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Defamation, neglect and new evaluation of the Bauhaus and
Masters' Houses after 1932
On the instigation of the National Socialists the Bauhaus in Dessau
was closed in 1932. The new dictatorship defamed the international
and avant-garde orientation of the school, together with all modern
works of art, as cultural Bolshevism. The Bauhaus, that had already
been under criticism prior to 1932 as a hot house of new building
styles, offered the fascists a welcome target of attack for their
propaganda:
"With the disappearance of this so-called
' High School for Design ' from German soil, we will also be rid
of one of the noted places of Jewish-Marxist artistic intentions.
Let us hope that the total destruction of the building will follow
quickly and where today a plain glass palace of Middle Eastern taste
is standing, in its place clinics and parks will soon be created
to offer German people homes and relaxation."
(Chairman City Council Hofmann NSDAP 1932 in the "Anhalter
Tageszeitung").
In the early 50s the President of the East German Building Academy
explained "the creations of the Bauhaus
architects continue to scar our towns as their earlier Bauhaus buildings
did in the past." It was not until after the cultural
and political changes of the sixties that the Dessau Bauhaus Buildings
were once more of public interest. In 1974 the Bauhaus and the Masters'
Houses were included on the central GDR Monument List as a cultural
inheritance to be protected.
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