The Open Space Gallery
A journey through time in our city
Take your time for a walk and discover photo impressions on an approximately 3.5 km long circular route between the railway station and Kavalierstraße.
Temporary exhibitions in this interesting format present appealing topics such as urban development, urban history and urban culture.
The current Freiraum exhibition invites you to get to know personalities from the Bauhaus era in Dessau. On the tour, you will encounter directors, masters, students, and patrons of the Bauhaus who shaped and carried forward the ideas of modernism through their work.
The image banks tell their story in text and pictures, bringing the diversity of the Bauhaus era to life in the urban space.
station square
Fritz Hesse (1881 – 1973)
Fritz Hesse was initially mayor and, from 1929, lord mayor of Dessau. He is considered the driving force behind the establishment of the Bauhaus in Dessau in 1925. Hesse recognized the potential of the avant-garde school, which had been forced to close in Weimar due to political pressure, and saw it as an opportunity to raise the city’s profile culturally and architecturally as a modern, up-and-coming industrial city.
Under his leadership, Dessau took over the Bauhaus as a municipal institution, financed the construction of the school building designed by Walter Gropius, and built the Masters’ Houses for the Bauhaus masters.
These investments turned the city into an international center of modernism and laid the foundation for the Bauhaus’s most productive phase. Hesse focused on progress and innovation as Dessau’s hallmarks. After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, he was forced out of office and withdrew from public life. He is remembered as one of the most important promoters and enablers of the Bauhaus.
station square
Hinnerk Scheper (1897 – 1957)
After studying at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Hinnerk Scheper worked as a color designer and was appointed by Gropius as head of the wall painting workshop in Dessau in 1925. In this role, he was responsible not only for the color design of the new school building and other Bauhaus buildings in Dessau, but also for the development of the “Bauhaus wallpaper,” which at times became the school’s most successful product.
From 1929 to 1931, he took a leave of absence from the Bauhaus to establish and manage a state advisory center for color design with a design office and associated teaching activities for the entire Soviet Union in the Soviet capital of Moscow. After his return to Germany, he worked freelance with his wife Lou Scheper-Berkenkamp until 1932, taking on commissions for smaller color designs and restoration work.
It was only after his military service from 1942 to 1945 that Scheper was able to work on a larger scale as a color designer again as head of the Office for Monument Preservation and Urban Planning in Berlin.
Peace Square/Bear Clock
Otti Berger (1898 – 1944)
Otti Berger was one of the most innovative textile artists at the Bauhaus. As a student and later as an employee at the weaving workshop in Dessau, she developed numerous experimental fabrics in which she combined traditional materials such as wool and cotton with new materials such as cellophane and artificial silk. She experimented with innovative weaving techniques to achieve special effects in terms of structure, feel, and light reflection. Many of her designs were intended for use in modern architecture, for example as wall coverings, carpets, or floor coverings.
In 1930, Berger took over the management of the Bauhaus weaving workshop for a short time as the successor to Gunta Stölzl. After her time at the Bauhaus, she ran her own studio in Berlin, received international commissions, and collaborated with architects and companies.
From 1933 onwards, she was increasingly disenfranchised and prevented from practicing her profession due to her Jewish heritage. A planned emigration failed. In 1944, Otti Berger was deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp and murdered there. Today, her work is considered groundbreaking for modern textile design.
Peace Square/Bear Clock
Carl Fieger (1893 – 1960)
Carl Fieger was an architect and, above all, a close colleague of Walter Gropius in his architectural office from 1921 to 1934, working primarily as a draftsman. At the same time, he taught technical drawing and descriptive geometry at the Bauhaus from 1927 onwards and, with his own office, designed the Kornhaus restaurant in 1930, among other projects.
With its distinctive dynamic curves, this building in particular—like the house he designed for himself in 1926–1927—represents Fieger’s individual modern architectural style. During the Nazi era, he was banned from working in his profession from 1934 onwards and could only work anonymously as an architect.
After 1945, Carl Fieger was involved in the reconstruction of the heavily damaged city of Dessau and, in 1953, as an employee of the German Building Academy in Berlin (East), he developed the first prefabricated building in the GDR, whose construction, however, remained hidden behind a traditional façade.
