Tempelherrenhaus
About This Site
A court folly in the park that became a Bauhaus master's studio and then a bombed shell — the three centuries of Weimar in one small building.
A greenhouse turned salon, 1786
The building was converted in 1786 out of an old greenhouse into what the city calls a salon in the park, for the court.[1] That is the Weimar of Goethe's first decade: a pleasure ground with garden buildings, laid out to be walked through and looked at, and this one dressed up with figures that gave it the name of the Knights Templar.
Itten's painting studio
A hundred and thirty years later the Bauhaus master Johannes Itten set up his painting studio here, in the middle of the ducal park.[1] Weimar's stubborn joke about itself is that the modern school worked inside the classical scenery rather than beside it; the man who taught the school's first-year course did his own painting in an eighteenth-century garden building.
Destroyed, and what came after, 1945
The Tempelherrenhaus was destroyed too, in the war, and from 1945 a Soviet war cemetery was laid out at it.[2] What stands today is a ruin — walls, an outline, the remains of the figures. Among the city's Bauhaus sites, it is one of the most legible: three uses, three centuries, one shell.
Questions visitors ask
- What was the Tempelherrenhaus originally?
- A court folly: converted in 1786 out of an old greenhouse into what the city calls a salon in the park, decorated with figures that gave it the name of the Knights Templar.[1]
- What's the Bauhaus connection?
- The Bauhaus master Johannes Itten set up his painting studio here, in the middle of the ducal park — the man who taught the school's first-year course, painting in an eighteenth-century garden building.[1]
- What happened to it in the war?
- It was destroyed, and from 1945 a Soviet war cemetery was laid out at the site.[2] What stands today is a ruin — walls, an outline, the remains of the figures.
- Can I visit?
- Yes — it stands in the public Park an der Ilm and can be reached as part of a walk through it, like the rest of the park.
Sources
- Bauhausstätten — Stadt Weimar, retrieved 29 August 2026
- Park an der Ilm — Klassik Stiftung Weimar, retrieved 29 August 2026
Connected Historical Figures
painter • art teacher • Bauhaus master
His painting studio was in this building, in the middle of the ducal park.
Visit Information
Park an der Ilm, 99423 Weimar
In Weimar's history
Historical periods
One of the city's Bauhaus sites: a master's studio, in a building a century older than the school.
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.
Converted in 1786 from a greenhouse into a salon in the park, for the court.
For roughly sixty years a duchy of a few thousand people held the centre of German literature, because its ruler kept inviting writers to live there and then gave them jobs. That is the whole mechanism, and it ran from Goethe's arrival in 1775 to his death in 1832.