Home » Home & Style » Antiques & Collectibles » II. The Bauhaus School - Design and Architecture

II. The Bauhaus School - Design and Architecture

© Barbara Nicholson Bell

To have been a young adult in the years just before and just after World War I was to experience both terrifying social upheaval and dizzying intellectual freedom. The old order, as the Victorian and Edwardian eras came to a close, had been characterised by the rise of the middle class whose wealth often resulted from the industrialization of every form of production. While the middle class enjoyed the benefits of this industrialization, the working class sank more deeply into poverty and despair. Few governments had acted to alleviate such inequality between classes. Even before the outbreak of war, and indeed, for several decades before, there had been among Europe's intellectual elite, a growing revolution - the seeds of Marxism, socialism, and other social theories which intended to create a utopia for the working class.

Germany was home to many of these young radical thinkers, but other countries such as Russia, Hungary, Poland, France, Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia were also experiencing tremendous intellectual upheaval. Before World War I had even been declared over, there was revolution in Russia. And in Germany, suffering defeat and humiliation at the hands of the victors, millions of unemployed desperate men were ready for any New Order that would feed them and put them back to work.

Against this background, the Bauhaus school opened in Weimar in 1919, headed by Walter Gropius. Gropius, an architect, had been a leader of the Deutsches Werkbund, a group of artists, designers, industrialists and financial supporters who felt the industrial arts should be elevated to the same status as fine arts. By so equating these two forms of creative endeavors, the artisan would become as respected as the artist, and take greater pride in his work. At the same time, industry would benefit by fresh ideas and more cooperation between worker and factory owner. The movement no doubt had wonderful intentions, but failed to achieve its goals before the War intervened.

Gropius realized that to achieve this kind of happy cooperation between industry and art, the education of both fine and applied arts had to be reformed. The student had to tackle the problems of both artistic technique and machination, or production, of the final product. Gropius, as a Werkbund member, saw the simple utilitarian objects of daily life as opportunities to create beauty, provide employment, and provide improved design at the same time.

In 1925 he stated: 'Bauhaus wishes to serve the actual development of housing, from simple utensils to the complete dwelling house. Convinced of the fact that a house and the utensils have to be in a sensible relation to each other, Bauhaus tries to find the form of every object in its natural functions and presuppositions by systematically experimenting in theory and practice ...Bauhaus wishes to... educate a new type of worker for industry and handicrafts, so far missing, who simultaneously has the command over techniques as well as form... in the future, handicraft will [be] a supporter of industrial experimental production. Speculative experimentation in laboratory workshops create models - types - for the production to realize'. By the mid 1920s Gropius had refined the starting points of modern design and its doctrines.