Antoinetten Street 9
Marianne Brandt (1893 – 1983)
After studying painting, Marianne Brandt began her Bauhaus training in 1924 as the first woman in the metal workshop. Early on, she designed numerous objects in this workshop, which she also ran herself from 1928 to 1929, that are now considered iconic examples of early Bauhaus design, including the famous MT49 teapot and numerous lamps for the Bauhaus building in Dessau.
After leaving the Bauhaus in 1929, Brandt worked in Walter Gropius’s architectural office and then, until 1932, in the design department of the metal goods factory Ruppelwerk GmbH in Gotha. In 1949, she was a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden.
From 1951 to 1954, she worked at the University of Applied Arts in Berlin-Weißensee and at the Institute for Industrial Design of the GDR, which was located there. In the 1950s, Marianne Brandt once again designed many functional and formally sophisticated industrial products made of metal and glass, drawing on and further developing Bauhaus designs.
Antoinetten Street 9
Lucia Moholy (1894 – 1989)
Lucia Moholy not only documented Bauhaus buildings with her black-and-white photography, but also shaped their perception to this day with her unique visual language. Her photographs of the Bauhaus building, the masters’ houses, and the Bauhaus workshops are world-famous.
Since her photographs were often published without her knowledge and without attribution, primarily by Walter Gropius, Lucia Moholy was denied recognition as a photographic artist for decades.
After emigrating in 1933, she lived in various European countries and later in England, where she worked as a photographer, teacher, and author. In addition to her photographic work, she also published writings on the theory of photography, in which she emphasized the importance of image composition for the perception of architecture and design.
Today, she is considered not only a pioneer of modern architectural photography but also a pioneering theorist of photographic image composition.
Parking place Bauhaus Museum Dessau
Johannes Itten (1888 – 1967)
Johannes Itten was one of the most influential teachers at the early Bauhaus in Weimar, particularly through the Bauhaus preliminary course he developed and led until 1923. This course aimed to teach students a fundamental sensitivity and awareness of the properties of materials and colors.
The color wheel he developed in this context is still used today in art, design, and psychology. In his teaching, Itten emphasized the development and unfolding of individual creativity. At the same time, his teaching was strongly influenced by mystical elements of the neo-religious doctrine of “Maszdaznan,” which was popular in the early 1920s and was also associated with racist views.
After his emphasis on artistic personality development came into conflict with Walter Gropius’s 1923 reorientation of the school toward technology and industry, Itten left the Bauhaus. He joined the “Mazdaznan Temple Community” in Herrliberg near Zurich, where he founded the “Ontos Art School” and then, in 1926, his own school in Berlin, which existed until 1934. Itten then taught at the Zurich School of Applied Arts, which he eventually headed from 1938 to 1954.
Parking place Bauhaus Museum Dessau
Marcel Breuer (1902 – 1981)
Marcel Breuer, who had studied carpentry at the Bauhaus in Weimar, became head of this workshop in Dessau in 1925. In 1925 and 1926, he developed innovative tubular steel chairs for the Bauhaus building. He sought advice from employees at Junkerswerke and technical support from locksmiths in Dessau.
In 1927, Breuer and Hungarian architect Kálmán Lengyel founded the company Standard Möbel Lengyel & Co, which took over the production and distribution of his tubular steel furniture, now considered design icons – such as the B3 armchair known as the “Wassily” – before the Austrian company Thonet-Mundus took over the production rights in 1929.
After leaving the Bauhaus in 1928, Breuer worked as a freelance architect in Berlin until he fled Germany in 1933 due to his Jewish heritage and emigrated via Hungary to England and finally to the USA in 1937. There he taught at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and founded a joint architectural firm with Walter Gropius. After its dissolution in 1941, he opened his own. One of his best-known US architectural projects is the Whitney Museum in New York (now the MET Breuer), built in 1966.
city park
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886 – 1969)
Mies van der Rohe took over as director of the Bauhaus in 1930 during a period of political radicalization. He sought to curb political debates at the Bauhaus and promoted a focus on a minimalist, sober architectural aesthetic characterized by open floor plans and the emphasized use of modern materials such as steel and glass. His own works were considered exemplary in this regard. Some of his most famous designs, such as the Barcelona Pavilion (1929) and the Farnsworth House (1951), are still considered icons of modern architecture today.
