Latest / The History of Germany: Kingdoms, War, and Rebuilding Europe — Fexingo History / Bauhaus at 100: The Factory That Remade German Art
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- Lucas: So a while back we talked about the Bauhaus at its hundredth anniversary, and I think we focused a lot on the personalities and the art. But there's this other angle that I find just as wild — the Bauhaus as a kind of factory, a machine for cranking out not just paintings but objects, buildings, even a whole way of seeing. Luna: A factory for seeing? That's a bold way to put it. Lucas: Well, yeah. Think about it: when Walter Gropius set up the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar in 1919, he wasn't just founding another art school. He had this vision of merging art and craft, breaking down the old hierarchy where painting sat at the top and weaving, metalwork, carpentry were somehow lesser. Lucas: He wanted the school to be like a medieval cathedral workshop where everyone worked together on the total artwork, the Gesamtkunstwerk. But by the mid-1920s, that romantic utopianism had to face the modern world — mass production, industry, the need to make things people could actually use. Luna: So the factory angle is literal. Lucas: Exactly. The shift from Weimar to Dessau in 1925 is when the Bauhaus really became this machine. Gropius designed the new building himself — that famous glass and steel and concrete block — and it was like a factory for teaching and making. Studios, workshops, even a stage, all under one roof. Lucas: And the products coming out of those workshops were designed for production. Marianne Brandt's teapot, for instance — that iconic geometric design. It wasn't just a sculpture; it was meant to be mass-produced, to be a household object for the new democratic age. Luna: Like the teapot that looks like it came off a factory line. Lucas: Right. And the metal workshop was actually one of the success stories, thanks to Brandt and others. But the Bauhaus wasn't always this sleek, functionalist machine. When it started, it was heavily expressionist — Gropius's original manifesto even had that woodcut of a cathedral on the cover. Luna: Wait, the cathedral was the symbol of the Bauhaus? Lucas: Yeah, Lyonel Feininger made that woodcut. It was all about that medieval guild spirit, but it didn't last. There was a faction led by the painter Johannes Itten, who was into mysticism and wore these flowing robes, and he pushed a more spiritual, expressive approach. Gropius wasn't having it, and by 1923 Itten was out. Lucas: That's when you get the motto 'Art and Technology: A New Unity,' and they start bringing in designers like Marcel Breuer, who started experimenting with tubular steel furniture. That's the Bauhaus we recognize today — the Wassily chair, the simple geometry, the glass curtain walls. Luna: So the factory idea won out over the cathedral idea. Lucas: It did, but it wasn't a clean victory. There was this constant tension between individual artistic expression and the demands of industrial production. Even Gropius acknowledged it in his writings — he said the school had to find a balance between the 'individual and the universal.' Lucas: And then when Hannes Meyer took over in 1928, he pushed even harder toward collectivism and functionalism, almost to the point of banishing aesthetics. He wanted to serve the people, not the art market. But he was also a Marxist, and that didn't sit well with the Dessau city council, so he was out by 1930. Luna: And then Mies van der Rohe came in. Lucas: Right, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the last director. He tried to keep it afloat by stripping away the radical socialism and focusing on architecture, making it more technocratic. But by then the Nazis were gaining power in Dessau, and they hated the Bauhaus — they called it 'degenerate art.' Lucas: So in 1932 the school was forced to move to Berlin, a private institute, and then in 1933, with Hitler as chancellor, it was closed for good. The Bauhaus only lasted fourteen years, but its influence just exploded after the Second World War, especially in the United States. Luna: All those artists and designers who fled Germany. Lucas: Exactly. Gropius went to Harvard, Mies ended up in Chicago, Josef Albers went to Black Mountain College. They took the Bauhaus ideas with them, and that's how you get the glass boxes of the postwar corporate skyline. The Bauhaus became a kind of global brand, even though the school itself was gone. Lucas: But here's a thing that's often overlooked: the Bauhaus wasn't just about buildings and furniture. It was also about textiles. The weaving workshop was run by women — Gunta Stölzl, Anni Albers, Otti Berger — and they were making these groundbreaking abstract textiles that were intended for mass production too. Luna: So the factory metaphor applies to textiles as well. Lucas: Definitely. And that's partly because the Bauhaus had a rule: women could enter any workshop, but in practice they were steered toward weaving. Still, they turned it into one of the most technically and artistically advanced workshops. Anni Albers's wall hangings are now museum pieces, but they were designed to be manufactured. Luna: And that's the Bauhaus in a nutshell, isn't it? Even the art you hang on a wall was meant to be made by a machine. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why I love talking about this — because the Bauhaus was never just about style, it was about a philosophy of making. And that philosophy still shapes how we think about design, from the phone in your pocket to the chair you're sitting on. It's all inherited from those workshops in Weimar and Dessau. Luna: So what happened to the building itself, the Dessau one? Lucas: The Bauhaus building in Dessau survived the war, though it was used for various purposes — the Nazis used it as a school for the Nazi party, and later it was neglected. But it's now a UNESCO World Heritage site, and you can visit it. There's also the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin, which holds a huge collection of drawings, models, and objects. Luna: And that famous crooked building on the Landwehr Canal? Lucas: That's the Bauhaus-Archiv, designed by Gropius himself, though it wasn't completed until after his death. It has that iconic sawtooth roof, which was meant to let in northern light without the glare. It's a working archive, so you can actually go and see the original designs for that teapot or the furniture. Luna: I want to go see that teapot in person. Lucas: It's worth the trip. But thinking about all this, it strikes me that the Bauhaus was as much about failure as success. It was constantly on the verge of collapse, financially, politically, internally. Yet it managed to produce this incredible burst of ideas that outlived it by decades. Luna: Maybe the pressure of the factory made the work sharper. Lucas: That's a nice way to put it. And you know, this whole conversation reminds me of something — the reason we can spend this much time on stories like the Bauhaus is that the show is listener-funded. We don't run ads, and a few people who chip in monthly at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo keep us going. That's it. Luna: Yeah, it's that small group that lets us dig into these rabbit holes. Lucas: Right. And we're able to keep every episode ad-free, which matters when you're talking about something as nuanced as Bauhaus politics or Nazi-era cultural bans. So thank you for that, seriously. Lucas: Now, where were we? Oh, the legacy. The Bauhaus's greatest contribution might be that it made art and design relevant to everyday life. Before, a teapot was a craft object; after the Bauhaus, it was a design product. That shift didn't happen overnight, but it's everywhere now. Luna: So in a way, the Bauhaus is still cranking out ideas today. Lucas: I think that's fair. It's an unfinished project, if you will. Every time you see a minimalist building or a sleek coffee maker, you're seeing the Bauhaus. And that's what I love about history — it's not dead; it's still living in the objects around us.