bauhaus faces – Details, episodes & analysis

This brand-new episode of "bauhaus faces" is about a rather unknown Bauhausler: Fritz Kuhr. Although he was at the Bauhaus for roughly 7 years he is widely unknown. Kuhr was the student spokesperson of the Bauhaus Master Council, part of the infamous Bauhaus band, helped edit and produce the Bauhaus publications with Ernst Kállai and had a connection to the communists at the Bauhaus. After leaving the Bauhaus in 1930 Kuhr moved to Berlin and tried to make a living as a freelance artist. He was internationally represented by the gallery Ferdinand Möller and though he seemingly was a rising star in the vibrant art scene of the 1930s, this all came to an abrupt end when the Nazis defamed him as a degenerated artist in 1937. Kuhr stayed in Berlin during World War 2. His atelier was bombed twice and many of his works were partly or completely destroyed. After the second bombing in 1944 Kuhr was drafted into military service and became a Soviet prisoner of war. On his return to Berlin, he was a „bird-free painter in berlin. no studio. no light. no paper. hardly any canvases and oil colours. nevertheless. a new beginning. made possible by the comradeship of colleagues who are also suffering. “ In 1948 Kuhr was appointed as university teacher at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste in Berlin (today UdK Berlin). From now on, he fully concentrated on his art students. Fritz Kuhr died in 1975. For this episode fellow art-historian Ute Famulla tells Kuhr’s story. Her family has clos ties with Kuhr and today owns his estate.

In the latest episode of “bauhaus faces,” we dive into the remarkable story of another iconic Bauhaus couple: Anni and Josef Albers. Their lives and legacies are deeply intertwined— from their first meeting in 1922 in Weimar to their lasting impact on art, design, and education in the US. Anni, who would later shortly lead the weaving workshop at the Bauhaus and then at Black Mountain College, and Josef, a visionary "young master" of the preliminary course, fled Nazi persecution in 1933. In the U.S., they helped shape the Black Mountain College and continued to innovate—Anni in textiles and jewelry, Josef in teaching and painting. Inspired by their travels to Mexico and their love for geometric forms, their art resonates to this day. Join me and Brenda Danilowitz, Chief Curator of The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, as we explore the incredible journey of this Bauhaus power couple.

This time I am going to talk about one of the most brilliant photographers of the Bauhaus, T. Lux Feininger. As the youngest son of the renowned German US-American painter Lyonel Feininger he is the only Bauhausler who both grew up at the Bauhaus and later became a Bauhaus student – as the only offspring of a Bauhaus master and with his 16,5 years the youngest ever student at the Bauhaus. Podcast website bauhausfaces.com | Instagram @bauhausfaces Vita https://www.kunst-archive.net/en/wvz/t_lux_feininger/vita) List of works https://www.kunst-archive.net/en/wvz/t_lux_feininger/works Texts by T. Lux Feininger https://www.kunst-archive.net/en/wvz/t_lux_feininger/texts Photos at the Bauhaus Archive, Berlin https://open-archive.bauhaus.de/eMP/eMuseumPlus?service=direct/1/ResultListView/result.t2.artist_list.$TspTitleLink$0.link&sp=10&sp=Sartist&sp=SfilterDefinition&sp=0&sp=1&sp=1&sp=SsimpleList&sp=0&sp=Sdetail&sp=0&sp=F&sp=T&sp=4 Paintings https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79725; https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/311565?position=311565 Cover image for this episode: © T. Lux Feininger Estate

The new "bauhaus faces" podcast is dedicated to the fascinating life stories of students and teachers of the legendary and infamous Bauhaus art school. Each episode will highlight a unique Bauhaus personality. With the help of their descendants, of researchers, and authors I will navigate you through each personal Bauhaus story. Subscribe to bauhaus faces now – Follow on instagram – Visit bauhausfaces.com

This episode of "bauhaus faces“ is not about a typical Bauhäusler, not a student or a master. She nevertheless played crucial part in documenting the history of the Bauhaus between 1923 and 1928 in her diary. Of course she was also Walter Gropius’s closest confidant, advisor, and editor, his wife, Ise Gropius. Ise Gropius entered the service of the Bauhaus as a secretary, editor, organizer and ‘equal partner’ for Gropius. Soon, she became “Mrs. Bauhaus” and liked her role very much. „The Bauhaus infected me,“ she would later say. For this episode the architect and author Jana Revedin helps to tell the story of Ise Gropius. She wrote a biographical novel called "Jeder hier nennt mich Frau Bauhaus“. The novel is based on Ise Gropius as a main character and her diary that she kept during her stay at the Bauhaus from 1923 to 1928.

This episode of bauhaus faces is about the Bauhaus educated architect Pius Pahl. After being trained as carpenter and interior designer, he decided it was time to go to the Bauhaus and become an architect. He studied with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Ludwig Hilberseimer, who would both become essential for his approach towards designing buildings. Pius Pahl is also one of the students who made the Bauhaus move from Dessau to Berlin. After successfully graduating with his Bauhaus diploma in 1933 he went on a journey to Switzerland, Italy and North Africa before starting to work in different architecture offices. In World War II he was drafted by the military and became a prisoner of war. Although he set up his own building office in 1946 in fear for his four sons to also become soldiers in a war – it was the time of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West – Pius Pahl decided it was time to emigrate. While he wasn’t allowed to go to the US to work with Mies van der Rohe in Chicago (this was his dream) the choice fell on South Africa, because his wife Jeanette was born there and could speak English fluently. Pius, however, struggled during the first years as his language skills were underwhelming. Once he and his family had relocated to Stellenbosch and he had started – once again – his own office, Pius Pahl planned several public and private houses, adapted to the possibilities and materials there. Two of his four sons, Jan-Peter and Tyll Pahl invited me into their houses to talk to me about their father and his work.   

