Travel and Adventure by Various Travel Authors

By Joan Scobey

Take a look around. The iPod. Target's bright-red circles. Tubular steel chairs and goose-necked desk lamps. Skyscrapers of glass and steel, and whitewashed buildings with clean, sharp lines. They are all indebted to one school of design, the Bauhaus, that existed for just 14 years in Germany, from 1919 to 1933.

Contrary to common belief, Bauhaus is not an architectural style; it was a school whose idealistic goal was to train artists to work with craftsmen to produce industrial products of good design and affordable price for a humane society. Its legacy runs from household objects to Marcel Breuer's Wassily chair and Mies van der Rohe's International Style Seagram Building in New York.

The Bauhaus story starts in Weimar, 160 miles southwest of Berlin, with founding father architect Walter Gropius. Weimar's charms had long drawn writers, artists and thinkers who were captivated by its cobbled streets and graceful Renaissance houses. In the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, where Johann Sebastian Bach was an organist and Franz Liszt a choirmaster, you can, if your timing is right, hear a Bach concert in front of an exquisite altar triptych by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

Goethe came for a short visit when he was 26 and was so enchanted that he stayed until the end of his life 57 years later. Friedrich Schiller arrived later; the close friendship of the two towering German writers is commemorated in a statue of them in front of the German National Theater, where, incidentally, the Weimar Republic was also born in 1919. It, too, collapsed in 1933, its 14-year lifespan coinciding exactly with that of the Bauhaus, both victims of the rise of the Nazis.

Gropius first came to Weimar in 1919 to head its Academy of Fine Arts and soon renamed it State Bauhaus. Now called Bauhaus University, it is still in business in the original elegant building designed by Belgian artist Henry Van de Velde, where a sweeping circular staircase rises above Rodin's statue of Eve in the lobby.

At the start, there was no architecture department, and craft was elevated to fine art. Curiously, Gropius picked artists, not craftsmen, as teachers, though it was definitely an A-list: Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, L‡szl— Moholy-Nagy, Georg Muche, and Oskar Schlemmer.

For the first large Bauhaus exhibit in 1923, Gropius redesigned the director's office, a room so tall it seemed to be a cube; he designed all its furnishings, from the bright yellow architectural chairs and blond desk to tubular light fixtures joined at right angles. The "Gropius Room," now regarded as a Bauhaus artwork, is the most popular stop on a Bauhaus tour. Reconstructed in 1999, it is actually a near replica of the original, which is in Cambridge, Mass., where Gropius later taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

To see the another gem of the major 1923 Bauhaus exhibit, walk across tranquil Ilm Park, past the Garden House where Goethe lived when he first came to Weimar to the Haus am Horn, the first Bauhaus building ever built, and the only one in Weimar. Spare, white and rectangular, it was a model of major Bauhaus principles: form follows function, no ornamentation.

By 1925 Weimar's government had turned right-wing, and funding for the school dried up. Gropius had an offer from the town of Dessau he couldn't refuse, with the chance to design his own school building, following his own concepts.

Industrial Dessau doesn't have the charm of Weimar, but for Bauhaus buffs it is hallowed ground for its splendid examples of International Style architecture, especially Gropius' Bauhaus school, and the "Masters' Houses" he designed for the star lineup of professors who followed him from Weimar to Dessau.

The workshops were the core curriculum at the Bauhaus, even for master artists.

Out of them came quality furniture and daily objects at affordable prices, most famously the tubular steel chairs of Marcel Breuer, probably the school's best-known student.

The various parts of the complex — the studio wing, workshops, trade school and stage — all reflected their functions. The workshop wing has a glass wall three stories high, a two-story bridge with administrative offices that links it with the vocational school, and a "Festive Area" with a hall, dining room and theater with multiple uses.

It was brilliantly Bauhaus. Form follows function. The now-famous glass-and-steel complex became the icon of Modernism, of the International Style.

To house his teachers, Gropius built three identical "Masters' Houses," each a pair of semidetached homes in white cubes with flat roofs and glass walls, colorfully painted inside, some with Breuer furniture. His own home was bombed but is being restored. They sit side-by-side on a leafy street, an upscale suburban enclave of famous artists.

For serious architectural students there is yet more Bauhaus in Dessau, but these are the must-see gems, the ones that earned the Bauhaus and its sites in Weimar and Dessau the collective designation of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and that are said to have launched the Modern Movement, which shaped much of the architecture of the 20th century.

In 1930 Mies van der Rohe, the famous German architect, became director, and the school took on a more architectural bent as workshops declined. It hardly mattered; by 1932 Germany's National Socialists forced its closing, and he moved it to Berlin, where, within a year, it become another victim of the Nazi regime.

By rights, the Bauhaus trail should end at the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin, one of Gropius' last buildings, but this year much of its collection was sent across town to join exhibits from Weimar and Dessau in an all-encompassing 90th anniversary show, "Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model" at the Martin-Gropius-Bau. Most of it has now moved on to New York as "Bauhaus 1919 -1933: Workshops for Modernity" at the Museum of Modern Art, where it will remain until Jan. 25, 2010. There's no escaping the Bauhaus this, or any year. But design aficionados knew that already.

IF YOU GO

Weimar

Bauhaus University, Geschwister-Scholl-Strasse 8, www.uni-weimar.de. Guided tours of the Bauhaus buildings leave from here; for details visit www.uni-weimar.de/bauhausspaziergang.

Haus Am Horn, Am Horn 61, www.uni-weimar.de.

Hotel Elephant, Markt 19, phone 800-325-3589, www.starwoodhotels.com. Central location, with character and history.

Dessau:

Bauhaus Building, Gropiusallee 38, phone 011-49-(0)340 6508 251, www.bauhaus-dessau.de.

Masters' Houses, Ebertallee 63-71, phone 011-49-(0)340-6508241, www.meisterhaeuser.de.

Steigenberger Hotel Fuerst Leopold, Friedensplatz, phone: 866-991-1299, www.steigenberger.com.

Berlin

Bauhaus-Archiv Museum of Design, Klingelhoeferstrasse 14, phone: 011-49-(0)30-2540 0278, www.bauhaus.de. It has an excellent shop with iconic contemporary design objects.

Hotel Concorde Berlin, Augsburger Strasse 41, phone: 800 888 4747, www.berlin.concorde-hotels.com. A stunning architectural design.

For more information about Bauhaus celebrations and German travel, see www.weimar.de and www.cometogermany.com.

Walter Gropius designed everything in the famous Gropius Room at Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany, a popular stop on a Bauhaus tour. Photo courtesy of Joan Scobey. (end caption)

The famous workshop wing of the Dessau (Germany) Bauhaus with its glass facade is linked to the vocational school by a two-story bridge housing offices. Photo courtesy of Joan Scobey. (end caption2)

Gropius designed three similar Masters' Houses in Dessau, each a pair of semidetached homes. This one was shared by Wassily Kandinsky, at the left front, and Paul Klee, at the right rear. Photo courtesy of Joan Scobey. (end caption3)

Joan Scobey is a freelance travel writer. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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