An Idea and What Became of ItWhere the Bauhaus Is Alive in Southwest Germany

Weissenhof in Stuttgart, Walter Gropius in Karlsruhe, and the revival of Bauhaus ideas in Ulm. On the 100th anniversary of the famous art school, we are searching for clues.

You step over the threshold - and feel at home. The narrow staircase with its colorful walls feels spacious. The living room has large windows that provide a view of the greenery. The room can be transformed into two bedrooms in no time. The beds are pushed out of wardrobes and a sliding wall separates the parents' bed from the children's bed. Welcome to the famous Le Corbusier house in Stuttgart's Weissenhof Estate.

You walk reverently through the show house from 1927, which is now a museum - despite its clear forms, it is really cozy and still very modern. The two Le Corbusier houses have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2016. Today, like the entire Weissenhof Estate, they are internationally renowned as an example of the architectural style 'Neues Bauen' (which also includes the Bauhaus designs). This is why the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus was also be celebrated here in 2019.

The 33 flat-roofed buildings once divided opinion, says Anja Krämer, director of the Weissenhof Museum in the Le Corbusier House. "We Berliners look at Stuttgart with envy," wrote a newspaper in the capital at the time. And 500,000 people came to see the houses. But planner Ludwig Mies van der Rohe also faced a rough wind. When the architect presented his plans for the architectural exhibition organized by the city and the Deutscher Werkbund, several Stuttgart architects rejected the ideas, calling the estate an "Italian mountain village" and a "suburb of Jerusalem. Stuttgart's city council, visionary at the time, voted in favor of van der Rohe's plans, and he hired 17 architects, including Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and Hans Scharoun, who would later build the Berlin Philharmonic Hall. The result was 33 buildings, two-thirds of which are still standing today.

Only two Stuttgart residents are among the planners. One of them, Adolf Gustav Schneck, builds a Kaufmann Rest Home in Bad Urach in 1929/30, the 'Haus auf der Alb', which today houses the conference center of the State Center for Political Education. Seminar participants can stay overnight in this icon of the 'Neues Bauen' architectural style.

How do we want to live in the future? What will improve the living conditions of people in Germany? Founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919, the 'Staatliches Bauhaus' is not just an art school - its students are also concerned with social conditions. Gropius had in mind 'the great building' - a unified work of art with fluent boundaries between architecture, design, and art. But first, many design classics were created.

Some of the ideas developed in Thuringia at the time can be seen as imports from Baden-Württemberg: Oskar Schlemmer and the Swiss artist Johannes Itten, who both studied under Adolf Hölzel at the Stuttgart Art Academy, came to Weimar to teach as Bauhaus masters. That's why a visit to the Staatsgalerie, the art gallery in downtown Stuttgart, is a must on a Bauhaus tour, to admire a very special formation: the costumes of Oskar Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet. It premiered in Stuttgart in 1922. Local artists came and went in Weimar. And the head of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, was not only involved in the construction of the Weissenhof Estate. Under his direction, another model estate of the 'Neues Bauen' architectural style was built in 1928/29: the Dammerstock in Karlsruhe.

“Lots of light, lots of air and lots of spaciousness - that's what they wanted for the new estate in Dammerstock,” explains tour guide Gabriele Tomaszewski during the tour. The target group were ordinary citizens. Exciting fact: the Dammerstock Estate in Karlsruhe, which was never completed due to the global economic crisis, was built in rows: The houses are built so that the sun shines into the bedroom in the morning - and into the living room in the afternoon. A lot of space was left between the rows of buildings. Today, you can stroll through a green, airy neighborhood that is especially popular with families.



When the National Socialists closed the Bauhaus in Dessau in 1933, was that the end of 'Neues Bauen' and the Bauhaus? Of course not! Many artists emigrated. They built houses in places like Chicago and Tel Aviv that would have looked good in Germany. But not only there, the Bauhaus lives on in Germany, too. In Ulm, to be precise. The Ulm School of Design was founded in 1953 and is considered the most important design school after the Bauhaus. Students experiment in graphic design, product design, architecture, and film on the remarkable campus designed by Swiss designer Max Bill and inaugurated by Walter Gropius. An exhibition in the building tells the story of the university, which only existed until 1968. Once again, you come across well-known designs: the Lufthansa crane, for example, or the stacking tableware. But the Ulm School of Design has something even more important in common with the Bauhaus: its political aspirations. Museum director Martin Mäntele calls it the 'anti-fascist founding impulse'. After all, one of the initiators was Inge Aicher-Scholl, the sister of Hans and Sophie Scholl. And Max Bill proclaimed at the time: "All of the university's activities are aimed at helping to build a new culture.