Fine Arts: top-lit workrooms for painters.[1] The university calls it one of the most significant art-school buildings of its generation, and it is where Walter Gropius founded the Staatliches Bauhaus in 1919.[1] A restoration completed in 1999 under the architect Thomas van den Valentyn took it largely back to its original state.[1]
Number 7: the arts and crafts school, and a purge, 1905–1980
The Van-de-Velde-Bau next door was raised in 1905/06 for the arts and crafts school, an angled block that now holds the deanery and the Faculty of Art and Design.[2] The reliefs and stairwell mural Oskar Schlemmer made there for the 1923 exhibition fell victim to the "purge" that preceded the opening of the Staatliche Hochschulen für Baukunst, bildende Künste und Handwerk in 1930.[2] What hangs there now are reconstructions: one by Hubert Schiefelbein in 1979, one by Bruno Dolinski in 1980.[2]
Inside the foyer
The entrance opens on a free-swinging Art Nouveau staircase and Rodin's sculpture "Eva".[1] Upstairs is Gropius's reconstructed director's room, which the university describes as the first realised total work of art of the Bauhaus[1] — a room, furniture, textiles and lighting designed as one object.
The Maurice-Halbwachs-Auditorium, 1944–2024
On 4 December 2024 the university renamed its Auditorium Maximum after Maurice Halbwachs, the French sociologist whose work on memory and its social conditions founded the theory of collective memory.[3] In the summer of 1944 he was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp above this town, and in March 1945 he died there of the consequences of his imprisonment.[3]
A working university, not a museum, 1996
Both buildings have been UNESCO World Heritage since 1996 as founding sites of the Bauhaus, and they are a working university: the heritage interiors are shown on the university's guided Bauhaus walks, booked through Tourist Information Weimar.[4]
Questions visitors ask
- Where was the Bauhaus founded?
- In the main building at Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 8 — Walter Gropius founded the Staatliches Bauhaus there in 1919, in a studio building Henry van de Velde had designed in 1904–1911 for the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Fine Arts.[1]
- What is the Van-de-Velde-Bau next door?
- Number 7, raised by van de Velde in 1905/06 for the arts and crafts school, now the deanery and the Faculty of Art and Design.[2]
- What happened to Schlemmer's wall works?
- Oskar Schlemmer's reliefs and stairwell mural, made for the 1923 exhibition, fell victim to the university's own "purge" of 1930. What hangs there now are reconstructions — one by Hubert Schiefelbein in 1979, one by Bruno Dolinski in 1980.[2]
- Why is there a Maurice-Halbwachs-Auditorium?
- The university renamed its Auditorium Maximum after him on 4 December 2024. Halbwachs, the French sociologist who founded the theory of collective memory, was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp above this town in summer 1944 and died there in March 1945.[3]
- Can I visit, and what does it cost?
- The main building is free to walk into, Monday to Friday 10:00–18:00, but the rooms people come for — the Gropius room, Schlemmer's wall works — are shown only on the guided Bauhaus walks, which run Wednesday to Saturday in summer and Friday to Saturday in winter, minimum five people. €12 (1.5 hours) or €20 (2.5 hours), reduced €10/€15, under-14s free, booked through Tourist Information Weimar.[4]
Connected Historical Figures
architect • master of architecture at the Bauhaus • teacher
He taught technical drawing and construction in the school's buildings and ran Gropius's building office there.
grand duke • patron
It descends from the art school he founded on 1 October 1860 and financed out of his own privy purse.
painter • Bauhaus master • head of the weaving workshop
He taught in van de Velde's buildings, which the school had taken over: the preliminary course with Itten, then the weaving workshop.
weaver • Bauhaus student, then head of the weaving workshop
She studied in van de Velde's buildings from 1919 — Itten's preliminary course, then glass painting, wall painting and weaving.
typographer • graphic designer • photographer • architect
He studied in the school's Weimar buildings from 1921 to 1925.
painter • art teacher • Bauhaus master
He taught the preliminary course in van de Velde's buildings, and was form master over almost every workshop in them.
sculptor • typographer • Bauhaus master
He studied in these buildings twice over — at the ducal academy from 1910 and at the Bauhaus from 1919.
painter • designer • teacher
He studied in the school's Weimar buildings from 1920 and taught in them from 1923.
artist • photographer • Bauhaus master
He taught the preliminary course and ran the metal workshop in van de Velde's buildings from 1923.[^bauhauskooperation-moholynagy]
playwright • painter • head of the Bauhaus stage workshop
He ran the stage workshop in the school's buildings from 1921 to 1923.[^bauhauskooperation-schreyer]
painter • printmaker • art teacher
He studied and taught in the school's buildings for the whole of its Weimar existence.
painter • printmaker • Bauhaus master
He led the printing workshop in van de Velde's buildings from 1919 to 1925.
furniture designer • architect • Bauhaus student, then master
He was a student and then a young master in van de Velde's buildings, in the carpentry workshop.
designer • metalworker • photographer
She studied in the school's Weimar buildings from 1923, in the preliminary course and then the metal workshop.
