Bauhaus Weimar

In 1919, in the shattered aftermath of World War I, architect Walter Gropius founded the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar, merging fine art and craft into a radical new school that would define modern design for a century. Its teachers included Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Lyonel Feininger; its ideas — form follows function, clean geometry, mass-producible objects — reshaped architecture, furniture and typography worldwide. Local conservatives and nationalists, hostile to its avant-garde and its foreign staff, forced it out in 1925, and it moved to Dessau. The original Weimar buildings, designed by Henry van de Velde, and the Bauhaus Museum opened in 2019 preserve the movement's birthplace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.