After a brief, futile attempt to come to terms with Nazi officials for the preservation of the Bauhaus, the Dessau school was closed in 1932 by the Dessau city council, which was dominated by the Nazis. His attempt to continue the Bauhaus in Berlin as a private institute in 1933 was also short-lived. After numerous attempts to continue working as an architect in fascist Germany, Mies van der Rohe emigrated to the USA in 1938, where he was director of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and ran an architectural firm.
He further developed his idea of “flowing space” as “universal space” – open, flexible spatial concepts that established their own line of development in modern interior design. His skyscraper designs shaped the cityscape of many metropolises, especially in the USA.
city park
Oskar Schlemmer (1888 – 1943)
Oskar Schlemmer was a painter, choreographer, and stage designer who headed the stage workshop at the Bauhaus from 1923 to 1929. His best-known work is considered to be the Triadic Ballet, which he developed in Stuttgart between 1912 and 1922 together with dancers Albert Burger and Els Hötzl. In this costume ballet, as well as in the Bauhaus dances developed with the stage workshop in Dessau from 1926 onwards, he combined abstract geometric forms with equally abstract dance movements. As a result, the masked and costumed performers in Schlemmer’s stage experiments often appeared like sculptures or sculptural groups in motion. Schlemmer was fascinated by the relationships between people, space, and geometry, which he presented on stage not in the form of stories, but primarily as structural constellations.
In 1929, he left the Bauhaus to take up a teaching position at the Academy of Fine Arts in Breslau (now Wrocław). This was followed in 1932 by a professorship at the United State Schools for Art and Design in Berlin. After being dismissed from there in 1933, Schlemmer, whose art was rejected as degenerate in Nazi Germany, was no longer able to exhibit publicly. From 1940 until his death in 1943, a job at a paint factory in Wuppertal secured his livelihood.
Kavalier Street 66
Paul Klee (1879 – 1940)
The painter Paul Klee is one of the most influential figures of the Bauhaus. In his art and teaching, he was preoccupied with the fundamental relationships between lines, shapes, and colors. He understood art as an act of creation parallel to nature and was therefore particularly interested in natural forms of growth and becoming. Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis and his idea of a “primordial plant” also inspired him greatly.
Many of his works are characterized by rhythmic structures and a playful lightness, as can be seen, for example, in the painting “Ad Parnassum” (1932).
Paul Klee’s Bauhaus teaching, characterized by poetic images and ideas, continues to inspire teachers of art and design to this day. After ending his teaching career at the Bauhaus Dessau in 1931, he was appointed professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. After being dismissed without notice in 1933, Klee emigrated to Switzerland, where he continued to work as an artist until his death in 1940, despite serious illness.
Kavalier Street 66
Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944)
Wassily Kandinsky is considered a pioneer of abstract art and was one of the most important figures at the Bauhaus. He taught color theory and design and developed a system in which he linked colors and shapes with musical sounds and moods. As a synesthete, he assigned an instrument or tone color to each color. Accordingly, he also referred to many of his paintings as compositions, for example the painting “Composition VIII” (1923).
Kandinsky had already conceived his systematic, partly spiritual theory of form and color in 1920-1922 as director of the Institute of Artistic Culture (INChUK) in Moscow and further developed it in his Bauhaus teaching from 1922 onwards.
His ideas on the synthetic color theory of painting and music continue to inspire artists and teachers in art and design education to this day.
After the Bauhaus in Dessau closed, Kandinsky emigrated to France in 1933, where he continued to devote himself to abstract painting.
Askanische Street 43
Gunta Stölzl (1897 – 1983)
Gunta Stölzl headed the weaving workshop at the Bauhaus Dessau from 1927 to 1931 and was the first woman to be appointed as a master craftsman. She developed weaving from a craft into an avant-garde discipline of textile art and design by experimenting with new materials, patterns, and techniques.
In 1931, political tensions and internal conflicts at the Bauhaus forced Gunta Stölzl to resign from her position, and she left the Bauhaus in October. After emigrating to Switzerland, she founded the SPH-Stoffe hand weaving mill in Zurich in the same year together with Bauhaus graduates Gertrud Preiswerk and Heinrich Otto Hürlimann. Among other things, the company produced carpets and upholstery fabrics for home furnishings.
