Readymag Stories: Bauhaus

ith the push to industrialize the country at fever pitch, there were shortages of specialists for industry. Institutions of higher learning were expected to produce them quickly. Vkhutemas’ hybrid structure (art/crafts) began to crack. A decree ordered the transfer of students from industrial and art departments to specifically industrial and art schools. The teachers and directors became forced to defend the notion of an architecture department as a creative discipline against the government’s repeated attempts to regard it as an engineering specialty.

Construction eventually ceased on the Finance Ministry complex. The design cast an enormous influence on Le Corbusier, whose famous Marseilles “residential unit” (1945) incorporates Moisei Ginzburg’s Type F plan.

he Nazi (National Socialist) Party won the majority of votes in national elections and then became the most influential force on German culture. Even steadfast admirers of the Bauhaus began to criticize it, although many famous figures in the art world came to its defense. This dramatized the school’s connection to the “new” art which the Nazis consider Communist.

In October 1932 Mies van der Rohe opened the final version of the Bauhaus in Berlin as an entirely private educational institution. It lasted only a few months.