The Final years of the Bauhaus


Walter Gropius resigned his post I n1928 to resume private architectural practice. At the same time, Bayer and Moholy-Nagy both left for Berlin, where graphic design and typography figured prominently in the activities of each. Former student Joost Schmidt followed Bayer as master of the typography and graphic design workshop. He moved away from strict constructivist ideas and stocked the workshop with a larger variety of type fonts. Hannes Meyer, a Swiss architect with strong socialist beliefs, assumed the directorship of the Bauhaus. By 1930 conflicts with the municipal authorities forced Meyer to resign. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe a prominent Berlin architect whose design dictum “less is more” became a major tenet of twentieth- century design, became director.


Herbert Bayer, “Europäisches Kunstgewerbe 1927”
(European arts and crafts 1927), poster, 1927.

The Nazi party dominated the Dessau City Council in 1931. It cancelled the Bauhaus faculty contracts in 1932. Mies van der Rohe tried to run the Bauhaus from an empty telephone factory in Berlin-Steglitz. Nazi harassment soon made continuance untenable. The faculty voted to dissolve the Bauhaus, which lead it to close down on 10 August 1933. A notice was sent to students that faculty would be available for consultation if needed. This lead to the end of one of the most important design schools of the twentieth century.

Gropius and Marcel Breuer were teaching architecture at Harvard University in 1937 and Moholy-Nagy established the New Bauhaus (now the Institute of Design in Chicago.) A year later, Herbert Bayer began the American phase of his design career.

The accomplishments and influences of the Bauhaus transcend its fourteen-year life, thirty-three faculty members and 1250 students. It created a viable, modern design movement spanning from architecture and product design to visual communications. In dissolving fine and applied art boundaries, the Bauhaus tried to bring art into a close relationship with life by way of design, which was seen as a vehicle for social change and cultural revitalization.

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