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Mies, Politics, and the Bauhaus Closure

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Mies, Politics, and the Bauhaus Closure 85THACSA ANNUAL MEETING ANDTECHNOLOGY (ONFEKENCE 617 Mies, Politics, and the Bauhaus Closure RANDALL OTT University of Colorado From the very moment of its inception by Walter Gropius in of instruction." Meyer noted that: "The influence on the 19 19, the Bauhaus School never enjoyed a politically stable, students over the way life was lived at the Bauhaus was wiped much less supportive, public climate. In retrospect widely AS Sandra Honey has put it, "spiritually the real celebrated as the greatest art and design school of the modern Bauhaus ended with Meyer's di~inissal."~Under Mies, age, the Bauhaus throughout its relatively brief 14-year social activism of any overt sort within the school was existence was constantly faced with ideologically based brutally repressed. Controversial works-a painting on the attacks and subsequent abrupt closures, as the school's subject of abortion, for instancewere removed froin exhi- peripatetic wanderings from Weimar to Dessau and finally bitions before they opened.' Mies's tough approach seemed to Berlin in search of acceptancmr at least tolerance-- to work for a while, even after the school had been forced by clearly indicate. No matter where this progressive and a cutoff of municipal hnds in Dessau to relocate to Berlin as experimental school opened its doors, political controversy a private institution. Ultimately. though. despite all Mies's seemed to rapidly and virulently follow. tough actions, the Gestapo trucks appeared at the door ofthe It is within the context of this climate of constant political Bauhaus in Berlin on the morning on April 1 lth, 1933, for hostility in various locales and under various regimes that we final loading. The school would never reopen. must view the harsh actions taken by the Modem architect What is much less well known about the final, Miesian Mies van der Rohe upon his assulnption of the directorate of years of the Bauhaus is the exact nature of the changes that the Bauhaus in the summer of 1930, while the school was still Mies made in pedagogy, as opposed to the specific lirnita- located in Dessau. The fierce turmoil surrounding the tions he put on the students' political activism. What were Bauhaus' final years of existence under Mies-the accusa- his specific curricular steps toward creating a "school of tions of Bolshevism, the inspections by the local Dessau instruction?" And what ramifications did these changes authorities, the relocation to Berlin, and the school's ulti- have for the pre-existing modernist program of aesthetics at mate padlocking and collapse at the hands of the Nazis-are the Bauhaus? In response to the political retrenchment well known aspects of Bauhaus lore. Committed to cleans- within the increasingly conservative climate that surrounded ing the school of any and all political taints as the only hope the school, especially in its final days in Dessau and Berlin, for its survival, and faced with not just hostility but a near riot did Mies try to foster an aesthetic retrenchment as well? as a reaction to his appointment in Dessau by many of the Further, what did these decisions say about Mies's own students, Mies ilnmediately called in the local police to clear reasons for taking on the controversial, difficult and thank- the school. He then ordered each student into his office less task of sanitizing the Bauhaus? Before confronting, individually and threatened immediate expulsion if the rules though, these complicated issues surrounding Mies's peda- were not adhered to. A follow-up letter infonned each gogical actions as director, we should review in more detail student "to not stay late in the canteen in the evening, to avoid the nature and force of the political travails that afflicted the political discussions, and to take care not to make any noise Bauhaus in Wei~narand in Dessau, prior to Mies's arrival, in in the town and to go out well dressed."' Mies felt that order to give a full context to his decisions. authoritarianism, a concept quite foreign to the original No sooner had Gropius founded the school in Weimar, the Bauhaus ideal, was necessary to keep the more radical, left- small, non-industrial and inherently rather conservative leaning students under control. Hannes Meyer. an outspo- capital city of Thuringia (a provisional Federal state which. ken Comlnunist sympathizer who had been Mies's immedi- interestingly enough, was to give the Nazis their first state- ate predecessor as director and who had to be summarily wide electoral victory in 1930"). then did he have to begin fired by the city under intense political pressure. sadly defending the Bauhaus against what would become common described these changes of Mies's as a "return to the school accusations of cosmopolitanism. Vague assertions of "po- AR('HITECT1lKE: MATERIAL AND IMAGINED litical activities"' within the Bauhaus ancCeven Inore omi- authorities, and given Mies's own distaste for political nously--of the harboring of students "alien to the race"' intrigue, it is far from clear why Mics agreed to accept the were made within the school's first year, and Gropius was Bauhaus directorate. ilmnediately forced to reply at the town council that all the Elaine Hochrnan, in her book Architects c?f'For.tune.Mies school's students were Gennan speakers and of Gennan vtrrl der Rohe and the Third Reich. has tnade an extensive origin. Me went on to re~narkthat "only 17 students are of study of this period of Mies's career, and has discussed a Jewish extraction" and of thcse "most have been bapti~ed."