This episode of "bauhaus faces" is about a photographer that most Bauhaus fans today know: Lucia Moholy. She was the photographer who delivered the photos of the Bauhaus in Dessau and its masters’ houses that made the art school so iconic. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that art historians became alert to her when her photos and negatives made their way into the Bauhaus-Archive in Berlin. Until then they had taken a long reroute from Germany via the US, while Lucia Moholy had thought they were lost, when in fact Bauhaus founder and first director Walter Gropius had taken them with him, denied their possession for decades and made use of them to promote the Bauhaus as the ultimate epitome of the avantgarde without ever mentioning their creator: Lucia Moholy. But her life and work were so much more! When she was in danger of being arrested by the Nazis, Lucia left Germany and emigrated to London. Here, she worked as a portrait photographer and – as director – set up the microfilm archive ASLIB. She never succeeded in emigrating to the US like so many other Bauhauslers although she had an offer from her ex-husband László Moholy-Nagy to come and teach photography at the New Bauhaus in Chicago. Most of her adult life, Lucia Moholy struggled to make ends meet and gain recognition for her achievements. When she – once more – emigrated to Switzerland in 1959 (she would live and die in Zollikon near Zurich) Lucia started writing about her collaborative work with László Moholy-Nagy and her own share in it.For this episode the US art historian Robin Schuldenfrei helped to tell the story of Lucia Moholy. She has been researching Moholy for many years now.

This episode is not about just one Bauhaus person, but about two. It’s the premiere of our first episode about a Bauhaus couple: Etel and Ernst Mittag, who were both students at the Bauhaus in Dessau, met there, fell in love, got married, had children and emigrated to South Africa when Etel – as a Jew – was in great danger in Europe.   About her time at the Bauhaus from 1928 to 1930 Etel later wrote in her autobiography: “This was a new world for me. Everything was completely different from what I knew. Nothing was taken for granted. Everything had to be discussed, examined anew from different angles. […] There was almost absolute freedom from prejudice. Of course, I was completely bewildered and intimidated.” Etel studied at the advertising department and then, when founded in 1929, at the photo class. She became prolific in it and could earn a living with it for some time. At a demonstration on the International Women’s Day Etel met two rough looking fellows who had arrived at the Bauhaus via the river Elbe by boat. One of them was Ernst Mittag. He was from Riesa and had studied in Dresden before coming to the Bauhaus to study architecture and carpentry. The two of them became involved in the communist movement, holding clandestine political meetings in their kitchen in a workers’ housing estate in Ziebigk, a suburb of Dessau, and publishing a communist paper in Berlin after leaving the Bauhaus. Even in South Africa they felt most comfortable with the members of a Left book club. While Etel Fodor-Mittag wrote her autobiography “Not an unusual Life, for the Time and the Place” (published by the Bauhaus-Archive Berlin in 2014), not much is known about Ernst Mittag. Until now. In this podcast their younger son Michael Mittag tries to remember as much as possible about both of his parents by remembering conversations with them, by looking at old papers of them and by talking about their work and projects.

This episode is dedicated to the Bauhaus master Gunta Stölzl, one of the few better-known Bauhaus women. We have already mentioned her name in the previous podcast about Stölzl’s first husband, the Israeli architect Arieh Sharon. They had a daughter, Yael, what was born in 1929, do you remember? And Ariel Aloni, my interview partner for the last episode is also Gunta Stölzl’s grandson.  My interview partners for today’s episode are Gunta Stölzl’s younger daughter, Monika Stadler (who shares with us her personal view on her mother’s work) and the Dutch art historian Mirjam Deckers who is currently working for the Gunta Stölzl Estate and is writing her thesis about Stölzl’s work. As we already have two people talking in this podcast you will not hear much of me. My own research into Gunta Stölzl’s life and work is rather restricted, and I will therefore leave the talking to the expert and the daughter as they talk about Gunta Stölzl’s life and work in Munich (before the Bauhaus), as a student at the Bauhaus in Weimar, as a master of the weaving workshop at the Bauhaus in Dessau and with her own businesses in Switzerland (after the Bauhaus).

This time I talked to Ariel Aloni. He is a grandson of even two Bauhaus students: the architect, Arieh Sharon, probably the most famous Israeli architect, and the Bauhaus weaver Gunta Stölzl, the only woman who was successful in becoming a Bauhaus master.  As Ariel says: “There was no conversation with Sharon without the Bauhaus popping up!” And that is also true to his architecture. In his buildings in Israel and Nigeria Sharon still refers to what he had learned from Hannes Meyer and Hans Wittwer at the Bauhaus, and then elevated the concept by adapting to the climatic conditions that were very different from Northern Europe. In Nigeria he went even further and added also architectural aspects of the local Yoruba tribe.  After a career of nearly 60 years as an architect Arieh Sharon left roughly 800 buildings and is today known as the father of Israeli architecture and as one of the consequent pursuers of Tropical Modernism. He is less known for his work as a construction site manager for the ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau near Berlin, but we will get to that project, too.  There is no Israeli architecture prize that Sharon did not win. And even today everyone in Israel knows who Arieh Sharon is. It is time we get to him, as well.