With this succinct letter from the Office of the Hofmarschallamt in Weimar on 12th April 1919, Bauhaus formally existed.
A succinct letter that ended four long years of negotiation and planning, and which - arguably, and depending on your position - opened a chapter which would change architecture and design more comprehensively than any movement before or since.
Having decided in 1915 to leave Germany for his native Belgium, Henry van der Velde recommended Hermann Obrist, August Endell and Walter Gropius as potential successors for his position as Director of the Kunstgewerbeschule in Weimar. In October of the same year Walter Gropius began a correspondence with Fritz Mackensen, Director of the Großherzoglich Sächsische Hochschule für bildende Kunst, also in Weimar, about a new Department of Architecture and Applied Arts at the school, a new department Gropius was earmarked to lead.
In 1917 Mackensen, together with the school's Professors for painting, graphics and sculpture, approached the Weimar government demanding not only the creation of such an architecture department but also the employment of technicians with handicraft skills to assist and support the teaching at the school: clearly as a step to helping Gropius establish his craft based faculty.
There then followed a period of social and political unrest leading to the German Revolution and the overthrow of Kaiser Wilhelm II on November 9th 1918......
On January 31st 1919 Walter Gropius, no doubt sensing the favourable wind blowing across the young republic, contacted the new government in Weimar to inform them about the talks that had taken place with the old regime, and to offer his services to the new authorities.
With success.
On March 29th 1919 the Vossische Zeitung reported, "The Berlin architect Walter Gropius has, according to our Weimar correspondent, been appointed Director of the Hochschule für bildende Kunst in Weimar. Simultaneously he will assume control of the Kunstgewerbeschule with the Kunstgewerbliche Seminar that the former Professor Vandervelde [sic] led". On April 1st 1919 Gropius formally signed a contract with the Office of the Hofmarschallamt in Weimar appointing him Director of the new unified institution, an institution which received its new name on April 12th, and shortly afterwards Walter Gropius published his "Bauhaus Manifesto".
The rest, as they say................................
