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  By the end of the summer, Gropius had completed working drawings for the new building. To achieve this, he employed some of his former students, among them Marcel Breuer. The building complex that emerged from their charette was marvelously functional, and of unprecedented appearance. A sparkling white, crisp amalgam of interlocking geometric forms, with a neatly tapered bridge and a flurry of balconies breaking up the strong masses, it was bold and refined at the same time, radiating power and optimism and a love of beauty.

  The structure housed spacious workshops, a large auditorium, a dining hall, and residential facilities. By the time it opened in April 1926, it was the twentieth-century equivalent of a medieval village, a place for working and living in a community—even though the object of adulation was now art and design rather than the God for whom the Gothic cathedral had been built. The Dessau Bauhaus was a perfect marriage of function and style; it used industrial devices to achieve artistic grace and coupled high tech with poetry. Its glass walls were tensile light, its flat roof a statement of newness.

  The Bauhaus in Dessau, built by Gropius, 1926, in a photo annotated by Josef Albers. The building separated the living accommodations from the work and community spaces, while linking them with a bridge.

  Even today, the building is the symbol of all that was achieved within it. While he was designing it, Gropius carried on his campaign to reinvigorate the Bauhaus and to organize its students and faculty, but nothing was more effective as a gathering cry and an icon of the new faith, a representation of vigor, than this handsome shell with its impeccably clean, bold vertical lettering saying simply “Bauhaus.”

  AS BEFORE, Gropius was the school’s main public spokesman, codifying its philosophy with serenity and assurance. Impressively resolute, as elegant in his verbal expression as in his architecture and his personal appearance, he reiterated that whether one was creating “a container, a chair, or a house—one must first of all study its nature; for it must serve its purpose perfectly, that is, it must fulfill its function usefully, be durable, economical, and beautiful.”171

  Gropius intended for the Dessau Bauhaus to improve life for the masses; even more than its Weimar predecessor, it was to penetrate society at every level, and to do so while emphasizing superior quality: “The Bauhaus fights against the cheap substitute, inferior workmanship, and the dilettantism of the handicrafts, for a new standard of quality work.” The goal was “simplicity in multiplicity, economical utilization of space, material, time, and money.”172

  Gropius’s ability to deal with difficult people was again called upon. Money was tight, in spite of the generosity of the Municipal Council, and he decided he had no choice but to ask senior faculty to give up 10 percent of their teaching salaries for the first year in the new location. Klee refused. Gropius, in turn, wrote an extremely measured response. He explained the harsh realities of the overall financial situation and of the antipathy toward Bauhaus modernism, and politely beseeched Klee to recognize the efforts that the mayor of Dessau and Gropius himself had made to ensure that Klee would enjoy ideal working conditions. As insistent as he was in matters of love, Gropius was willing to go down on his knees to beg for what he wanted. He wrote, “I simply cannot believe that you, dear Herr Klee, will desert me in this matter, and I cordially request you to support me.”173 In this instance, however, Gropius failed to persuade: neither Klee nor Kandinsky would agree to the cut.

  In spite of the grim financial situation, Mayor Hesse provided land and funding for private houses for the Bauhaus masters. There was a forest of pine trees on Burgkuhnauer Allee, only a kilometer from the main Bauhaus building. It was a wonderfully bucolic setting, ideal for these artists who were as interested in the truths and tranquillity to be derived from nature as they were in modernism. Gropius immediately designed idyllic dwellings for the school’s upper echelons.

  Wassily and Nina Kandinsky, Georg Muche, Paul Klee, and Walter Gropius at the Dessau Bauhaus, 1926. At first, the Bauhauslers had been sceptical about moving to Dessau, but the new headquarters and masters’ houses soon provided them with exceptional working and living conditions.

