Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, László Moholy-Nagy and Oskar Schlemmer–all taught at the Bauhaus and shaped the ideas of modern art.
In 1925, the Bauhaus moved to Dessau where the groundbreaking Bauhaus architecture was put into effect in a great variety of buildings. In addition to the Bauhaus building itself, four "Master-Houses", duplexes in which the Bauhaus lecturers lived, were built. They are still regarded as outstanding examples of the Bauhaus Modern School. In 1996, the buildings were defined as part of the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage.
You can find further information on the Master-Houses at www.meisterhaeuser.de and www.bauhaus-online.de.
The house was the home of the artists Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and Paul Klee (1879-1940) during their Bauhaus years in Dessau.
Walter Gropius had engaged Klee to join the Bauhaus in 1921. Klee initially lectured in theory of forms and later also in painting. Kandinsky
taught at the Bauhaus from 1922 onwards. He was Workshop Master for wall-painting and taught "Analytical drawing" and "Abstract from elements".
The artists and their families lived in the duplex whose multi-color design created special room atmospheres. Kandinsky and Klee designed the
interior of the duplex to meet their own individual preferences, with more than 170 different color shades, and in stark contrast to the
dry, abstract, almost technocratic architecture of the duplexes.
The artists and master-craftsmen of the Bauhaus were driven out by the Nazis, and the Kandinsky-Klee duplex already started undergoing structural alterations in the 1930s. By the 1990s, it was in desperate need of modernization, but nevertheless fascinating parts of the original structure had been preserved. In addition to doors, fittings, and walk-in closets, the original colors of the interior were still in existence or at least recognizable.
HOCHTIEF declared its willingness to shoulder the modernization and donated DM 1 million to the cause in order to make accessible the building–an
irreplaceable piece of art and architectural history–and preserve it for later generations. HOCHTIEF was glad to take on this challenge as part of
its anniversary celebrations. HOCHTIEF started its work as general contractor in early 1998, after some very extensive preparatory inspections had first
been made. The Kandinsky-Klee Master House in Dessau was reopened on February 4, 2000.
Today the highly individual and impressive color scheme of the duplex can be seen again. Unique in the field of Bauhaus architecture, the Kandinsky-Klee Master-House is thus rightly regarded as an internationally significant incunabulum, an example of the earliest beginnings of modern architecture. Moreover, the modernization of Kandinsky's house provides rare insights into the artist's private life.
Further information:
www.meisterhaeuser.de
Gropius' villa and one of the duplex houses were destroyed in the war, but the others are still there and have a turbulent past behind them, starting with the Nazis' repression of the Bauhaus.
With their clear shapes and economical internal layout the Master-Craftsmen's Houses can still be regarded as outstanding examples of the Bauhaus Modern School. This was reason enough for UNESCO to include all of them together into its list of the world's cultural heritage in 1996.
You can find more information about the master-craftsmen's houses in Dessau at www.meisterhaeuser.de and at www.bauhaus-online.de.
These are the houses in which the artists Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) and László
Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) lived and worked during their time at the Bauhaus. Lyonel
Feininger worked as a master-printer at the Bauhaus until 1925 and from then on as
a non-teaching master-craftsman. László Moholy-Nagy was in charge of the preliminary
courses from 1923 through 1928 and was also the master-craftsman in charge of the
metal workshop. From 1924 onwards he published the Bauhaus books along with
Walter Gropius.
An air raid in 1943 destroyed Walter Gropius' villa and the neighboring duplex that had belonged to Feininger and Moholy-Nagy. All that remained of Feininger's house underwent a very varied history until the City of Dessau restored it to its pristine condition in 1994. Feininger House reopened in March 2011 after months of renovation work and is once again painted in the same colors as when the Feininger Family moved in to the house in 1926. All surfaces were repainted and the doors and door cases refurbished as well. Nowadays the Kurt Weill Center has its headquarters in this house at Ebertallee 63.
The Bauhaus lecturers Georg Muche (1895-1947) and Oskar Schlemmer
(1888-1943) during the time when they worked in Dessau.
Georg Muche worked as a master-craftsman at the Bauhaus from 1920 through 1927. At first, in 1921 and 1922, he taught the preliminary course but then took over management of the Exhibitions Commission for the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition. It was on the occasion of this exhibition that the "Haus am Horn" was built that he had designed. From 1925 onwards he worked as the master-craftsman in charge of the weaving room.
When the Muche-Schlemmer duplex at Ebertallee 65-67 was restored the last surviving building of the group was complete. This one, like the others, had had to suffer a number of disfiguring changes in the 1930s; some of the studio windows were bricked up, chimneys added, and the internal layout changed.