Exploring Bauhaus History
A group of 150 students gathered outside the sprawling main building in Dessau waiting for the tours to begin. The main building, which is itself a key Bauhaus site in Dessau, was to first be visited that morning. The groups were to then visit the »Masters’ Houses« designed by Walter Gropius where the Bauhaus masters once lived. The main building in Dessau is built entirely in the Bauhaus style and has been preserved to this day thanks to extensive renovation work. Large windows superimposed from the outside create bright, light-flooded rooms that blur the boundaries between inside and out. In other places, industrial steel elements have been used and there are large window fronts that can be opened at the pull of a single chain. In the auditorium, the first few rows of seating facing the stage are made of basic materials – foldable metal frames covered in fabric. What is today the standard in countless theatres, lecture halls and auditoriums originated in Dessau in the 1920s and was considered highly innovative at that time. The back wall of the stage also provides a spatial separation from the dining hall, which connects to the former student residences. Bauhaus students were provided with single rooms with a balcony, running water, large windows, and a desk. In those days, 20m² of living space per person was a lot – even today there are smaller spaces that cost more than they did 100 years ago. The idea of integrating student residences into the campus came from the USA, and Gropius was one of the first to implement the idea in Europe.
The second building on the site served as a vocational school and is linked with the other building by a two-storey bridge. Walter Gropius’ private office was once located here, along with other administrative offices. Concealed wall cupboards can be found throughout the entire building and yet a sense of openness prevails, with sophisticated details often only being revealed at second glance. The striking use of window panes, for example, that were unbelievably large for the time. While it is today perhaps something taken for granted, in those days it took several attempts to install a large pane flawlessly.
The Bauhaus Dessau is today a museum and home to the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. Several rooms are also used by Anhalt University of Applied Sciences. The former residential rooms are rented out as hotel rooms. The »Masters’ Houses« are located just a short distance from the Bauhaus building and have only been preserved in part. The three pairs of semi-detached houses and one detached house were built on the street today known as Ebertallee amidst a pine grove and were in those days home to an artists’ colony. The original detached house and half of the adjacent semi-detached house were destroyed during an air raid in WWII and have today been reinterpreted in new Buildings.
Similar to most of the main building, the »Masters’ Houses« are today part of the museum and can be visited. Works by the current »artist in residence« are shown in the reinterpreted Gropius houses. At regular intervals, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation invites different artists to work in the first of the semi-detached »Masters’ Houses« for several months. The house that was once the family home of the artists Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky provides visitors with a particularly realistic impression of the 1920s, as the walls have been painted in the original colours. The house will be closed in 2018 for restoration work by the Wüstenrot Stiftung, a private non-profit foundation. Due to the restoration work, the rooms were empty when the group visited in December.
In the afternoon, the students toured the Dessau-Törten housing estate together. Built between 1926 and 1930 under the leadership of Walter Gropius and Hannes Meyer, the key aim was to create affordable housing. Thus the so-called »Houses with Balcony Access« (»Laubenganghäuser«) in which entire families lived on 47m² were built, along with 314 terraced houses offering 57–75m² of living space. Each house had a clearly defined, simple façade in an industrial style and an elongated garden plot at the back. Built for self-sufficiency, there was space to grow vegetables and keep animals as well as composting toilets. At the time, just a nominal down payment was required to purchase one of these properties. While all of the buildings still exist today, the majority have been renovated and are therefore almost unrecognisable. One terraced house has been left in its original state, though, and is open to visitors. The »Houses with Balcony Access« have been added to the UNESCO World Heritage List and – with the exception of one show home – are all inhabited.
The group found the entire trip both informative and interesting. Despite the rainy weather, all participants gladly took a walk through Dessau together and observed countless minor and major details of Bauhaus history. It was also a new experience for the museum guides, being the first time that so many people in such large groups visited the site at the same time. Despite this, all found sufficient time and space to gain an impression of the in part small rooms and narrow corridors.
A report by Anna-Lena Öhmann on the visit to the Bauhaus Dessau on 21 December 2018.