  While the Bauhaus masters all belonged to the same purposeful brigade and shared certain ideals and some beliefs, they still had their strong individual preferences and quirks. Gropius, aided by Ise, set out to be as accommodating as possible with regard to their new houses. The masters’ wives had very specific requests. Tut Schlemmer wanted a gas stove, while Lily Klee preferred one fueled by coal. Georg Muche’s wife, the Norwegian painter Erika Brandt, insisted on a new electric model. Nina Kandinsky, ever nostalgic for her native Russia, wanted only a Kamin—a wood-burning stove made of heavily ornamented black iron, which looked more suitable for a cozy dacha than a contemporary kitchen. For themselves, Ise and Walter Gropius picked streamlined furniture and objects from the Bauhaus workshops, or designed their own suitably modern pieces, but everyone else had tastes that had little to do with the school’s program.

  While their houses were under construction, the masters lived in whatever apartments they could rent. Neither the new building nor the residences were ready when the Bauhaus reopened in Dessau in October 1925.

  Postcard sent by Lily, Felix, and Paul Klee in 1928. It shows a photo taken by Lucia Moholy-Nagy of the masters’ houses in Dessau, where the Klees and Kandinskys lived in more idyllic working conditions than they had ever known before.

  The workshops and classrooms were located temporarily in a defunct textile mill and an unheated building that had been a rope factory.

  In these makeshift facilities, Gropius reiterated the institution’s ideals with his usual fervor, and reminded people of the links he was forging between the workshops and German industry. Inconveniences were of secondary importance.

  The pace was relentless that summer as he tried to whip the new building into shape and organize the reborn institution. In August, Ise, who was pregnant, had an emergency appendectomy during which she lost her baby. But Gropius could not afford to stop. He lectured wherever he thought he could drum up support, while also working on his architectural projects and promoting prefabricated housing. He now undertook the publication of a series of Bauhaus book, for which he functioned as editor in chief Privately he was working on office buildings and an important project for the great exhibition of modern housing that was scheduled to open in 1927 in the Weissenhof section of Stuttgart. He was dealing nonstop with personnel issues, too; when Georg Muche wanted to switch from being form master of the weaving workshop to the architectural workshop and Gropius didn’t think he was up to the task, it was Gropius who had to make the decision and enforce it diplomatically. Walter Gropius’s ability to be architect, educator, and administrator at once was the backbone of the school.

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  On December 4, 1926, when the Dessau Bauhaus formally opened, Walter Gropius gave a speech that stirred his audience to a fervor. First he acknowledged that the Bauhaus had a troubled history. Its tenure in Weimar had been marred by confusion about what the school’s intentions and functions were; the Bauhauslers themselves understood, but the outside world did not. Nevertheless, the masters and the students had demonstrated “unwavering determination.”174 Gropius’s voice underscored the last two words.

  He knew how to rally his listeners. Standing before the crowd at Dessau, handsome and confident as he always was in public, he explained that the Bauhaus had survived and was now being reborn because it had at its core “the purity of an idea” and a “common spiritual center” and because an entire community, comprising masters and students together, had worked together. “I would like to take this opportunity to thank them publicly and with all my heart,” he declared with a warmth that stirred not only the recipients of those thanks, but also the many new converts to his cause.175

  Gropius infused his listeners with a sense of their own worth and a faith that their purpose was lofty. This new building, he assured the more than one thousand guests—who included government minister
s and artists and architects from all over Europe—was “for the creatively talented young people who some day will mold the face of our new world.”176 Everyone in the audience felt engaged in the phenomenal task.

  WITH HIS GOAL of taking his new vision to the public at large, Gropius quickly was given an opportunity to prove himself. The government was funding a housing development in the Dessau suburb of Torten, and it was in effect the Bauhaus director’s test case.

