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I. The Bauhaus School, Weimar, 1919

© Barbara Nicholson Bell

Probably the most influential design and architectural movement since the Renaissance, the Bauhaus School has impacted virtually every area of functional living in the 20th century. If you live in nearly any city of the world, you have seen buildings with the architectural stamp of the ?Bauhaus? movement. College campuses, hospitals, office buildings, apartments and shopping malls built in the last 70 years were, almost without exception, built to the design ideals of the Bauhaus, more familiarly known as the International Style.

Lyonel Feiniger's dynamic Expressionistic woodcut Cathedral, appeared as the frontispiece of the Bauhaus Manifesto in April 1919. The cathedral represents the Total Work of Art, the glorious product of communal effort.

Although its roots lay in the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th and early 20th century, the Bauhaus directly descended from the pre-WWI Deutsches Werkbund movement in Germany. Seeking to elevate the production of everyday objects from utilitarian to art, thereby giving the industrial worker greater pride in his craft, the Werkbund gathered architects, artists, factory owners and art patrons together in 1907 to provide impetus and financial support to experimental design, architecture, textile and furniture production, and fine art. It failed however, when in 1914, a large exhibition was held to herald the new movement, and instead, only restatements of old solutions were displayed. Something radically new was needed, and Walter Gropius saw the answer.

Following Germany?s defeat in WWI and humiliation at Versailles, the economy collapsed and it seemed evident that a new order of thinking would be necessary in order to bring Germany, and the rest of Europe, back to stability. While some looked to Marxism, others to fascism, all seemed to turn against the bourgeois ideals of capitalism. The ?worker? became the new Hero. Fulfilling his ?needs? became the Mission of the intellectuals and planners of the new order.

Walter Gropius (1883-1969) had been a leader of the Werkbund. An architect, Gropius had taught at the school of industrial art 'Grossherzoglich-Sächsische Kunstbewerbe' founded by Henry van de Velden in 1906. In 1919 he was invited to head a new school in Weimar, a merger of the Weimar Art Academy, and the Weimar Arts and Crafts School. This new school became known as the Bauhaus, (?architectural building? or ?building for building?! in German).

The school set itself three goals, or missions: 1) to encourage the individual artisans and craftsmen to work cooperatively and combine all of their skills; 2) to elevate the status of crafts, chairs, lamps, teapots, etc., to the same level enjoyed by fine arts, painting, sculpting, etc.; 3) to eventually gain independence from government support by selling designs to industry. These goals strongly echo the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement of William Morris, Gustave Stickley, and Elbert Hubbard.

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