~ number of potential reasons that may have lain behind While these early accusations were officially found to be Mies's willingness. Philip Johnson, in a letter to Hochman, groundless, this did little to quiet hostility toward the Bau- suggested that only extreme financial distress could have haus. Local craftsmen and trade groups remained highly prompted Mies to accept this post,I9 an opinion that has also suspicious ofthe Bauhaus's aim to collaborate with industry. been offered by others.20Hoch~nan finds this explanation to fearing competition for jobs."' By 1924. state funds were bc insufficient. and goes on to speculate at length that: slashed in half and the Bauhaus's status in Weitnar became something else lay in the back of [Mies's] tnind. It was increasingly untenable. Faculty contracts were to be re- very clear by late July 1930 . that the Nazis were newed for only six lnonths at a time." The Bauhaus masters looming as an ilnportant political force in Gennany. voted to close the Weimar incarnation of the school only a What better forum to convince them of Modernism's few lnonths later.I2anda series ofproposals from other. more apoliticisrn than the Bauhaus, its most prominent and liberal cities offering to house the Bauhaus were considered, politicized symbol? Eliminate politics from the Bau- with Dessau's ultimately being accepted. Dessau, then haus and the centerpiece of Nazi opposition to Mod- under Socialist party rule, seemed a more appropriate loca- ernism would collapse. The Bauhaus, in this perspee- tion for the Bauhaus. tive, offered the key to Modernism's-and [Mies's] While the Bauhaus seemed to find greater peace during its ow~urvivalunder a Nazi govemnent. There was first few years following the relocation in 1925 to the larger no way he could build in a Nazi-dominated Gennany and more industrially oriented city of Dessau, controversy unless ~nodernislnwas decisively and pennanently ultimately erupted there as well. Brought to Dessau at the severed from its crippling, and in Mies's mind, irrel- instigation of the Social Democratic mayor Fritz Hesse, the evant political associations. The Bauhaus would be school was given entirely new and customized facilities built the laboratory where Mies would prove his case.2' to the designs of Gropius, and the curriculu~nwas expanded in 1927 to include a department ofarchitecture, to be headed These are seductive thoughts, particularly as they present by Hannes Meyer." Even so, political attacks soon began Mies in a rather flattering light-making him into a funda- again in earnest. municipal budget cuts followed,'hnd mentally altruistic visionary who would, for the sake of Gropius, under the pressure of his own practice. decided to easing the potentially sony plight of Modernism in Gennany resign as director, claiming "that until now ninety percent of under the Nazis as much as for any personal gain, take on the my work has been devoted to the defense ofthe school."" As unpleasant task of lifting the Bauhaus from the political a replacement Gropius proposed Meyer, an appointment gutter and sanitizing it. that, given Meyer's overtly Colnlnunist political leanings We cannever. obviously, know for sure what lay inMies's and the increasingly conservative climate taking hold even mind as he considered and then accepted the Bauhaus in Dessau, would prove to be nothing short of disastrous for directorate, and Hochman's reasonable suggestions would the school. Meyer's pedantic emphasis on social issues at the certainly explain part of Mies's actions. There is no doubt expense of all else not only antagonized the painters but that Mies dealt swiftly and harshly with all expressions of fostered a Comlnunist cell amongst the students. Marxist political activism when he arrived at the Bauhaus, rapidly songs were sung, incidents were reported in the right-wing and brutally excising the "genn cell of Bol~hevism"'~fos- press, and Meyer's days were numbered.'" tered by Meyer. Yet the actual changes in pedagogy that he After Meycr's fiery dis~nissalin 1930 following a report instituted upon arriving at the school suggest that at least part of the contribution he had made in the Bauhaus's name to of his motive in assuming the directorate may have been striking Colmnunist miners, Gropius recommnended approach- much simpler and Inore personal than a desire to save the ing Mies for the job, feeling that only someone with a depth and breadth of Modernism in Germany.
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