The Bauhaus was an important inspiration for modern design and functional architecture, well beyond the bounds of Germany alone. Yet the products themselves were not the only decisive factor in its international impact and reception. The ideas of the Bauhaus were carried around the world largely because of the – mostly involuntary – emigration of the Bauhaus figures in the 1930s, above all to the USA and the Soviet Union, but also to Israel, China, India and Turkey.

The designer Peter Behrens (1868-1940) was extremely versatile as a painter, designer, typographer and architect. Even though he acquired architecture autodidactically, it occupies a special position in his oeuvre.