The Man Behind Bauhaus

In April 1919, a new director was appointed to lead the recently combined schools of fine and applied arts in the city of Weimar. The chosen candidate was Walter Gropius, an ambitious young architect from Berlin, freshly returned from wartime service in France. In his first act as director, Gropius chose a new name for his institution: das Staatliche Bauhaus in Weimar – the State Bauhaus in Weimar.Over the following fourteen years, the Bauhaus would establish itself among Europe's best-known and most progressive art schools. In its founding manifesto, also published in April 1919, Gropius laid down his ideas. The Bauhaus would provide a new style of arts education for the newly democratic Germany, a country openly questioning itself after the devastating losses of the First World War. Central to the teaching programme would be a return to the crafts, a new guild … without the class distinctions…