It helped in an international sense in that it was finished in Germany and then moved elsewhere. There's a huge impact during the Cold War period when the Bauhaus myth gets revived again. It serves the Americans in league with the West Germans as the good bit as it were. And there is a funny story I was told that there was an exhibition in Stuttgart, the first big post-war Bauhaus exhibition. But only by going to the West German cultural commissar in London and getting a plot against East Germany. Later on they take it back again. That's again this pliability and this flexibility of this Bauhaus idea.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bauhaus which began in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, as a school for arts and crafts combined, and went on to be famous around the world. Under its first director, Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus moved to Dessau and extended its range to architecture and became associated with a series of white, angular, flat-roofed buildings reproduced from Shanghai to Chicago, aimed for modern living. The school closed after only 14 years while at a third location, Berlin, under pressure from the Nazis, yet its students and teachers continued to spread its ethos in exile, making it even more influential.
The image above is of the Bauhaus Building, Dessau, designed by Gropius and built in 1925-6
With
Robin Schuldenfrei
Tangen Reader in 20th Century Modernism at The Courtauld Institute of Art
Alan Powers
History Leader at the London School of Architecture
And
Michael White
Professor of the History of Art at the University of York
Producer: Simon Tillotson