Her work has had a lasting influence on textile design and can be found in the collections of many major museums.
Askanische Street 43
Anni Albers (1899 – 1994)
The artist and textile designer Anni Albers began her Bauhaus studies in 1922 in the weaving workshop in Weimar. In Dessau, under the direction of Gunta Stölzl, she not only designed numerous tapestries, fabrics, and carpets, but also took over as deputy director of the Bauhaus weaving workshop in 1928/29 and 1930/31.
This also resulted in the creation of innovative fabrics that were particularly suitable for furniture upholstery or wall coverings due to their structural properties. From 1933, after emigrating to the USA, she taught at Black Mountain College until 1949, where she further developed her textile art techniques.
In 1949, the Museum of Modern Art in New York dedicated a solo exhibition to her, the first textile artist to receive such an honor. Her book “On Weaving,” published in 1965, is still considered one of the most important works on the art of weaving.
Askanische Street 43
Gunta Stölzl (1897 – 1983)
Gunta Stölzl headed the weaving workshop at the Bauhaus Dessau from 1927 to 1931 and was the first woman to be appointed as a master craftsman. She developed weaving from a craft into an avant-garde discipline of textile art and design by experimenting with new materials, patterns, and techniques.
In 1931, political tensions and internal conflicts at the Bauhaus forced Gunta Stölzl to resign from her position, and she left the Bauhaus in October. After emigrating to Switzerland, she founded the SPH-Stoffe hand weaving mill in Zurich in the same year together with Bauhaus graduates Gertrud Preiswerk and Heinrich Otto Hürlimann. Among other things, the company produced carpets and upholstery fabrics for home furnishings.
Her work has had a lasting influence on textile design and can be found in the collections of many major museums.
Askanische Street 43
Anni Albers (1899 – 1994)
The artist and textile designer Anni Albers began her Bauhaus studies in 1922 in the weaving workshop in Weimar. In Dessau, under the direction of Gunta Stölzl, she not only designed numerous tapestries, fabrics, and carpets, but also took over as deputy director of the Bauhaus weaving workshop in 1928/29 and 1930/31.
This also resulted in the creation of innovative fabrics that were particularly suitable for furniture upholstery or wall coverings due to their structural properties. From 1933, after emigrating to the USA, she taught at Black Mountain College until 1949, where she further developed her textile art techniques.
In 1949, the Museum of Modern Art in New York dedicated a solo exhibition to her, the first textile artist to receive such an honor. Her book “On Weaving,” published in 1965, is still considered one of the most important works on the art of weaving.
Franz Street 98
Herbert Bayer (1900 – 1985)
Gunta Stölzl headed the weaving workshop at the Bauhaus Dessau from 1927 to 1931 and was the first woman to be appointed as a master craftsman. She developed weaving from a craft into an avant-garde discipline of textile art and design by experimenting with new materials, patterns, and techniques.
In 1931, political tensions and internal conflicts at the Bauhaus forced Gunta Stölzl to resign from her position, and she left the Bauhaus in October. After emigrating to Switzerland, she founded the SPH-Stoffe hand weaving mill in Zurich in the same year together with Bauhaus graduates Gertrud Preiswerk and Heinrich Otto Hürlimann. Among other things, the company produced carpets and upholstery fabrics for home furnishings.
Her work has had a lasting influence on textile design and can be found in the collections of many major museums.
Franz Street 98
Richard Paulick (1903 – 1979)
Richard Paulick wurde am 7. November 1903 in Roßlau (Elbe) als Sohn des Porzellandrehers und SPD-Funktionärs Richard Paulick (1876–1952) geboren. Während seines Studiums in Dresden und Berlin knüpfte er über seinen Vater Kontakte zum Bauhaus in Dessau.
Im Jahr 1926 gestaltet Georg Muche zusammen mit dem Architekturstudenten Richard Paulick das „Stahlhaus“ in der Siedlung Dessau-Törten als zweites Musterhaus des Bauhauses.
