Walter Gropius Founds the Bauhaus in Weimar
- Date
- April 1919
- Category
- Culture, arts & philosophy
- Region
- Weimar, Germany
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
In April 1919 the architect Walter Gropius founded the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, and issued a four-page manifesto proclaiming a new school that would unite fine art, craft, and industry.
Gropius sought to abolish the hierarchy separating 'artist' from 'craftsman,' declaring that 'the ultimate goal of all art is the building.' The school's workshop-based curriculum trained students under both an artist and a master craftsman, producing furniture, typography, textiles, ceramics, and architecture defined by functional clarity and the union of form and purpose. After moving to Dessau in 1925 into a purpose-built complex, and briefly to Berlin, the Bauhaus was closed in 1933 under Nazi pressure. Its faculty and graduates, including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, and László Moholy-Nagy, dispersed internationally, carrying its principles to the United States and elsewhere. The Bauhaus aesthetic of simplicity, geometric rationality, and mass-producible design became foundational to modern architecture, industrial design, graphic design, and product design worldwide, shaping the look of the built and manufactured environment for the remainder of the century and beyond.
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Empires active in April 1919
- Empire of Japan1868 CE – 1947 CE
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
Related culture, arts & philosophy events
- Rabindranath Tagore wins the Nobel Prize in Literature1913
- The Jazz Singer Inaugurates the Sound Film Era6 October 1927
- First FIFA World Cup Held in Uruguay13–30 July 1930
- Freud publishes 'The Interpretation of Dreams'1900 (completed 1899)
- Nietzsche's 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'1883–1885
- First Impressionist Exhibition opens in Paris15 April 1874
Further reading
The wider story
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