Background: Idea of the Bauhaus Centenary 2019

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Background information:
About the idea of the Bauhaus Centenary 2019
Contact person
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Dr. Julia Glesner
Klassik Stiftung Weimar
+49 3643 545-104
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Toska Grabowski
Klassik Stiftung Weimar
+49 3643 545-113
presse@
bauhaus100.de
Celebrating the Bauhaus – Rethinking the World
The idea of the Bauhaus Centenary 2019
In 2019, Germany will be celebrating the centenary of the founding of the Bauhaus
together with partners all over the world. Founded in Weimar in 1919, relocated to
Dessau in 1925 and closed in Berlin under pressure from the National Socialists in
1933, the school of design only existed for fourteen years. Despite this, the Bauhaus
still has an impact all over the world.
The Bauhaus in its international forms is still the most effective cultural export that
Germany produced during the twentieth century, and it has shaped today’s lived-in
world in many ways. The ideas of the Bauhaus in the fields of fine and applied art,
design, architecture and education were disseminated all over the world by its former
teachers and students, to countries including the United States, China, Israel,
Switzerland, Japan and Mexico. Its global approach involving a rethinking of the
world was central to its effectiveness.
The Bauhaus was a vibrant school of ideas and a realm of experimentation. Lesser
known paths led to new terrains, which were explored there with insatiable curiosity
through experimentation, production, drawing and study. Learning and
experimentation took place using real materials and in real life. This involved nothing
less than a transformation of everyday life, housing and social coexistence – issues
that are as up to date and relevant today as they were 100 years ago.
With its universal design methods – elementary in terms of formal language,
comprehensible and accessible to all – the Bauhaus stands worldwide for a grand
idea, for interdisciplinary design, for an unconditional quest for utopias, opportunities
and inspiration. All quests and experiments also involve mistakes and failed or
incomplete projects – and these also form part of the international history of the
Bauhaus.
On the occasion of the centenary, the Bauhaus past and present as well as its ideas,
works and influences in Germany and throughout the world will be retold and
brought to life in all sorts of ways in a wide-ranging programme. With the theme
‘Rethinking the World’, the Bauhaus centenary all over Germany – celebrated
together with a large number of regional, national and international partners – will
give fresh impetus to an engagement with current issues in design and society in
office
100 years of bauhaus
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Background information:
About the idea of the Bauhaus Centenary 2019
efforts to find new approaches to central social and design issues and actively find
innovative ways of solving them.
Statements by the directors of the three Bauhaus institutions with collections,
concerning the Bauhaus Centenary 2019:
“The Bauhaus is recognised worldwide as a synonym for modern architecture and
design, for the boldness of its experiments and for the international character of its
design vocabulary and its community. Designers, architects and fine artists all over
the world still refer to the Bauhaus in their works and in their approaches. It is
therefore extremely important that the centenary is celebrated not only in Germany,
but also worldwide, so that everyone is able to be part of it. Berlin was the Bauhaus’s
final location prior to its closure during the National Socialist era. On the occasion of
the centenary, Berlin finally gains a museum worthy of its Bauhaus collection by
means of an extension added to the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung. The
Bauhaus centenary is a matter close to our heart; after all, the institution was
brought to life with the support of the founder of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, in
order to collect and preserve the cultural and material legacy of the Bauhaus for the
future. 2019 gives us cause and impetus to progress with our building project so that
we can finally present the world’s most comprehensive Bauhaus collection in a
manner that reflects its magnitude. I am delighted to be able to contribute to the
success of this undertaking as director of the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für
Gestaltung.”
Dr. Annemarie Jaeggi, Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung, Berlin
“‘The Bauhaus comes from Weimar’. This effective promotional slogan for the 2009
anniversary exhibition remains equally valid for 2019. With its new Bauhaus Museum
which will open in 2018 however, Weimar adopts a new position in the global context
in close collaboration with the two other Bauhaus institutions, the Bauhaus-Archiv /
Museum für Gestaltung in Berlin and the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. At the same
time, the ideas of the Bauhaus do not seem to have aged; on the contrary, many of
them appear to have lost none of their topicality and inspire the search for
contemporary resolutions. The challenge for Weimar lies first in the innovative
reflection of historic Weimar Classicism and secondly, above all in the moves for
reform around 1900, when with the legacy of Friedrich Nietzsche, with Harry Graf
Kessler and Henry van de Velde the city was once again a cultural focal point. The
economic, political and cultural framework of the Weimar Republic provided the
historic Bauhaus with a latitude that perished with the beginning of the Third Reich
and forced many of the Bauhaus’s teachers and students into internal or external
exile. We therefore regard the location of the controversial theme “Topography of
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Background information:
About the idea of the Bauhaus Centenary 2019
Modernism” in the new museum in the former “Gauforum” as a reference point that
has lost none of its topicality. ‘The ills of an age’, wrote Ludwig Wittgenstein, ‘are
healed by changing the ways in which people live their lives’. This question of the
‘New Man’ and his everyday reality was addressed by Bauhaus in the context of the
existential experiences of the First World War, and it remains no less urgent for us
today.”
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Holler, Klassik Stiftung Weimar
“It is hard to believe that the Bauhaus will be celebrating its centenary in just a few
years, especially since the Bauhaus as an idea is still extremely relevant today.
Thinking in a radically different way, uniting numerous perspectives and working with
new pedagogical models: that’s the Bauhaus. In its fourteen years of existence, one
constant prevailed: it moved forward in its thinking. With this open-mindedness and
curiosity transferred to artistic-experimental work, the Bauhaus became the school
of the avant-garde. Never again was there a school with such a contemporary and
lasting relevance as the Bauhaus. Here, a school was built for an innovative
curriculum, a theatre stage was interpreted as a performative space and social
themes such as housing development and the household were reconceived for
modern ways of living. It is with good cause that the Bauhaus was awarded UNESCO
World Cultural Heritage status in 1996.
The centenary year is a gift that gives us an opportunity to communicate the
diversity and relevance of the Bauhaus. And perhaps in this context we will also be
able to bring to the forefront the value of an artistic avant-garde as a driving force
for social development. Today in the 21st century, this is no less topical than it was at
the time.”
Dr. Claudia Perren, Bauhaus Dessau Foundation