Ab 1927 war Richard Paulick in Dessau als Assistent von Gropius tätig und arbeitete dann bis 1929 auch in seinem Berliner Büro mit ihm zusammen. Zwischen 1930 und 1933, bis zu seiner erzwungenen Emigration vor den Nationalsozialisten, betrieb Paulick ein eigenes Büro in Berlin und Dessau.
In der Emigration in Shanghai arbeitete er zwischen 1933 und 1949 als Innenarchitekt und Stadtplaner. Nach der Rückkehr nach Ost-Berlin wurde Paulick einer der bedeutendsten und einflussreichsten Architekten in der DDR. So war er maßgeblich an der Planung der Stalinallee (heute Karl-Marx-Allee) in Ost-Berlin beteiligt sowie an modernen Stadtplanungen in Hoyerswerda, Schwedt und Halle-Neustadt. Dabei wirkte er wesentlich an der Entwicklung der Plattenbauweise in der DDR mit. Paulick gilt heute als einer der wichtigsten Architekten der ostdeutschen Nachkriegsmoderne.
Kavalier Street 73
Lyonel Feininger (1871 – 1956)
Born in New York in 1871, Lyonel Feininger was the first artist to be appointed as a master at the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1919. He also designed the cover image for the Bauhaus founding manifesto: a woodcut depicting a crystalline-looking cathedral crowned with stars. Until 1906, he had worked primarily as a caricaturist and only began painting later in life.
In his painting, Feininger ultimately developed a unique visual language characterized by prismatic, architectural structures, which he himself once described as “prismatism.” As a neo-Romantic painter, he was fascinated by small medieval town churches—such as the church in Gelmeroda or the cathedral in Halle—but also by seascapes and sailing ships.
While Feininger was put in charge of the printmaking workshop at the Bauhaus in Weimar, he was exempt from all teaching duties in Dessau.
After the Bauhaus closed, Feininger, an American citizen, left Nazi Germany, where his art had been classified as “degenerate,” in 1938. Works by Lyonel Feininger can now be seen in the world’s most important museums.
Kavalier Street 73
László Moholy-Nagy (1895 – 1946)
Moholy-Nagy was one of the most innovative Bauhaus artists and, with his experiments with materials, space, and light at the Bauhaus, he had a particularly influential role in pioneering explorations of the media of photography and film. Among other things, he experimented with photograms, i.e., a process of camera-less photography in which images are created by directly exposing photographic paper to light.
For Moholy-Nagy, the Bauhaus was essentially a laboratory for modern visual media, which he tested with a view to their applicability in the design of printed matter and exhibitions, but also of stage sets and architecture.
In 1937, he founded the “New Bauhaus” in Chicago, which had to close in 1938 for financial reasons. In 1939, Moholy-Nagy founded the successor institute to the School of Design in Chicago, which was restructured into the Institute of Design in 1944 and is now part of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT).
Council Lane 12
Walter Gropius (1883 – 1969)
Walter Gropius was not only the founder of the Bauhaus, but also a visionary who revolutionized architecture and design. In 1919, he established the Bauhaus in Weimar with the aim of establishing a new, holistic form of design. His goal was to merge art, craftsmanship, and technology into a unified whole, thereby creating a modern, functional aesthetic.
After the Bauhaus was forced to leave Weimar due to political tensions, it found a new home in Dessau in 1925. There, Gropius and his architectural firm designed the Bauhaus building, which is considered an icon of modern architecture.
In 1928, he handed over the management of the Dessau Bauhaus to Hannes Meyer and worked as an architect in Berlin until 1933. In 1934, Gropius emigrated to London and from there to the USA in 1937, where he worked as a professor of architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, but also as an architect.
From 1938 and, after 1945, also in Germany, Gropius promoted the Bauhaus as his idea in lectures, texts, and exhibitions.
Council Lane 12
Hannes Meyer (1889 – 1954)
Hannes Meyer succeeded Walter Gropius as director of the Bauhaus in 1928 and reoriented the work of the design school: artistic and individual design was to be avoided, and instead the focus was to be placed on social architecture and the production of affordable housing.
During his short tenure, projects such as the pergola houses in the Törten housing estate in Dessau were developed in collective collaboration with students in the Bauhaus architecture department.