  At Torten, Gropius organized living as if in a manufacturing plant. His goal was to apply the most rational approach conceivable to human needs. The settlement included a “building research section,” which was intended to be the headquarters at which the reich could develop “a generous long-range master plan” for future construction nationwide.177 The planners were to address the financing of housing, urban and rural development, and transportation all over the country. They were also to create central facilities that could provide electricity, water, and heating economically; to determine where decorative or kitchen gardens would be beneficial; and to provide landscaping, standardize building types, revise construction ordinances, and study new materials as well as the latest methods of industrial production with an eye to their application for housing. Gropius believed that, with standardized building components and established working methods and tables of costs, it would be possible to calculate all expenses in advance. Such control of the finances of building would make it far easier for good design standards to proliferate.

  Although the community of three hundred buildings, completed in 1928, looks more like a collection of barracks than what most people would want to call homes, it still allowed him to put his ideas to work.

  A PHOTOGRAPH SNAPPED in 1927 shows Walter Gropius standing with Paul Klee and Béla Bartók in the roof garden of his house—the first in the row of masters’ houses and the only single-family dwelling. The snapshot, meant only to record a happy encounter, makes clear the toll taken by all that the Bauhaus director had been doing. One can hardly believe that this is the same Walter Gropius who was the dashing lover of Ise in photos taken only three years earlier. He looks exhausted and worried; his pale face has aged two decades. While he is, as always, dressed and groomed with style, his jacket fits awkwardly and his bow tie is askew—surprising for someone usually so meticulous.

  Walter Gropius with Paul Klee and Béla Bartók, Dessau, 1927. Gwpim suddenly looked haggard; he lacked his usual dash and vigor His greatest struggles at the Bauhaus had become financial.

  A few days after the photo was shot, Gropius wrote to Kandinsky: “You are uninformed as to the superhuman burden I have to carry here, which is further significantly increased through the malfunctioning or the seclusion of some of the masters.”178 The bitterness was new. Feeling that he was giving more than he was getting, he was beginning to wear out.

  GROPIUS’S FRUSTRATION began to turn to rage over an insult to Ise. Klee and Frau Lürs, the wife of a Dessau official, had both been invited to become directors of the Bauhaus Circle of Friends. At the same time, Ise Gropius was being eased out of that role by some of the other directors, who found Ise intrusive. Frau Lürs had organized a musical evening with Adolf Busch on violin, accompanied by Rudolf Serkin on piano, and Ise had proposed that the reception afterward be organized by Hinnerk Scheper, the head of the wall-painting workshop. Klee was annoyed. He considered Ise meddlesome and believed that, now that she was no longer a director of the Circle of Friends, she should not be involved. Klee said he would no longer have anything to do with the planning of the concert.

  His main issue was with Ise’s substandard musical taste. She had brought in a dance instructor from Berlin to teach the Charleston and other new steps to the young faculty. The lessons took place at Gropius’s house, because that’s where the only gramophone was. For Klee and Kandinsky, already appalled by what they considered Ise’s frivolous taste in music, her intrusion into the social details of the Busch-Serkin concert was the last straw.

  It seemed as if everyone at the Bauhaus was annoyed with everyone else. People accused one another of not doing enough for the institution, or of assuming too much power while taking on too few burdens.

  In the summer of 1927, Walter and Ise Gropius got away from all the contentiousness for a holiday at his family’s country house, followed by a trip to Copenhagen and rural Sweden. Gropius returned rejuvenated. The combination of beach time and lecturing to receptive audiences restored his hopes for the Bauhaus. But as soon as he was back, he faced demands from every direction. Teachers, students, journalists, Bauhaus guests, and prospective clients all wanted something from him. At the same time, he needed to travel continually to Berlin because of his private work.

  Fritz Hesse, the Dessau mayor who had made everything possible, didn’t like to see Gropius devoting time to anything other than the Bauhaus. Hesse’s political party was losing support, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to get funding for the school. It irked him that Gropius was rarely in his office.

  Hesse was also concerned about rumors of radical students organizing political meetings in the school canteen. With the director away more often than not, there was no one to address the problem. When Hesse told Gropius that he wanted to see some major changes—the departure of Moholy-Nagy, whose work and personality were controversial; a reduction of the budget in many workshops; the closing of the printing workshop to cut costs—Gropius’s only response was to volunteer that the salary owed him personally should go to the school instead. In spite of the offer of what would have been a major sacrifice, Hesse was not satisfied.

