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.This did not mean that therewas absolutely no audience in the United States for social issues.On the contrary: thedepression and its prospective antidote, the New Deal, forced a confrontation withmany social problems.A similar sensibility was expressed in the literature and thevisual arts of those years, which dealt with such topics as unemployment, strikes, street 207 SUPPRESSION OF THE WELTANSCHAUUNGlife, and hunger.But the economic situation and its consequences were, in the lastanalysis, not part of the way the nation wanted to see itself.Instead, they were seen asweak points to be repaired as quickly as possible.The determinants of the Bauhaus architecture, as seen from the American pointof view, would in the future be those identified by Kenneth Stowell in his commentaryon the exhibition: From this bare beginning may grow in the fertile imagination ofyouthful designers, an architecture that will be truly functionally efficient, economi-cally sound and aesthetically satisfactory. 17 This definition corresponds to some funda-mental intentions of the early Bauhaus program, which was geared to the education ofa type of architect whose work would respond to the economic, functional, and aes-thetic demands of the time.But it does not speak of the hope that the Bauhaus teachersalso harbored, that the new architecture would be a catalyst in the transformation ofsociety. 18 What had begun as a comprehensive design for a new form of life, the pro-ject of an aesthetically minded cultural reform, had to a large extent been reduced to a style comprising a certain repertoire of formal design strategies, of motifs.Releasedfrom their integrity to the original idea, they could from now on be used freely forvarious design needs.Under the premise of this extroverted understanding of architec-ture, the floodgates were opened to formalism and cheap plagiarism.The year 1932marked the point when the previously divergent conceptions of the architecture pro-duced at the Bauhaus were subsumed in a unified image.In place of the eternally validissues with which the Bauhaus architects hoped to come to terms, the most obvioustypological characteristics and commonalties of their temporally bracketed answerswere displayed.The loss of the Weltanschauung element proved to be a two-sided coin, for it alsorepresented an opportunity for the Bauhaus s architects: not only did their work be-come more digestible for a contemporary American audience, but its formal elements13 Bruno Taut, Die Stadtkrone, 59ff.14 Walter Gropius, Rede während einer internen Bauhaus-Ausstellung von Studentenarbeiten, June 1919, in Howard Dearstyne, Inside the Bauhaus, 52ff.Gropius did not want his generalconvictions or Weltanschauung to be understood as partisan political ideology.His reaction toOskar Schlemmer s manifesto, written as an advertisement for a Bauhaus exhibition in 1923,makes this clear.Schlemmer had described the Bauhaus as the gathering point of those whowant to build the cathedral of socialism, dedicated to the future and reaching toward the heav-ens. Oskar Schlemmer, Das Staatliche Bauhaus in Weimar, 181ff.Gropius had the text ex-punged.According to Isaacs, Walter Gropius, 1:298.15 Walter Curt Behrendt, Modern Building, 219.Trachtenberg and Hyman note that in Europe,Bauhaus architecture had represented the zeitgeist; in America, it did not: Architecture, 524.16 Karl-Heinz Hüter, Architektur in Berlin, 91.17 Kenneth K.Stowell, The International Style, 253.18 Lampugnani, Encyclopedia of 20th Century Architecture, 160. 208 AGAINST THE ODDS: THE RESOLUTION OF CONTRADICTIONSalso became accessible to generations of architects, who could play with them unbur-dened by the utopian aspirations behind the original concepts.By condensing thenew architecture to its abstract and thus elementary formal-aesthetic vocabulary,Barr, Hitchcock, and Johnson revealed one of the great achievements of the Bauhaus,namely to have provided for the first time in architectural history a basic language offorms that, free of cultural and geographical bounds, could be universally understoodand applied to some extent even adjusted to regional traditions.The universality ofits formal language, derived from the repercussions of primitive art in cubism andexpressionism, both influencing the Bauhaus, is a main reason for the Bauhaus prod-ucts lasting appeal.Thus the deideologizing of Bauhaus architecture proved to be notjust a conceptual loss but, at the same time, the regaining of its aesthetic and artisticautonomy.IDENTIFICATIONWITH ANTI-FASCISMOn the orders of the Dessau state attorney, Berlin police and storm troopers enteredthe Bauhaus s facilities in Berlin-Steglitz on 11 April 1933, searched the building forsubversive material, and temporarily arrested a group of students.They were laterreleased, but the school s director found himself compelled to dissolve the institutionon 19 July.In the search for answers to the contradictions embedded in the controversiessurrounding the Bauhaus, it should also not be forgotten that the former Bauhaus ar-tists and architects had come to America from Germany in the wave of anti-fascistimmigration.They had generally been admitted as victims of the National Socialist re-gime.For Jewish émigrés such as Anni Albers, Marcel Breuer, and Xanti Schawinsky,this asylum was particularly important.The treatment that might have awaited themas artists might be surmised from the notice received by the Stuttgart sculptor Mar-garethe Garthe in 1936 from the President of the Reichskammer of the Visual Arts:Notice!Based upon my examination of the qualities of your personal characteristics, you are notin possession of the necessary proclivity and reliability to participate in the advancementof German culture in a manner responsible to people and state.You thus do not fulfillthe requirements for a membership in the Reichskammer of the Visual Arts.On the basis of § 10 of the first code on the execution of the Reichskulturkam-mer s bylaws of 1.11.1933 (RGBI.I, p.797), I reject your application for acceptanceinto the Reichskammer of the Visual Arts and forbid you to practice the profession ofsculptor. 209 IDENTIFICATION WITH ANTI-FASCISMYour activities within the opportunities offered by the State Union of Jewish Cul-tural Organizations, Berlin SW.19, Stallschreiberstr.44, are not affected by this decree.(Signed) Mai.19The loss of professional licenses and positions was only the first step toward the worstscenario.Some of the Jewish Bauhaus associates who were not lucky enough to fleeNazi Germany lost their life in concentration camps.The textile artist Otti Berger wasone of them.The closing of the Bauhaus and the subsequent increase in the political and racistdefamation and persecution of artists and architects made it possible to interpret theirwork as the expression of a Western way of life, democracy, and freedom.Thereafter,the fact that the National Socialists had condemned the school s art and architecture asincapable of embodying traditional German values proved, ironically, advantageous tothe Bauhaus s acceptance elsewhere [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]