GERMANY 1 Apr 2009 Weimar celebrates 90th anniversary of Bauhaus movement

Celebrations for the 90th birthday on Apr 1 of the Bauhaus movement will center in the eastern German city of Weimar, where the design movement was founded. Weimar will mark the occasion with a special exhibition at the Bauhaus Museum, which houses one of the most comprehensive collections of Bauhaus designs in the world. Architect Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus school, which attracted avant garde artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Lyonel Feininger.

The museum collection includes an art nouveau inspired writing desk, furniture for a hairdresser's salon and a chair that is reputed to have astounded its carpenter by having visible screws.

Encyclopedia Britannica describes Bauhaus as a school of design, architecture, and applied arts that existed in Germany from 1919 to 1933. It was based in Weimar until 1925, Dessau through 1932, and Berlin in its final months. Gropius combined two schools, the Weimar Academy of Arts and the Weimar School of Arts and Crafts, into what he called the Bauhaus, or “house of building,” a name derived by inverting the German word Hausbau, “building of a house.”

Today the Bauhaus school is called the Bauhaus University of Weimar. Visitors to the campus can buy t-shirts printed with slogans such as "Bauhaus Lives" or "Discover the Gropius in you."

The city has become a popular destination for holidaymakers in recent years. Many people associate Weimar with Germany's literary past and figures such as Goethe, Schiller and the poet Johann Gottfried Herder.

The exhibition "The Bauhaus is Coming" will be shown at locations separate to the museum building including the Goethe National Museum, the Schiller Museum and the New Museum.

Weimar is already preparing for the Bauhaus centenary, and plans to open a new museum in 2019. Jan/09

RELATED READING:

90th anniversary website:
http://www.bauhaus2009.de

Bauhaus (Encyclopedia Britannica)
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/56418/Bauhaus