Meyer emphasized that architecture must serve people and advocated sociological research and standardized, industrial construction methods that reduced building costs.
Due to his sympathies for socialist and communist ideas, he was dismissed in 1930. After his time at the Bauhaus, Meyer first went to the Soviet Union and later to Mexico, where he continued to initiate and lead socially oriented architectural projects. His radical visions of functional and socially just housing construction continue to inspire today.
Nantegasse / Long Lane
Kurt Weill (1900 – 1950)
Kurt Weill was one of the most influential composers of the Weimar Republic. His music combined classical, jazz, folk songs, and popular forms to create his own unique style—today we might call it “crossover.” Together with Bertolt Brecht, he created works such as “The Threepenny Opera” (featuring the global hit “Mack the Knife”) and “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,” which were both artistically innovative and politically pointed.
Weill was born on March 2, 1900, in Dessau. His education took him from private piano and composition lessons to the Academy of Music in Berlin, where he studied with Engelbert Humperdinck and later became a master student of Ferruccio Busoni.
Like the artists of the Bauhaus, Weill sought new forms, interdisciplinarity, and the connection between art and social reality. A direct encounter took place on April 4, 1928, when Kandinsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” and Weill’s opera “The Tsar Gets Photographed” were performed together at the Friedrich Theater in Dessau.
After the National Socialists came to power, Weill fled first to Paris in 1933 and then emigrated to the United States in 1935. There he made a career as a musical composer without abandoning his critical stance and social commitment. Kurt Weill died on April 3, 1950, in New York. His work continues to have an impact today—at the Kurt Weill Center in Dessau, at the annual Kurt Weill Festival in Saxony-Anhalt, and on theater and music stages around the world.
Nantegasse / Long Lane
Hugo Junkers (1859 – 1935)
Hugo Junkers was one of the most innovative entrepreneurs of his time and played a decisive role in establishing the Bauhaus in Dessau. As an engineer and entrepreneur, he focused on innovation, functionality, and state-of-the-art materials—principles that the Bauhaus also pursued.
Junkers was known for his advanced aircraft designs. During World War I, he developed the J1 in 1915, the world’s first all-metal aircraft, and in 1919, the F13, the first civilian aircraft made entirely of metal.
But the Junkers factory in Dessau also produced modern heating and hot water supply technology and worked on furniture and houses made of steel and aluminum.
Junkers supported the Bauhaus both financially and by providing equipment and apparatus for the newly established workshops in Dessau.
In 1933, Junkers was forced by the National Socialists to hand over large parts of his company to the new rulers and leave Dessau. After this expropriation, he devoted himself once again to metal construction until his death in 1935, in particular to the modular lamella construction method he had developed, which is considered groundbreaking for the design of innovative space structures.
Kavalier Street (Post Office)
Lou Scheper-Berkenkamp (1901 – 1976)
After completing her studies at the mural painting workshop, Lou Scheper-Berkenkamp became one of the most important colour designers at the Bauhaus. She worked closely with Hinnerk Scheper, the head of the mural painting workshop, whom she married in 1922.
Together, they developed many innovative colour concepts for interior and exterior spaces, including for the Bauhaus buildings in Dessau in 1925-1926. At the same time, Lou Scheper-Berkenkamp was active in the Bauhaus stage workshop, where she also designed her own ‘circus’ performance for the opening of the Bauhaus building on 4 December 1926.
After the Bauhaus, she continued her career as a stage designer, painter and children’s book author. Her colour concepts for modern residential buildings in the 1950s and 1960s had a lasting influence on the design of urban spaces.
Kavalier Street (Post Office)
Gertrud Arndt (1903 – 2000)
Gertrud Arndt is one of the most important female photographers of the Bauhaus, although she was originally trained as a textile artist. She came to the Bauhaus in Weimar with the desire to study architecture, but switched to weaving due to the restrictions imposed on women at the time. After graduating, she worked as a pattern weaver and returned to Dessau with her husband, the architect Alfred Arndt.
At the end of the 1920s, she created her famous ‘mask portraits’ there – staged self-portraits in which she experimented with costumes, scarves, hats and unusual poses.
