Between 1919 and 1933, the Bauhaus School, based first in Weimar and then in Dessau, revolutionized architectural and aesthetic concepts and practices. The buildings put up and decorated by the school's professors (Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Wassily Kandinsky) launched the Modern Movement, which shaped much of the architecture of the 20th century.

Bauhaus is the German school of architecture and design that had inestimable influence on modern architecture, the industrial and graphic arts, and theatre design. It was founded in Weimar in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius as an amalgamation of the Weimar Academy of Fine Arts and the Weimar School of Arts and Crafts. The principles of the Bauhaus, based on those of the 19th-century English craftsman and writer William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement, were that art should meet the needs of society and that no distinction should be made between fine arts and practical crafts. They also depended on the more forward-looking principles that modern art and architecture must be responsive to the needs and influences of the modern industrial world and that good design must be both aesthetically pleasing and technically sound. Thus, classes were offered in crafts, typography, and commercial and industrial design, as well as in sculpture, painting, and architecture.  

• The museum building is a late work of Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus. It was planned in 1964 for Darmstadt (Germany), and was built 1976-79 in modified form in Berlin. Today, its characteristic silhouette is one of Berlin's landmarks. Photograph by courtesy of Bauhaus-Archiv Museum. 

• German Federal Republic 1983.  Commemorative issue for Bauhaus' 50th anniversary.  

• Bauhaus Building in Dessau, Germany.  Photograph by courtesy of Bauhaus-Archiv Museum. 

The Bauhaus style, also known as the International Style, was marked by the absence of ornament and ostentatious façades and by harmony between function and the artistic and technical means of manufacture. In 1925 the Bauhaus was moved into a group of starkly rectangular glass and concrete buildings in Dessau especially designed for it by Gropius. In Dessau the Bauhaus style became more strictly functional, with greater emphasis on showing the beauty and suitability of basic, unadorned materials. 

• German Federal Republic 1983.  Commemorative issue for Bauhaus' 50th Anniversary; artwork by Josef Albers (1886-1976) "Sanctuary" 1942.  

• German Federal Republic 1983.  Commemorative issue for Bauhaus' 50th Anniversary; kinetic art by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946).  

• German Federal Republic 1993.  Contemporary art:  painting by Josef Albers "Homage to the Square".  

In 1930 the Bauhaus came under the direction of the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who moved it to Berlin in 1932. By 1933, when the school was closed by the Nazis, its principles and work were known worldwide. Many of its staff members emigrated to the United States, where the teachings of the Bauhaus came to dominate art and architecture for decades and strongly contributed to the architectural style known as International Style.

• Germany 2004. Bauhaus. UNESCO-issue. 

• Germany 1975. Painting by Oscar Schlemmer (1888-1943). Bauhaustreppe. (Bauhaus Stairway). 

• Germany 2002. Bauhaus Dessau. 

• German Democratic Republic 1980.  A series of three stamps depicting Bauhaus buildings in Weimar and Dessau.  Note that the building shown on the 70pf-stamp is identical with that shown above on Germany 2004. 

Other than Josef Albers, also the Swiss-German painter Paul Klee, and the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky were known as leading artists of the Bauhaus movement.  Paul Klee was a teacher at Bauhaus 1920-1931. 

In 1996 Bauhaus and its sites in Weimar and Dessau (Germany) was declared World Cultural Heritage by UNESCO.  The Bauhaus School, based first in Weimar and then in Dessau, revolutionized architectural and aesthetic concepts and practices. The buildings put up and decorated by the school's professors (Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Wassily Kandinsky) launched the Modern Movement, which shaped much of the architecture of the 20th century. 

Other World Heritage Sites in Germany (on this site). Inactive links are not described on stamps. Please refer to the UNESCO-listing, section Germany for further information about such sites.