  Ise was disliked by many of the Bauhaus faculty members and students, which only added to her husband’s difficulties in Dessau. She was, however, helpful in his ongoing struggles with Alma. Alma would not permit eleven-year-old Mutzi to go to Dessau, as if the Bauhaus were a hotbed of danger, yet when Walter and Ise had tried to have his daughter join them on their summer holiday, Alma had prevented that as well. Meanwhile, Mutzi, who had been educated by private tutors and a governess, had no friends her own age. In the fall of 1927, she went to a boarding school in Geneva, but her trial enrollment lasted just a single night, after which she and Alma ended up on a mother-daughter holiday in Venice. When Alma finally consented to have Mutzi go to Dessau for a month, during a time when Gropius was swamped by his problems with Mayor Hesse and glimpsed his daughter only at meals and on weekends, Ise became involved and helped organize activities for her. Mutzi, who was developing an interest in the theater, attended rehearsals at the Bauhaus workshop, and “the children of masters dutifully called upon the director’s daughter, but … she was still shy, and she found it difficult to communicate with the more unconventionally brought up children of the community.”179 Gropius’s feeling that his child was an outsider exacerbated his feeling of being different from the world around him in the institution he had created less than a decade earlier.

  THE ADMINISTRATIVE ISSUES INTENSIFIED, with no relief in sight. Marcel Breuer, who was creating extraordinary furniture, and whose chairs would eventually become staples of modern life, had arranged to have the steel pieces manufactured by a craftsman who was a fellow Hungarian. The Bauhaus administration, however, had already made an agreement with Meissner GmbH, a German manufacturer, to produce them. When Gropius insisted that was how it was going to be, Breuer became enraged and resigned from the Bauhaus faculty.

  Gropius had by then begun to imagine finding someone to replace him as director. Breuer was one of the candidates. Even though the brilliant furniture designer rescinded his resignation, his erratic behavior disqualified him in Gropius’s eyes. Looking outside the Bauhaus, he considered the architects Mart Stam and Hannes Meyer. Stam was not interested, but Meyer agreed to come to Dessau to head a new department of architecture. His specialty was housing, specifically the way that individual residencies are affected by their surroundings: the impact of adjacent houses, of ambient smells, of outside noises, and of traffic.

  In late 19
27, shortly after Meyer arrived, a Dessau newspaper, the Volksblatt, accused Gropius of taking disproportionately large fees for the housing project in Torten. He wrote a rebuttal, which the editor would not print. On January 15, 1928, he wrote the publisher personally. “Why do you demand the voluntary renunciation of all financial gain only from me and not all others who participate in the construction work? This type of untoward and ridiculous demand can only result in regretting one’s helpfulness.”180

  Since he had in fact relinquished a quarter of the fee to which he was entitled, Gropius was enraged to be accused of profiting from a social housing project. Beyond that, he had contributed more than 75 percent of his salary as Bauhaus director to the school’s budget, which went unacknowledged in public.

  On January 17, 1928, Gropius told a meeting of the Masters’ Council that if the newspaper did not retract the charges, he would probably resign as director of the Bauhaus. Then the publisher replied to his letter with a postcard that said, “I am too busy to answer.”181

  The slight was unbearable. Worse still, after nearly a decade of daily anguish to finance the Bauhaus and keep it solvent, Gropius was tired of fighting an uphill battle that was only growing more difficult. An avant-garde theater director, Erwin Piscator—for whom Gropius, in 1927, had designed a fascinating total theater in the shape of a shell, with large interior units that could be rotated and raised or lowered (it was never built)—had ordered a great deal of furniture for his home in Berlin, but Piscator had gone bankrupt, owing the Bauhaus ten thousand marks.182 There was not enough money to cover the next salary payments.