The Staatliches Bauhaus is the legendary wellspring of 20th-century modern art, craft, architecture and product, textile, typographic and graphic design pedagogy known as Gesamtkunstwerk. Over the years its unprecedented core curriculum has been critically analyzed: Was the revolutionary approach ideologically motivated, commercially tainted or purely visionary?
The Bauhaus heritage and mythology has been interpreted, reinterpreted and cast in amber. The Nazis closed the Dessau school in 1932 for leaning toward dangerously progressive nonconformity. It was smeared as a left-wing hothouse when, in fact, being modern was more an art-based rejection of antiquarian aesthetics, not a political stance, per se. Nonetheless, Nazi ideologues labeled the Bauhaus and Modernism as “un-German.”
Now, curators/historians/researchers Patrick Rössler, Anke Blümm and Elizabeth Otto have taken the Bauhaus discourse and its exalted status in Germany to another scholarly level. The exhibition, Bauhaus and National Socialism, currently showing at three German museums until Sept. 15, examines the conflicts that arose for some Bauhauslers living and working in Adolf Hitler’s dictatorial Third Reich.
Rössler, Blümm and Otto were each asked the same questions via email; they decided to combine their answers together. The following interview is the result of this collaboration.
This is understandably a very controversial exhibition. The Bauhaus was forcibly closed by the Nazis. To link aspects of Bauhaus legacy to National Socialism is [perhaps heresy to some]. What were your concerns about mounting this in Germany?
For many years, the narrative of the Bauhaus was recounted as focusing on the “good” avant-garde expelled by the bad political forces in Nazi Germany. This story is in part true, but, in retrospect, it is not the only truth: already during the period of its existence in Weimar, Dessau, and Berlin, disputes between Modernists and right-wing fascist groups were commonplace. From 1933 on, with the Nazi party seizing power, the Bauhaus as an institution ceased to exist, but the term “Bauhaus” survived as a symbol for the avant-garde during the Weimar Republic that the Nazis hated so thoroughly. It is also important to note that, contrary to popular belief, a majority of Bauhaus members stayed in Germany and tried to make a living by using their artistic skills. Our exhibition for the first time shows both aspects—the ongoing fights around the Bauhaus as well as selected careers of former Bauhaus members who stayed in Germany after 1933. The latter part in particular adds new evidence to the monolithic narrative of the “good” Bauhaus, displaying also how those artists and designers had to compromise—politically and aesthetically. The exhibition is thus not the usual sequence of masterpieces, but rather an often-intriguing mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly.
Was there any protest around the idea of the exhibit in social, political or academic communities?
In the beginning there were some reservations about whether this complex and differentiated topic is suitable for an art exhibition at all. But when we hosted an intense and well-received academic conference in 2023, there was great support for us and our approach, backed by Annette Ludwig and Ulrike Bestgen from the Klassik-Stiftung Weimar. Also, we staged the exhibition intentionally in the year of 2024 in Weimar, 100 years after the right-wing delegates in the local parliament forced the budget cuts which led to the shutdown and move to Dessau. And we chose 2024 because in September, state elections are held in Thuringia, where Weimar is located, with a victory of right-wing and populist parties looming. We have, however, yet to receive a response from right-wing political circles, however.
From what you present in the catalog, not having seen the exhibition, it appears that Bauhaus students who stayed in Germany during the NSDAP regime were trying to live their lives and earn a living. Are you making value judgements on their behavior?
Living in a repressive political system led by a dictator and supported by substantial military and social power is outside of the experience of any of the three of us who curated this exhibition. We never were in a life-threatening situation like that, and it would be impudent to judge them from today’s point of view. But we spotlight a range of decisions different people took—and of course no one was forced to become a party member or to work for Nazi organizations.
There is a shockingly incongruous photograph of the original Bauhaus building with a swastika banner hanging from it. Was there any support for Bauhaus “style” by the Nazi party?
With regard to the Bauhaus building, the Nazi officials just used this huge and empty structure for their own purposes, after initially announcing completed plans to demolish it!
In general, initially, there was no hard shift regarding the use of a modern visual design, because the Nazis were interested in cultivating a modern appearance for their new state, and in this regard the Bauhaus was only one part of a much larger Modernist movement. Our show also displays several photos of Adolf Hitler sitting in a tubular steel armchair—a signature design associated with the Bauhaus—at his private home. But this should not be confused with an overall appreciation of any Bauhaus “style”—within the [National Socialist German Workers’ Party], some more progressive officials still admired works from the Bauhaus, while the majority wished to return to a more “völkisch” ambience. Still, some of the Bauhaus ideals did not contradict some aims of the Nazi state, e.g., the strive for functionalism and efficiency in design matters, which sourced from rationalization efforts within the industry and for which the Bauhaus developed art-based solutions.
Emil Nolde, the German Expressionist, was an early Nazi party member. Did you find that any former Bauhauslers were members as well?