painter • sculptor • choreographer • Bauhaus master
His 1923 reliefs and stairwell mural were made for van de Velde's workshop building; a "purge" in 1930 destroyed them, and reconstructions of 1979 and 1980 stand there now.[^uni-weimar-vandevelde-bau]
painter • Bauhaus master • teacher
He taught in van de Velde's buildings from January 1921 and was form master of four workshops there.
painter • Bauhaus master • teacher
He taught at the wall-painting workshop in van de Velde's buildings from June 1922.
designer • silversmith • industrial designer
He studied metalwork in the school's Weimar buildings from 1923 to 1925 — and stayed on in its successor institution.
architect • designer • founder of the Weimar arts and crafts school
He designed both buildings, 1904–11 and 1905/06, and ran the arts and crafts school in the second of them.
architect • founder and director of the Bauhaus • teacher
He founded the Bauhaus here in 1919 and his reconstructed director's room is in the main building.
sociologist • scholar
The university renamed its largest lecture hall after him on 4 December 2024; he died in Buchenwald in March 1945.
Sources (4)
- Hauptgebäude — Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, retrieved 29 August 2026
- Van-de-Velde-Bau — Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, retrieved 29 August 2026
- Maurice-Halbwachs-Auditorium — Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, retrieved 29 August 2026
- Bauhaus-Spaziergang: Touren, Preise, Informationen — Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, retrieved 29 August 2026
Visit Information
Free to walk into the main building during opening hours; the guided Bauhaus walks cost €12 (1.5 hours) or €20 (2.5 hours), €10 / €15 reduced and under-14s free, booked through Tourist Information Weimar
Mon–Fri 10:00–18:00; groups by appointment. Guided walks run Wed–Sat in summer and Fri–Sat in winter, minimum five people
Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 8, 99423 Weimar
50.9744, 11.3290
Stay and eat nearby
Where to stay
Steubenstraße 19A, 99423 Weimar
The university's main building is on the Geschwister-Scholl-Straße; the hostel is on the Steubenstraße.
On stage
On stage
Konzert · Gabriel Thibaudeau
The film concert is given in the university's Maurice-Halbwachs-Auditorium.
Events held here
Events
Fridays and Saturdays at 14:00, and Wednesdays too from 21 March to 1 November
The walk moves through the school's own buildings, and its guides study in them.
Two days a year — International Women's Day and the Buß- und Bettag
Its students are the performers, which puts the working art school inside a day about the museums.
Three days in September, every few years since 1964
The conference is the university's own — run by its F. A. Finger Institute for Building Materials Science.
A weekend in early September
The university that descends from the Bauhaus and carries its name — the institutional heir, not the ancestor.
In Weimar's history
Historic sites
Van de Velde's school buildings — Jugendstil that housed the Bauhaus.
Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 6a, 99423 Weimar
It stands in the courtyard of the main building and is the university's visitor point.
Stéphane-Hessel-Platz 1, 99423 Weimar
The school in whose workshops all of it was made.
Am Horn 61, 99425 Weimar
The school that built it: the exhibition ran in its two van de Velde buildings and out here at the same time.
Belvederer Allee 58, 99425 Weimar
The same hand: the school buildings van de Velde raised in the city centre, which the Bauhaus took over in 1919.
Historical periods
The founding place of the school, and the buildings it used for its whole Weimar life.
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.
Descends directly from the art school Carl Alexander founded in 1860 and from the school of applied arts of 1907/08 — the period's institutions, under a later name.
Goethe died in 1832, and Weimar had to work out what a town does after its golden age. It decided to keep going, and the answer took eighty-six years — the era the Klassik Stiftung Weimar calls the Silver Age. Music replaced literature as the thing Weimar was for, two royal patrons paid for it, and the schools they founded outlived the monarchy that funded them.
In Weimar's history
A grand duke started an art school out of his own pocket; fifty-nine years later it was half of the Bauhaus.
The university descends from this school; the Bauhaus of 1919 was assembled from it and from van de Velde's applied-arts school.
The school the Bauhaus was built out of: begun as a private seminar in borrowed rooms, closed by ministerial order thirteen years later.
The school that occupied these buildings before the Bauhaus, and built the second of them.
Walter Gropius took over a grand-ducal art school in a defeated country and renamed it the Staatliches Bauhaus.
The founding happened in this building, and the school took over van de Velde's second one with it.
A rival course, taught in a studio directly opposite the Bauhaus, by a man the school never employed.
The course was taught directly opposite the school's own buildings.
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.
Two of the three city venues were the school's own van de Velde buildings.
An election, a halved budget, and contracts cancelled to 31 March 1925: the school left for Dessau after six years.
The buildings stayed; the school did not. They are UNESCO World Heritage today as its founding sites.
Articles
Weimar's Jugendstil is a style of houses: the villa streets west and south of the old town, built between the 1890s and 1914, with Rudolf Zapfe's façades and Henry van de Velde's own buildings.
Van de Velde's main building of the Kunstschule, 1904/05 and 1911 — the second phase with Bruno Röhr.