06 March 2008

Prehistory of Barhaus

"From Morris to the Bauhaus" is a book title which has long become a slogan, positioning the Bauhaus in a line of development reaching back to the mid-nineteenth century in England. The artist William Morris (1834-1896) was founder and head of a reform movement whose aim it was to fight the damage incurred on culture by industrialization. From 1861 onward, he resuscitated old handcraft techniques in his workshops in order to produce high-quality goods such as fabrics, carpets, glass painting, furniture, and utility articles. In his own "Kelmscott Press", he published books, paving the way for the Jugendstil.

Morris produced a reform wave which was later to reach Germany, where industrialization only set in after the foundation of the Reich in 1871. Germany had also recognized that well-designed industrial products represented a considerable economic factor. The educational system in England was scrutinized in order to reform the German schools for arts and crafts. An entire generation of painters understood applied arts to be the major assignment. The Dresdner Werkstätten (1898), whose machine furniture had been designed by Richard Riemerschmid, are the most well-known example for the setting up of workshops all over Germany. The year 1903 marks the foundation in Austria of the Wiener Werkstätte, their most important representatives being Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser.

A special role was played by the Belgian Henry van de Velde, who had been in Germany since 1897, had founded the School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar in 1907, and who paved the way for the Bauhaus. The school in Weimar was even physically the direct precursor of the Bauhaus, which took up work in van de Velde's school building.

In 1907, artists and industrialists founded the Deutscher Werkbund in Munich, aimed at improving Germany's economy by "enhancing craft work". The young architect Walter Gropius soon became one of the leading figures in the Werkbund. In line with the ideas of his teacher, Peter Behrens, he considered industrial building to be the most important contemporary form of architecture. For the Fagus-Werk in Alfeld/Leine, which he began in 1911 together with his partner, Adolf Meyer, he realized a façade with storey-high steel windows, a motif which was to become an icon of industrial architecture. In 1914, he erected a model factory for the Werkbund exhibition, in search of an expressive and inspired language for building materials such as iron and glass - which in his eyes were timely, but without expression - combining glass stairwells with monumental building volumes of Egyptian inspiration.

In 1919, Gropius succeeded in enforcing his art school reform with the founding of the Bauhaus in Weimar. Not only had he turned central ideas of the Werkbund concerning art school reform into reality, he had also captured the spirit of change of a young generation willing to rebuild a bankrupt post-World War I Germany. The name Bauhaus seemed to fulfill these expectations, and the expressionist style ofLyonel Feininger's cathedral on the front of the Bauhaus manifesto, which invited participation in this adventure, came across as modern and future-oriented.

Source From :- www.bauhaus.de/english/bauhaus1919/vorgeschichte1919.htm

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