The data is not always clear in this matter, since after the war many files on Nazi involvement were destroyed. We consulted, however, all existing evidence at the German Bundesarchiv and have confirmed 188 party members (including 18 women) among the approximately 900 former Bauhaus students who remained in Germany. Moreover, 15 of them signed up for the paramilitary Storm Troopers (SA) and 14 for the notorious “Schutzstaffel” (SS).
How did the regime treat the Bauhaus ex-students? Were they arrested, warned, left alone? How did they fare under Hitler?
Many former Bauhaus members were expelled from their teaching positions after 1933, such as Oskar Schlemmer and Paul Klee. Some of them, like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe or Walter Gropius, no longer received commissions. There were difficulties and harassment, especially for the better-known names. But we are not aware of one single Bauhäusler who was arrested or persecuted just for having been at the Bauhaus. Reasons why Bauhaus people suffered or were even killed in death camps were usually due to their Jewish descent, communist or socialist party membership, or homosexual orientation, but not solely because of their participation in an aesthetic avant-garde movement. On the other hand, it is known that the Nazis defamed unwelcome art as degenerate, displayed it in exhibitions and confiscated over 20,000 publicly owned works of art in 1937. These included many paintings, prints and sculptures by Bauhaus artists including Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. Again, some examples challenge this notion, e.g., when the same person was defamed as “degenerate” and, with different works, represented on the official Nazi-“Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung.” Another issue which affected many was the restriction that, in order to work as a designer or architect, one had to be a member of the “Reichskulturkammer,” or Reich Chamber of Culture, and undesirable persons were refused this membership. This was tantamount to a work ban.
The logo for the exhibit is a brilliant use of Bauhaus and Volk type. Did you meet with any resistance to this matchup?
Actually, the idea was developed by the three of us curators together with the graphic design agency Boros from Berlin. We expected reservations among local officials because the city of Weimar is currently paved with posters and banners, but without exception we received only positive feedback for this provocative stance. However, some experts pointed out to us that the Fraktur font was banned under the National Socialists from 1941 due to the so-called Font Decree (which we were of course aware of). Their critique was that we were again replicating this reductive picture of “Fraktur=Nazi,” which is indeed a simplification. However, Fraktur was the officially preferred font of the Nazis for over nine years, so it’s no wonder that people identify it with the regime. Yes, the poster is striking—but that’s how advertising should be.
What were the surprises you found while doing the extensive research for this show?
One part of our work was to identify often little-known scholarship on specific Bauhaus members under Nazism, and bring these voices together. Another part was to find and showcase newly accessed materials—for instance, the playing cards one Jewish Bauhaus student, Alice Glaser, hand-painted for her daughter, which left Germany on one of the last boats to South America; Glaser did not go herself (probably because of the high cost of an exit visa) and was later murdered in one of the ghettos. Also a surprise was to learn that the cover of one of the most cynical propaganda books on forced labor in Germany was designed by former Bauhaus student Max Thalmann. Or that Bauhaus artist Ilse Fehling was considered “degenerate” as a sculptor but meanwhile had a very successful career as a respected costume designer for major German film companies.
In Italy, Fascist Modernism was de rigeur and sat alongside imperial Roman style. Was there any chance of that occurring between the Bauhaus manner and the Nazi “brand”?
During the first period after 1933, the Bauhaus’ final director Ludwig Mies van der Rohe dreamt of possibly establishing a modified Bauhaus under National Socialist regulations, but his efforts were in vain. Finally, after 14 years of accusing the Bauhaus of being a “cultural-bolshevist” institution, the suspicions among Nazi leaders were too substantial to give this idea any chance. For many Modernists, however, such as Wassily Kandinsky, as well as modern architects, the Italian government was a role model and a source of hope. They hoped that the Nazis would also adopt this openness towards the avant-garde, a hope that turned out to be in vain. Only industrial buildings permitted technically innovative designs with a steel skeleton and flat roof.
Was there anything you deemed too sensitive to exhibit?
The exhibition shows everything we decided to be relevant, no matter how sensitive it might be perceived to be by some visitors. The show at the Schiller Museum, for instance, begins in the courtyard of the museum, with a key object of our exhibition: the official copy of the entrance gate to the Buchenwald concentration camp. As a political prisoner, Bauhaus student Franz Ehrlich designed the lettering for the cynical phrase “Jedem das Seine” (“To each his own”), a text prescribed by the Nazis. In the run-up to the exhibition, we encountered some resistance to the plan of bringing the gate right into the heart of Weimar, but, through numerous discussions, we were able to convince the authorities and the city that it was the right thing to do. It is a controversial object, but so far we can only observe that visitors stand in front of it with great interest and attention. We are very pleased that we were able to prevail. We shouldn’t be afraid of discussions; it’s worse not to engage in public debate at all because of fear. Giving in to such fears would have long-term negative effects on our democratic society.