Masters’ Houses
by Walter Gropius (1925–26)
Parallel to the Bauhaus Building, the city of Dessau commissioned Walter Gropius to construct three pairs of identical semi-detached houses for the Bauhaus masters and a detached house for the director. These were built in a small pine wood on the street now known as the Ebertallee.
Modular architecture
Gropius planned to build the complex based on a modular principle, using industrially prefabricated components. With this he wished to realise the principles of rational construction, both in the architecture and in the process of building per se. In view of the technical resources available at the time, his plan was only partially realised.
The buildings take the form of interlocking cubic structures of various heights. Towards the street the semi-detached houses are distinguished by generously glazed studios; vertical strip windows on the sides let light into the staircases. Only the director’s house featured an asymmetric arrangement of windows. The light-coloured houses have generously-sized terraces and balconies and feature colourful accents on the window reveals, the undersides of the balconies and the drainpipes.
Famous residents
Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy furnished their houses entirely with furniture by Marcel Breuer, while other masters brought their own furniture with them. All of the houses were fitted with built-in cupboards and modern household appliances. The list of residents reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of modernists: László Moholy-Nagy, Lyonel Feininger, Georg Muche, Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, along with their families. Others lived here later, including Hannes Meyer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Josef Albers, Hinnerk Scheper and Alfred Arndt. For the colour design of the interiors, artists such as Klee and Kandinsky developed own ideas that were closely related to their works.
War and its repercussions
After the closure of the Bauhaus in 1932 the houses were let to third parties. The director’s house was destroyed in the war; work on its reconstruction began just a few years ago. The only building realised in Dessau by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was rebuilt at the same time: a kiosk on the eastern edge of the complex, which had been demolished in 1970. The rest of the complex was extensively renovated in 1992. The house that Kandinsky and Klee originally lived in and decorated is particularly fascinating on account of its colourfulness.
Reopening after restoration of the Kandinsky/Klee Master House
The Kandinsky/Klee Master House was reopened to visitors on 18 April 2019 after extensive restoration work in 2018/2019, which was financed and realized by the Wüstenrot Foundation. After the restoration, the Kandinsky/Klee Master House will give visitors the opportunity to experience with all their senses the life of Bauhaus masters in the surroundings they created themselves. Colours and furnishings depict the artistically shaped living and working environment, which was in contrast to Walter Gropius' design, especially in the Kandinsky/Klee Master House.
The Wüstenrot Foundation works directly in the fields of conservation, science, research and education, art and culture. One of her current projects as part of the monument programme is the restoration of the Klee/Kandinsky Master House (project duration 2017-2019, closure of the Master’s House 2018). The semi-detached house, built by Walter Gropius in Dessau in 1926, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. The restoration is necessary to preserve the house, in which the world-famous artists Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky lived with their families in the 1920s, as a Bauhaus heritage.
More information is available at www.wuestenrot-stiftung.de