The Bauhaus at Dessau

The next morning I woke up and hiked through the woods and got on the bus to get on the train to go to Dessau, which was an easy ride. Finding the Bauhaus school was not very hard either—I went straight to the tourist information booth just outside of the train station and the disgruntled looking woman sitting there grudgingly gave me a map of the city and the Bauhaus buildings, and the Bauhaus school itself was only a short hop across a modern looking bridge to a residential district in the city. I shy looking Asian woman and her boyfriend followed me off the train—apparently they were Bauhaus devotees as well and were looking for a day tour of the city, starting with the main event—the Gropius designed Bauhaus school itself. So I trundled along, suitcase in tow, while they walked easily, only lightly burdened. But we turned the corner and entered an entirely different part of the city—complete with even more avante garde looking buildings and signs denoting some kind of school.

I stepped closer and I noticed that it was, in fact, a design school, and each building was different than the next. Some contained a scattering of marble and glass, open to the street, and another one looked like a reincarnation of a greenhouse, except where the plants were supposed to be, desks and chairs and computer screens lined the walls. Finally, just as we rounded the corner and I could see the distinctive porches of the Bauhaus school rising in the distance, I ran into the oddest building of all—what was called the Exposition Wurm. It looked like a tent and a spaceship all rolled up into one—white translucent canvas sheets stretched over curved wooden arches and closed off in one direction by a clear door. It was evidently some very experimental type of school... and I was interested to want to learn more.

But the first order of the day was to finally drop off my bags at the school. I knew from reading which of the buildings was for the students, but since none of the entrances were labeled, I had no idea where the reception was because I certainly knew that I could not waltz right into a room without a key. I actually ended up walking into the cafeteria area first, bags in tow, to find an only-German speaking staff that looked rather puzzled at my appearance. Luckily, one of the people waiting to get the food spoke enough English to translate my question, and sent me two flights up the stairs where I repeated my question again, and got directed up another flight, to be greeted by a stout but well dressed middle aged woman named Frau Oede who, in keeping with what would become the theme of the day, spoke no English (of course). But she called in another younger woman to translate, and without further ado I got my keys to my lovely student apartment on the fourth floor of the Bauhaus school. Which also meant that I had to take all of my bags back down the stairs, outside of the building, and up the stairs, admirably marked with a bright red metal banister. I reached the fourth floor to find my keys stuck, but after a few minutes a guy in dark clothes and dark rimmed glasses came to my rescue. He spoke perfect American English and I asked him where he was from. Turns out he was affiliated with the University of Ohio or somewhere in the Midwest and that he was giving a lecture on the Bauhaus in Dessau. He was here to do research. I asked him when he was lecturing, intrigued, but it was not for a few weeks and I told him that I was going to Weimar afterwards. He told me that was where he was going too—and asked me where I had come from. I told him I had just visited the Bauahus Archiv in Berlin, and he laughed. It turned out that we had the exact same itinerary, except, of course, he was staying much longer than I was. I thanked him and finally got to see my room.

I was immediately pleased when I opened the door to a perfectly clean, modern and sparely furnished apartment. The room was huge, and painted entirely white. On the wall near the window was a simple orange table, flanked, of course, by a modern plastic and metal incarnation of that famous Marcel Breuer chair. I was happy to see them both, and turning around to see a massive double bed with sheets that did NOT feel like they could have been made out of paper made me so happy I was ready to jump for joy. There was no bathroom in the room, but the sink was clean with fresh fixtures and the lights were streamlined and I almost did not want to leave to see the rest of it—I was ecstatic with my choice to sleep at the Bauhaus!

But, my whole purpose of the visit was to see the rest of the Bauhaus school and buildings, so I snapped a few photographs before I destroyed the perfect simple harmony of the room. I went back down the stairs, color coded by floor, and back up the stair into the main exhibition hall to see what there was to see. Although the woman at this front desk spoke no English either, the young woman who I later discovered was the tour guide helped me figure out what to do with my afternoon. I wanted to see the masterhouses, but was disappointed to discover that the only way to get inside of them was to take the tour, which (of course) was only in German. But I decided to go on the tour anyway, so I hung to the back of the group and followed the young lady out of the door of the school and down a wooded street to where three white block houses stood in a row.

