The open atmosphere of life at the Bauhaus, which demanded
and promoted creativity, was always at the forefront of their
memories when members of the Bauhaus community were asked
what shaped them the most at the Bauhaus. Gropius’s slogans of
“freedom to individuality” and “favouring the creative” as well as
“avoidance of all things stiff” from the 1919 Bauhaus Manifesto
worked like an elixir at the time. The new way of thinking
conveyed by the teachers, the use of varied methods to develop
creative skills through experiment, theoretical training and
practical application all contributed to the Bauhaus’s exposed
position in relation to other art schools. For teachers and
students, it was often difficult and tiring at the same time to force
the existing, sometimes conflicting forces at the Bauhaus into
unity. During the early years particularly, there were
representatives of the most diverse ideologies, religious
orientations, and world views, often coupled with corresponding
individual artistic programmes and visions, which were an
expression of the general cultural situation of the time. At the
Bauhaus, representatives of the most different youth movements
in reform, pedagogic and artistically avant-garde circles as well
as supporters of the Deutscher Werkbundand politically left or
right-wing forces were gathered together. While at first the
constructivists deemed themselves confirmed in the wake of the
general, yet only short-lived, economic prosperity, the
increasingly extreme political, social and economic tensions in
Germany can be seen as the background for the increasingly
left-wing politicisation of parts of the student body at the Bauhaus
under Hannes Meyer in 1927.
From 1919 to 1933, 1,287 students from twenty-nine
countries passed through the Bauhaus. Twenty percent of them
were foreigners, and about one third were female. The
proportion of foreigners was above average. The influence of
foreign students on life at the Bauhaus had stimulating effects,
and the international, inter-religious, cosmopolitan spectrum
shaped the atmosphere at the school. There were, however,
no equal rights for women, despite the relatively high
proportion of female students, particularly during the Weimar
years. Women were predominantly directed towards work in
the weaving workshop. Only through extraordinary
achievements and perseverance and against manifold
difficulties were Marianne Brandt, Gunta Stölzl and Alma
Siedhoff-Buscher, for example, able to be successful as
autonomous designers for some time. The majority of Bauhaus
students came from a middle-class background and disposed
of a higher education. Their average age was twenty-four.
49
Many of them were consciously aware that they were part of
something special. In their endeavour to fight conventions and
help the breakthrough of new ideas and ideals they believed
that they had to express their individuality by provocative
deviation from social norms.
In Weimar there were two dominant groups. The supporters of
the Mazdaznan philosophy of life propagated by Johannes Itten
were concerned with a “physical and spiritual cleansing”. They
saw their path to self-knowledge in meditation. A special
breathing technique, vegetarian food, a shaved head and wide
habit-like clothing designed by Itten were some of their outer
signs. The constructivists of the KURI group, on the other hand,
preferred everything related to the world of technology. They
appeared in suits and with exactly the same short hairstyle. In
Dessau it could no longer be determined who belonged to which
group, as the Bauhaus students there preferred longer or bobbed
hair and tracksuits. One of the identifying signs of the Bauhaus
community was the so-called Bauhaus whistle, for which a
Hungarian folk song had been adapted and used as an
identifier. Ten teachers and all Junior Masters married Bauhaus
students, the most prominent example being Hannes Meyer’s
marriage to Lena Bergner. The unusually free interaction also led
to the fact that there were a relatively large number of marital
relationships among students and not a few children produced
from these. The number of students per semester varied
depending on political events, economic conditions and the
institution’s inherent dynamics. The highest number of students
was reached in the 1919/1920 winter semester, when 245
students studied at the Bauhaus, about the average for German
art schools at the time. In its endeavour also to support less well-off talents, the Bauhaus’s fee policy with low rates, grants and
free tuition was deliberately socially oriented. Nevertheless,
many students were forced to end their studies for financial
reasons. Some left the Bauhaus because they were dissatisfied
with the education offered. On the basis of its status as an
academy, which the Bauhaus had obtained in Dessau in 1926,
a total of one hundred and thirty-three diplomas were issued from
1929, most of them in the construction department, the
construction furnishing department and the weaving department.
The Bauhaus students’ life was mainly shaped by a largely
collective manner of learning, working and living. The principle
conveyed in theory and in practise in the workshops was to
analyse conditions and things, to question their purpose and
consequently to reinvent them, allowing for an awareness of the
noticeably heightened feeling of being alive. Work and play
were equal when concerned with the fullest development of the
student’s natural talents. The student-teacher relationship was
usually a partnership shaped by give and take, which went
beyond a method of individual education, since it also referred
to the practical organisation in the world outside. There were a
multitude of opportunities to acquire additional knowledge and
experiences beyond basic and specialist knowledge by means
of interdisciplinary and non-dogmatic instruction. These included
lectures, evening classes, interdisciplinary class visits, joint travel,
theatre visits, work in the workshops for companies as well
đang được dịch, vui lòng đợi..