With humour, irony and creative precision, she questioned conventional role models and explored the self-image of the ‘new woman’. At a time when photography at the Bauhaus was used primarily for documentary purposes, she created a personal, artistically experimental visual language that was far ahead of its time.
Today, the ‘mask portraits’ are considered groundbreaking for modern conceptual and self-portrait photography. It was not until decades later that her work was rediscovered and recognised as a significant contribution to 20th-century photographic art.
St John's Church
Georg Muche (1895 – 1987)
The painter Georg Muche was one of the Bauhaus masters from 1920 onwards. Together with Adolf Meyer, he designed the Haus am Horn in Weimar, the first Bauhaus building to be realised. Furnished in a modern style with works from the Bauhaus workshops, the house was one of the main attractions of the first major Bauhaus exhibition in 1923. From 1921 to 1927, he was head of the Bauhaus weaving workshop, but saw himself primarily as a painter and architect.
In 1926, Muche and Richardt Paulick designed the Stahlhaus (Steel House) in the Dessau-Törten housing estate as the second Bauhaus model house. After leaving the Bauhaus in 1927, he taught at Johannes Itten’s art school in Berlin, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Breslau (Wrocław) from 1931 to 1933, from 1933 to 1938 at the ‘Kunst und Werk’ school in Berlin, which was run by Hugo Häring, and finally, from 1939, at the Higher Technical College for the Textile Industry (from 1944, the Textile Engineering School) in Krefeld. Muche then devoted himself exclusively to painting until his death in 1987.
St John's Church
Joost Schmidt (1893 – 1948)
Joost Schmidt was one of the most versatile designers at the Bauhaus and had a decisive influence on its visual appearance. As a graphic designer, typographer, sculptor and teacher, he combined clear design language, geometric order and experimental typography.
He became famous above all for his poster for the first Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar in 1923, which is still considered an icon of modern graphic design today.
In Dessau, Schmidt taught type design from 1925 to 1929 and initially headed the sculpture workshop and, from 1928, the printing and advertising workshop. There he imparted a modern understanding of typography, advertising and visual communication that had an impact far beyond the Bauhaus. Under his leadership, groundbreaking posters, catalogues, exhibition designs and advertising materials were created that set standards in graphic design.
Schmidt valued functional, concise and at the same time aesthetic design and promoted an awareness of the impact of modern typefaces. His work inspired an entire generation of designers and continues to have an impact today.
Ferdinand-von-Schill-Street / Antoinetten Street
Franz Ehrlich (1907 – 1984)
Franz Ehrlich studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau from 1927 to 1930 and worked in his own office as a graphic designer and exhibition designer until 1934.
In 1934, Ehrlich was arrested and deported to Buchenwald concentration camp in 1937. As a prisoner in the camp’s carpentry workshop and construction office, he designed, among other things, the gate to the prison camp with the inscription ‘Jedem das Seine’ (To each his own).
Even after his release in 1939, Ehrlich continued to work for SS construction companies until he was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1943, but as a salaried architect. After 1945, Ehrlich became a successful designer and architect in the GDR, which also involved working with the Ministry for State Security (MfS).
In addition to his buildings, his standardised furniture, which he designed as an artistic collaborator of the VEB Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau, had a major influence on the modern design of the GDR from the late 1950s onwards.
Ferdinand-von-Schill-Street / Antoinetten Street
Jean Leppien (1910 – 1991)
Jean Leppien was a French painter of German origin who studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau under Kandinsky, Klee, Albers and Moholy-Nagy, among others. The fundamentals of colour and form theory and constructive design taught there shaped his entire artistic oeuvre. Kandinsky’s abstract visual language and Moholy-Nagy’s experimental approach to space and material left a lasting impression on him.
After his time at the Bauhaus, Leppien continued his training in Berlin before fleeing to France in 1933 to escape the Nazi regime. He was imprisoned during the Second World War but survived and began a new career in Paris after 1945. In the 1950s, he developed a clear, constructivist-abstract formal language and became an important representative of Concrete Art.
Geometric structures, precise compositions and balanced colour fields characterise his work, which remained committed to the ideals of the Bauhaus. Leppien exhibited internationally and is considered an important mediator between the Bauhaus and European post-war modernism.