The houses were designed and built by Walter Gropius and would house the Bauhaus masters—the first house was partially destroyed but originally held the house of Feininger and Maholy-Nagy. One half of it had been destroyed by bombs, but since all three of the masterhouses were built on the same plan it is easy to reconstruct this one by comparison with the next two, which held, respectively: Muche and Schlemmer, and perhaps the most famous of the six—Kandinsky and Klee. They were all designed along Gropius’ principles of architecture. They were houses constructed of highly elementary shapes—different cubes stacked up upon one another, curves interposed where metal balconies met the straight walls. A huge window allowed for light to enter the house, and it was placed directly in the location of the stair, which sought its way up to the top. Elsewhere, the windows had more of a ribbon-quality, and the entire exterior spoke of a kind of simple and rational housing.

With the help of the guide we entered the house. I was also pleased to discover that she usually gave me a little aside in English—a sort of Cliff’s notes version of the longer speech she had been making in German—whenever we were moving locations. I think she felt bad for the fact that I spoke none of the language and still wanted to come on the tour anyway. The inside of the buildings were just as functional, but quite a bit more colorful than the exteriors. All of the walls were painted crazy colors—usually a flat hue in a primary, but occasionally a more eccentric gold or green as well! And the building proliferated with built-ins. There were small shelves over the exposed radiators to make more space, and closets with drawers and shelves to suit every need. The kitchen was even divided into two parts to separate the washing and cleaning of dishes from their preparation, with a special dumbwaiter to bring up food from the cellar, without needing to make the trek all of the way into the basement.

Each of the houses had been converted into a different museum—one devoted to a local musician, and the Kandinsky-Klee house had (appropriately) been converted into a museum for some of Kandinsky’s smaller works. I really enjoyed seeing each of the houses, a duplex house with identical floor plans that were turned 90 degrees from each other so that a frontal view of the house afforts each side its own private balcony and entrance way, and private stair.

But the most impressive part of all was that the typical view of white boxy modernism was completely upended in this tour. The interior was anything but white—the furniture and the building itself were painted a huge managerie of colors, and even when I returned to the Bauhaus school itself I noticed cues on the interior to help navigate the building, up to the red stair that tied the four floors of the student quarters together.

Upon exiting the building, I noticed tons of art and architecture students, scattered among the pine trees sketching away like I had been scribbling in my notebook. It was an idyllic location, with different birds chirping away and a very nice cool breeze gently moving the trees. The group dispersed and I walked slowly back with the tour guide, who filled me in on some of the details I had missed in the German tour. She told me some more about the history of the Bauhaus, and when I returned to the school itself I discovered that she would be the tour guide for the following tour—the one of the school. And, for this one, I would be given an audio guide in English, so I got to be the only one following the tour who was allowed to pay absolutely no attention to what she was saying and get completely engrossed in my digital guide.

I followed the German-speaking group around to the more inaccessible parts of the Bauhaus. We started out on the main stair, which led to the auditorium area, which by a huge curtain wall was divided from the staircase and from the cafeteria area which I had run into earlier. It was there that the tour guide demonstrated some of the more technical innovations that Gropius incorporated into the Bauhaus school—columns of windows that could be opened by pulling on a single bar, which operated a multitude of hinges, and seats with folding parts made entirely of spare canvas and steel that looked more like director’s chairs than anything else, and a stage set that could accommodate multiple different types of performances. Oskar Schlemmer was the master who tended to stage these—fantastic performances with the players dressed up in outfits that made them look like different combinations of polygons. This was another element of the Bauhaus school that I had not explored very much—the theater school, in which those involved in woodshop and textiles could try out their skills on a live stage. The Bauhaus wanted to do everything.

Then we went on, up to some of the teacher’s quarters, which stood on the bridge area that separated the three parts of the building—the student’s housing, which stood in an upright block, the long windowed wall of the design studios, and the more traditional-looking classrooms. A street ran between the student housing and design studios and the classrooms, and Gropius simply spanned the space with a bridge, full of two floors of offices. Here, we could step inside one of the rooms, where a spare but efficient desk of a light colored wood and glass occupied one wall. The wall with the door had a built in closet with a tiny sink, and the rest was painted and wallpapered in different textures and colors. Quite different from the white walled modernism that I was used to thinking of—maybe my perceptions had been biased by the black and white pictures I had always seen of the place—knowing that the exterior was white made me assume that the grey interiors must have been that color. The desk was interesting two—it had a built in file tray made of glass that was supported not from below, as is traditional, but hanging down from a strip of wood that curved over the top, ending about six inches from the desk top and leaving the space underneath it completely free. Such is the innovation of the Bauhaus.

