In this Bauhaus centenary, one often gets the impression that this laboratory of modernism was a trailblazer for pretty much everything. Its combination of industry, art and craft, its teaching methods, publications, the notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk... And last but not least, a holistic understanding of aesthetics, which many architects still value today as their personal guiding principle.

With its modernism influencing literature, drama, architecture, art, music and dance, the Weimar Republic can be seen as an era all of its own. It was not a crisis-ridden “interwar period”. It was an age marked in part by explosive development processes. The Weimar culture is more readily understood from the perspective of the First World War than from its end phase. It is extremely important for Germany’s cultural history and informs many aspects of how we approach the arts today.

In its mere 14 years of existence, the Bauhaus gave rise to a fascination which persists until today. This book introduces the Bauhaus architects, guides us through the sites of the school’s activities and former homes of the Bauhaus members, and it portrays some of the artists. It recounts the unconventional forms of living, working and learning at the Bauhaus, and describes its creativity – from the enthusiastic period of its foundation in Weimar, to its establishment in Dessau and finally its forced closure by the Nazis, in Berlin in 1933.