bauhaus.mainblg.dessau

With Julia Zay, Jenny James:  made our way to Dessau by regional train to visit and tour the site of the second (and longest) incarnation of the Bauhaus school.  The school had leave Weimar in 1925, when the Nazis gained local power; it lasted until 1933, when they gained national control.  The style was deemed wesensfremde Architektur, the architectural parallel to entartete Kunst, and the buildings in the Bauhaus style were immediately transformed, modern elements covered over with traditional materials, large windows broken.

We toured the main buildings, original dorm rooms (big, with spare, beautiful Marcel Breuer desks and Marianne Brandt lamps, designs from students incorporated throughout), the auditorium where Schönberg and Bartok played, Oskar Schlemmer put on plays and dances, the houses where Gropius, Magoly-Nage, Klee, and Kandinsky lived.