The last place we visited was a classroom, which was by far the most conventional of the places we saw, complete with rows of modern looking desks and chairs, and a ribbon of windows near the top. Looking out of these we could see the solid glass curtain wall of the design studios. This is one of the most impressive parts of the building, and is almost always featured in photographs—because one corner is completely glassed in—unstopped by any kind of roof support. In fact, the roof is not supported by the exterior walls at all, which simply wrap around the building like fly netting. The real support is found internally, which leaves the corner free to be completely glass. Such an innovation is now a normal part of the exterior of modern skyscrapers, but this was one of the first times that it was used. The walls were not even connected to the floors—a little gap allowed for the free circulation of air (which turned out to not be so advantageous—sound and smell could just as easily move). And we visited the student apartments, which of course I had seen already, because I was living in it!

And the tour ended, bringing me back to where I started in the main stairwell of the school. I was impressed with all I had seen. The Bauhaus truly was integrated—the lights, door handles, fixtures, and fabric had all been a product of a member of the school itself. The Gropius door handle was never patented and has since found its way into every halfway modern establishment. I am sure that Lowe’s probably contains a handle whose shaft is cubical and ends in a cylinder turned 90 degrees so that it is parallel to the plane of the door. The Bauhaus is so ubiquitous that it dosen’t seem revolutionary anymore.

I took some time to browse the permanent exhibition that I had missed on the way in; it contained more of what I had seen in the Archiv. Bowls, plates, typefont, teakettles, chairs, and publications lined the well lit cabinets. But I could feel myself fading. The excitement and the business of Berlin was finally catching up with me, and instead of spending more time seeing what was already familiar, I opted instead to retreat to my wonderful room and take a nap.

I woke up much later than I expected. The sun was already starting to fade from the sky, but I got up and decided that I would take a short walk before I had dinner. I ventured out of the Bauhaus, past what I learned was a new incarnation of the Bauhaus school—a design and architecture school run in an unconventional manner, not offering any recognizable certificate, and taught in English. Something to look into for the future…

I came out by the residential area I had passed on the way in, and saw a sign for a tiergarden. I knew that there were a few notable buildings in the place, so I decided to take a look around. The paths were wide and well marked, and the park ended up being huge—I spend an hour walking past sunlit glades complete with some old stone urns. I turned down one road and found myself contemplating a footbridge over some still water, the whole thing framed by arching trees. It was all so romantic, and I took the time to let myself relax and slow down as I lost myself in this German fairytale.

After a while, I found the Schloss, a stately neoclassical white building set near the edge of the park where the shadows of houses and the hum of the road could just barely be seen through the trees. It was an art museum converted from a mansion, which had closed hours ago, but walking around to the back I could see rows of chairs and cars and voices. The chairs were set neatly into rows, and it looked like it could have been preparations for a wedding—highly believable in such a beautiful setting—but I asked some of the people standing around and it turned out to be an open air theater. I was standing behind the stage building, and the rows of chairs were for a very small but apparently attentive audience. I walked around the side to see folks in costume moving and gesticulating on the stage, and stopped for a moment to watch (I could understand none of it, being in German) before moving back into the forest.

It was a lovely walk. I am very appreciative that the Germans are so conscious about maintaining their green spaces. Almost every place that I have seen has at least one park, and ample room for pedestrians and bicycles. They are even allowed on the subway and on the trains, and I have never seen as many in use as I have here. This is an outdoorsman’s paradise.

After leaving the park, I took a brief stroll back across the bridge and into the city itself, passing a number of well maintained streets before reaching the National Theater, and I stopped to admire its lovely appearance before I realized that the sun really was fading fast. I headed back to the Bauhaus.

I still had not had dinner yet, but my trusty Let’s Go Germany had informed me that the best place to go was at the Bauhaus Kafe, located in the basement of the studio building. I walked down the stairs to a quietly glowing bar and a number of small black Marcel Breuer chairs and tables. A number of students sat there, sipping on tall beers and smoking cigarettes and talking about whatever art students talk about. I grabbed a table for myself and ordered some couscous salad, which was light but satisfying. And then after that it was some blogging and bed. I was exhausted from my long days in Berlin, but so happy to have seen so much. And there was more to come!